Biology subjects

Ariel, E.

Publications and source records attributed to Ariel, E..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Global overview of sea turtle fibropapillomatosis tumors: a survey of expert opinions and trends.

Marine environments offer a wealth of opportunities to improve understanding and treatment options for cancers, through insights into a range of fields from drug discovery to mechanistic insights. By applying One Health principles the knowledge obtained can benefit both human and animal populations, including marine species suffering from cancer. One such species is green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas), which are under threat from fibropapillomatosis (FP), an epizootic tumor disease (animal epidemic) that continues to spread and increase in prevalence globally. In order to effectively address this epizootic, a more thorough understanding is required of the prevalence of the disease and the approaches to treating afflicted turtles. To identify knowledge gaps and assess future needs, we conducted a survey of sea turtle FP experts. The survey consisted of 47 questions designed to assess general perceptions of FP, the areas where more information is needed, local FP trends, the disease status, and mitigation needs, and was voluntarily completed by 44 experts across a broad geographic range. The survey responses provided a valuable overview of the current FP status in sea turtles, FP research, and insight into the approaches currently taken by turtle rehabilitation facilities around the world. Over 70% of respondents both recognized FP as a cancerous panzootic disease, and reported that FP is increasing in prevalence. They report several factors contributing to this increase. Nearly all of the respondents reported that FP research, patient treatment and rehabilitation required more funding in their area, and reported inadequate facilities and capacity for dealing with FP patients. Treatment approaches varied: just over 70% of the medical experts that responded surgically remove FP tumors, either using laser or scalpel. Just under half of respondents use anti-cancer drugs in their treatment of FP. Internal tumors were reported as justification for euthanasia by 61.5% of respondents, and 30.8% reported severe external tumors to be sufficient grounds for euthanasia. Most medical respondents (93.3%) routinely perform necropsy on deceased or euthanized FP-afflicted turtles. Over 80% of respondents considered large-scale multidisciplinary collaboration extremely important for advancing the field of FP research. The survey responses provide a valuable insight into the current state of FP treatment, rehabilitation and research, and help to identify critical FP-related research and rehabilitation areas most in need of attention.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2023

Transgene-Free Ex Utero Derivation of A Human Post-Implantation Embryo Model Solely from Genetically Unmodified Naive PSCs

Our ability to study early human post-implantation development remains highly limited due to the ethical and technical challenges associated with intrauterine development of the human embryo after implantation. Despite the great progress made on human gastruloids, axioloids and in vitro cultured blastoids, such elegant models do not constitute an integrated Stem cell-derived Embryo Models (SEMs) that includes all the key extra-embryonic tissues of the early post-implantation human conceptus (e.g., hypoblast, yolk-sac, trophoblasts, amnion, and extraembryonic mesoderm), and thus, do not recapitulate post-implantation epiblast development within the context of these extra-embryonic compartments. Mouse naive pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) have recently been shown to give rise to embryonic and extra-embryonic stem cells capable of self-assembling into post-gastrulation mouse SEMs, while bypassing the blastocyst-like stage, and eventually initiating organogenesis ex utero. Here, we implement critical adaptations to extend these finding to humans, while using only genetically unmodified human naive PSCs, thus circumventing the need for ectopic expression of lineage promoting transgenes. Such integrated human SEMs recapitulate the organization of all known compartments of early post-implantation stage human embryos, including epiblast, hypoblast, extra-embryonic mesoderm, and trophoblast surrounding the latter layers. The organized human SEMs recapitulate key hallmarks of post-implantation stage embryogenesis up to 13-14 days post-fertilization (dpf, Carnegie stage 6a), such as bilaminar disk formation, epiblast lumenogenesis, amniogenesis, anterior-posterior symmetry breaking, PGC specification, primary and secondary yolk sac formation, and extra-embryonic mesoderm expansion that defines a chorionic cavity and a connective stalk. This new platform constitutes a tractable stem cell-based model for experimentally interrogating previously inaccessible windows of human peri- and early post-implantation development.

developmental biology↗

bioRxiv2020

Disease Risk Analysis in sea turtles: A baseline study to inform conservation efforts

The impact of a range of different threats has resulted in the listing of six out of seven sea turtle species on the IUCN Red List of endangered species. Disease risk analysis (DRA) tools are designed to provide objective, repeatable and documented assessment of the disease risks for a population and measures to reduce these risks through management options. To the best of our knowledge, DRAs have not previously been published for sea turtles, although disease is reported to contribute to sea turtle population decline. Here, a comprehensive list of health hazards is provided for all seven species of sea turtles. The possible risk these hazards pose to the health of sea turtles were assessed and "One Health" aspects of interacting with sea turtles were also investigated. The risk assessment was undertaken in collaboration with more than 30 experts in the field including veterinarians, microbiologists, social scientists, epidemiologists and stakeholders, in the form of two international workshops and one local workshop. The general finding of the DRA was the distinct lack of knowledge regarding a link between the presence of pathogens and diseases manifestation in sea turtles. A higher rate of disease in immunocompromised individuals was repeatedly reported and a possible link between immunosuppression and environmental contaminants as a result of anthropogenic influences was suggested. Society based conservation initiatives and as a result the cultural and social aspect of interacting with sea turtles appeared to need more attention and research. A risk management workshop was carried out to acquire the insights of local policy makers about management options for the risks relevant to Queensland and the options were evaluated considering their feasibility and effectiveness. The sea turtle DRA presented here, is a structured guide for future risk assessments to be used in specific scenarios such as translocation and head-starting programs.

ecology↗