Comparative genomic hybridization analysis for pancreatic cancer specimens obtained by endoscopic ultrasonography-guided fine-needle aspiration

Background Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) analysis of pancreatic cancer has been done exclusively for surgical and autopsy specimens, because of the difficulty of tissue sampling without surgery. To overcome this difficulty, we applied CGH technology to cells obtained by endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA).Methods In the present study, we performed EUS-FNA for 17 patients with pancreatic cancer before surgery. Tumor cells were selected by microdissection. DNA was extracted from the cells and amplified by degenerate oligonucleotide-primed polymerase chain reaction (DOP-PCR). Then CGH was carried out.Results In the 15 patients with tubular adenocarcinoma, the most common loci of gains (including amplification) were 5p, 8q, and 20q (60% of the patients); and 1q, 7p, and 12p (27%). The most frequent losses were 17p (73%); 9p, 18q, and 19p (47%); and 8p (33%). These findings were similar to our previously reported data. Both of the patients with acinar cell carcinoma showed gains of 2q and 5p, and losses of 1p, 9p, 9q, 11p, 11q, 14q, 17p, 17q, and 18q.Conclusions The results of this study suggest that comprehensive genetic analysis is possible for EUS-FNA biopsy specimens, with a combination of microdissection and DOP-PCR. This analytical strategy will enable us to evaluate the biological characteristics of pancreatic cancer before treatment.     

布鲁氏菌A19疫苗株全基因组测序及比较基因组学分析

目的 探索布鲁氏杆菌A19疫苗株全基因组的结构、分子生物学的功能,并对其生物信息学进行研究。方法 采用Illumina Hiseq 4000和PacBio对A19进行全基因组测序,并与GenBank 上的8株菌进行比较基因组学解析。A19基因组3 286 167 bp, 预测3 371个基因,GC含量57.25%。通过注释COG库,对应基因有2 560个,将其归入22类COG中;根据比对KEGG库,得到2 544个基因,共参与33类代谢通路。结果 综合两个数据库结果发现,大多数A19预测基因中的基因功能主要与膜运输、氨基酸转运及碳水化合物代谢有关。结论 通过分析发现, A19和猪羊牛种布鲁氏菌之间存在一定差异,并找出牛种毒力基因。本实验通过测序A19全基因组,为布鲁菌疫苗的研究提供思路。     

The evolution of self-control

Cognition presents evolutionary research with one of its greatest challenges. Cognitive evolution has been explained at the proximate level by shifts in absolute and relative brain volume and at the ultimate level by differences in social and dietary complexity. However, no study has integrated the experimental and phylogenetic approach at the scale required to rigorously test these explanations. Instead, previous research has largely relied on various measures of brain size as proxies for cognitive abilities. We experimentally evaluated these major evolutionary explanations by quantitatively comparing the cognitive performance of 567 individuals representing 36 species on two problem-solving tasks measuring self-control. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that absolute brain volume best predicted performance across species and accounted for considerably more variance than brain volume controlling for body mass. This result corroborates recent advances in evolutionary neurobiology and illustrates the cognitive consequences of cortical reorganization through increases in brain volume. Within primates, dietary breadth but not social group size was a strong predictor of species differences in self-control. Our results implicate robust evolutionary relationships between dietary breadth, absolute brain volume, and self-control. These findings provide a significant first step toward quantifying the primate cognitive phenome and explaining the process of cognitive evolution.Since Darwin, understanding the evolution of cognition has been widely regarded as one of the greatest challenges for evolutionary research (1). Although researchers have identified surprising cognitive flexibility in a range of species (2–40) and potentially derived features of human psychology (41–61), we know much less about the major forces shaping cognitive evolution (62–71). With the notable exception of Bitterman’s landmark studies conducted several decades ago (63, 72–74), most research comparing cognition across species has been limited to small taxonomic samples (70, 75). With limited comparable experimental data on how cognition varies across species, previous research has largely relied on proxies for cognition (e.g., brain size) or metaanalyses when testing hypotheses about cognitive evolution (76–92). The lack of cognitive data collected with similar methods across large samples of species precludes meaningful species comparisons that can reveal the major forces shaping cognitive evolution across species, including humans (48, 70, 89, 93–98).To address these challenges we measured cognitive skills for self-control in 36 species of mammals and birds (Fig. 1 and Tables S1–S4) tested using the same experimental procedures, and evaluated the leading hypotheses for the neuroanatomical underpinnings and ecological drivers of variance in animal cognition. At the proximate level, both absolute (77, 99–107) and relative brain size (108–112) have been proposed as mechanisms supporting cognitive evolution. Evolutionary increases in brain size (both absolute and relative) and cortical reorganization are hallmarks of the human lineage and are believed to index commensurate changes in cognitive abilities (52, 105, 113–115). Further, given the high metabolic costs of brain tissue (116–121) and remarkable variance in brain size across species (108, 122), it is expected that the energetic costs of large brains are offset by the advantages of improved cognition. The cortical reorganization hypothesis suggests that selection for absolutely larger brains—and concomitant cortical reorganization—was the predominant mechanism supporting cognitive evolution (77, 91, 100–106, 120). In contrast, the encephalization hypothesis argues that an increase in brain volume relative to body size was of primary importance (108, 110, 111, 123). Both of these hypotheses have received support through analyses aggregating data from published studies of primate cognition and reports of “intelligent” behavior in nature—both of which correlate with measures of brain size (76, 77, 84, 92, 110, 124).Open in a separate windowFig. 1.A phylogeny of the species included in this study. Branch lengths are proportional to time except where long branches have been truncated by parallel diagonal lines (split between mammals and birds ∼292 Mya).With respect to selective pressures, both social and dietary complexities have been proposed as ultimate causes of cognitive evolution. The social intelligence hypothesis proposes that increased social complexity (frequently indexed by social group size) was the major selective pressure in primate cognitive evolution (6, 44, 48, 50, 87, 115, 120, 125–141). This hypothesis is supported by studies showing a positive correlation between a species’ typical group size and the neocortex ratio (80, 81, 85–87, 129, 142–145), cognitive differences between closely related species with different group sizes (130, 137, 146, 147), and evidence for cognitive convergence between highly social species (26, 31, 148–150). The foraging hypothesis posits that dietary complexity, indexed by field reports of dietary breadth and reliance on fruit (a spatiotemporally distributed resource), was the primary driver of primate cognitive evolution (151–154). This hypothesis is supported by studies linking diet quality and brain size in primates (79, 81, 86, 142, 155), and experimental studies documenting species differences in cognition that relate to feeding ecology (94, 156–166).Although each of these hypotheses has received empirical support, a comparison of the relative contributions of the different proximate and ultimate explanations requires (i) a cognitive dataset covering a large number of species tested using comparable experimental procedures; (ii) cognitive tasks that allow valid measurement across a range of species with differing morphology, perception, and temperament; (iii) a representative sample within each species to obtain accurate estimates of species-typical cognition; (iv) phylogenetic comparative methods appropriate for testing evolutionary hypotheses; and (v) unprecedented collaboration to collect these data from populations of animals around the world (70).Here, we present, to our knowledge, the first large-scale collaborative dataset and comparative analysis of this kind, focusing on the evolution of self-control. We chose to measure self-control—the ability to inhibit a prepotent but ultimately counterproductive behavior—because it is a crucial and well-studied component of executive function and is involved in diverse decision-making processes (167–169). For example, animals require self-control when avoiding feeding or mating in view of a higher-ranking individual, sharing food with kin, or searching for food in a new area rather than a previously rewarding foraging site. In humans, self-control has been linked to health, economic, social, and academic achievement, and is known to be heritable (170–172). In song sparrows, a study using one of the tasks reported here found a correlation between self-control and song repertoire size, a predictor of fitness in this species (173). In primates, performance on a series of nonsocial self-control control tasks was related to variability in social systems (174), illustrating the potential link between these skills and socioecology. Thus, tasks that quantify self-control are ideal for comparison across taxa given its robust behavioral correlates, heritable basis, and potential impact on reproductive success.In this study we tested subjects on two previously implemented self-control tasks. In the A-not-B task (27 species, n = 344), subjects were first familiarized with finding food in one location (container A) for three consecutive trials. In the test trial, subjects initially saw the food hidden in the same location (container A), but then moved to a new location (container B) before they were allowed to search (Movie S1). In the cylinder task (32 species, n = 439), subjects were first familiarized with finding a piece of food hidden inside an opaque cylinder. In the following 10 test trials, a transparent cylinder was substituted for the opaque cylinder. To successfully retrieve the food, subjects needed to inhibit the impulse to reach for the food directly (bumping into the cylinder) in favor of the detour response they had used during the familiarization phase (Movie S2).Thus, the test trials in both tasks required subjects to inhibit a prepotent motor response (searching in the previously rewarded location or reaching directly for the visible food), but the nature of the correct response varied between tasks. Specifically, in the A-not-B task subjects were required to inhibit the response that was previously successful (searching in location A) whereas in the cylinder task subjects were required to perform the same response as in familiarization trials (detour response), but in the context of novel task demands (visible food directly in front of the subject).     

The phylogeny of howler monkeys (Alouatta, Platyrrhini): Reconstruction by multicolor cross-species chromosome painting

We performed multidirectional chromosome painting in a comparative cytogenetic study of the three howler monkey species Alouatta fusca, A. caraya and A. seniculus macconnelli (Atelinae, Platyrrhini) in order to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships within this genus. Comparative genome maps between these species were established by multicolor fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) employing human, Saguinus oedipus and Lagothrix lagothricha chromosome-specific probes. The three species included in this study and previously analyzed howler monkey species were subjected to a phylogenetic analysis on the basis of a data matrix comprised of 98 discrete molecular cytogenetic characters. The results revealed that howler monkeys represent the genus with the most extensive karyotype diversity within Platyrrhini so far analyzed with high levels of intraspecific chromosomal variability. Two different multiple sex chromosome systems were identified. The phylogenetic analysis indicated that Alouatta is a monophyletic clade which can be derived from a proposed ancestral Atelinae karyotype of 2n=62 chromosomes by a chromosome fusion, a fission, a Y-autosomal translocation and a pericentric inversion. Following these suggestions, the genus Alouatta can be divided into two distinct species groups: the first includes A. caraya and A. belzebul, the second A. s. macconnelli, A. sara, A. s. arctoidea and A. fusca.     

Let bone and muscle talk together: a study of real and virtual dissection and its implications for femoral musculoskeletal structure of chimpanzees

Proximal femoral morphology and associated musculature are of special relevance to the understanding of hominoid locomotor systems. Knowledge of bone–muscle correspondence in extant hominoids forms an important comparative basis for inferring structure–function relationships in fossil hominids. However, there is still a lack of consensus on the correspondence between muscle attachment sites and surface morphology of the proximal femoral diaphysis in chimpanzees. Two alternative observations have been proposed regarding the attachment site positions of gluteus maximus (GM) and vastus lateralis (VL) relative to two prominent surface features of the proximal femoral diaphysis, the lateral spiral pilaster and the inferolateral fossa. Here, we use a combination of virtual and physical dissection in an attempt to identify the exact correspondence between muscle attachment sites and osteological features in two specimens of Pan troglodytes verus. The results show that the insertion of the GM tendon is consistently inferolateral to the lateral spiral pilaster, and that a part of the inferolateral fossa consistently forms the attachment site of the VL muscular fibers. While overall musculoskeletal features are similar in the two specimens examined in this study, GM and VL exhibit different degrees of segregation at the level of the inferolateral fossa. One specimen exhibited tendinous GM fibers penetrating the posteromedial part of VL, with both GM and VL inserting at the inferolateral fossa. In the other specimen, GM and VL were separated by a lateral intermuscular septum, which inserted into the inferolateral fossa. Variation of proximal femoral muscle attachments in chimpanzees is thus greater than previously thought. Our results indicate that a conspicuous osteological feature such as the inferolateral fossa does not necessarily correspond to the attachment site of a single muscle, but could serve as a boundary region between two muscles. Caution is thus warranted when interpreting the surface topography of muscle attachment sites and inferring locomotor functions.     

Mapping genomic rearrangements in titi monkeys by chromosome flow sorting and multidirectional <Emphasis Type="Italic">in-situ</Emphasis> hybridization

We developed chromosome painting probes for Callicebus pallescens from flow-sorted chromosomes and used multidirectional chromosome painting to investigate the genomic rearrangements in C. cupreus and C. pallescens. Multidirectional painting provides information about chromosomal homologies at the subchromosomal level and rearrangement break points, allowing chromosomes to be used as cladistic markers. Chromosome paints of C. pallescens were hybridized to human metaphases and 43 signals were detected. Then, both human and C. pallescens probes were hybridized to the chromosomes of another titi monkey, C. cupreus. The human chromosome paints detected 45 segments in the haploid karyotype of C. cupreus. We found that all the syntenic associations proposed for the ancestral platyrrhine karyotype are present in C. cupreus and in C. pallescens. The rearrangements differentiating C. pallescens from C. cupreus re one inversion, one fission and three fusions (two tandem and one Robertsonian)that occurred on the C. cupreus lineage. Our results support the hypothesis that karyological evolution in titi monkeys has resulted in reduction in diploid number and that species with higher diploid numbers (with less derived, more ncestral karyotypes)are localized in the centre of the geographic range of the genera, while more derived species appear to occupy the periphery     

基于可视化脉诊信息采集与识别的"独取寸口法"与"遍诊法"的信息学比较

《难经》以降，临床医家以“独取寸口”辨证，既往现代脉诊研究，也仅从寸口一部获取压力信息、可视化信息。理论上讲，获得的信息量越多、越有效，辨证的结果越准确。从解剖生理学角度来说，寸口和跌阳脉离心脏距离比较远，而人迎脉距离心脏近，而且是人体的大血管，人迎脉反映的血管、血流等心血管的信息量比较寸口和跌阳脉应该多，更能反映人体的整体的病理生理状况。课题组在专利技术复合B型超声柔性脉动信息采集装置基础上，实现了脉动信息采集与识别的数字化和可视化，并对正常人、人和动物（犬、小型猪）的脉诊模型的寸口、人迎、跌阳脉动部位，获取近似于中医脉诊指下感觉的多维脉管运动信息，通过对信息进行识别，在信息学上对“独取寸口法”与“遍诊法”取脉进行了比较。从初步研究结果来看，遍诊法获得的信息量要比“独取寸口”取脉获得的信息量大，但是，信息量大就一定能提高辨证率吗？海量的信息是否包含有垃圾信息？寻找脉动的特征信息为临床服务是否可行？还有待我们进一步的做大量研究。     

中医脏腑与西医内脏之比较分析

文章从起源、形态和功能三方面,就中医脏腑和西医内脏之间的联系与区别展开比较分析,认为中医脏腑代表的是一个功能体系,而西医内脏代表的是一个具体的器官,两者“名”同, “形”近, “气”不同,只有正确区分,才能学好中医知识,准确认识和治疗中医疾病.     

活血化瘀类方抗肝纤维化疗效比较

目的:基于方证相对原理,通过肝肾纤维化方证数据库筛选分析,选择膈下逐瘀汤、复肝丸、燮枢汤、鳖甲丸4首方剂,观察他们对二甲基亚硝胺(DMN)大鼠肝纤维化的药效作用。方法:大鼠随机分为正常组、模型组、膈下逐瘀汤组、复肝丸组、燮枢汤组、鳖甲丸组和N-乙酰半胱氨酸对照药组。除正常组外,各组大鼠均以DMN 10μg/kg腹腔注射,每天1次,每周连续3天,共4周。造模第3周开始给予相应药物灌胃:膈下逐瘀汤7.03g/kg、复肝丸6.43g/kg、燮枢汤12.51g/kg、鳖甲丸5.40g/kg,正常组与模型组给予等体积的生理盐水灌胃,每天1次,连续4周。试剂盒测定血清ALT、AST、γ-GT活性及Alb、T.Bil含量,盐酸水解法测定肝组织羟脯氨酸(Hyp)含量,HE染色与天狼猩红染色观察肝组织炎症与胶原沉积情况。结果:与正常组比较,模型组大鼠体重明显降低,脾体比升高,腹水形成;血清ALT、AST、Tbil及肝组织Hyp含量明显升高,血清Alb明显降低;肝组织病理染色可见大量炎性细胞浸润、胶原纤维沉积明显,纤维间隔、部分假小叶形成。与模型组比较,复肝丸组、N-乙酰半胱氨酸组脾体比和ALT、Hyp含量等显著降低,肝细胞变性和炎症坏死明显减轻,胶原沉积明显减少,AST、Tbil、γ-GT无明显变化;膈下逐瘀汤组脾体比、ALT、Hyp含量等降低,但死亡率较高,肝组织病理炎症及纤维化程度均较重;燮枢汤组脾体比降低,其余指标无明显变化;鳖甲丸组脾体比降低,ALT、Hyp含量有所降低,但肝细胞变性、炎症坏死和胶原沉积无明显变化;结论:与N-乙酰半胱氨酸相似,复肝丸有较好的抗DMN大鼠肝纤维化作用。