A Mathematical model for Astrocytes mediated LTP at Single Hippocampal Synapses

Many contemporary studies have shown that astrocytes play a significant role in modulating both short and long form of synaptic plasticity. There are very few experimental models which elucidate the role of astrocyte over Long-term Potentiation (LTP). Recently, Perea & Araque (2007) demonstrated a role of astrocytes in induction of LTP at single hippocampal synapses. They suggested a purely pre-synaptic basis for induction of this N-methyl-D- Aspartate (NMDA) Receptor-independent LTP. Also, the mechanisms underlying this pre-synaptic induction were not investigated. Here, in this article, we propose a mathematical model for astrocyte modulated LTP which successfully emulates the experimental findings of Perea & Araque (2007). Our study suggests the role of retrograde messengers, possibly Nitric Oxide (NO), for this pre-synaptically modulated LTP.Comment: 51 pages, 15 figures, Journal of Computational Neuroscience (to appear

Intraspecific Diversity of <i>Mycobacterium abscessus</i> Isolated from Patients with Pulmonary Lesions

The objective: to perform intraspecific differentiation of M. abscessus strains isolated from patients with pulmonary lesions using molecular genetic tests.Results. Intraspecific differentiation of 164 cultures of M. abscessus from 114 patients without cystic fibrosis showed that the subspecies M. abscessus subsp. dominated in the analysis set (90 of 114 patients; 78,95%), followed by M. abscessus subsp. massiliense (24/114; 21,05%). In 54 examined cystic fibrosis patients excreting non-tuberculous mycobacteria, M. abscessus was most often detected (41 patients out of 54; 75,93%). Intraspecific identification of the obtained M. abscessus isolates demonstrated the prevalence of the subspecies M. abscessus subsp. abscessus (29/41; 70,73%) over M. abscessus subsp. massiliense (11/41; 26,83%). In one case, a rare M. abscessus subsp. bolletii (1/41; 2,44%) was detected