Faculty Bibliography

Sensory neurons with related functions form ganglia, but how these precisely positioned clusters are assembled has been unclear. Here, we use the zebrafish trigeminal sensory ganglion as a model to address this question. We find that some trigeminal sensory neurons are born at the position where the ganglion is assembled, whereas others are born at a distance and have to migrate against opposing morphogenetic movements to reach the site of ganglion assembly. Loss of Cxcr4b-mediated chemokine signaling results in the formation of mispositioned ganglia. Conversely, ectopic sources of the chemokine SDF1a can attract sensory neurons. Transplantation experiments reveal that neuron-neuron interaction and the adhesion molecules E- and N-Cadherin also contribute to ganglion assembly. These results indicate that ganglion formation depends on the interplay of birthplace, chemokine attraction, cell-cell interaction, and cadherin-mediated adhesion

Spatial events largely determine the biology of cells, tissues, and organs. In this paper, we present a tool for the quantitative spatial analysis of heterogeneous cell populations, and we show experimental validation of this tool using both artificial and real (mammary gland tissue) data, in two and three dimensions. We present the refined relative neighborhood graph as a means to establish neighborhood between cells in an image while modeling the topology of the tissue. Then, we introduce the M function as a method to quantitatively evaluate the existence of spatial patterns within one cell population or the relationship between the spatial distributions of multiple cell populations. Finally, we show a number of examples that demonstrate the feasibility of our approach

Urothelium that lines almost the entire urinary tract acts as a permeability barrier and is involved in the pathogenesis of major urinary diseases including urothelial carcinoma, urinary tract infection and interstitial cystitis. However, investigation of urothelial biology and diseases has been hampered by the lack of tissue-specific approaches. To address this deficiency, we sought to develop a urothelium-specific knockout system using the Cre/loxP strategy. Transgenic mouse lines were generated in which a 3.6-kb mouse uroplakin II (UPII) promoter was used to drive the expression of Cre recombinase (Cre). Among the multiple tissues analyzed, Cre was found to be expressed exclusively in the urothelia of the transgenic mice. Crossing a UPII-Cre transgenic line with a ROSA26-LacZ reporter line, in which LacZ expression depends on Cre-mediated deletion of a floxed 'stop' sequence, led to LacZ expression only in the urothelium. Gene recombination was also observed when the UPII-Cre line was crossed to an independent line in which a part of the p53 gene was flanked by the loxP sequences (floxed p53). Truncation of the p53 gene and mRNA were observed exclusively in the urothelia of double transgenic mice harboring both the UPII-Cre transgene and the floxed p53 allele. These results demonstrate for the first time the feasibility and potentially wide applicability of the UPII-Cre transgenic mice to inactivate any genes of interest in the urothelium

BACKGROUND: The erythrocyte sedimentation rate, the C-reactive protein serum level, and the white blood-cell count are routinely used to diagnose periprosthetic infection. In the present study, the diagnostic accuracy of the interleukin-6 serum level was compared with the accuracy of these standard tests for the evaluation of a group of patients who had had a total hip or total knee arthroplasty and were undergoing a reoperation for the treatment of an infection or another implant-related problem. METHODS: A prospective, case-control study of fifty-eight patients who had had a total hip or knee replacement and were undergoing a reoperation because of an infection (seventeen patients) or another implant-related problem (forty-one patients) was conducted. The serum levels of interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein, the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and the white blood-cell count were measured. The definitive diagnosis of an infection was determined on the basis of positive histopathological evidence of infection and growth of bacteria on culture of intraoperative specimens. Two-sample Wilcoxon rank-sum (Mann-Whitney) tests were used to determine the presence of a significant difference between patients with and without infection with regard to each laboratory value studied. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of each text were also calculated. RESULTS: The serum interleukin-6 level, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and C-reactive protein level were significantly higher in patients who had an infection than in those who did not, both when all patients were considered together and when the total hip arthroplasty and total knee arthroplasty groups were considered separately. With the numbers available, there was no significant difference with regard to the white blood-cell count between patients with and without infection. With a normal serum interleukin-6 level defined as <10 pg/mL, the serum interleukin-6 test had a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of 1.0, 0.95, 0.89, 1.0, and 97%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: An elevated serum interleukin-6 level correlated positively with the presence of periprosthetic infection in patients undergoing a reoperation at the site of a total hip or knee arthroplasty. The serum interleukin-6 level is valuable for the diagnosis of periprosthetic infection in patients who have had a total hip or total knee arthroplasty. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Diagnostic Level IV. See Instructions to Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence

Implantation is the process by which the blastocyst comes into intimate physical and physiological contact with the uterine endometrium. This process is governed by an intimate cross-talk between the activated blastocyst and the receptive uterus. An increased understanding of mammalian implantation has been gained through the use of the mouse model. This review highlights the more recently defined signaling cascades involved in this dialogue, focusing specifically on cyclooxygenase-2-derived prostaglandins, endocannabinoids, Wnt proteins, homeotic transcription factors, and immunophilins. Unraveling the nature of these signals and discovering additional molecular cascades may lead to strategies to correct implantation failure and improve pregnancy rates in women.