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“Lentiviruses, CDK inhibitor the genus of retrovirus that includes HIV-1, rarely endogenize. Some lemurs uniquely possess an endogenous lentivirus called PSIV (“”prosimian immunodeficiency virus”"). Thus, lemurs provide the opportunity to study the activity of host defense factors, such as TRIM5 alpha, in the setting of germ line invasion. We characterized the activities of TRIM5 alpha proteins from two distant lemurs against exogenous retroviruses and a chimeric PSIV. TRIM5 alpha from gray

mouse lemur, which carries PSIV in its genome, exhibited the narrowest restriction activity. One allelic variant of gray mouse lemur TRIM5 alpha restricted only N-tropic murine leukemia virus (N-MLV), while a second variant restricted N-MLV and, uniquely, B-tropic MLV (B-MLV); both variants poorly blocked PSIV. In contrast, TRIM5 alpha from ring-tailed lemur, which does not contain PSIV in its genome, revealed one of the broadest antiviral activities reported to date against lentiviruses, including PSIV. Investigation into the antiviral

specificity of ring-tailed lemur TRIM5 alpha demonstrated selleck compound a major contribution of a 32-amino-acid expansion in variable region 2 (v2) of the B30.2/SPRY domain to the breadth of restriction. Data on lemur TRIM5 alpha and the prediction of ancestral simian sequences hint at an evolutionary scenario where antiretroviral specificity is prominently defined by ID-8 the lineage-specific expansion of the variable loops of B30.2/SPRY.”
“Embryonic exposure to ethanol leads to malformations such as cyclopia. Cyclopic embryos present fused eyes and lack of the ventral specification of the brain, with physiological and morphological defects in the visual system, which provides a useful model for teratology and neurotoxicity

assessments.

We analysed the differentiation of the visual areas in the ethanol-induced cyclopic animals. For this purpose we exposed zebrafish embryos to 1.5% ethanol from 4 hours post-fertilisation (hpf) to 24 hpf in order to get cyclopic embryos. We monitored cytoarchitecture and quantified both the proliferation rate and cell differentiation from 2 days post-fertilisation (dpf) onwards, focusing on the main components of the visual system (retina, optic nerve and optic tectum) of normal and cyclopic zebrafish embryos.

The visual system of the zebrafish embryos is affected by exposure to ethanol; two optic nerves that fuse before leaving the eyes are present in cyclopic specimens but an optic chiasm is not evident. Cell differentiation is severely delayed throughout the visual system at 2 dpf. At 5 dpf, lamination in the cyclopic retina and optic tectum is completed, but they are filled with pyknotic nuclei demonstrating cell death.