ENTRIES A–Z
Philip Winn in Dictionary of Biological Psychology, 2003
Further research has revealed other developmental processes besides filial and sexual imprinting in birds. These include the development of host preferences in parasitic species and the establishment of preference for food, habitat and locality. In addition, imprinting occurs in other animals besides birds. Imprinting to olfactory stimuli plays a crucial role in spawning MIGRATION of salmonoids such as the Pacific salmon. After hatching, juvenile fish mature in their natal fresh water streams. At about 18 months of age the fish undergo morphological changes called MOLTIFICATION that prepares them for life in salt water. At this time the fish also imprint to the olfactory bouquet of their natal streams. The hormone THYROXINE seems to be involved in both moltification and home stream odour imprinting. The salmon then swim downstream to the ocean where there live for 1-4 years before migrating back to their natal stream to spawn and die. During this return migration the salmon appear to swim up a concentration gradient of home steam odours. Imprinting may have an adaptive benefit for any organism characterized by rapid ontogenetic development and by early dispersal of young. The time course of the sensitive phase also appears to have a selective advantage. It is geared to the age requirement when information is needed for the first time and capitalizes on the opportunity to acquire that information under favourable learning conditions.
The Problems of Undernutrition
R. J. Jarrett in Nutrition and Disease, 1979
The act of suckling is a form of intimate communication between the mother and her infant, and it contributes to the creation of the love bond between the two. The skin contact, the eye-to-eye or ‘en face’ position adopted during or soon after feeding, the satisfaction of hunger in the infant and the pleasurable tactile stimulation in the mother during suckling all promote the process of bonding between the two. In many mammals, the time of birth is a critical period during which imprinting occurs, so that the mother recognises her offspring and vice versa. Similar imprinting during a critical period also occurs in the human, and breast feeding plays an important role in this process. Mothers who are separated from their infants, for medical or other reasons, at this critical period, have a higher incidence of rejection of their babies and of child abuse.
The Harmful Dysfunction Analysis of Addiction
Hanna Pickard, Serge H. Ahmed in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction, 2019
What makes the gosling’s imprinting on a fox a dysfunction whereas lack of sexual partners is not a dysfunction? In imprinting, during a brief critical period at hatching, the imprinting mechanism enduringly and irreversibly fixes the image in the imprinting register. Once a failure of the expectable correlation causes that mechanism to fail to perform its storing-mother-image function, all higher levels of function are enduringly disrupted due to the permanent storage of the “wrong” image in the internal mechanism. No such incapacitation occurs in the lack of available partners, which does not preclude designed functioning if circumstances change. A dysfunction consists not merely of the failure to achieve a biologically designed function, but of the incapacity to perform a biologically designed function when within an expectable environment that relevantly matches the range of conditions for which it was selected. The gosling by these criteria does have a dysfunction, the individual without available partners does not.
Recent advances in fertility preservation and counseling for female cancer patients
Published in Expert Review of Anticancer Therapy, 2018
Marie-Madeleine Dolmans
The technique the technique of oocyte vitrification and OTC has proved successful in terms of numbers of children born, the long-term effects have yet to be elucidated. There are some concerns that emerging assisted reproductive technologies might interfere at the epigenetic level and, in particular, with genomic imprinting [60]. Although animal models provide reassuring data on imprinting establishment in cultured oocytes [61], future studies should assess the effect of these new techniques in humans. Indeed, epigenetic alterations potentially induced by assisted reproductive technologies will only become evident once these children reach adulthood. Further investigations into imprinting and methylation need to be conducted in children born from pregnancies issuing from these technologies to draw definitive conclusions on their epigenetic safety [60].
Design, synthesis and characterization of enzyme-analogue-built polymer catalysts as artificial hydrolases
Published in Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology, 2019
Divya Mathew, Benny Thomas, Karakkattu Subrahmanian Devaky
p-nitrophenol [13] from N-carbobenzoxy-L-tyrosine p-nitrophenyl ester, nitrophenyl esters of acetic acid, hydrocinnamic acid and carbobenzoxyglycine. Even though biocatalysts increase the rate to several orders and are highly specific, they suffer from several limitations, for instance, incompatibility with organic solvents, extreme pH, and elevated temperatures. The developing technique of molecular imprinting advances a promising and advantageous alternative to overcome the problems associated with biomolecules. The most archaic and extensive efforts toward MIP catalysts have used the “catalytic triad” motif of serine, histidine, and aspartic acid found in the family of serine proteases to serve as a model [14]. Chymotrypsin, an enzyme with a well-recognized catalytic mechanism has long been a model of choice for MIP catalysts. Rate enhancements by MIPs, however, have yet to reach the catalytic rate of this enzyme, which enhances the rate of the hydrolysis of peptide bonds by a factor of ∼1010.
Cannabis alters DNA methylation at maternally imprinted and autism candidate genes in spermatogenic cells
Published in Systems Biology in Reproductive Medicine, 2022
Rose Schrott, Katherine W. Greeson, Dillon King, Krista M. Symosko Crow, Charles A. Easley, Susan K. Murphy
We first examined the regulatory regions associated with imprinted genes in CE- and vehicle-exposed sorted cells. No paternally methylated DMRs showed significant effects of exposure in the SSC-like or in the haploid spermatid-like cells. Among the maternally methylated DMRs analyzed, we observed a significant effect of CE exposure on DNA methylation at the SGCE DMR in the SSC-like cells. SGCE encodes the epsilon member of the sarcoglycan family of transmembrane proteins (Peall et al. 2014). Mutations in SGCE are associated with myoclonus dystonia syndrome (MDS), a rare young-onset movement disorder (Peall et al. 2013, 2014). Maternal imprinting plays a role in regulating the penetrance of this heritable disorder (Peall et al. 2013, 2014). Additionally, the promoter CpG island that houses this SGCE DMR also regulates the expression of another imprinted gene, Paternally Expressed Gene 10 (PEG10). PEG10 encodes a retrotransposable element, and deregulation of this region has been reported in cancers (Xie et al. 2018). Thus, alterations in methylation at this regulatory region could have implications for multiple pathologies.
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