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"Opossums"
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Opossums
\"Vibrant photographs and carefully leveled text introduce emergent readers to an opossum as hunts for food, defends itself against predators, and raises its young. Includes labeled diagram, picture glossary, and index.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Trypanosoma cruzi transmission in the wild and its most important reservoir hosts in Brazil
Trypanosoma cruzi
(Kinetoplastea: Trypanosomatidae) infects all tissues of its hosts, which along with humans, include hundreds of mammalian species in the Americas. The epidemiology of
T. cruzi
has been changing in that currently the majority of the cases and/or outbreaks of Chagas disease occur by the ingestion of comestibles contaminated by
T. cruzi
metacyclic forms. These cases/outbreaks occur in distinct regional scenarios, mainly in the Amazon biome and are related to the local interaction mode of humans with their surroundings, as well as with the overall local ecological peculiarities. As trypanosomiasis caused by
T. cruzi
is primarily a zoonosis, understanding the variables that influences its transmission in the wild as well as the role played by the extant fauna in the maintenance of the parasite, is critical in establishing control measures. Here, we present the results of our studies of
T. cruzi
infection of free ranging wild mammalian fauna in the five biomes of Brazil, a country of continental dimensions. From 1992 up to 2017, we examined a total of 6587 free-ranging non-volant wild mammal specimens. Our studies found that 17% of mammals were seropositive and 8% of all animals displayed positive hemocultures indicative of high parasitemia and, consequently, of infectivity potential. We observed that opossums, mainly
Philander
spp. and
Didelphis
spp., the coati
Nasua nasua
, the capuchin monkey
Sapajus libidinosus
and the golden lion tamarin
Leontopithecus rosalia
, were mammal taxa that demonstrated higher rates of positive hemocultures. Additionally,
Didelphis
spp. demonstrated to be a competent bioaccumulator of TcI diversity. Chiroptera were distinguished for hosting the greatest diversity of species and genotypes of
Trypanosoma
spp. Additionally the observation of the higher host range of some
Trypanosoma
spp., shows the need to reassess the ecology of representatives of the taxon. Altogether, our results showed that each locality, may display distinct enzootiological and epidemiological scenarios that must be taken into account when it comes to establishing control and/or clarification campaigns of the local population.
Journal Article
Opossums after dark
\"Describes the life of opossums including their habits, diet, and behavior\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Cellular development and evolution of the mammalian cerebellum
The expansion of the neocortex, a hallmark of mammalian evolution
1
,
2
, was accompanied by an increase in cerebellar neuron numbers
3
. However, little is known about the evolution of the cellular programmes underlying the development of the cerebellum in mammals. In this study we generated single-nucleus RNA-sequencing data for around 400,000 cells to trace the development of the cerebellum from early neurogenesis to adulthood in human, mouse and the marsupial opossum. We established a consensus classification of the cellular diversity in the developing mammalian cerebellum and validated it by spatial mapping in the fetal human cerebellum. Our cross-species analyses revealed largely conserved developmental dynamics of cell-type generation, except for Purkinje cells, for which we observed an expansion of early-born subtypes in the human lineage. Global transcriptome profiles, conserved cell-state markers and gene-expression trajectories across neuronal differentiation show that cerebellar cell-type-defining programmes have been overall preserved for at least 160 million years. However, we also identified many orthologous genes that gained or lost expression in cerebellar neural cell types in one of the species or evolved new expression trajectories during neuronal differentiation, indicating widespread gene repurposing at the cell-type level. In sum, our study unveils shared and lineage-specific gene-expression programmes governing the development of cerebellar cells and expands our understanding of mammalian brain evolution.
Single-nucleus RNA-sequencing data from the cerebellum of human, mouse and opossum is used to analyse the developmental dynamics of cell types and states in mammalian cerebellum and provide evolutionary insights.
Journal Article
Rabbit & Possum
\"Best friends Rabbit and Possum are always looking for fun--even if it often lands one (or both) of them in a jam!\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Oral Flea Preventive to Control Rickettsia typhi –Infected Fleas on Reservoir Opossums, Galveston, Texas, USA, 2023–2024
Murine typhus, a fleaborne bacterial disease caused by Rickettsia typhi, has reemerged and spread in the United States. We tested spinosad, an oral flea preventive, in opossum flea reservoirs. Spinosad killed 98% of fleas infesting opossums. Oral preventives could control fleas in host species and curb murine typhus spread to humans.
Journal Article
Gilbert and the lost tooth
When Gilbert loses his tooth, the reader finds out just how resourceful the Tooth Fairy can be.
Book
The Evolutionary Landscape of Alternative Splicing in Vertebrate Species
How species with similar repertoires of protein-coding genes differ so markedly at the phenotypic level is poorly understood. By comparing organ transcriptomes from vertebrate species spanning ∼350 million years of evolution, we observed significant differences in alternative splicing complexity between vertebrate lineages, with the highest complexity in primates. Within 6 million years, the splicing profiles of physiologically equivalent organs diverged such that they are more strongly related to the identity of a species than they are to organ type. Most vertebrate species-specific splicing patterns are cis-directed. However, a subset of pronounced splicing changes are predicted to remodel protein interactions involving trans-acting regulators. These events likely further contributed to the diversification of splicing and other transcriptomic changes that underlie phenotypic differences among vertebrate species.
Journal Article
Don't laugh, Joe
Mother Possum is in despair because her son cannot learn to play dead without laughing.
Book
Origin and Evolution of Marsupial-specific Imprinting Clusters Through Lineage-specific Gene Duplications and Acquisition of Promoter Differential Methylation
Abstract
Genomic imprinting is a parent-of-origin-specific expression phenomenon that plays fundamental roles in many biological processes. In animals, imprinting is only observed in therian mammals, with ∼200 imprinted genes known in humans and mice. The imprinting pattern in marsupials has been minimally investigated by examining orthologs to known eutherian imprinted genes. To identify marsupial-specific imprinting in an unbiased way, we performed RNA-seq studies on samples of fetal brain and placenta from the reciprocal cross progeny of two laboratory opossum stocks. We inferred allele-specific expression for >3,000 expressed genes and discovered/validated 13 imprinted genes, including three previously known imprinted genes, Igf2r, Peg10, and H19. We estimate that marsupials imprint ∼60 autosomal genes, which is a much smaller set compared with eutherians. Among the nine novel imprinted genes, three noncoding RNAs have no known homologs in eutherian mammals, while the remaining genes have important functions in pluripotency, transcription regulation, nucleolar homeostasis, and neural differentiation. Methylation analyses at promoter CpG islands revealed differentially methylated regions in five of these marsupial-specific imprinted genes, suggesting that differential methylation is a common mechanism in the epigenetic regulation of marsupial imprinting. Clustering and co-regulation were observed at marsupial imprinting loci Pou5f3-Npdc1 and Nkrfl-Ipncr2, but eutherian-type multi-gene imprinting clusters were not detected. Also differing from eutherian mammals, the brain and placenta imprinting profiles are remarkably similar in opossums, presumably due to the shared origin of these organs from the trophectoderm. Our results contribute to a fuller understanding of the origin, evolution, and mechanisms of genomic imprinting in therian mammals.
Journal Article