The CAD/CAM orthodontic bracket system evaluated in this study was as effective in treatment outcome measures as were standard brackets bonded both directly and indirectly. The CAD/CAM appliance was more efficient in regard to treatment duration, although the decrease in total archwire appointments was minimal. Further investigation is needed to better quantify the clinical benefits of CAD/CAM orthodontic appliances.

Across bacterial species, metal binding proteins can serve functions in pathogenesis in addition to regulating metal homeostasis. We have compared and contrasted the activities of zinc (Zn2+)-binding lipoproteins AdcA and AdcAII in the Streptococcus pneumoniae TIGR4 background. Exposure to Zn2+-limiting conditions resulted in delayed growth in a strain lacking AdcAII (ΔAdcAII) when compared to wild type bacteria or a mutant lacking AdcA (ΔAdcA). AdcAII failed to interact with the extracellular matrix protein laminin despite homology to laminin-binding proteins of related streptococci. Deletion of AdcA or AdcAII led to significantly increased invasion of A549 human lung epithelial cells and a trend toward increased invasion in vivo. Loss of AdcAII, but not AdcA, was shown to negatively impact early colonization of the nasopharynx. Our findings suggest that expression of AdcAII affects invasiveness of S. pneumoniae in response to available Zn2+ concentrations.

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Acrasids are large, fast-moving, omnivorous amoebae. However, under certain conditions, they can also cooperate to form multicellular fruiting bodies in a process known as aggregative multicellularity (AGM). This makes acrasids the only known example of multicellularity among the earliest branches of eukaryotes (formerly superkingdom Excavata) and thus the outgroup to all other known multicellular eukaryotes. We have sequenced the genome of Acrasis kona, along with transcriptomes from cells in pre-, mid- and post-development. We find the A. kona genome to be rich in novelty, genes acquired by horizontal transfer and, especially, multigene families. The latter include nearly half of the amoeba’s protein coding capacity, and many of these families show differential expression among life cycle stages. Development in A. kona appears to be molecularly simple, requiring substantial upregulation of only 449 genes compared to 2762 in the only other AGM model, Dictyostelium discoideum. However, unlike the dictyostelid, developing A. kona also does not appear to be starving, being instead very metabolically active and inducing neither autophagy nor increasing ubiquitin-tagged proteolysis. Thus, contrary to current expectations, starvation does not appear to be essential for AGM development. Moreover, despite the ~ 2 billion years of evolution separating the two amoebae, their development appears to employ remarkably similar pathways for signaling, motility and construction of an extracellular matrix surrounding the developing cell mass. In addition, much of this similarity is shared with the clonal multicellularity of animals. This makes the acrasid something of a “bare bones” developmental model and suggests that much of the basic tool kit for multicellular development arose very early in eukaryotic evolution.