Kick Start to an Epidemiological Report of Soccer-Related Craniofacial Trauma Analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Soccer is a global sport played by millions annually with an increasing popularity in the United States. Game is played by a wide range of participants from all ages and levels of competition. This scenario leads to a potential disparity in the injury profile based on quantifiable demographics. As the game continues to grow, injury detection and side-line assessment must change as well. METHODS: Utilizing a national injury database, a retrospective cohort study was conducted using 10 years of data collected from randomly selected emergency departments across the United States. Patient demographics, injury sites, and diagnosis were recorded. Diagnoses examined included concussion, contusion or abrasion, dental injury, fracture, hematoma, hemorrhage, internal injury, and laceration. RESULTS: Highest percentage of craniofacial injuries was observed in soccer players between the ages of 12 and 18. In ages 6 to 11 the most common injuries were contusions and dental injuries, with a significantly low number of fractures. Within the age group of 12 to 18 the highest percentage of injuries was concussions. Finally, the highest percentage of injury in the ages of 19 to 34 were fractures and lacerations. DISCUSSION: There is a shift in injury profile as the age of soccer players increases and the level of play becomes faster-paced. In youth players, there is a higher percentage of soft tissue injury. Older players are more likely to suffer a higher degree of injury including fractures, concussions, and lacerations. This suggests a great utility for a layperson-friendly educational intervention initiative applicable to all demographics for the sport of soccer.

Mitochondrial lipid profiling data of a traumatic optic neuropathy model.

Traumatic optic neuropathy (TON) is a degenerative process that occurs in a subset of patients following blunt force trauma to the head. This condition is characterized by retinal ganglion cell (RGC) death and axon degeneration within the optic nerve [1]. At the cellular level, mitochondrial changes are associated with many optic neuropathies [2, 3]. Here, we provide a dataset demonstrating changes in the optic nerve mitochondrial lipid profile of a sonication-induced traumatic optic neuropathy (SI-TON) mouse model at 1, 7, and 14 days after injury. 32 C57BL/6J mice were separated into 4 groups (control, 1, 7, and 14 days) of 8, with 4 males and 4 females in each. Mice were exposed to sonication-induced trauma as described previously (by Tao et al) and optic nerves were harvested at 1, 7, or 14 days following injury [4]. Mitochondria were isolated from homogenized optic nerves and lipids were extracted. Extracted mitochondrial lipids were analysed with a Q-Exactive Orbitrap Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer (LC MS-MS). Further analysis of raw data was conducted with LipidSearch 4.1.3 and Metaboanalyst 4.0. This data is publicly available at the Metabolomics Workbench, http://www.metabolomicsworkbench.org (Project ID: PR000905).

Dynamic Changes in Yeast Phosphatase Families Allow for Specialization in Phosphate and Thiamine Starvation.

Convergent evolution is often due to selective pressures generating a similar phenotype. We observe relatively recent duplications in a spectrum of Saccharomycetaceae yeast species resulting in multiple phosphatases that are regulated by different nutrient conditions - thiamine and phosphate starvation. This specialization is both transcriptional and at the level of phosphatase substrate specificity. In Candida glabrata, loss of the ancestral phosphatase family was compensated by the co-option of a different histidine phosphatase family with three paralogs. Using RNA-seq and functional assays, we identify one of these paralogs, CgPMU3, as a thiamine phosphatase. We further determine that the 81% identical paralog CgPMU2 does not encode thiamine phosphatase activity; however, both are capable of cleaving the phosphatase substrate, 1-napthyl-phosphate. We functionally demonstrate that members of this family evolved novel enzymatic functions for phosphate and thiamine starvation, and are regulated transcriptionally by either nutrient condition, and observe similar trends in other yeast species. This independent, parallel evolution involving two different families of histidine phosphatases suggests that there were likely similar selective pressures on multiple yeast species to recycle thiamine and phosphate. In this work, we focused on duplication and specialization, but there is also repeated loss of phosphatases, indicating that the expansion and contraction of the phosphatase family is dynamic in many Ascomycetes. The dynamic evolution of the phosphatase gene families is perhaps just one example of how gene duplication, co-option, and transcriptional and functional specialization together allow species to adapt to their environment with existing genetic resources.