Faculty Bibliography

Last Friday, several British newspapers reported that the World Health Organization had found in a study that blonds would become extinct within 200 years, because blondness was caused by a recessive gene that was dying out. The reports were repeated on Friday by anchors for the ABC News program ''Good Morning America,'' and on Saturday by CNN. On ''Good Morning America,'' Charles Gibson began a conversation with his co-anchor, Diane Sawyer, by saying: ''There's a study from the World Health Organization, this is for real, that blonds are an endangered species. Women and men with blond hair, eyebrows and blue eyes, natural blonds, they say will vanish from the face of the earth within 200 years, because it is not as strong a gene as brunets.'' The British accounts were replete with the views of bleached blonds who said hairdressers would never allow blondness to become extinct, and doctors who said that rare genes would pop up to keep natural blonds from becoming an endangered species

Last Friday, several British newspapers reported that the World Health Organization had found in a study that blonds would become extinct within 200 years, because blondness was caused by a recessive gene that was dying out. The reports were repeated Friday by anchors for the ABC News program Good Morning America, and on Saturday by CNN

For example, [David F. Gordon] said, the AIDS epidemic in Russia is likely to help shape how that country emerges in the post-Soviet era. In Russia, up to one-third of prospective military conscripts are deemed unfit for service because of HIV and chronic hepatitis from drug use, the report said. Gordon also said the AIDS epidemic has the potential to generate political tensions in Nigeria, an important oil producer. He also said the AIDS epidemic could weaken Nigeria's peacekeeping role for the United Nations in Africa. --HHS is conducting a broad management review of its AIDS spending, ordered by HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson. That includes grants to outside groups and includes prevention, treatment and research. [Claude Allen] said he did not know of any other HHS-funded programs that are undergoing similar scrutiny

For instance, Dr. [David F. Gordon] said, the AIDS epidemic in Russia is likely to help shape how that country emerges in the post-Soviet era. Up to one-third of prospective conscripts to Russia's military services are deemed unfit for service because of H.I.V. or chronic hepatitis from drug use, the report said. In Ethiopia, many soldiers contracted H.I.V. during the civil war in the 1980's by having contact with multiple sex partners. When the war ended in 1991, thousands of infected soldiers and prostitutes returned home, spreading H.I.V. and AIDS in their villages and towns, and the threat continues, the report said. The report is the latest in a series of papers by the National Intelligence Council on AIDS since the late 1980's. It expands on one the group issued in December 1999 on the global threat of infectious diseases, including H.I.V., on the United States. The United States has declared the global epidemic of AIDS a national security threat

[David F. Gordon] also said that the AIDS epidemic has the potential to generate political tensions in Nigeria, an important oil producer. He also said the AIDS epidemic could weaken Nigeria's peacekeeping role for the United Nations in Africa

the AIDS virus -- could harm the economic, social, political and military structure in each of the five countries, a CIA official said in releasing the declassified portions of the council's report. HIV would spark tensions over spending priorities, driving up health care costs and sharpening military manpower shortages, David F. Gordon, a CIA official and the report's author said at a news conference at the agency's headquarters in Langley. Gordon said the AIDS epidemic has the potential to generate political tensions in Nigeria, an important oil producer. He also said the AIDS epidemic could weaken Nigeria's peace-keeping role for the United Nations in Africa

HIV, the AIDS virus, could harm the economic, social, political and military structure in each of the five countries, a CIA official said in releasing the declassified portions of the council's report. HIV would spark tensions over spending priorities, driving up health care costs and sharpening military manpower shortages, David F. Gordon, a CIA official and the report's author, said at a news conference at the intelligence agency's headquarters here

For example, [David F. Gordon] said, the AIDS epidemic in Russia is likely to help shape how that country emerges in the post-Soviet era. In Russia, up to one-third of prospective military conscripts are deemed unfit for service because of HIV and chronic hepatitis from drug use, the report said. Gordon said the AIDS epidemic has the potential to generate political tensions in Nigeria, an important oil producer. He also said the AIDS epidemic could weaken Nigeria's peacekeeping role for the United Nations in Africa. The AIDS epidemic is in a different stage of development in each country, but in all of them the epidemic is at a much earlier stage than it is in the worst affected areas of central and southern Africa. In all five countries, risky sexual behaviors are fueling the epidemic, but the rates of spread differ among the five countries, the agency said

We hypothesized that the CXC chemokine receptor-4 (CXCR4)-stromal-derived factor-1 (SDF-1) axis may be involved in metastasis of CXCR4(+) tumor cells into the bone marrow and lymph nodes, which secrete the alpha-chemokine SDF-1. To explore this hypothesis, we phenotyped by fluorescence-activated cell sorter analysis various human tumor cell lines for expression of CXCR4 and found that it was highly expressed on several rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) cell lines. We also observed that cell lines derived from alveolar RMS, which is characterized by recurrent PAX3- and PAX7-FKHR gene fusions and is associated with a poor prognosis, expressed higher levels of CXCR4 than lines derived from embryonal RMS. Furthermore, transfer of a PAX3-FKHR gene into embryonal RMS cell activates CXCR4 expression. Because alveolar RMS frequently metastasizes to the bone marrow and lymph nodes, it seems that the CXCR4-SDF-1 axis could play an important role in this process. These findings prompted us to determine whether SDF-1 regulates the metastatic behavior of RMS cells. Accordingly, we found that, although SDF-1 did not affect proliferation or survival of these cell lines, it induced in several of them (1) phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinase p42/44; (2) locomotion; (3) directional chemotaxis across membranes covered by laminin, fibronectin, or Matrigel; (4) adhesion to laminin, fibronectin, and endothelial cells; and (5) increased MMP-2 and diminished tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases secretion. The small-molecule CXCR4-specific inhibitor, T140, effectively blocked the in vitro responses of RMS cells to SDF-1. On the basis of these observations we suggest that the CXCR4-SDF-1 axis may play an important role in tumor spread and metastasis of RMS cells to bone marrow and that molecular strategies aimed at inhibiting this axis could thus prove to be useful therapeutic measures.

Neuronal circuits involved in left-right coordination are a fundamental feature of rhythmic locomotor movements. These circuits necessarily include commissural interneurons (CINs) that have axons crossing the midline of the spinal cord. The properties of CINs have been described in some detail in the spinal cords of a number of aquatic vertebrates including the Xenopus tadpole and the lamprey. However, their function in left-right coordination of limb movements in mammals is poorly understood. In this review we describe the present understanding of commissural pathways in the functioning of spinal cord central pattern generators (CPGs). The means by which reciprocal inhibition and integration of sensory information are maintained in swimming vertebrates is described, with similarities between the three basic populations of commissural interneurons highlighted. The subsequent section concentrates on recent evidence from mammalian limbed preparations and specifically the isolated spinal cord of the neonatal rat. Studies into the role of CPG elements during drug-induced locomotor-like activity have afforded a better understanding of the location of commissural pathways, such that it is now possible, using whole cell patch clamp, to record from anatomically defined CINs located in the rhythm-generating region of the lumbar segments. Initial results would suggest that the firing pattern of these neurons shows a greater diversity than that previously described in swimming central pattern generators. Spinal CINs play an important role in the generation of locomotor output. Increased knowledge as to their function in producing locomotion is likely to provide valuable insights into the spinal networks required for postural control and walking.