Cornea-Specific Human Adipose Stem Cell-Derived Extracellular Matrix for Corneal Stroma Tissue Engineering.

Utilizing tissue-specific extracellular matrices (ECMs) is vital for replicating the composition of native tissues and developing biologically relevant biomaterials. Human- or animal-derived donor tissues and organs are the current gold standard for the source of these ECMs. To overcome the several limitations related to these ECM sources, including the highly limited availability of donor tissues, cell-derived ECM offers an alternative approach for engineering tissue-specific biomaterials, such as bioinks for three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting. 3D bioprinting is a state-of-the-art biofabrication technology that addresses the global need for donor tissues and organs. In fact, there is a vast global demand for human donor corneas that are used for treating corneal blindness, often resulting from damage in the corneal stromal microstructure. Human adipose tissue is one of the most abundant tissues and easy to access, and adipose tissue-derived stem cells (hASCs) are a highly advantageous cell type for tissue engineering. Furthermore, hASCs have already been studied in clinical trials for treating corneal stromal pathologies. In this study, a corneal stroma-specific ECM was engineered without the need for donor corneas by differentiating hASCs toward corneal stromal keratocytes (hASC-CSKs). Furthermore, this ECM was utilized as a component for corneal stroma-specific bioink where hASC-CSKs were printed to produce corneal stroma structures. This cost-effective approach combined with a clinically relevant cell type provides valuable information on developing more sustainable tissue-specific solutions and advances the field of corneal tissue engineering.

Mitochondrial dysfunction generates a growth-restraining signal linked to pyruvate in Drosophila larvae.

The Drosophila bang-sensitive mutant tko25t, manifesting a global deficiency in oxidative phosphorylation due to a mitochondrial protein synthesis defect, exhibits a pronounced delay in larval development. We previously identified a number of metabolic abnormalities in tko25t larvae, including elevated pyruvate and lactate, and found the larval gut to be a crucial tissue for the regulation of larval growth in the mutant. Here we established that expression of wild-type tko in any of several other tissues of tko25t also partially alleviates developmental delay. The effects appeared to be additive, whilst knockdown of tko in a variety of specific tissues phenocopied tko25t, producing developmental delay and bang-sensitivity. These findings imply the existence of a systemic signal regulating growth in response to mitochondrial dysfunction. Drugs and RNAi-targeted on pyruvate metabolism interacted with tko25t in ways that implicated pyruvate or one of its metabolic derivatives in playing a central role in generating such a signal. RNA-seq revealed that dietary pyruvate-induced changes in transcript representation were mostly non-coherent with those produced by tko25t or high-sugar, consistent with the idea that growth regulation operates primarily at the translational and/or metabolic level.

Data Exchange Interoperability in IoT Ecosystem for Smart Parking and EV Charging.

Many domains are trying to integrate with the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, such as public administrations starting smart city initiatives all over the world. Cities are becoming smart in many ways: smart mobility, smart buildings, smart environment and so on. However, the problem of non-interoperability in the IoT hinders the seamless communication between all kinds of IoT devices. Different domain specific IoT applications use different interoperability standards. These standards are usually not interoperable with each other. IoT applications and ecosystems therefore tend to use a vertical communication model that does not allow data sharing horizontally across different IoT ecosystems. In 2014, The Open Group published two domain-independent IoT messaging standards, O-MI and O-DF, aiming to solve the interoperability problem. In this article we describe the practical use of O-MI/O-DF standards for reaching interoperability in a mobile application for the smart city context, in particular for the Smart Mobility domain, electric vehicle (EV) charging case study. The proof-of-concept of the smart EV charging ecosystem with mobile application user interface was developed as a part of an EU (Horizon 2020) Project bIoTope.