Taste the rainbow: A review of color abnormalities affecting the herpetofauna of the British Isles

Liquid nitrogen cryosurgery for a chromatophoroma in a captive largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides)

The use of biomaterials in the treatment of skin wounds has been steadily increasing over the last two decades. The key to the successful application of biomaterials in scar reduction is the up-to-date knowledge of the actors involved in accelerated healing and the cellular factors that can be implemented in bioinspired materials. Natural models of scarless healing such as oral mucosa, fetal skin and the skin of amphibians, fish, and reptiles are a great source of information. By investigating their microenvironments, cellular factors, and inflammatory self-regulatory systems, a general model of scarless healing can be defined. This review introduces the basic and current concepts of skin wound healing and focuses on providing a detailed overview of the main processes of accelerated healing without scarring. The article outlines the common features and key points that develop and promote scar-free healing. The tissues and healing processes of the selected natural models are described individually (tissue organization, structural components, ratios of cellular factors such as Collagen and transforming growth factor and their mechanisms of regulation of inflammation and scar overgrowth). A comparative work of each natural model concerning healing in human skin is included in the discussion. Finally, the patterns identified through the analysis of each model and their differences from normal healing are presented to facilitate the knowledge for the implementation of new treatments.

Until now it had been assumed that mammalian skin contains only one provitamin D, 7-dehydrocholesterol, that is eventually converted to vitamin D3 after the skin is exposed to sunlight. Examination by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography of lipid extracts from young rat skin, however, led to the observation that 7-dehydrocholesterol is not the only provitamin D in rat skin. Another provitamin D, accounting for 22 +/- 3% of the total provitamin content of the skin, was resolved from 7-dehydrocholesterol, and, on the basis of ultraviolet spectrophotometry, mass spectrometry, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry, was identified as 24-dehydroprovitamin D3 (cholesta-5,7,24-trien-3 beta-ol). This new cutaneous provitamin D is not unique to the rat because it was also detected in the skin of reptiles, amphibians, birds, aquatic mammals, and humans. To be certain that the cutaneous 24-dehydroprovitamin D3 was as susceptible as 7-dehydrocholesterol to ultraviolet photolysis, rat skin was exposed to ultraviolet radiation. A reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic analysis of a lipid extract of rat skin previously exposed to ultraviolet radiation demonstrated the presence of both previtamin D3 and 24-dehydroprevitamin D3. Therefore, these observations demonstrate for the first time that mammalian skin has the capacity to produce not one but at least two different vitamin Ds.

Chromatophoromas are neoplasms that develop from the dermal pigment-bearing and light-reflecting cells (chromatophores) in the skin of reptiles, fish, and amphibians. Seventeen cutaneous chromatophoromas were identified from 851 bearded dragon submissions (2%) to a private diagnostic laboratory in a 15-y period. No sex predilection was found. Ages ranged from 9 mo to 11 y. Chromatophoromas most commonly were single, raised, variably pigmented masses or pigmented scales on the trunk, and less commonly the extremities or head. Microscopically, iridophoromas, melanophoromas, mixed chromatophoromas, and nonpigmented chromatophoromas were identified. Neoplasms were often ulcerated and invaded deep into the subcutis and muscle. Most commonly, nuclear atypia was mild-to-moderate, and mitotic count was low. Six neoplasms had abundant, periodic acid-Schiff-positive, mucinous stroma. Histologic examination was often adequate to diagnose chromatophoromas in bearded dragons given that 11 of 17 had some degree of pigmentation, although it was often scant. IHC for S100 and PNL2 could be helpful to diagnose poorly pigmented neoplasms. No lymphatic invasion or metastases at the time of excision were noted in any of the cases. Follow-up data were available for 6 cases, with no reports of recurrence or neoplasia-related death. Two cases had elevated mitotic counts and nuclear pleomorphism, which has been associated with metastasis in other reports of bearded dragon chromatophoromas. In general, it appears that aggressive surgical excision is often curative, but monitoring may be warranted for cases in which tumors had high mitotic count and nuclear pleomorphism.

Organ-Specific, Phylogenetic, and Ontogenetic Distribution of the Epidermolysis Bullosa Acquisita Antigen

SynopsisThree videotapes of diagnostic interviews were rated by psychiatrists at several different centres in the British Isles. Audiences were asked to use a number of rating schedules including a list of 116 technical psychiatric terms. They were also asked to make a provisional diagnosis. The influence of the psychiatrists' concepts of normality and the type of training and other factors such as age on the perception and quantitative assessment of psychiatric symptoms and the use of technical terms is discussed. Maudsley-trained raters tended to see fewer symptoms of all kinds in all three patients, while Glasgow psychiatrists made more ratings of affective symptoms–both manic and depressive—on two of the three tapes. Dublin raters use more ‘dynamic’ terms in their daily routine than do raters from the United Kingdom. Raters over 40 years of age tended to use ‘dynamic’ terms more often than raters under 40 years. Raters trained in university departments differed only slightly in the terms they used from those trained in area mental hospitals. This study points to the problems of psychiatric communication within one culture.

Environmental risk assessment of chemicals depends on the production of toxicity data for surrogate species of mammals, birds, and fish and on making comparisons between these and estimated or predicted environmental concentrations of the chemicals. This paper gives an overview of biomarker assays and strategies that might be used as alternatives, that is, to replace, reduce, or refine currently used ecotoxicity tests that cause suffering to vertebrates. In the present context a biomarker is a biologic response to an environmental chemical at the individual level or below which demonstrates a departure from normal status. Of immediate interest and relevance are nondestructive assays that provide a measure of toxic effect in vertebrate species and that can be used in both laboratory and parallel field studies. A major shortcoming of this approach is that such assays are currently only available for a limited number of chemicals, primarily when the mode of action is known. Nondestructive assays can be performed on blood, skin, excreta, and eggs of birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. An interesting recent development is the use of vertebrate cell cultures, including transgenic cell lines that have been developed specifically for toxicity testing. The ultimate concern in ecotoxicology is the effects of chemicals at the level of populations and above. Current risk assessment practices do not address this problem. The development of biomarker strategies could be part of a movement toward more ecologic end points in the safety evaluation of chemicals, which would effect a reduction in animal tests that cause suffering.

240 Reviews specialist. Established textual and art history scholars will not find anything new in the critical or analytical apparatus within the covers. It is difficult to agree with the pubUsher's hype that the work is '... an indispensable guide for scholars . . . ' . It is, however, an admirable record of a cross-section of the manuscripts held in the Beinecke and will be valuable to bibliophiles and certainly a teaching tool at the undergraduate level. Whilst Latin or technical terms are generally explained in her text, the lack of a glossary does, nonetheless, limit the volume's function as a teaching aid in this area. Peter Rolfe Monks Townsvdle Shepard, Jonathon and Simon Franklin, eds., Byzantine diplomacy (Papers from the Twenty-fourth spring symposium of Byzantine studies, Cambridge, March, 1990), Aldershot, Variorum, 1992; pp. xi, 332; R.R.P.? This is an important book on several counts. First and not least it is the first volume in a new monograph series published by the Society for the promotion of Byzantine Studies. The SPBS, founded in 1983 as an umbrella organization for the sundry activities in Byzantine studies in the British Isles, has already taken under its wing the Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies (BBBS) whose annual, regular, and increasingly more complete lists of recent publications is now more than ever acting as a substitute for the authoritative but much delayed bibliographical listings of Byzantinische Zeitschrift. For nearer thirty than twenty years, at first in the University of Birmingham thanks to Antony Bryer's energy but more recendy in other centres too, Britain has also seen annual symposia on Byzantinetopics,always closely focussed (unlike the American and Australian affairs) and authoritative—but preserved in written form only occasionally. It is welcome news then that under the aegis of its cunent president Averil Cameron, the SPBS has found means which permit much more regular publication of these symposia. Then the subject matter of this book is significant. In the later Middle Ages Byzantine diplomatic machinations became a byword beyond the empire's borders for deviousness and subdety. However, there is no one modem study which examines the means by which this reputation came to be acquired, nor how the deviousness was put into practice. The symposium in 1990, and this coUection of papers derived from it provides the ground work for such a study. The topic is one that is not always easy to pin down. Foreign policy, the overall design, and diplomacy, the means by which the design is carried out are not always immediately separable. Although the symposium convenors and editors of this volume instructed the speakers to concentrate on the means rather Reviews 241 than the policy, some have been more successful than others in carrying this out. Thought has gone into the overall construction. There are general overviews of Byzantium's relations with outside powers by A. Kazhdan, E. Chrysos, J. Shepard, and N. Oikonomides. Between them they cover more than a thousand years of complex contacts, changing state structures, and differing external pressures. It is in these chapters, perhaps, that the distinctions between foreign policy and diplomatic means are most difficult to maintain, though a sense of the differing demands at different periods is well brought out. These papers are contrasted with more detailed analyses of Byzantium's relations with specific peoples: J. Herrin on the Franks, T. Noonan on the Khazars (especially useful because of the paucity of the evidence), H. Kennedy on the Arabs before the eleventh century, S. Franklin on detailed points of dispute with the Russian church in the twelfth century, and K. Hopwood on the sort of contract between Byzantine and Turkish communities in Asia minor that must have been very frequent but usually escapes attention. The question of our sources on Byzantine diplomacy is a tricky one, given the lack of primary archival documentation. By and large scraps have to be constructed from the rewritings of more or less literary historians, as was done in Dolger's Regesten der Kaiserurkunden. R. Scott (on Malalas of Antioch) and C. Schummer (on Liuprand of Cremona) discuss the remnants of diplomatic exchanges that can be seen in these authors while M . Mullett sets out the...

<i>Annotation in Eighteenth-Century Poetry</i>, ed. Michael Edson.

SynopsisThe Reptilia and Amphibia are two distinct groups of vertebrates. However, they show a number of similarities, such as ectothermy and ecdysis, and are therefore compared and contrasted in this paper.The physical features of the skin of reptiles and amphibians vary considerably; in the case of the amphibians the skin is usually relatively thin and may play a part in respiration while that of the reptile is often thick and impervious due to heavy keratinisation. Little is known of the ‘climate’ of the integument and there are relatively few data on its chemistry. Various pathogens may gain entry to the skin but usually this necessitates breaching the epithelium or taking advantage of existing damage.

Reptiles first appeared during the Upper Carboniferous and Permian periods about 220 million years ago. They are the first truly terrestrial vertebrates. Unlike the amphibia they have no need to return to the water in order to breed since they enclose their offspring together with necessary supplies of water within water-impermeable membranes until the young have developed sufficiently to lead an independent existence. Present-day reptiles range from the completely aquatic, for example the sea snakes and turtles, to the highly successful colonisers of the more arid regions of the world. The latter are well suited to terrestrial life by having a skin that is, relative to the skin of amphibians and aquatic reptiles, impermeable to water. In addition they reduce their urinary water losses by being uricotelic. Most important of all, however, is a new dimension in water balance, not present in the amphibia, namely the ability to drink water when the need arises.

The phoretic behaviour of ostracods (Elpidium bromeliarum) andannelids (Dero superterrenus) that inhabit tank bromeliads was studied. Our previous field observations had shown that bromeliad ostracods can be found attached to the skin of amphibians and reptiles that move among bromeliads, probably allowing the ostracods to colonise new tanks. In this paper, we present the first record of bromeliad annelids found attached to frogs moving among bromeliads in the field. We have also enlarged the database on bromeliad ostracods engaged in phoretic association with terrestrial vertebrates in three locations in southeastern Brazil. In our laboratory experiments bromeliad annelids show a strong significant tendency to climb onto papers that had been in contact with frog skin when compared with control papers, indicating a kind of chemically oriented behaviour. Bromeliad ostracods, on the other hand, attached themselves to treated and untreated papers with same frequency. When brought into contact with various species of frogs and lizards, the bromeliad annelids and ostracods both presented preference to attach themselves to frogs, but the annelids showed a stronger preference to attach to frogs and to avoid attachment to lizards. Another experiment demonstrated that bromeliad annelids are much more prone to dehydration than are ostracods. We suggest that the chemically oriented behaviour presented by bromeliad annelids toward frogs could diminish the risk of death by dehydration during the transport among bromeliads due to the moist characteristic of frog skins.

For rapid handling of amphibian and reptilian skin biopsies, specimens were first frozen on a tissue carrier, then surrounded by an open-ended box of plastic-coated paper. This box was filled with cool but still fluid 5% gelatin solution, and the whole frozen for cryostat sectioning. Thus, serial sections could be obtained for the demonstration of a water-soluble (pteridine) and an oil-soluble (carotenoid) component in the same section. Sections that were stained for skin components were attached to the slides with an adhesive fixative, which, allowed the gelatin matrix to be removed with water before staining.

Revival of the liberal arts and classical studies at several times was responsible for multiple periods of influx of Greek and Latin loanwords in English. This chapter outlines the works that were influential on the external history of English in connection with the continental background to the events in the British Isles discussed in previous chapters. The main topics are Ecclesiastical Latin, the reforms of Alcuin and Medieval Latin, the Humanistic and Neolatin of the Renaissance, the effects of printing and other factors on standardization, latinate vocabulary in Shakespeare and other literary works, and the technical and scientific terminology in the post‐Renaissance period.

The triassic sandstones of Yorkshire and Durham: Their Petrography and their Relation to the Trias of other parts of the British Isles