Despite preclinical studies demonstrating the functional benefit of transplanting human pluripotent stem cellderived cardiomyocytes (PSC-CMs) into damaged myocardium, the ability of these immature cells to adopt a more adult-like cardiomyocyte (CM) phenotype remains uncertain. To address this issue, we tested the hypothesis that prolonged in vitro culture of human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-and human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived CMs would result in the maturation of their structural and contractile properties to a more adult-like phenotype. Compared to their early-stage counterparts (PSC-CMs after 20-40 days of in vitro differentiation and culture), late-stage hESC-CMs and hiPSC-CMs (80-120 days) showed dramatic differences in morphology, including increased cell size and anisotropy, greater myofibril density and alignment, sarcomeres visible by bright-field microscopy, and a 10-fold increase in the fraction of multinucleated CMs. Ultrastructural analysis confirmed improvements in the myofibrillar density, alignment, and morphology. We measured the contractile performance of late-stage hESC-CMs and hiPSC-CMs and noted a doubling in shortening magnitude with slowed contraction kinetics compared to the early-stage cells. We then examined changes in the calciumhandling properties of these matured CMs and found an increase in calcium release and reuptake rates with no change in the maximum amplitude. Finally, we performed electrophysiological assessments in hESC-CMs and found that late-stage myocytes have hyperpolarized maximum diastolic potentials, increased action potential amplitudes, and faster upstroke velocities. To correlate these functional changes with gene expression, we performed qPCR and found a robust induction of the key cardiac structural markers, including b-myosin heavy chain and connexin-43, in late-stage hESC-CMs and hiPSC-CMs. These findings suggest that PSC-CMs are capable of slowly maturing to more closely resemble the phenotype of adult CMs and may eventually possess the potential to regenerate the lost myocardium with robust de novo force-producing tissue.

Despite advances in the field of male reproductive health, idiopathic male infertility, in which a man has altered semen characteristics without an identifiable cause and there is no female factor infertility, remains a challenging condition to diagnose and manage. Increasing evidence suggests that oxidative stress (OS) plays an independent role in the etiology of male infertility, with 30% to 80% of infertile men having elevated seminal reactive oxygen species levels. OS can negatively affect fertility via a number of pathways, including interference with capacitation and possible damage to sperm membrane and DNA, which may impair the sperm's potential to fertilize an egg and develop into a healthy embryo. Adequate evaluation of male reproductive potential should therefore include an assessment of sperm OS. We propose the term Male Oxidative Stress Infertility, or MOSI, as a novel descriptor for infertile men with abnormal semen characteristics and OS, including many patients who were previously classified as having idiopathic male infertility. Oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) can be a useful clinical biomarker for the classification of MOSI, as it takes into account the levels of both oxidants and reductants (antioxidants). Current treatment protocols for OS, including the use of antioxidants, are not evidence-based and have the potential for complications and increased healthcare-related expenditures. Utilizing an easy, reproducible, and cost-effective test to measure ORP may provide a more targeted, reliable approach for administering antioxidant therapy while minimizing the risk of antioxidant overdose. With the increasing awareness and understanding of MOSI as a distinct male infertility diagnosis, future research endeavors can facilitate the development of evidence-based treatments that target its underlying cause.

The long-term goal of our research is to engineer an acellular nerve graft for clinical nerve repair and for use as a model system with which to study nerve-extracellular matrix interactions during nerve regeneration. To develop this model acellular nerve graft we (1) examined the effects of detergents on peripheral nerve tissue, and (2) used that knowledge to create a nerve graft devoid of cells with a well-preserved extracellular matrix. Using histochemistry and Western analysis, the impact of each detergent on cellular and extracellular tissue components was determined. An optimized protocol was created with the detergents Triton X-200, sulfobetaine-16, and sulfobetaine-10. This study represents the most comprehensive examination to date of the effects of detergents on peripheral nerve tissue morphology and protein composition. Also presented is an improved chemical decellularization protocol that preserves the internal structure of native nerve more than the predominant current protocol.

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Objective-To discover whether systematic methods of call and recali are more effective than a non-systematic method and to see which of the two systematic methods was more effective.Design-Prospective randomised controlied trial over a year.

Key points• The contractile properties of human fetal skeletal muscle are unknown.• Reductionist approaches such as isolated myofibril and isolated contractile protein biomechanical assays allow study of activation and relaxation properties of skeletal muscle from different sources.• We have tested the contractile properties of human fetal skeletal myofibrils and myosin in comparison with myosin and myofibrils from human adult skeletal muscle and rabbit psoas muscle.• Human fetal skeletal myofibrils have much slower kinetics of activation and relaxation compared to myofibrils from adult human or rabbit psoas skeletal muscle.• Investigations using altered substrate and product conditions for both the in vitro motility assay and myofibril mechanics/kinetics indicate that fetal muscle acto-myosin crossbridges cycle more slowly than, but with similar rate-limiting steps to, the adult myosin isoforms. AbstractLittle is known about the contraction and relaxation properties of fetal skeletal muscle, and measurements thus far have been made with non-human mammalian muscle. Data on human fetal skeletal muscle contraction are lacking, and there are no published reports on the kinetics of either fetal or adult human skeletal muscle myofibrils. Understanding the contractile properties of human fetal muscle would be valuable in understanding muscle development and a variety of muscle diseases that are associated with mutations in fetal muscle sarcomere proteins. Therefore, we characterised the contractile properties of developing human fetal skeletal muscle and compared them to adult human skeletal muscle and rabbit psoas muscle. Electron micrographs showed human fetal muscle sarcomeres are not fully formed but myofibril formation is visible. Isolated myofibril mechanical measurements revealed much lower specific force, and slower rates of isometric force development, slow phase relaxation, and fast phase relaxation in human fetal when compared to human adult skeletal muscle. The duration of slow phase relaxation was also significantly longer compared to both adult groups, but was similarly affected by elevated ADP. F-actin sliding on human fetal skeletal myosin coated surfaces in in vitro motility (IVM) assays was much slower compared with adult rabbit skeletal myosin, though the K m(app) (apparent (fitted) Michaelis-Menten constant) of F-actin speed with ATP titration suggests a greater affinity of human fetal myosin for nucleotide binding. Replacing ATP with 2 deoxy-ATP (dATP) increased F-actin speed for both groups by a similar amount. Titrations of ADP into IVM assays produced a similar inhibitory affect for both groups, suggesting ADP binding may be similar, at least under low load. Together, our results suggest slower but similar mechanisms Abbreviations ADP, adenosine diphosphate; ATP, adenosine triphosphate; DA, distal arthrogryposis; dATP, deoxy-adenosine triphosphate; HMM, heavy meromyosin; IVM, in vitro motility assay; MYH, myosin heavy chain; t 1/2 , the time to half-maximum activation or relaxation.

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