•Brain ischemia process can trigger neurogenesis in the adult brain.•Endogenous neurogenesis is insufficient to restore brain damage after stroke.•Several drugs can boost neurogenesis after ...stroke.•Stem cell-based stroke therapy can improve neurogenesis after stroke.
Stroke consists of an abrupt reduction of cerebral blood flow resulting in hypoxia that triggers an excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, and neuroinflammation. After the ischemic process, neural precursor cells present in the subventricular zone of the lateral ventricle and subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus proliferate and migrate towards the lesion, contributing to the brain repair. The neurogenesis is induced by signal transduction pathways, growth factors, attractive factors for neuroblasts, transcription factors, pro and anti-inflammatory mediators and specific neurotransmissions. However, this endogenous neurogenesis occurs slowly and does not allow a complete restoration of brain function. Despite that, understanding the mechanisms of neurogenesis could improve the therapeutic strategies for brain repair. This review presents the current knowledge about brain repair process after stroke and the perspectives regarding the development of promising therapies that aim to improve neurogenesis and its potential to form new neural networks.
The monitoring of toxic inorganic gases and volatile organic compounds has brought the development of field-deployable, sensitive, and scalable sensors into focus. Here, we attempted to meet these ...requirements by using concurrently microhole-structured meshes as (i) a membrane for the gas diffusion extraction of an analyte from a donor sample and (ii) an electrode for the sensitive electrochemical determination of this target with the receptor electrolyte at rest. We used two types of meshes with complementary benefits, i.e., Ni mesh fabricated by robust, scalable, and well-established methods for manufacturing specific designs and stainless steel wire mesh (SSWM), which is commercially available at a low cost. The diffusion of gas (from a donor) was conducted in headspace mode, thus minimizing issues related to mesh fouling. When compared with the conventional polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane, both the meshes (40 μm hole diameter) led to a higher amount of vapor collected into the electrolyte for subsequent detection. This inedited fashion produced a kind of reverse diffusion of the analyte dissolved into the electrolyte (receptor), i.e., from the electrode to bulk, which further enabled highly sensitive analyses. Using Ni mesh coated with Ni(OH)
nanoparticles, the limit of detection reached for ethanol was 24-fold lower than the data attained by a platform with a PTFE membrane and placement of the electrode into electrolyte bulk. This system was applied in the determination of ethanol in complex samples related to the production of ethanol biofuel. It is noteworthy that a simple equation fitted by machine learning was able to provide accurate assays (accuracies from 97 to 102%) by overcoming matrix effect-related interferences on detection performance. Furthermore, preliminary measurements demonstrated the successful coating of the meshes with gold films as an alternative raw electrode material and the monitoring of HCl utilizing Au-coated SSWMs. These strategies extend the applicability of the platform that may help to develop valuable volatile sensing solutions.
Several studies have demonstrated that children with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) exhibit postural instabilities, as well as balance and gait disorders, due to the vestibular dysfunction that ...they are prone to display as a consequence of inner ear injury. Thus, some experiments have proposed vestibular rehabilitation exercises programs as a treatment to improve these motor skills in children with SNHL.
Assess the evidence quality of the trials that used vestibular rehabilitation exercises programs to improve the postural control, balance and gait of children with SNHL.
This is a systematic review that surveyed articles in nine databases, published up to July 4, 2019, in any language, using the following inclusion criteria: (1) Randomized or quasi-randomized controlled trials. (2) Participants of both groups with clinical diagnosis of SNHL, aged up to 12 years old, with no physical problems, cognitive or neurological impairments, except the vestibular dysfunction. (3) Using vestibular rehabilitation exercises programs to improve the following outcomes: postural control, balance and/or gait.
Six experiments, including 153 children, met the inclusion criteria of this systematic review. Two randomized controlled trials (45 children) on the postural control exhibited low evidence quality and four others; three randomized and controlled trials (90 children) on the balance and one quasi-randomized (18 children) on the gait demonstrated very low evidence quality, respectively.
There is promising evidence that vestibular rehabilitation exercises programs improve the postural control, balance and gait of children with SNHL. However, due to the methodological limitations of the trials and low quality of current evidence on this topic, the trials results analyzed by this systematic review should be interpreted with caution. Due to the low quality of evidence observed in this review, we suggest that new trials be proposed on this topic, with better methodological quality, to prove the effectiveness of vestibular rehabilitation exercises programs to improve the postural control, balance and gait of children with SNHL.
The so-coined fourth paradigm in science has reached the sensing area, with the use of machine learning (ML) toward data-driven improvements in sensitivity, reproducibility, and accuracy, along with ...the determination of multiple targets from a single measurement using multi-output regression models. Particularly, the use of supervised ML models trained on large data sets produced by electrical and electrochemical bio/sensors has emerged as an impacting trend in the literature by allowing accurate analyses even in the presence of usual issues such as electrode fouling, poor signal-to-noise ratio, chemical interferences, and matrix effects. In this trend article, apart from an outlook for the coming years, we present examples from the literature that demonstrate how helpful ML algorithms can be for dispensing the adoption of experimental methods to address the aforesaid interfering issues, ultimately contributing to translate testing technologies into on-site, practical, and daily applications.
Graphical Abstract
This paper outlines a straightforward, fast, and low-cost method to fabricate polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chips. Termed sandwich bonding (SWB), this method requires only a laboratory oven. Initially, ...SWB relies on the reversible bonding of a coverslip over PDMS channels. The coverslip is smaller than the substrate, leaving a border around the substrate exposed. Subsequently, a liquid composed of PDMS monomers and a curing agent is poured onto the structure. Finally, the cover is cured. We focused on PDMS/glass chips because of their key advantages in microfluidics. Despite its simplicity, this method created high-performance microfluidic channels. Such structures featured self-regeneration after leakages and hybrid irreversible/reversible behavior. The reversible nature was achieved by removing the cover of PDMS with acetone. Thus, the PDMS substrate and glass coverslip could be detached for reuse. These abilities are essential in the stages of research and development. Additionally, SWB avoids the use of surface oxidation, half-cured PDMS as an adhesive, and surface chemical modification. As a consequence, SWB allows surface modifications before the bonding, a long time for alignment, the enclosure of sub-micron channels, and the prototyping of hybrid devices. Here, the technique was successfully applied to bond PDMS to Au and Al.
The present study was conducted to characterize the major proteome of preimplantation (D6) ovine embryos produced in vitro. COCs were aspirated from antral follicles (2–6 mm), matured and fertilized ...in vitro and cultured until day six. Proteins were extracted separately from three pools of 45 embryos and separately run in SDS‐PAGE. Proteins from each pool were individually subjected to in‐gel digestion followed by LC‐MS/MS. Three ‘raw files’ and protein lists were produced by Pattern Lab software, but only proteins present in all three lists were used for the bioinformatics analyses. There were 2,262 proteins identified in the 6‐day‐old ovine embryos, including albumin, zona pellucida glycoprotein 2, 3 and 4, peptidyl arginine deiminase 6, actin cytoplasmic 1, gamma‐actin 1, pyruvate kinase, heat shock protein 90 and protein disulfide isomerase, among others. Major biological processes linked to the sheep embryo proteome were translation, protein transport and protein stabilization, and molecular functions, defined as ATP binding, oxygen carrier activity and oxygen binding. There were 42 enriched functional clusters according to the 2,147 genes (UniProt database). Ten selected clusters with potential association with embryo development included translation, structural constituent of ribosomes, ribosomes, nucleosomes, structural constituent of the cytoskeleton, microtubule‐based process, translation initiation factor activity, regulation of translational initiation, cell body and nucleotide biosynthetic process. The most representative KEEG pathways were ribosome, oxidative phosphorylation, glutathione metabolism, gap junction, mineral absorption, DNA replication and cGMP‐PKG signalling pathway. Analyses of functional clusters clearly showed differences associated with the proteome of preimplantation (D6) sheep embryos generated after in vitro fertilization in comparison with in vivo counterparts (Sanchez et al., 2021; https://doi.org/10.1111/rda.13897), confirming that the quality of in vitro derived blastocysts are unlike those produced in vivo. The present study portrays the first comprehensive overview of the proteome of preimplantational ovine embryos grown in vitro.
This technical note describes a new microfluidic sensor that combines low-cost (USD $0.97) with rapid fabrication and user-friendly, fast, sensitive, and accurate quantification of a breast cancer ...biomarker. The electrodes consisted of cost-effective bare stainless-steel capillaries, whose mass production is already well-established. These capillaries were used as received, without any surface modification. Microfluidic chips containing electrical double-layer capillary capacitors (μEDLC) were obtained by a cleanroom-free prototyping that allows the fabrication of dozens to hundreds of chips in 1 h. This sensor provided the successful quantification of CA 15-3, a biomarker protein for breast cancer, in serum samples from cancer patients. Antibody-anchored magnetic beads were utilized for immunocapture of the marker, and then, water was added to dilute the protein. Next, the CA 15-3 detection (<2 min) was made without using redox probes, antibody on electrode (sandwich immunoassay), or signal amplification strategies. In addition, the capacitance tests eliminated external pumping systems and precise volumetric sampling steps, as well as presented low sample volume (5 μL) and high sensitivity using bare capillaries in a new design for double-layer capacitors. The achieved limit-of-detection (92.0 μU mL
) is lower than that of most methods reported in the literature for CA 15-3, which are based on nanostructured electrodes. The data shown in this technical note support the potential of the μEDLC toward breast cancer diagnosis even at early stages. We believe that accurate analyses using a simple sample pretreatment such as magnetic field-assisted immunocapture and cost-effective bare electrodes can be extended to quantify other cancer biomarkers and even biomolecules by changing the biorecognition element.
Parametric multiscale tumor models have been used nowadays as tools to understand and predict the behavior of tumor onset, development, and decrease under treatments. In order to obtain a useful ...model, its parameters have to be accurately estimated, often requiring numerous model evaluations. This can be computationally prohibitive for complex problems. In this work, we propose an approximate Bayesian computation approach for estimating model parameters using a low-fidelity Gaussian Process Regression metamodel. We develop an adaptive procedure to build the data-driven surrogate model by sequentially enriching the data set in the parametric space regions where the surrogate is not accurate enough. At the end of the process, we obtain good emulators of the original models over the entire parametric space at a low computational cost. We investigate the use of the proposed framework for the calibration of two tumor growth models, reaching high accuracy and computational efficiency, which may be key issues in many complex problems.
•Simple, fast, and scalable method provides on-field sensing of oil in produced water.•It basically requires off-the-shelf reagents and a handheld turbidimeter.•The measurements can be performed in ...less than 5 min.•The method is robust facing variations in the salinity of the samples.•Accurate determinations of oil in produced water samples were achieved.
The oil and gas industry involves the generation of a large amount of produced water (PW), which incorporates chemicals of ecological concern such as petroleum compounds (oil) that further imply deleterious effects to its recovery rate and safety of operation. As limitation, the monitoring of oil in PW (OiW) samples at onshore and offshore wells is challenging as the currently available methods usually require the use of benchtop equipment and laborious experimental routines. Using the microemulsification-based method (MEC), which was introduced by our group in 2014, here we describe a cost-effective, user-friendly, fast, and scalable strategy for the on-field determination of OiW. The analysis is based on the monitoring of the minimum volume fraction of amphiphile needed to thermodynamically stabilize cloudy dispersions, thus forming transparent microemulsions. Applying the own sample as oil-water phases, Tween-80 25% v/v in acetone as amphiphilic phase, and a handheld turbidimeter, the assays are performed in less than 5 min with a limit of detection of ∼6 ppm. The latter is lower than the maximum average (OiW 29 ppm per month) that is limited by the Brazilian environmental agency. In addition to showing high robustness facing changes in salinity, it is noteworthy that the method enabled the determination of OiW in real samples with accuracies ranging from 95.7% to 105.6%. Our results are a significant step towards the on-field quantification of OiW. The oil and gas industry may benefit from this method for translating useful solutions into the real world to support the making/management of decisions aiming to minimize ecological and operational side effects.
The present study evaluated the effects of in vitro maturation (IVM) on the proteome of cumulus–oocyte complexes (COCs) from ewes. Extracted COC proteins were analyzed by LC‐MS/MS. Differences in ...protein abundances (p < 0.05) and functional enrichments in immature versus in vitro‐matured COCs were evaluated using bioinformatics tools. There were 2550 proteins identified in the COCs, with 89 and 87 proteins exclusive to immature and mature COCs, respectively. IVM caused downregulation of 84 and upregulation of 34 proteins. Major upregulated proteins in mature COCs were dopey_N domain‐containing protein, structural maintenance of chromosomes protein, ubiquitin‐like modifier‐activating enzyme 2. Main downregulated proteins in mature COCs were immunoglobulin heavy constant mu, inter‐alpha‐trypsin inhibitor heavy chain 2, alpha‐2‐macroglobulin. Proteins exclusive to mature COCs and upregulated after IVM related to immune response, complement cascade, vesicle‐mediated transport, cell cycle, and extracellular matrix organization. Proteins of immature COCs and downregulated after IVM were linked to metabolic processes, immune response, and complement cascade. KEGG pathways and miRNA‐regulated genes attributed to downregulated and mature COC proteins related to complement and coagulation cascades, metabolism, humoral response, and B cell‐mediated immunity. Thus, IVM influenced the ovine COC proteome. This knowledge supports the future development of efficient IVM protocols for Ovis aries.
In vitro maturation (IVM) alters the proteome of cumulus–oocyte complexes (COC) from adult ewes. Major protein signatures characterizing mature COCs relate to immune response, complement cascade, vesicle‐mediated transport, cell cycle, extracellular matrix organization and metabolism, among other events. Knowledge of COC protein atlas will certainly improve IVM protocols. Created with BioRender.com.
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