Abstract Candida albicans is a commensal fungal pathogen that grows in yeast and hyphal forms in the human gut. C. albicans causes mucosal and cutaneous diseases that can result in significant mortality following systematic infections and it also exhibits drug resistance. Zebrafish have been an excellent model to investigate C. albicans infections because of their transparency and the availability of many transgenic lines. However, there is a limitation in using zebrafish as a model because the fish embryos cannot survive at 37°C therefore it is not suitable for studying Candida infections at physiological relevant human body temperature. In this thesis, the normal embryonic development of Arabian killifish (A. dispar) is investigated, revealing that embryogenesis was divided into 32 stages based on diagnostic patterns of development. A. dispar can also found to tolerate a wide range of temperatures and salinities. This suggests that A. dispar could be developed as a novel model to investigate host-pathogen interactions. The tolerance of A. dispar to high temperatures may in part be attributable to brown pigment cells with a highly fluorescent character that may have developed to allow the fish to adapt to live within extreme environmental conditions with strong sunlight and a wide range of temperatures (Chapter 3). In terms of Candida infections, this study examined A. dispar as a model to test C. albicans pathogenicity. The survival of A. dispar embryos following Candida infection showed a dose dependent relationship. We also found that A. dispar can survive longer than zebrafish after infection. Furthermore, C. albicans cells were observed to undergo a transition from yeast to hyphae at 37°C. An investigation of the ability of mutant strains of C. albicans with defects in cell wall mannosylation revealed a significant impact on virulence, host mortality, and the fishes’ immune response. The present study found that although the deletion of O- and N-mannan from the cell wall of C. albicans, affected fungal burden (attenuation), and the survival of the infected embryos per se was significantly decreased in the infections of the mutant strains compared to the WT. This data confirms the importance of the mannosylation state of the cell wall in triggering an immune recognition event (Chapter 4). A. dispar is also shown to be suitable for studying the effectiveness of 3 | P a g e antifungals. Fluconazole treatment of infected embryos and eggs promoted greater rates of survival at high doses, alongside a significant reduction of C. albicans CFUs (Chapter 4). When looking at the Candida-host interaction, we directly observed phagocytosed yeast cells within macrophages. Various detection methods were used to follow macrophages and neutrophils including Western blotting, immunostaining and histological staining (Sudan black and FITC-tyramide) allowing the monitoring of the time course of the immune cells. A biphasic response of macrophages was detected by L-plastin Western blotting, suggesting activation of two different type of macrophage: activated macrophage (M1) and alternative macrophage (M2). We also assayed reactive oxygen species (ROS) within infected embryos using a fluorescent probe (H2DCFDA), revealing the accumulation of the fluorescent probe at the sites of infection. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the oxidative and immune response using the H2DCFDA and qPCR were also accomplished within A. dispar embryos after infection with both the WT and mutant strains of Candida albicans (WT, pmr1∆, mnt1-mnt2∆, and och1∆). The results confirmed that the mutant strains did not activate a host oxidative stress response nor immune cell accumulation when compared to WT, suggesting that the immune response is less activated against these mutants. Finally, a new transgenic line of A. dispar fish was developed using Betaactin-DsR-LoxP-GFP. The new transgenic A. dispar is suggested to be an ideal model for real time observation of host-pathogen interactions and for investigation of molecular functions of the immune response. Overall these results improve our understanding of the use of a new transparent fish model to study fungal pathogenesis and demonstrates the potential advantages of using this species in future studies of bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens at a physiologically relevant temperature for human infection. Such a model could lead us to investigate in more depth the key interactions between pathogens and their host and permit the screening and development of new antifungal therapies (that might target the pathogens directly or target the host immune system). View full metadata
Teen-Computer Interaction (TeenCI) stands in an infant phase and emerging in positive path. Compared to Human-Computer Interaction (generally dedicated to adult) and Child-Computer Interaction, TeenCI gets less interest in terms of research efforts and publications. This has revealed extensive prospects for researchers to explore and contribute in the region of computer design and evaluation for teen, in specific. As a subclass of HCI and a complementary for CCI, TeenCI that tolerates teen group, should be taken significant concern in the sense of its context, nature, development, characteristics and architecture. This paper tends to discover teen’s emotion contribution as the first attempt towards building a conceptual model for TeenC
... Show More
In this paper, the dynamical behavior of a three-dimensional fractional-order prey-predator model is investigated with Holling type III functional response and constant rate harvesting. It is assumed that the middle predator species consumes only the prey species, and the top predator species consumes only the middle predator species. We also prove the boundedness, the non-negativity, the uniqueness, and the existence of the solutions of the proposed model. Then, all possible equilibria are determined, and the dynamical behaviors of the proposed model around the equilibrium points are investigated. Finally, numerical simulations results are presented to confirm the theoretical results and to give a better understanding of the dynami
... Show More
(10)
(7)
The researcher studies and explains the content of some pictures that are published in al-Mada newspaper. The research is important as it deals with a topic that has a relation with visual culture and its role to transfer the press letter to the audience. The researcher finds that cartoonist exposed the security services through important people who have a major role in state policy and reveals the level of corruption and the weak treatments for this phenomenon and its reflection on the whole society and individuals. In addition to that, cartoonists try to encourage the public for going on the peaceful demonstrations since it is a good tool to make pressure on the government to punish the corrupts.
The purchase of a home and access to housing is one of the most important requirements for the life of the individual and the stability of living and the development of the prices of houses in general and in Baghdad in particular affected by several factors, including the basic area of the house, the age of the house, the neighborhood in which the housing is available and the basic services, Where the statistical model SSM model was used to model house prices over a period of time from 2000 to 2018 and forecast until 2025 The research is concerned with enhancing the importance of this model and describing it as a standard and important compared to the models used in the analysis of time series after obtaining the
... Show More
Theoretical trends have appeared Which posed the concept of biological structures in contemporary architecture concept, Spread through the emergence of architectural production that reflect and indicate the nature of the construction structures based on the ideas and principles of biological structures in biological science: Despite the emergence of many architectural proposals that tried to explain the concept in the field of architecture, but it is not dealt with in depth and not given a comprehensive definition: So there was need to search for the concept and its beginning in the biological field as a general framework down to the field of architecture for the purpose of reducing the limits of their search framework T
... Show More
The cyanobacterial neurotoxin
(22)
Objective: To conduct a standardized method for cavity preparation on the palatal surface of rat maxillary molars and to introduce a standardized method for tooth correct alignment within the specimen during the wax embedding procedure to better detect cavity position within the examined slides. Materials and methods: Six male Wistar rats, aged 4-6 weeks, were used. The maxillary molars of three animals were sectioned in the frontal plane to identify the thickness of hard tissue on the palatal surface of the first molar which was (250-300µm). The end-cutting bur (with a cutting head diameter of 0.2mm) was suitable for preparing a dentinal cavity (70-80µm) depth. Cavity preparation was then performed using the same bur on the tooth
... Show More
(4)
(4)
Objective: To conduct a standardized method for cavity preparation on the palatal surface of rat maxillary molars and to introduce a standardized method for tooth correct alignment within the specimen during the wax embedding procedure to better detect cavity position within the examined slides. Materials and methods: Six male Wistar rats, aged 4-6 weeks, were used. The maxillary molars of three animals were sectioned in the frontal plane to identify the thickness of hard tissue on the palatal surface of the first molar which was (250-300µm). The end-cutting bur (with a cutting head diameter of 0.2mm) was suitable for preparing a dentinal cavity (70-80µm) depth. Cavity preparation was then performed using the same bur on the tooth surf
... Show More
(4)
(4)
In many scientific fields, Bayesian models are commonly used in recent research. This research presents a new Bayesian model for estimating parameters and forecasting using the Gibbs sampler algorithm. Posterior distributions are generated using the inverse gamma distribution and the multivariate normal distribution as prior distributions. The new method was used to investigate and summaries Bayesian statistics' posterior distribution. The theory and derivation of the posterior distribution are explained in detail in this paper. The proposed approach is applied to three simulation datasets of 100, 300, and 500 sample sizes. Also, the procedure was extended to the real dataset called the rock intensity dataset. The actual dataset is collecte
... Show More
(2)
Profit is a goal sought by all banks because it brings them income and guarantees them survival and continuity, and on the other hand, facing commitments without financial crisis. Hence the idea of research in his quest to build scientific tools and means that can help bank management in particular, investors, lenders and others to predict financial failure and to detect early financial failures. The research has produced a number of conclusions, the most important of which is that all Islamic banks sample a safe case of financial failure under the Altman model, while according to the Springate model all Islamic banks sample a search for a financial failure except the Islamic Bank of Noor Iraq for Investment and Finance )BINI(. A
... Show More