The amphibole asbestos, anthophyllite, is associated with asbestos-related disease in humans, along with mesothelioma in animal models. In humans, however, there are only three cases of histologically proven malignant mesothelioma of the pleura associated with anthophyllite that have been documented in the English-language literature. A fourth case is presented in a man who lived in South Afric...

The paper presents three cases of Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, very rarely found in cats. The disease in this species is characterized by skin hyper-extensibility. Physical examination and additional diagnostics i.e. complete blood count, serum chemistry profile and histopathological examinations (including HE and van Gieson’s staining), as well as electronomicroscopic examinations. The diagnosis wa...

The viscera receive dual sensory innervation. The majority of visceral sensory fibres terminate in the spinal cord but sensory fibres contained in the vagus and pelvic nerves, which terminate in the brain stem and lumbosacral spinal cord, respectively, also innervate the same visceral organs. Figure 1 illustrates this unique pattern of innervation for the gastrointestinal tract, classically ref...

INTRODUCTION Two groups of free-living, acoelomate worms, the nemerteans and turbellarians, are noted for their ability to change their shape. The role of circular and longitudinal muscles in producing these changes are well known, but since these worms are not invested by a cuticle, it is not immediately apparent what limits the changes of shape. Obviously the worms are not indefinitely extens...

Lens regeneration in adult mice is possible when the lens capsule is left behind after lentectomy. The lens is regenerated by the remaining adherent lens epithelial cells, which differentiate to form lens fibres within days, showing normal morphology and bow regions. Epithelial to mesenchymal cell transformation is also seen during the early stages. The mouse, therefore, can become an indispens...

Oxidative energy production is by far dominant in living animal muscles, with the exception the short periods of severe stress, where the aerobic capacity is exceeded, and formation of large amounts of lactate and protons will take place. Energy consumption in muscle cells continues post-mortem with formation of large amounts of lactate and protons, because the aerobic processes for energy prod...

Microplastics have been reported in marine environments worldwide. Accurate assessment of quantity and type is therefore needed. Here, we propose new techniques for extracting microplastics from sediment and invertebrate tissue. The method developed for sediments involves a volume reduction of the sample by elutriation, followed by density separation using a high density NaI solution. Compariso...

Junctional feet in tubulo-reticular junctions of crayfish muscle fibres are arranged tetragonally with a centre-to-centre spacing of 30-34 nm. The resulting density of 860-1110 feet per 1 micron 2 of the junctional membrane is similar to that reported for other animal species. Using data of a previous stereological study, there are 150-190 feet per 1 micron 2 of the total T-tubule surface and 6...

BACKGROUND MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been recently involved in most of human diseases as targets for potential strategies to rescue the pathological phenotype. Since the skeletal muscle is a spread-wide highly differentiated and organized tissue, rescue of severely compromised muscle still remains distant from nowadays. For this reason, we aimed to identify a subset of miRNAs major involved in mu...

In the peripheral nerve trunks of vertebrates, the distance between the nodes of Ranvier is normally greater on fibres of larger diameter than on those of smaller size (Ranvier, 1875; Key and Retzius, 1876). At the time of myelination during development , internodal length is uniformly short, the nodes being spaced about 150 to 300 ,u apart. Each inter-node represents the territory of an indivi...