Landscape of human spinal cord cell type diversity at midgestation

Understanding spinal cord generation and assembly is essential to elucidate how motor behavior is controlled and how disorders arise. The cellular landscape of the human spinal cord remains, however, insufficiently explored. Here, we profiled the midgestation human spinal cord with single cell-resolution and discovered, even at this fetal stage, remarkable heterogeneity across and within cell types. Glia displayed diversity related to positional identity along the dorso-ventral and rostro-caudal axes, while astrocytes with specialized transcriptional programs mapped onto distinct histological domains. We discovered a surprisingly early diversification of alpha (α) and gamma (γ) motor neurons that control and modulate contraction of muscle fibers, which was suggestive of accelerated developmental timing in human spinal cord compared to rodents. Together with mapping of disease-related genes, this transcriptional profile of the developing human spinal cord opens new avenues for interrogating the cellular basis of motor control and related disorders in humans.

Fetus Trafficking in Viet Nam – The New Criminal Method of Human Trafficking

When it comes to basic rights of the fetus, including the right to life, theoretical studies around the world on human rights of the fetus still have not reached an agreement on approaches and explanation. Criminal law at the international and national levels still leaves the possibility of protecting the unborn child. Viet Nam’s criminal law is no exception to this trend. In addition, Viet Nam is currently facing human trafficking with new methods and tricks. Children are bought and paid for while still in the womb, then born abroad and given to traffickers. Children are only protected by criminal law for human trafficking if they are born, alive, and detected by the authorities. While the act of trafficking in fetuses is often easily detected by the authorities right from the stage of purchasing and paying, it is not feasible to prosecute this act for human trafficking under the criminal law of Viet Nam. This reduces the criminal law’s ability to suppress crime, at the same time, leaves many fetuses unprotected. Should criminal law be left outside the legal mechanism to protect children while in the fetal stage? This article suggests considering fetus trafficking as a form of human trafficking and to criminalize fetus trafficking. Criminal law should recognize fetus trafficking as a sign of crime or an early stage in the criminal process of human trafficking, because children need special care and protection, including appropriate legal protection before and after birth, due to their physical and mental immaturity.

Intrauterine Programming of Cardiovascular Diseases in Maternal Diabetes

Maternal diabetes is a prevalent pathology that increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases in the offspring, the heart being one of the main target organs affected from the fetal stage until the adult life. Metabolic, pro-oxidant, and proinflammatory alterations in the fetal heart constitute the first steps in the adverse fetal programming of cardiovascular disease in the context of maternal diabetes. This review discusses both human and experimental studies addressing putative mechanisms involved in this fetal programming of heart damage in maternal diabetes. These include cardiac epigenetic changes, alterations in cardiac carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, damaging effects caused by a pro-oxidant and proinflammatory environment, alterations in the cardiac extracellular matrix remodeling, and specific signaling pathways. Putative actions to prevent cardiovascular impairments in the offspring of mothers with diabetes are also discussed.

162 Fetal Programming and Meat Quality

For many years, variation in carcass and meat quality traits was thought to result from actions taken throughout the animals’ life after birth. However, the quantity and quality of meat obtained at slaughter are not always as good as expected. The past decade has increased the number of evidence of the effects of intrauterine development of skeletal muscle on animal performance that affects the carcass and meat quality traits. The so-called “Fetal Programming” concept sheds light on the biology of skeletal muscle development in meat animals, revealing that this development stage appears to be a pivotal moment to invest efforts aiming to improve animal productivity and the quality of meat. Because most, if not all, of the muscle fibers are formed prenatally in livestock species, the impairment of muscle fiber formation at this stage will limit the overall muscle mass deposition throughout postnatal life. Intramuscular adipocytes also start their formation at the fetal stage. As such, since the intramuscular fat depot has a lower deposition rate than other fat depots, enhancement of intramuscular adipogenesis during the fetal stage may increase marbling deposition postnatally. Muscle fibers, adipocytes, and fibroblasts, which contribute to connective tissue formation, are derived from the same pool of mesenchymal stem (MS) cells. Depending on the insult suffered during intrauterine development, their commitment may shift from myogenic towards adipogenic/fibrogenic lineage. So far, most of the evidence in livestock animals has shown that maternal nutrition during gestation is the main factor that influences the mechanisms underlying the commitment of the MS cells. Although the majority of these studies have shown the consequences of maternal nutrition on myogenesis, adipogenesis, and fibrogenesis, the epigenetic markers that cause the programming of MS cells to undergo to one lineage or another needs to be further investigated.

Individual and combined association analysis of famine exposure and serum uric acid with hypertension in the mid-aged and older adult: a population-based cross-sectional study

Background Malnutrition in early life may affect health in later life. The associations between malnutrition and serum uric acid (SUA) and hypertension were inconsistent. The present study aimed to investigate the individual and combined association between famine exposure and serum uric acid and hypertension in middle-aged and older Chinese. Methods Data were selected from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) Wave2011. The analytic sample included 9368 individuals aged 45 to 90. Differences between baseline characteristics and famine exposure/SUA level were evaluated using the Chi-square test, t-test, and F-test. Then, the differences in the prevalence of hypertension between characteristic groups was also estimated by the Chi-square and t-test. Finally, multivariable-adjusted logistic regression models examined association of famine exposure and serum uric acid with odds of prevalence of hypertension. Results A total of 9368 individuals were enrolled in the study, 4366 (46.61%) and 5002 (53.39%) were male and female, respectively. Among males, 459 (10.51%) had been exposed to the Chinese famine during the fetal stage, whereas 1760 (40.31%) and 1645 (37.68%) had been exposed to the famine during childhood and adolescence/adult stage, respectively. Among females, 635 (12.69%) had been exposed to the Chinese famine during the fetal stage, whereas 1988 (39.74%) and 1569 (31.37%) had been exposed to the famine during childhood and adolescence/adult stage, respectively. Regarding the participants with SUA level measurements, 290 (6.64%) reported having Hyperuricemia (HUA) in males and 234 (4.68%) in the females. Furthermore, 1357 (31.08%) reported having hypertension in male and 1619 (32.37%) in the female. In multivariable-adjusted model, famine exposure and serum uric acid were associated with prevalence of hypertension independently in total populations [(1) Model fourd, fatal exposed group vs non-exposed group: 1.25 (95% CI 1.03, 1.52); childhood-exposed group vs non-exposed group:1.60 (95% CI 1.37, 1.87); adolescence/adult exposed group vs non-exposed group: 2.87 (95% CI 2.44, 3.37), P for trend < 0.001; (2) Model four e, high vs normal:1.73 (95% CI 1.44, 2.08)]. When stratified by sex, the results in both males and females were similar to those in the total population. In general, interaction analysis in the multivariable-adjusted model, compared with the combination of normal SUA level and no-exposed famine stage, all groups trended towards higher odds of prevalence of hypertension [the greatest increase in odds, adolescence/adult exposed stage and high SUA level in total participants: OR4.34; 95%CI 3.24, 5.81; P for interaction < 0.001]. When stratified by sex, the results in both males and females were also similar to those in the total population. Conclusion Our data support a strongly positive individual and combined association of famine exposure and serum uric acid with hypertension in middle-aged and elderly Chinese.

Evaluation of Newborn Screening Test for Critical Congenital Heart Disease (Cchd) in a Private Medical Center in Mexico and its Implications for being at 2550 Meters above Sea Level

Pulse oximetry screening test (POT) has been shown to be useful for in early detection of critical congenital heart disease (CCHD). The precise oxygen saturation expected at altitudes above 1500 meters above sea level is unknown, and its usefulness in children born above this height is also unknown. The target is to describe the results obtained from the POT in 100 apparently healthy newborns in a private hospital at 2550 meters above sea level where most of them were evaluated by one or more fetal-stage ultrasounds for the detection of CCHD among other things. Sex, resuscitation and weeks of gestation did not alter the results. 95 patients had “normal” prenatal ultrasound, of which 32% tested positive POT, and CCHD was also ruled out after clinical follow-up. It was concluded that all the patients with a positive test were healthy. We suggest possibility of modifying the POT parameters in order to avoid false positives is also discussed.

Mammals fail to regenerate organs when wound contraction drives scar formation

To understand why mammals generally do not regenerate injured organs, we considered the exceptional case of spontaneous skin regeneration in the early lamb fetus. Whereas during the early fetal stage skin wounds heal by regeneration, in the late fetal stage, and after birth, skin wounds close instead by scar formation. We review independent evidence that this switch in wound healing response coincides with the onset of wound contraction, which is also enabled during late fetal gestation. The crucial role of wound contraction in determining the wound healing outcome in adults has been demonstrated in three mammalian models of severe injury (excised guinea pig skin, transected rat sciatic nerve, excised rabbit conjunctival stroma) where grafting the injury with DRT, a contraction-blocking scaffold of highly-specific structure, altered significantly the wound healing outcome. While spontaneous healing resulted in scar formation in these animal models, DRT grafting significantly reduced the extent of wound contraction, prevented scar synthesis, and resulted in partial regeneration. These findings, as well as independent data from species that heal spontaneously via regeneration, point to a striking hypothesis: The process of regeneration lies dormant in mammals until appropriately activated by injury. In spontaneous wound healing of the late fetus and in adult mammals, wound contraction impedes such endogenous regeneration mechanisms. However, engineered treatments, such as DRT, that block wound contraction can cancel its effects and favor wound healing by regeneration instead of scar formation.

Cognitive Development in Chimpanzees

Cognitive development in chimpanzees has been illuminated through fieldwork and laboratory studies. Their life history reveals the importance of the mother–infant relationship. Females give birth at 5-year intervals on average, and the infants cling to their mothers in the first 3 months. Each chimpanzee community has its own unique cultural traditions, for example in tool use. How tools are used is passed across generations through social learning, in a process called education by master-apprenticeship. Laboratory studies in the early 21st century examined chimpanzees’ learning abilities even at the fetal stage. Chimpanzee and human cognition appear similar in both physical and social domains, and they follow the same developmental stages. However, there is a fundamental difference in the levels of complexity of hierarchical structure. Chimpanzees do not show the recursive and infinite levels that characterize human cognition. Chimpanzees are good at memorizing things at a glance but less skilled at representing things through imagination. The cognitive trade-off between working memory and language may explain the essential difference in cognitive development in the two species.

Features of growth and development of egg cross chicken embryos «Lomann Brown»

Purpose: to study morphometric parameters of absolute values of linear and weight body sizes, specific growth rate and relative (allometric) growth of chicken embryos of the «Lohmann Brown» egg cross at different stages of embryogenesis.Materials and methods. The absolute values of linear and weight body sizes of chicken embryos were estimated using morphometric methods. The formula of I. I. Schmalhausen and S. Brody was calculated the specific growth rate of length and body weight of chicken embryos by the formula simple allometry — relative (allometric) growth of body length from body mass.Results. This is manifested in the increase in the specific growth rate of body length of the embryo at 5 days of the late-fetal stage, 8th, 10th, 12th day of the early-fetal stage and specific growth rate of body mass for 6 days of the late-fetal stage of the late-fetal stage, 10-th and 12-th day of the early-fetal stage. At all stages of embryo development, there is a negative allometry of the relative growth rate of the embryo body length, except for 14 days of the mid-fetal stage, where negative isometry was observed (b=-1,000). Higher values of the power coefficient reflecting the slower growth of the embryo in length relative to their body weight, observed in late-fetal stage at 5-6 days (b=0,913-0,995), in early-fetal stage — 10-e (b=0,960) and 12 days (b=0,928), in mid-fetal stage — 13-th (b=0,821) and 15 days (b=0,981) and late-fetal stage — 20 days (b=0,836).Conclusion. New knowledge derived from this study can be applied not only in research, but in the poultry industry to assess the impact of preincubation processing of eggs on the development of embryos and embryonic mortality at different stages of embryogenesis, the definition of normal and abnormal development of embryos, as well as to assess the impact of other factors, artificial incubation on embryo development, hatchability of eggs and safety of poultry.