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1. Not your Mother’s MAPKs: Apicomplexan MAPK function in daughter cell budding

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1010849  

   O’Shaughnessy, William J.; Dewangan, Pravin S.; Paiz, E. Ariana; Reese, Michael L. (October 2022, PLOS Pathogens)

   Kafsack, Bjorn F.C. (Ed.)

   Reversible phosphorylation by protein kinases is one of the core mechanisms by which biological signals are propagated and processed. Mitogen-activated protein kinases, or MAPKs, are conserved throughout eukaryotes where they regulate cell cycle, development, and stress response. Here, we review advances in our understanding of the function and biochemistry of MAPK signaling in apicomplexan parasites. As expected for well-conserved signaling modules, MAPKs have been found to have multiple essential roles regulating both Toxoplasma tachyzoite replication and sexual differentiation in Plasmodium . However, apicomplexan MAPK signaling is notable for the lack of the canonical kinase cascade that normally regulates the networks, and therefore must be regulated by a distinct mechanism. We highlight what few regulatory relationships have been established to date, and discuss the challenges to the field in elucidating the complete MAPK signaling networks in these parasites. 

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2. Lactation has persistent effects on a mother’s metabolism and mitochondrial function

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17418-7  

   Hyatt, Hayden W.; Zhang, Yufeng; Hood, Wendy R.; Kavazis, Andreas N. (December 2017, Scientific Reports)
3. Investigation of Methods to Extract Fetal Electrocardiogram from the Mother’s Abdominal Signal in Practical Scenarios

   https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8020033  

   Sarafan, Sadaf; Le, Tai; Naderi, Amir Mohammad; Nguyen, Quoc-Dinh; Kuo, Brandon Tiang-Yu; Ghirmai, Tadesse; Han, Huy-Dung; Lau, Michael P.; Cao, Hung (June 2020, Technologies)

   null (Ed.)

   Monitoring of fetal electrocardiogram (fECG) would provide useful information about fetal wellbeing as well as any abnormal development during pregnancy. Recent advances in flexible electronics and wearable technologies have enabled compact devices to acquire personal physiological signals in the home setting, including those of expectant mothers. However, the high noise level in the daily life renders long-entrenched challenges to extract fECG from the combined fetal/maternal ECG signal recorded in the abdominal area of the mother. Thus, an efficient fECG extraction scheme is a dire need. In this work, we intensively explored various extraction algorithms, including template subtraction (TS), independent component analysis (ICA), and extended Kalman filter (EKF) using the data from the PhysioNet 2013 Challenge. Furthermore, the modified data with Gaussian and motion noise added, mimicking a practical scenario, were utilized to examine the performance of algorithms. Finally, we combined different algorithms together, yielding promising results, with the best performance in the F1 score of 92.61% achieved by an algorithm combining ICA and TS. With the data modified by adding different types of noise, the combination of ICA–TS–ICA showed the highest F1 score of 85.4%. It should be noted that these combined approaches required higher computational complexity, including execution time and allocated memory compared with other methods. Owing to comprehensive examination through various evaluation metrics in different extraction algorithms, this study provides insights into the implementation and operation of state-of-the-art fetal and maternal monitoring systems in the era of mobile health. 

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4. Network evolution of regional brain volumes in young children reflects neurocognitive scores and mother’s education

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29797-1  

   Zhou, Yidong; Müller, Hans-Georg; Zhu, Changbo; Chen, Yaqing; Wang, Jane-Ling; O’Muircheartaigh, Jonathan; Bruchhage, Muriel; Deoni, Sean; Braun, Joseph; Bruchhage, Muriel; et al (December 2023, Scientific Reports)

   Abstract The maturation of regional brain volumes from birth to preadolescence is a critical developmental process that underlies emerging brain structural connectivity and function. Regulated by genes and environment, the coordinated growth of different brain regions plays an important role in cognitive development. Current knowledge about structural network evolution is limited, partly due to the sparse and irregular nature of most longitudinal neuroimaging data. In particular, it is unknown how factors such as mother’s education or sex of the child impact the structural network evolution. To address this issue, we propose a method to construct evolving structural networks and study how the evolving connections among brain regions as reflected at the network level are related to maternal education and biological sex of the child and also how they are associated with cognitive development. Our methodology is based on applying local Fréchet regression to longitudinal neuroimaging data acquired from the RESONANCE cohort, a cohort of healthy children (245 females and 309 males) ranging in age from 9 weeks to 10 years. Our findings reveal that sustained highly coordinated volume growth across brain regions is associated with lower maternal education and lower cognitive development. This suggests that higher neurocognitive performance levels in children are associated with increased variability of regional growth patterns as children age. 

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5. Temperature-Sensitive Reproduction and the Physiological and Evolutionary Potential for Mother’s Curse

   https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icz091  

   Montooth, Kristi L; Dhawanjewar, Abhilesh S; Meiklejohn, Colin D (June 2019, Integrative and Comparative Biology)

   Abstract Strict maternal transmission of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is hypothesized to permit the accumulation of mitochondrial variants that are deleterious to males but not females, a phenomenon called mother’s curse. However, direct evidence that mtDNA mutations exhibit such sexually antagonistic fitness effects is sparse. Male-specific mutational effects can occur when the physiological requirements of the mitochondria differ between the sexes. Such male-specific effects could potentially occur if sex-specific cell types or tissues have energy requirements that are differentially impacted by mutations affecting energy metabolism. Here we summarize findings from a model mitochondrial–nuclear incompatibility in the fruit fly Drosophila that demonstrates sex-biased effects, but with deleterious effects that are generally larger in females. We present new results showing that the mitochondrial–nuclear incompatibility does negatively affect male fertility, but only when males are developed at high temperatures. The temperature-dependent male sterility can be partially rescued by diet, suggesting an energetic basis. Finally, we discuss fruitful paths forward in understanding the physiological scope for sex-specific effects of mitochondrial mutations in the context of the recent discovery that many aspects of metabolism are sexually dimorphic and downstream of sex-determination pathways in Drosophila. A key parameter of these models that remains to be quantified is the fraction of mitochondrial mutations with truly male-limited fitness effects across extrinsic and intrinsic environments. Given the energy demands of reproduction in females, only a small fraction of the mitochondrial mutational spectrum may have the potential to contribute to mother’s curse in natural populations. 

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