322 SPERM PRESERVATION BY FREEZE-DRYING IN ENDANGERED ANIMALS

Sperm preservation is a useful tool for conservation of endangered animals. Freeze-drying sperm have been studied as new preservation method in various mammals as samples can be preserved in a refrigerator at 4°C or ambient temperature. Sperm preservation by freeze-drying is the ultimate method by which sperm can be stored that neither required specialised cryoprotectants nor constant supply of liquid nitrogen. We established the freeze-drying method that mouse and rat sperm could be preserved long-term at 4°C after freeze-drying using a simple solution containing 10 mM Tris and 1 mM EDTA (TE buffer; 2012 PLoS ONE 7, e35043; 2012 Cryobiology 64, 211–214). Using this method, the fertility of the chimpanzee, giraffe, and jaguar sperm after freeze-drying were estimated. Ejaculated chimpanzee and giraffe and cauda epididymal jaguar sperm were freeze-dried using TE buffer. Sperm were rehydrated with sterile distilled water after storage at 4°C for 1 month. Sperm with normal shape were injected into mouse oocytes in CZB medium with HEPES, and oocytes were then cultured in vitro for 6 to 8 h in the same media. In all animals, pronuclei and sperm tail were observed into oocytes without artificial activation after injection of freeze-dried sperm. When chimpanzee, giraffe, and jaguar sperm were injected into oocytes, 86% (12/14), 100% (12/12), and 96% (22/23) of oocytes formed 2 distinct pronuclei. This study demonstrated that the sperm of various animals could be decondensed into the mouse oocytes after freeze-drying using the same protocol. A further advantage is that freeze-dried sperm can be transported oversea at ambient temperature. Freeze-drying preservation without using liquid nitrogen can be protected strongly valuable gametes of endangered animals even in the event of unexpected accidents and disaster such as earthquakes and typhoons. Freeze-drying of sperm has been applied as a “freeze-drying zoo” for conservation of endangered animals (http://www.anim.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp/reproduction/home.aspx).

Catalytic helix-sense-selective polymerisation of achiral substituted acetylenes containing bulky π-conjugated planar substituents yielding soluble and statically stable one-handed helical polymers

Helix-sense-selective polymerisation of three new achiral substituted acetylenes containing two bulky π-conjugated planar substituents via imino groups by using catalytic amounts of a chiral source were achieved.

Review of lattice results concerning low-energy particle physics

We review lattice results related to pion, kaon, [Formula: see text]- and [Formula: see text]-meson physics with the aim of making them easily accessible to the particle-physics community. More specifically, we report on the determination of the light-quark masses, the form factor [Formula: see text], arising in semileptonic [Formula: see text] transition at zero momentum transfer, as well as the decay-constant ratio [Formula: see text] of decay constants and its consequences for the CKM matrix elements [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Furthermore, we describe the results obtained on the lattice for some of the low-energy constants of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] Chiral Perturbation Theory and review the determination of the [Formula: see text] parameter of neutral kaon mixing. The inclusion of heavy-quark quantities significantly expands the FLAG scope with respect to the previous review. Therefore, we focus here on [Formula: see text]- and [Formula: see text]-meson decay constants, form factors, and mixing parameters, since these are most relevant for the determination of CKM matrix elements and the global CKM unitarity-triangle fit. In addition we review the status of lattice determinations of the strong coupling constant [Formula: see text].

Triple opportunistic pulmonary cavitary disease after cord blood transplantation

Opportunistic infectious diseases in patients are variable and depend on the host as well as the type of immunosuppression. Cord blood transplant recipients appear to be particularly vulnerable to infectious complications. Sequential or concurrent opportunistic infectious diseases can be particularly difficult to manage and have increased mortality. We present a young patient, status post cord blood transplantation for acute myelogenous leukemia, who developed a large pulmonary mass-like infection with Aspergillus, cytomegalovirus, and Mycobacterium avium complex. Radiological, surgical, and pathological features are described.

Long-term Follow-up Study of Onychomycosis: Cure Rate and Dropout Rate with Oral Antifungal Treatments

The "complete cure" of onychomycosis requires long-term treatment with a systemic antifungal agent. Therefore, to properly assess the effects of an antifungal agent on onychomycosis requires a long follow-up. We have conducted a retrospective analysis of the patients treated with griseofulvin (GRF) from 1962 to 1992 and a clinical study to compare the long-term effect of GRF with that of a new oral antifungal agent, itraconazole (ITCZ), for patients who received treatment from 1992 to 1995. For the retrospective study, 281 patients who were microscopically diagnosed as having onychomycosis at the Department of Dermatology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, and received GRF administration in 1962, 1972, 1982, and 1992, were evaluated for cure rate and dropout rate. The total cure rate was 29.2%, but the cure rate was 68.8% for the patients who continued their medication for more than one year. For the comparative study, 139 patients who received the treatment at the same institution between 1992 and 1995 were evaluated. The cure rate and the dropout rate for GRF were found to be 23.8% (23/97) and 52.6% (51/97) respectively. The cure rate and the dropout rate for ITCZ were found to be 50.0% (21/42) and 38.1% (15/42). When the two treatment protocols were compared for their long-term effects, we found that most of the patients treated with ITCZ were cured within 3 years, and about 30% of the patients treated with GRF remained uncured even after long-term administration of the agent. Furthermore, from a multiple regression analysis, the GRF/ITCZ administration required to cure onychomycosis was estimated to be 3.92 + 0.161 [Age (years)] + 0.635 [Number of infected toenails] months. The results of this study suggest that the biggest problem associated with the treatment of onychomycosis with an oral antifungal agent is compliance in long-term therapy. Notably, the final cure rate of ITCZ therapy went over 90%, suggesting that the low dose continuous therapy, the standard treatment protocol in Japan, was a key contributing factor for the higher cure rate for ITCZ.

Allele-specific genome editing and correction of disease-associated phenotypes in rats using the CRISPR-Cas platform

The bacterial CRISPR/Cas system has proven to be an efficient gene-targeting tool in various organisms. Here we employ CRISPR/Cas for accurate and efficient genome editing in rats. The synthetic chimeric guide RNAs (gRNAs) discriminate a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) difference in rat embryonic fibroblasts, allowing allele-specific genome editing of the dominant phenotype in (F344 × DA)F1 hybrid embryos. Interestingly, the targeted allele, initially assessed by the allele-specific gRNA, is repaired by an interallelic gene conversion between homologous chromosomes. Using single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides, we recover three recessive phenotypes: the albino phenotype by SNP exchange; the non-agouti phenotype by integration of a 19-bp DNA fragment; and the hooded phenotype by eliminating a 7,098-bp insertional DNA fragment, evolutionary-derived from an endogenous retrovirus. Successful in vivo application of the CRISPR/Cas system confirms its importance as a genetic engineering tool for creating animal models of human diseases and its potential use in gene therapy.

Large-Scale Optimization for Evaluation Functions with Minimax Search

This paper presents a new method, Minimax Tree Optimization (MMTO), to learn a heuristic evaluation function of a practical alpha-beta search program. The evaluation function may be a linear or non-linear combination of weighted features, and the weights are the parameters to be optimized. To control the search results so that the move decisions agree with the game records of human experts, a well-modeled objective function to be minimized is designed. Moreover, a numerical iterative method is used to nd local minima of the objective function, and more than forty million parameters are adjusted by using a small number of hyper parameters. This method was applied to shogi, a major variant of chess in which the evaluation function must handle a larger state space than in chess. Experimental results show that the large-scale optimization of the evaluation function improves the playing strength of shogi programs, and the new method performs signicantly better than other methods. Implementation of the new method in our shogi program Bonanza made substantial contributions to the program's rst-place nish in the 2013 World Computer Shogi Championship. Additionally, we present preliminary evidence of broader applicability of our method to other two-player games such as chess.

Development of Mobile Robot System Equipped with Camera and Laser Range Finder Realizing HOG-Based Person Following and Autonomous Returning

In this paper, we propose a mobile robot system which has functions of person following and autonomous returning. The robot realizes these functions by analyzing information obtained with camera and laser range finder. Person following is performed by using HOG features, color information, and pattern of range data. Along with person following, a map of the ambient environment is generated from range data. Autonomous returning to the starting point is performed by applying potential method to the generated map. We verified the proposed method by experiment using a wheel mobile robot in an indoor environment.

Order, criticality, and excitations in the extended Falicov-Kimball model

Using exact numerical techniques, we investigate the nature of excitonic (electron-hole) bound states and the development of exciton coherence in the one-dimensional half-filled extended Falicov-Kimball model. The ground-state phase diagram of the model exhibits, besides band-insulator and staggered orbital ordered phases, an excitonic insulator (EI) with power-law correlations. The criticality of the EI state shows up in the von Neumann entropy. The anomalous spectral function and condensation amplitude provide the binding energy and coherence length of the electron-hole pairs which, on their part, point towards a Coulomb interaction driven crossover from BCS-like electron-hole pairing fluctuations to tightly bound excitons. We show that while a mass imbalance between electrons and holes does not affect the location of the BCS-BEC crossover regime, it favors staggered orbital ordering to the disadvantage of the EI. Within the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) regime, the quasiparticle dispersion develops a flat valence-band top, in accord with the experimental finding for Ta2NiSe5.

222 PRODUCTION OF KNOCKOUT RATS BY USING ZINC FINGER NUCLEASES AND TAL EFFECTOR NUCLEASES

The rat has been used as an important animal for understanding human diseases. Genetically engineered rat strains are used as a human disease model in various research fields. Genetically engineered rat strains are now being routinely produced, not only as transgenic animals but also using gene knockout techniques. Recently, zinc finger nucleases (ZFN) and TAL effector nucleases (TALEN) have enabled editing targeted genes without using embryonic stem cells. These techniques have been applied for production of the knockout and knockin animals. We here studied that the effects of gene targeting by ZFN and TALEN introduced into rat embryos for efficient production of knockout rats. We custom-designed ZFN and TALEN plasmids targeted rat interleukin 2 receptor gamma (Il2rg) gene. Each mRNA was transcribed in vitro from these plasmids. Final concentration of mRNA was adjusted at 10 ng μL–1 in sterilized water for microinjection. Messenger RNA was injected into rat pronuclear stage embryos. The embryos were then cultured in vitro to the 2-cell stage, and were transferred into oviducts of pseudopregnant females. The rate of development of offspring of embryos and effects of editing targeted genes were examined. Of 41 two-cell embryos introduced ZFN after embryo transfer, 9 embryos (22%) developed to offspring. Three offspring (33%) had an edited targeted gene locus. In the embryos introduced TALEN, 30% (6 offspring) of embryos developed to offspring after embryo transfer and all offspring had an edited targeted gene locus. This study demonstrated that the ZFN and TALEN mRNA was active after introduction into rat embryos. Knockout rats could be produced by introduction of ZFN and TALEN into rat embryos. ZFN and TALEN will provide a powerful new approach for targeted gene editing not only in rats but also in other animal species.

Birth-date dependent arrangement of spinal enkephalinergic neurons: evidence from the preproenkephalin-green fluorescent protein transgenic mice

Enkephalin (ENK) has been postulated to play important roles in modulating nociceptive transmission, and it has been proved that ENKergic neurons acted as a critical component of sensory circuit in the adult spinal cord. Revealing the developmental characteristics of spinal ENKergic neurons will be helpful for understanding the formation and alteration of the sensory circuit under pain status. However, the relationship between the embryonic birth date and the adult distribution of ENKergic neurons has remained largely unknown due to the difficulties in visualizing the ENKergic neurons clearly. Taking advantage of the preproenkephalin-green fluorescent protein (PPE-GFP) transgenic mice in identifying ENKergic neurons, we performed the current birth-dating study and examined the spinal ENKergic neurogenesis. The ENKergic neurons born on different developmental stages and their final location during adulthood were investigated by combining bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation and GFP labeling. The spinal ENKergic neurogenesis was restricted at E9.5 to E14.5, and fitted in the same pattern of spinal neurogenesis. Further comparative analysis revealed that spinal ENKergic neurons underwent heterogeneous characteristics. Our study also indicated that the laminar arrangement of ENKergic neurons in the superficial spinal dorsal horn depended on the neurogenesis stages. Taken together, the present study suggested that the birth date of ENKergic neurons is one determinant for their arrangement and function.

Cutaneous vasculitis and glomerulonephritis associated with C4 deficiency

Complete deficiency of the fourth component of complement (C4) is an extremely rare condition. However, it has been reported that partial C4 deficiency can occur in normal subjects, and is associated with several immune diseases. We report a 44-year-old woman who developed slight oedema and punctate purpura on her lower legs after a common cold. She was noted to have persistent microscopic haematuria and proteinuria, and her C4 level was undetectable. On histological examination of a skin biopsy specimen, leucocytoclastic vasculitis was seen, with granular deposition of IgG, IgM, C3 and C1q on the vessel walls in the upper dermis. A renal biopsy showed mild mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis with slight damage to the capillary loops, and granular deposits of IgM and C4 mainly in the mesangium. The patient was systemically well and needed no medication. The C4 level remained low during the observation period, but neither genotyping nor allotyping analysis identified a C4 deficiency.

Immunotherapy of autologous tumor lysate-loaded dendritic cell vaccines by a closed-flow electroporation system for solid tumors

Dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccines with the use of various antigen loading methods have been developed for cancer immunotherapy. Electroporation (EP) of a whole tumor cell lysate into DCs was previously found to be more potent for eliciting antigen-specific CD8 + T-cells compared to co-incubation of tumor cell lysates with DCs in vitro. In the present report, we studied the feasibility, safety and antitumor effect in the clinical use of an EP-DC vaccine for the immunotherapy of various types of human solid tumors. We successfully prepared an autologous tumor lysate-loaded EP-DC vaccine with high cell viability by the closed-flow electroporation system. In the phase I clinical trial, mild adverse events associated with the EP-DC vaccine were found during the treatment of advanced or recurrent cancer, or during the adjuvant therapy of some types of cancer; no autoimmune responses were observed after treatment with the autologous tumor lysate-loaded EP-DC vaccines. For the antitumor effect of the EP-DC vaccine against the 41 various types of solid tumor, the overall response rate [complete remission (CR) + partial response (PR)] was 4.9% (2/41) and the clinical benefit rate [CR+ PR + long stable disease (SD)] was 31.7% (13/41). Furthermore, the delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) reactivity was positive in most cases of long SD and the positive rate of DTH was 91.7% (11/12) for the patients with clinical benefit. In conclusion, the safety and feasibility of the EP-DC vaccine with autologous tumor lysates were confirmed, and it was found that the antitumor effect might be associated with the immunological response induced by the EP-DC vaccine for cancer immunotherapy.