Suchergebnisse

The so-called Bactrian tax-receipt is a small leather document written in Greek, from the early 2nd century BC. Found in 1994, it is a rare administrative document from the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom. It was uniquely dated in the reigns of three kings: Antimachos (I) Theos, and his joint-regents Eumenes and Antimachos. For this paper, further technical analyses, including an IR photograph, were made to analyse traces of damaged text. The correct reading of the last line is affirmed, and the name of a fourth king, Apollodotos, could possibly be reconstructed. The political framework for the dating formula is also studied; including its possible connection to the rare Attic tetradrachms of the Indo-Greek ruler Apollodotos I. Finally, a remarkable passage in the 1st Book of Maccabees claims that Eumenes II of Pergamon, in the treaty of Apamea in 188 BC, was awarded Seleucid lands in Media and India. An analysis is made about whether the treaty may have actually included a clause about (apparently only nominal) Pergamene influence over eastern Seleucid vassal-states, and whether there might possibly be a connection to the otherwise unattested ruler Eumenes in the tax-receipt.

Direct neuronal reprogramming, by which a neuron is formed via direct conversion from a somatic cell without going through a pluripotent intermediate stage, allows for the possibility of generating patient-derived neurons. A unique feature of these so-called induced neurons (iNs) is the potential to maintain aging and epigenetic signatures of the donor, which is critical given that many diseases of the CNS are age related. Here, we review the published literature on the work that has been undertaken using iNs to model human brain disorders. Furthermore, as disease-modeling studies using this direct neuronal reprogramming approach are becoming more widely adopted, it is important to assess the criteria that are used to characterize the iNs, especially in relation to the extent to which they are mature adult neurons. In particular: i) what constitutes an iN cell, ii) which stages of conversion offer the earliest/optimal time to assess features that are specific to neurons and/or a disorder and iii) whether generating subtype-specific iNs is critical to the disease-related features that iNs express. Finally, we discuss the range of potential biomedical applications that can be explored using patient-specific models of neurological disorders with iNs, and the challenges that will need to be overcome in order to realize these applications. ; This research has received funding from the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme: FP/2007-2013 Neuro Stem Cell Repair (no. 602278), ERC Grant Agreement no. 30971, the Swedish Research Council treatment of the future grant agreement K2012-99X-22324-01-5, the Swedish Research Council 70862601/Bagadilico, Swedish Parkinson Foundation (Parkinsonfonden), the Strategic Research Area at Lund University Multipark and StemTherapy. JJ is supported by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (#FFL12-0074). JD is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) fellowship (#358492), and RB is supported by an NIHR Biomedical Research Centre grant to the University of Cambridge/Addenbrooke's Hospital. MP is a New York Stem Cell Foundation—Robertson Investigator.