The previous studies have shown that Amyloid-b peptide (Ab) was mainly found in neurons of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and glaucoma and little is known about its expression in normal nerve cells. The aim of the present study was to investigate the expression of amyloid-b peptide 42 (Ab-42) in retinal ganglion cells of the postnatal rats. Rats were divided into seven experimental groups: 3, 6, 13, 15, 25, 60, and 90 days postnatal groups. Rats from 15 and 25 days postnatal groups were further divided into light-exposure and non light-exposure group. Cryosections or flat-mounted retinas of rat eyes were used for testing Ab-42 by immunocytochemistry staining. Ab-42 expression was not observed in rats within 13 days after birth, but was easily detectable in all groups of rats over 15 days after birth. In addition, the expression of Ab-42 in retina was increasing as the rats got older, reached to highest level in 60 days after birth. Furthermore, the expression of Ab-42 was not detected in rats kept under dark indicating that light is required for the expression of Ab-42 in retina. This is the first report showing that normal retinal ganglion cells express Ab-42, and that the expression of Ab-42 in retinal ganglion cells requires the exposure to light. These data suggest that Ab-42 may play a important role in vision development. Anat Rec, 294:1401-1405, 2011. V V C 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Key words: amyloid-peptide 42; retinal ganglion cells; visual development; rat; immunocytochemistry Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive loss of memory. A hallmark feature of the AD is the formation of senile plaque (Selkoe, 1994 andFrost et al., 2003), in which amyloid-bpeptide 42(Ab-42) plays a central role (Selkoe, 2004). It was reported that the level of Ab-42 in aqueous humor of glaucoma patients was significantly higher than that of normal people (Blanks et al., 1989).A wealth of studies has demonstrated that Ab-42 is highly toxic to cultured retinal ganglion cells. Exogenously administrated Ab-42 induces apoptosis of the retinal ganglion cells in rats in vivo (Hinton et al., 1986;Yoshida et al., 1997; Alvarez et al., 1998), therefore, it is assumed that normal retinal ganglion cells do not express Ab-42. We currently investigated the expression of Ab-42 in retinal ganglion cells in rat by using immunocytochemistry. Results from our studies indicate that Ab-42 is expressed by retinal ganglion cells in rats, and the expression is dependent on the exposure to light.

Up to now, the ‘hardwired’ neural pathway of the neuro-immune regulation is not fully understood. Here we reported a new neural pathway which links sympathetic nerves with immune cells of the lymphoid tissues. Our results demonstrated that nerve fibers derived from superior cervical ganglion directly targeted only S100+ cells in the cervical lymph nodes. Moreover, we found co-expression of neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine, vasoactive intestinal polypeptide and neuropeptide Y in the postganglionic sympathetic nerve endings that innervate S100+ cells. Our findings suggested that S100+ cells serve as a neuro-immune cross-talker in lymph organs that may play a significant role in transmitting signals of nervous cells to targeted immune cells. The new findings provide better understanding of the cross-talk mechanism between the nervous system and the immune system.

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Obtaining sufficient genetic material from a limited biological source is currently the primary operational bottleneck in studies investigating biodiversity and genome evolution. In this study, we employed multiple displacement amplification (MDA) and Smartseq2 to amplify nanograms of genomic DNA and mRNA, respectively, from individual Caenorhabditis elegans. Although reduced genome coverage was observed in repetitive regions, we produced assemblies covering 98% of the reference genome using long-read sequences generated with Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT). Annotation with the sequenced transcriptome coupled with the available assembly revealed that gene predictions were more accurate, complete and contained far fewer false positives than de novo transcriptome assembly approaches. We sampled and sequenced the genomes and transcriptomes of 13 nematodes from early-branching species in Chromadoria, Dorylaimia and Enoplia. The basal Chromadoria and Enoplia species had larger genome sizes, ranging from 136.6 to 738.8 Mb, compared with those in the other clades. Nine mitogenomes were fully assembled, and displayed a complete lack of synteny to other species. Phylogenomic analyses based on the new annotations revealed strong support for Enoplia as sister to the rest of Nematoda. Our result demonstrates the robustness of MDA in combination with ONT, paving the way for the study of genome diversity in the phylum Nematoda and beyond.