Mandibular Myxoid Liposarcoma: a Case Study.

Liposarcomas are described as soft tissue sarcomas derived from adipose tissue. The finding of this tumor in the mandibular region is exceedingly rare. As of now, it has been described mainly in case reports and small series. A multidisciplinary approach is required to offer optimal treatment and may involve surgery, radiation and systemic therapies. Surgical repair of these defects represents a major challenge in oral and maxillofacial reconstructive surgery. We present the case of a 54-year-old man referred to our center with a progressively increasing mass in the anterior portion of the mandible. Biopsy revealed a well-differentiated myxoid liposarcoma. Resection of the tumor was performed with an additional primary reconstruction.

Analysis of global research on vegetable seedlings and transplants and their impacts on product quality.

BACKGROUND: Previous research has established that using high-quality planting material during the early phase of vegetable production significantly impacts success and efficiency, leading to improved crop performance, faster time to harvest and better profitability. In the present study, we conducted a global analysis of vegetable seedlings and transplants, providing a comprehensive overview of research trends in seedling and transplant production to enhance the nutritional quality of vegetables. RESULTS: The analysis involved reviewing and quantitatively analysing 762 articles and 5248 keywords from the Scopus database from 1971 to 2022. We used statistical, mathematical and clustering tools to analyse bibliometrics and visualise the most relevant research topics. A visualisation map was generated to identify the evolution of keywords used in the articles, resulting in five clusters for further analysis. Our study highlights the importance of the size of seed trays for the type of crop, the mechanical seeder used and the greenhouse facilities to produce desirable transplants. We identified grafting and light-emitting diode (LED) lighting technology as rapidly expanding technologies in vegetable seedlings and transplant production used to promote plant qualitative profile. CONCLUSION: There is a need for sustainable growing media to optimise resources and reduce input use. Thus, applying grafting, LED artificial lighting, biostimulants, biofortification and plant growth-promoting microorganisms in seedling production can enhance efficiency and promote sustainable vegetable nutritional quality by accumulating biocompounds. Further research is needed to explore the working mechanisms and devise novel strategies to enhance the product quality of vegetables, commencing from the early stages of food production. © 2024 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Reversible cardiomyopathy in a patient with Marfan's syndrome. Case report.

Marfan´s syndrome is a multisystemic, autosomal dominant congenital abnormality of variable penetrance that affects the integrity of connective tissue. In the cardiovascular system, the dysfunction of the physiology of the aortic root and the myocardial fibrosis originates non-ischemic cardiomyopathy independent of valve lesions. Few data have been reported on the prevalence of arrhythmias and its impact on heart function. We present a 21-year-old man with Marfan's syndrome and heart failure with frequent supraventricular arrhythmias and aortic root dilation. After ablation in the posteroseptal area of the mitral ring and Tirone David Surgery, there was clinical improvement, the left ventricular ejection fraction increased dramatically from 33% to 46%, the left ventricular end-diastolic volume decreased from 90 ml/m2 to 77 ml/m2 and the NT-proBNP decrease from 1100 pg/mL at 180 pg/mL.

El síndrome de Marfan es una anomalía congénita multisistémica, autosómica dominante y de penetrancia variable que afecta a la integridad del tejido conectivo. En el sistema cardiovascular, también se ha descrito la disfunción de la fisiología de la raíz aórtica y la fibrosis miocárdica que origina una miocardiopatía no isquémica independiente de las lesiones valvulares. Se han comunicado pocos datos sobre la prevalencia de arritmias y su repercusión en la función cardiaca. Presentamos el caso de un varón de 21 años con síndrome de Marfan e insuficiencia cardiaca con frecuentes arritmias supraventriculares y dilatación de la raíz aórtica. Después de la ablación en la zona posteroseptal del anillo mitral y la cirugía de Tirone David, hubo mejoría clínica, la fracción de eyección ventricular izquierda aumentó espectacularmente del 33 al 46%, el volumen telediastólico ventricular izquierdo disminuyó de 90 a 77 mL/m* y el NT-proBNP disminuyó de 1100 a 180 pg/mL.

A monolithic stationary phase with dendritic nanostructures for the separation of PEGylated proteins.

Separation of PEGylated protein mixtures into individual species is a challenging procedure, and many efforts have been focused on creating novel chromatographic supports for this purpose. In this study, a new monolithic stationary phase with hyperbranched nanostructures was chemically synthesized. For this, monoliths with a support matrix of poly (glycidyl methacrylate-co-ethylene dimethacrylate) and ethylenediamine chemistry were modified with third-generation dendrons with butyl-end groups. The new monolith was analyzed by infrared spectroscopy, confirming the dendron with butyl ligands and exhibited low mass transfer resistance as observed by breakthrough frontal analysis. This support was able to separate mono-PEG ribonuclease A from the PEGylation mixture, indicated by a single band (∼30 kDa) in the electrophoretic analysis. Moreover, the separation of mono-PEGylated positional isomers was probably observed, as the protein with ∼30 kDa was found in two separate peaks. Interestingly, the dendronized monolith allowed the separation of the reaction mixture into individual PEGylated species when using high ammonium sulfate concentrations (2 M). A correlation between the PEGylation degree and the strength of the hydrophobic interactions on the monolith was observed. This chromatographic approach combines the natural branched architecture of dendrons and the higher capabilities of the monoliths enhancing the hydrophobic surface area, and therefore the interaction between the PEGylated proteins and ligands. Thus, the novel support represents a novel platform for the purification of PEGylated from non-PEGylated proteins with biotechnological applications.

Osteogenic Sarcoma of the Head and Neck: Is Chemotherapy Needed?

OPINION STATEMENT: Head and neck osteosarcoma (HNOS) is a rare subtype of sarcoma that most commonly arises in the mandible or maxilla. Treatment for HNOS typically involves a multidisciplinary and multimodal approach depending on the size, grade, and histological subtype. Surgery by sarcoma-experienced head and neck surgeons and orthopedic oncologists remains a crucial component of treatment in all subtypes of HNOS, particularly for those with low-grade histology, which can be treated definitively with surgical resection if negative margins are obtained. Negative surgical margins are of utmost prognostic importance, and neoadjuvant or adjuvant radiation should be considered in patients with positive (or anticipated positive) margins/residual postoperative disease. Current data favors the use of (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with high-grade HNOS to improve overall survival but must be individualized to weigh benefits and risks of the short- and long-term effects of treatment. Our center uses a multidisciplinary treatment plan and notes anecdotal improvement in treatment outcomes with a combined surgical and ifosfamide-containing chemotherapeutic approach with radiotherapy for local control if positive margins. Large volume cohorts and adequate randomized control trials assessing the efficacy of chemotherapy in HNOS are scant and additional research and multi-institutional collaboration are needed to study polychemotherapeutic and radiation treatment regimens and outcomes more adequately.

Post-intubation double tracheal stenosis.

Post-intubation tracheal stenosis is a condition that can occur as a consequence of tracheostomy or prolonged intubation. The development of two levels of airway narrowing is rare. We present the case of a 43-year-old male with a history of prolonged mechanical ventilation, who presented to our center with progressive respiratory impairment. Computed tomography with three-dimensional reconstruction demonstrated complex tracheal anatomy with double-level stenosis. The patient underwent successful endoscopic procedure. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12055-022-01426-y.

Model selection, hummingbird natural history, and biological hypotheses: a response to Sazatornil et al.

We have previously suggested that a shift from bee to hummingbird pollination, in concert with floral architecture modifications, occurred at the crown of Salvia subgenus Calosphace in North America ca. 20 mya (Kriebel et al. 2020 and references therein). Sazatornil et al. (2022), using a hidden states model, challenged these assertions, arguing that bees were the ancestral pollinator of subg. Calosphace and claiming that hummingbirds could not have been the ancestral pollinator of subg. Calosphace because hummingbirds were not contemporaneous with crown subg. Calosphace in North America. Here, using a variety of models, we demonstrate that most analyses support hummingbirds as ancestral pollinators of subg. Calosphace and show that Sazatornil et al. (2022) erroneously concluded that hummingbirds were absent from North America ca. 20 mya. We contend that "biological realism" - based on timing and placement of hummingbirds in Mexico ca. 20 mya and the correlative evolution of hummingbird associated floral traits - must be considered when comparing models based on fit and complexity, including hidden states models.

Using Household Expenditure Surveys for Comparable and Replicable Nutritional Analysis: Evidence from México.

In this study, we explore how to use household expenditures and income surveys (HEIS) to provide replicable and comparable measures of nutrients availability at the population level. Our method formalizes the common practice in the literature and consists of three steps: identification of relevant food categories, pairing of food contents food groups in HEIS data, and calculation of the typical amount of nutrients by food group. We illustrate the usage of the method with Mexican data and provide a publicly available data set to readily convert food purchases into six nutrients: calories, proteins, vitamins A and C, iron, and zinc. We perform a descriptive analysis of the evolution of nutrients intake among Mexican households between 2008 and 2020, considering differences by income level. Our results reflect the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on nutrient availability in Mexican households, mainly driven by a substantial reduction in the expenditure in food consumed away from home, although for most nutrients the trend was stable over most of the period.

Sage Insights Into the Phylogeny of Salvia: Dealing With Sources of Discordance Within and Across Genomes.

Next-generation sequencing technologies have facilitated new phylogenomic approaches to help clarify previously intractable relationships while simultaneously highlighting the pervasive nature of incongruence within and among genomes that can complicate definitive taxonomic conclusions. Salvia L., with ∼1,000 species, makes up nearly 15% of the species diversity in the mint family and has attracted great interest from biologists across subdisciplines. Despite the great progress that has been achieved in discerning the placement of Salvia within Lamiaceae and in clarifying its infrageneric relationships through plastid, nuclear ribosomal, and nuclear single-copy genes, the incomplete resolution has left open major questions regarding the phylogenetic relationships among and within the subgenera, as well as to what extent the infrageneric relationships differ across genomes. We expanded a previously published anchored hybrid enrichment dataset of 35 exemplars of Salvia to 179 terminals. We also reconstructed nearly complete plastomes for these samples from off-target reads. We used these data to examine the concordance and discordance among the nuclear loci and between the nuclear and plastid genomes in detail, elucidating both broad-scale and species-level relationships within Salvia. We found that despite the widespread gene tree discordance, nuclear phylogenies reconstructed using concatenated, coalescent, and network-based approaches recover a common backbone topology. Moreover, all subgenera, except for Audibertia, are strongly supported as monophyletic in all analyses. The plastome genealogy is largely resolved and is congruent with the nuclear backbone. However, multiple analyses suggest that incomplete lineage sorting does not fully explain the gene tree discordance. Instead, horizontal gene flow has been important in both the deep and more recent history of Salvia. Our results provide a robust species tree of Salvia across phylogenetic scales and genomes. Future comparative analyses in the genus will need to account for the impacts of hybridization/introgression and incomplete lineage sorting in topology and divergence time estimation.

Pollinator shifts, contingent evolution, and evolutionary constraint drive floral disparity in Salvia (Lamiaceae): Evidence from morphometrics and phylogenetic comparative methods.

Switches in pollinators have been argued to be key drivers of floral evolution in angiosperms. However, few studies have tested the relationship between floral shape evolution and switches in pollination in large clades. In concert with a dated phylogeny, we present a morphometric analysis of corolla, anther connective, and style shape across 44% of nearly 1000 species of Salvia (Lamiaceae) and test four hypotheses of floral evolution. We demonstrate that floral morphospace of New World (NW) Salvia is largely distinct from that of Old World (OW) Salvia and that these differences are pollinator driven; shifts in floral morphology sometimes mirror shifts in pollinators; anther connectives (key constituents of the Salvia staminal lever) and styles co-evolved from curved to linear shapes following shifts from bee to bird pollination; and morphological differences between NW and OW bee flowers are partly the legacy of constraints imposed by an earlier shift to bird pollination in the NW. The distinctive staminal lever in Salvia is a morphologically diverse structure that has evolved in concert with both the corolla and style, under different pollinator pressures, and in contingent fashion.

Tracking temporal shifts in area, biomes, and pollinators in the radiation of Salvia (sages) across continents: leveraging anchored hybrid enrichment and targeted sequence data.

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: A key question in evolutionary biology is why some clades are more successful by being widespread geographically, biome diverse, or species-rich. To extend understanding of how shifts in area, biomes, and pollinators impact diversification in plants, we examined the relationships of these shifts to diversification across the mega-genus Salvia. METHODS: A chronogram was developed from a supermatrix of anchored hybrid enrichment genomic data and targeted sequence data for over 500 of the nearly 1000 Salvia species. Ancestral areas and biomes were reconstructed using BioGeoBEARS. Pollinator guilds were scored, ancestral pollinators determined, shifts in pollinator guilds identified, and rates of pollinator switches compared. KEY RESULTS: A well-resolved phylogenetic backbone of Salvia and updated subgeneric designations are presented. Salvia originated in Southwest Asia in the Oligocene and subsequently dispersed worldwide. Biome shifts are frequent from a likely ancestral lineage utilizing broadleaf and/or coniferous forests and/or arid shrublands. None of the four species diversification shifts are correlated to shifts in biomes. Shifts in pollination system are not correlated to species diversification shifts, except for one hummingbird shift that precedes a major shift in diversification near the crown of New World subgen. Calosphace. Multiple reversals back to bee pollination occurred within this hummingbird clade. CONCLUSIONS: Salvia diversified extensively in different continents, biomes, and with both bee and bird pollinators. The lack of tight correlation of area, biome, and most pollinator shifts to the four documented species diversification shifts points to other important drivers of speciation in Salvia.

Prevalence and risk factors of Neospora caninum infection in ovine flocks of central-western Mexico.

This study, carried out in 13 sheep flocks of central-western Mexico, aimed to identify the prevalence of anti-N. caninum antibodies, to develop a risk analysis of the infection and to estimate the prevalence of parasite DNA in blood. A total of 368 serum and blood samples were subjected to ELISA and PCR tests, respectively, and the association between the prevalence of antibodies and some management factors was estimated. The overall prevalence of anti-N. caninum antibodies was 13.5% [50/368; 95% confidence interval (CI) 10-17], ranging from 2.7 to 90% per flock, and 92% of the farms had seropositive animals. In ewes the prevalence was 14% (48/348, 95% CI 10-17) and in rams 10% (2/20; 95% CI 1- 33). The mean prevalence of Neospora DNA in blood was 27% (99/368, 95% CI 22-31), implying a range between 16 and 82%. In rams, the prevalence was 5% (1/20 95% CI 2-26), while in ewes it was 28% (98/348, 95% CI 23-33). The agreement between the tests was k = 0.19. The presence of other domestic animal species in the farms [odds ratio (OR) 4.4] and the consumption of placental debris, fetuses and stillborn lambs by dogs living in the farms (OR 5.8) were demonstrated to be risk factors.

Self-Assembly Behavior of Amphiphilic Janus Dendrimers in Water: A Combined Experimental and Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Simulation Approach.

Amphiphilic Janus dendrimers (JDs) are repetitively branched molecules with hydrophilic and hydrophobic components that self-assemble in water to form a variety of morphologies, including vesicles analogous to liposomes with potential pharmaceutical and medical application. To date, the self-assembly of JDs has not been fully investigated thus it is important to gain insight into its mechanism and dependence on JDs' molecular structure. In this study, the aggregation behavior in water of a second-generation bis-MPA JD was evaluated using experimental and computational methods. Dispersions of JDs in water were carried out using the thin-film hydration and ethanol injection methods. Resulting assemblies were characterized by dynamic light scattering, confocal microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. Furthermore, a coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CG-MD) simulation was performed to study the mechanism of JDs aggregation. The obtaining of assemblies in water with no interdigitated bilayers was confirmed by the experimental characterization and CG-MD simulation. Assemblies with dendrimersome characteristics were obtained using the ethanol injection method. The results of this study establish a relationship between the molecular structure of the JD and the properties of its aggregates in water. Thus, our findings could be relevant for the design of novel JDs with tailored assemblies suitable for drug delivery systems.

Structural analysis of binding functionality of folic acid-PEG dendrimers against folate receptor.

Dendrimers functionalized with folic acid (FA) are drug delivery systems that can selectively target cancer cells with folate receptors (FR-α) overexpression. Incorporation of polyethylene glycol (PEG) can enhance dendrimers solubility and pharmacokinetics, but ligand-receptor binding must not be affected. In this work we characterized, at atomic level, the binding functionality of conventional site-specific dendrimers conjugated with FA with PEG 750 or PEG 3350 as a linker. After Molecular Dynamics simulation, we observed that both PEG's did not interfere over ligand-receptor binding functionality. Although binding kinetics could be notably affected, the folate fragment from both dendrimers remained exposed to the solvent before approaching selectively to FR-α. PEG 3350 provided better solubility and protection from enzymatic degradation to the dendrimer than PEG 750. Also, FA-PEG3350 dendrimer showed a slightly better interaction with FR-α than FA-PEG750 dendrimer. Therefore, theoretical evidence supports that both dendrimers are suitable as drug delivery systems for cancer therapies.

Self-Assembly of Amphiphilic Dendrimers: The Role of Generation and Alkyl Chain Length in siRNA Interaction.

An ideal nucleic-acid transfection system should combine the physical and chemical characteristics of cationic lipids and linear polymers to decrease cytotoxicity and uptake limitations. Previous research described new types of carriers termed amphiphilic dendrimers (ADs), which are based on polyamidoamine dendrimers (PAMAM). These ADs display the cell membrane affinity advantage of lipids and preserve the high affinity for DNA possessed by cationic dendrimers. These lipid/dendrimer hybrids consist of a low-generation, hydrophilic dendron (G2, G1, or G0) bonded to a hydrophobic tail. The G2-18C AD was reported to be an efficient siRNA vector with significant gene silencing. However, shorter tail ADs (G2-15C and G2-13C) and lower generation (G0 and G1) dendrimers failed as transfection carriers. To date, the self-assembly phenomenon of this class of amphiphilic dendrimers has not been molecularly explored using molecular simulation methods. To gain insight into these systems, the present study used coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to describe how ADs are able to self-assemble into an aggregate, and, specifically, how tail length and generation play a key role in this event. Finally, explanations are given for the better efficiency of G2/18-C as gene carrier in terms of binding of siRNA. This knowledge could be relevant for the design of novel, safer ADs with well-optimized affinity for siRNA.