• Willard Zimmerman posted an update 4 hours, 9 minutes ago

    As teaching hospitals institute social distancing and defer nonemergent procedures to cope with the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, the need for daily on-site presence, unless necessary, has been reduced for all medical staff, including trainees. Pathology training programs must adapt to these changes to ensure overall safety without significantly compromising training and the educational mission of the institution.

    To describe the hybrid on-site and remote anatomic pathology training model in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic that was implemented in our pathology department and report the clinical fellows’ responses to the survey about their experiences.

    The hybrid model was implemented March 25, 2020. Fellows alternate weekly between working on site and working remotely. On site, fellows wear personal protective equipment and maintain social distancing. Remotely, fellows use digital pathology to review cases and supplement with online educational activities. Virtual “coffee breaks,”, hospital personnel, and the community.

    Hybrid on-site and remote training can maximize anatomic pathology learning opportunities while maintaining the safety of trainees, hospital personnel, and the community.Staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB), which is produced by the major human pathogen, Staphylococcus aureus, represents a powerful superantigenic toxin and is considered a bioweapon. click here However, the contribution of SEB towards S. aureus pathogenesis has never been directly demonstrated with genetically defined mutants in clinically relevant strains. Many isolates of the predominant Asian community-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus (CA-MRSA) lineage ST59 harbor seb, implying a significant role of SEB in the observed hypervirulence of this lineage. We created an isogenic seb mutant in a representative ST59 isolate and assessed its virulence potential in mouse infection models. We detected a significant contribution of seb to systemic ST59 infection that was associated with a cytokine storm. Our results directly demonstrate that seb contributes to S. aureus pathogenesis, suggesting value of including SEB as a target in multi-pronged anti-staphylococcal drug development strategies. Furthermore, they indicate that seb contributes to fatal exacerbation of CA-MRSA infection.

    Alpha-tocopherol (αT), the bioactive constituent of vitamin E, is essential for fertility and neurological development. Synthetic αT (8 stereoisomers; all rac-αT) is added to infant formula at higher concentrations than natural αT (RRR-αT only) to adjust for bio-potency differences, but its effects on brain development are poorly understood.

    The objective was to determine the impact of bio-potency-adjusted dietary all rac-αT versus RRR-αT, fed to dams, on the hippocampal gene expression in weanling mice.

    Male/female pairs of C57BL/6Jmice were fed AIN 93-G containing RRR-αT (NAT) or all rac-αT (SYN) at 37.5 or 75IU/kg (n=10/group) throughout gestation and lactation. Male pups were euthanized at 21 days. Half the brain was evaluated for the αT concentration and stereoisomer distribution. The hippocampus was dissected from the other half, and RNA was extracted and sequenced. Milk αT was analyzed in separate dams.

    A total of 797 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in the hippocampi acrosork of genes involved in transcription regulation and synapse formation was differentially affected by dam diet αT concentration and source all rac-αT or RRR-αT.Plants have evolved an innate immune system to protect themselves from pathogen invasion with the help of intracellular nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) receptors, though the mechanisms remain largely undefined. RIN13 (RPM1-interacting protein 13) was previously reported to enhance disease resistance, and suppress RPM1 (a CNL-type NLR)-mediated hypersensitive response in Arabidopsis via an as yet unknown mechanism. Here, we show that RIN13 is a nuclear-localized protein, and functions therein. Overexpression of RIN13 leads to autoimmunity with high accumulation of salicylic acid (SA), constitutive expression of pathogenesis-related genes, enhanced resistance to a virulent pathogen, and dwarfism. In addition, genetic and transcriptome analyses show that SA-dependent and SA-independent pathways are both required for RIN13-mediated disease resistance, with the EDS1/PAD4 complex as an integration point. RIN13-induced dwarfism was rescued completely by either the pad4-1 or the eds1-2 mutant but partially by snc1-r1, a mutant of the TNL gene SNC1, suggesting the involvement of EDS1/PAD4 and SNC1 in RIN13 functioning. Furthermore, transient expression assays indicated that RIN13 promotes the nuclear accumulation of PAD4. Collectively, our study uncovered a signaling pathway whereby SNC1 and EDS1/PAD4 act together to modulate RIN13-triggered plant defense responses.The photosynthetic capacity or the CO2-saturated photosynthetic rate (Vmax), chlorophyll, and nitrogen are closely linked leaf traits that determine C4 crop photosynthesis and yield. Accurate, timely, rapid, and non-destructive approaches to predict leaf photosynthetic traits from hyperspectral reflectance are urgently needed for high-throughput crop monitoring to ensure food and bioenergy security. Therefore, this study thoroughly evaluated the state-of-the-art physically based radiative transfer models (RTMs), data-driven partial least squares regression (PLSR), and generalized PLSR (gPLSR) models to estimate leaf traits from leaf-clip hyperspectral reflectance, which was collected from maize (Zea mays L.) bioenergy plots with diverse genotypes, growth stages, treatments with nitrogen fertilizers, and ozone stresses in three growing seasons. The results show that leaf RTMs considering bidirectional effects can give accurate estimates of chlorophyll content (Pearson correlation r=0.95), while gPLSR enabled retrieval of leaf nitrogen concentration (r=0.85). Using PLSR with field measurements for training, the cross-validation indicates that Vmax can be well predicted from spectra (r=0.81). The integration of chlorophyll content (strongly related to visible spectra) and nitrogen concentration (linked to shortwave infrared signals) can provide better predictions of Vmax (r=0.71) than only using either chlorophyll or nitrogen individually. This study highlights that leaf chlorophyll content and nitrogen concentration have key and unique contributions to Vmax prediction.