Vertebrate

CENTOGENE Collaborates on Research Published in Science Showing Immunopathological Landscape of Human Pre-TCRα Deficiency

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, February 29, 2024

The study revealed that complete pre-TCRα deficiency is rare in humans and less severe than anticipated.

Key Points: 
  • The study revealed that complete pre-TCRα deficiency is rare in humans and less severe than anticipated.
  • Prof. Peter Bauer, Chief Medical and Genomic Officer at CENTOGENE, said, "This research advances our understanding of pre-TCRα deficiency significantly.
  • In analyzing genomic and phenomic data, CENTOGENE researchers helped establish the association between partial pre-TCRα deficiency and autoimmunity, with a higher prevalence than initially expected.
  • Christian Beetz, Senior Director Genomic Innovation at CENTOGENE, added, “Until now, the impact of pre-TCRα deficiency has been largely unknown.

Travelers invited to experience Yunnan

Retrieved on: 
Friday, March 8, 2024

As a pioneer of ecological civilization, Yunnan will prioritize protection of the environment, animals and plants, while utilizing its green resources to develop related industries.

Key Points: 
  • As a pioneer of ecological civilization, Yunnan will prioritize protection of the environment, animals and plants, while utilizing its green resources to develop related industries.
  • Back in the 13th century, Italian traveler Marco Polo visited Yunnan and praised Kunming, its capital, as a magnificent city, immortalizing the beauty of Yunnan in his travelogue and sharing it with the world.
  • Wang added that the ecological environment is a precious asset of Yunnan, serving as a solid foundation for accelerating development and catching up.
  • "To prioritize the ecological environment is to secure the sustainable development of Yunnan and to ensure the well-being of future generations," he said.

An awkward family reunion: Sea monsters are our cousins

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, February 21, 2024

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The sea lamprey, a 500-million-year-old animal with a sharp-toothed suction cup for a mouth, is the thing of nightmares. A new study from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research discovered that the hindbrain—the part of the brain controlling vital functions like blood pressure and heart rate—of both sea lampreys and humans is built using an extraordinarily similar molecular and genetic toolkit.

Key Points: 
  • The team unexpectedly uncovered that a crucial molecular cue is very broadly required during vertebrate hindbrain development.
  • Because most vertebrates, including humans, have jaws, this striking difference in sea lampreys makes them valuable models for understanding the evolution of vertebrate traits.
  • Surprisingly, they found that the sea lamprey core hindbrain circuit is also initiated by retinoic acid, providing evidence that these sea monsters and humans are much more closely related than anticipated.
  • "People thought that because sea lampreys lack a jaw, their hindbrain was not formed like other vertebrates," said Krumlauf.

A 380-million-year old predatory fish from Central Australia is finally named after decades of digging

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, February 6, 2024

More than 380 million years ago, a sleek, air-breathing predatory fish patrolled the rivers of central Australia.

Key Points: 
  • More than 380 million years ago, a sleek, air-breathing predatory fish patrolled the rivers of central Australia.
  • Known from at least 17 fossil specimens, Harajicadectes is the first reasonably complete bony fish found from Devonian rocks in central Australia.

Meet the biter

  • This group had strongly built paired fins and usually only a single pair of external nostrils.
  • Tetrapodomorph fish from the Devonian period (359–419 million years ago) have long been of great interest to science.
  • They include the forerunners of modern tetrapods – animals with backbones and limbs such as amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

A long road to discovery

  • Packed within red sandstone blocks on a remote hilltop were hundreds of fossil fishes.
  • The vast majority of them were small Bothriolepis – a type of widespread prehistoric fish known as a placoderm, covered in box-like armour.
  • These included a lungfish known as Harajicadipterus youngi, named in honour of Gavin Young and his years of work on material from Harajica.
  • There were early attempts at figuring out the species, but this proved troublesome.
  • Then, our Flinders University expedition to the site in 2016 yielded the first almost complete fossil of this animal.

A strange apex predator

  • Likely the top predator of those ancient rivers, its big mouth was lined with closely-packed sharp teeth alongside larger, widely spaced triangular fangs.
  • It seems to have combined anatomical traits from different tetrapodomorph lineages via convergent evolution (when different creatures evolve similar features independently).
  • Similar giant spiracles also appear in Gogonasus, a marine tetrapodomorph from the famous Late Devonian Gogo Formation of Western Australia.
  • They are also seen in the unrelated Pickeringius, an early ray-finned fish that was also at Gogo.

The earliest air-breathers?


Other Devonian animals that sported such spiracles were the famous elpistostegalians – freshwater tetrapodomorphs from the Northern Hemisphere such as Elpistostege and Tiktaalik. These animals were extremely close to the ancestry of limbed vertebrates. So, enlarged spiracles seem to have arisen independently in at least four separate lineages of Devonian fishes.

  • The only living fishes with similar structures are bichirs, African ray-finned fishes that live in shallow floodplains and estuaries.
  • It was recently confirmed they draw surface air through their spiracles to aid survival in oxygen-poor waters.


Brian Choo receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed by Flinders University. Alice Clement receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed by Flinders University. John Long receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

The Bird with Largest Brain Size is not the Ostrich and the Animal with Smallest Brain-Body Mass Ratio Among Vertebrates is not Bony-Eared Assfish, According to New Research from Size Graf

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, January 31, 2024

CLAYMONT, Del., Jan. 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- There are some uncertainties about what animal has the largest or smallest brain size (and brain-body weight ratio) across several vertebrate classes. To gain better insights, Size Graf has performed comprehensive research to find out for sure the animal with biggest and tiniest brain in each of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians.

Key Points: 
  • New research conducted by Size Graf sheds light on the animals with largest and smallest brain size across the various vertebrate classes.
  • The results indicate that the ostrich does not have the largest brain size among birds, and bony-eared assfish does not have the smallest brain-body mass ratio across vertebrates.
  • CLAYMONT, Del., Jan. 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- There are some uncertainties about what animal has the largest or smallest brain size (and brain-body weight ratio) across several vertebrate classes.
  • To read the full details of the research and learn more about the animals with largest and smallest brain size, check the following link:

Why you may feel depressed and anxious when you're ill – and how to cope with it

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, January 16, 2024

All have one thing in common: they can make you feel miserable.

Key Points: 
  • All have one thing in common: they can make you feel miserable.
  • These illnesses often come with fatigue, lack of appetite and concentration difficulties.
  • To be successful, they need to rally other immune cells as well as several organs of your body.
  • But you can also be more sensitive to negative stimuli, which can easily make you sad and anxious.


That means that the psychological experience of sickness is not just triggered by your brain or the pathogen itself – it seems to be unleashed by your own immune system.

Making people sick for one day

  • Researchers have actually shown that such feelings can be brought about without a true pathogen being present.
  • My research group, and a few others in the world, purposely activate the natural immune defences of healthy and young volunteers, without using a pathogen.
  • And the sickness feelings, including the strong negative emotions that were triggered only a few hours earlier, also subsided within this time frame.

Why do we feel miserable during infections?

  • Well, even if you are not fully aware of it, fighting a pathogen requires an incredible amount of energy.
  • Both the activity of your immune cells and the increase in body temperature take a heavy toll.
  • Do not feel guilty or worried about feeling miserable – it’s only natural.
  • And by the way, if you feel miserable in the days following a vaccination… Don’t worry – it similarly means your immune system is at work.


Julie Lasselin receives funding from the Swedish Research Council (vetenskapsrådet), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and the Osher center for Integrative Health at Karolinska Institutet.

Why do some men not produce sperm? Stowers scientists collaborate to uncover one underlying reason for male infertility

Retrieved on: 
Friday, October 20, 2023

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Oct. 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Millions of couples worldwide experience infertility with half of the cases originating in men.

Key Points: 
  • KANSAS CITY, Mo., Oct. 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Millions of couples worldwide experience infertility with half of the cases originating in men.
  • In most sexually reproducing species, including humans, a critical protein structure resembling a lattice-like bridge needs to be built properly to produce sperm and egg cells.
  • Previous studies have examined many proteins comprising the synaptonemal complex, how they interact with each other, and have identified various mutations linked to male infertility.
  • Just a single mutation, predicted from the modeling experiments, was verified as the culprit of infertility in mice.

It's reassuring to think humans are evolution's ultimate destination – but research shows we may be an accident

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, September 5, 2023

It’s reassuring to imagine that complex bodies and brains like ours are the inevitable consequence of evolution, as if evolution had a goal.

Key Points: 
  • It’s reassuring to imagine that complex bodies and brains like ours are the inevitable consequence of evolution, as if evolution had a goal.
  • However, by the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin showed that natural selection has no direction, and will sometimes make organisms simpler.
  • If true, this could be a blow to our human sense of significance as the most complex organisms.
  • While driven trends need not imply divine purpose, they at least suggest that complexity was mostly an improvement, which is reassuring for us humans.
  • Rather than marching towards greater complexity, mammals evolved in lots of different directions, with only some lineages pushing the upper bounds of complexity.

Surely nature selects for complexity just a bit?

    • These are most visible in our vertebral column (or spine) and ribs, and in the six-pack of a lean athlete.
    • Counting the number of bones in different regions can quantify one aspect of complexity across all mammals.
    • This suggests higher complexity can be a winning formula, and that selection is driving this in multiple branches of the mammal tree.
    • Research into the evolution of complexity has only recently started gathering pace, so there is much we still don’t know.

Microplastics discovered in the body tissues of whales, dolphins and seals – sparking concerns for human health too

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Marine mammals – animals including whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sea otters, dugongs and manatees – are threatened by an array of human activities.

Key Points: 
  • Marine mammals – animals including whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sea otters, dugongs and manatees – are threatened by an array of human activities.
  • Species such as the North Atlantic right whale, Rice’s whale and Vaquita porpoise have been pushed to the brink of extinction.
  • However, the recent study found microplastics in various other tissues of a number of different whale, dolphin and seal species.

Contaminated tissues

    • Samples were taken from the animals’ blubber, melon (the fatty structure found in a whale’s forehead), acoustic fat pads (from the jaw), and lung tissue.
    • Analysis of the samples revealed that every single melon, acoustic fat pad and lung tissue sample contained microplastics, as did 64% of blubber samples.

Tiny particles, big impact

    • At Plymouth Marine Laboratory, we have shown that exposure to microplastic particles can affect feeding, growth and reproduction in animals that filter seawater or sediment for food.
    • Evidence of the impact of microplastics on larger animals is, by comparison, limited.
    • In the most severe scenario, the accumulation of these particles could lead to a loss of these tissues’ critical functions.

A concern for human health?

    • It’s generally believed that only very small microplastics (particles less than 100µm) can move from the gut or respiratory system into the bloodstream.
    • But the US study has found the presence of larger microplastic particles in non-digestive tissues, suggesting this assumption might not hold true.
    • Together, these findings could have implications for human health.
    • Research has found microplastic particles in human blood samples and in human placenta.

Global Times: National parks in documentaries, a new expression of China's image and values

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, August 17, 2023

National parks provide perfect perspectives to understand and experience the natural landscapes and cultural characteristics of a country or region.

Key Points: 
  • National parks provide perfect perspectives to understand and experience the natural landscapes and cultural characteristics of a country or region.
  • In October 2021, China established its first batch of five national parks: the Sanjiangyuan (the Three-River-Source) National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, and the Wuyi Mountain National Park.
  • At the end of 2022, China issued the "National Park Spatial Layout Plan," including a total of 49 candidate sites for the establishment of national parks.
  • As notable progress has been made in building the first batch of national parks, a slew of documentaries have emerged, such as National Parks: A Land of Symbiosis, National Parks: The Wildlife Kingdom, Qilian Mountain National Park, Qinghai: Our National Park and Wuyi Mountain: Our National Park.