Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary origins and principles of distributed neural computation for state estimation and movement control in vertebrates

Department of Zoology and Centre for Neuroscience, University of Otago, Dunedin, New ZealandReceived October 22, 2004; revised December 2, 2004; accepted December 10, 2004Vertebrates are mostly large, agile creatures that can move rapidly and efﬁciently despite the signiﬁcant inertialand interaction forces that are generated when they move. Vertebrates appear in the fossil record in the lowerCambrian, when predation began to apply selection pressure for increased size and, consequently, increasedinertia. Agility depends critically upon the cerebellum, a brain structure that appears to have evolved as anelaboration of the vestibular and lateral-line sensory processing regions in brains of aquatic ancestors. There iscompelling evidence to suggest that the speciﬁc role of the cerebellum in motor control (etc) is state estimation.Analysis of responses of vestibular neurons in bullfrogs shows that these neurons have fractional-order dynam-ics. Because of this property, the vestibular nerve forms a map of the state space of the animal’s head, andindividual action potentials can be regarded as assertions about the location of the head in that space. This viewof vestibular coding suggests an analogy with particle ﬁlters, a new simulation-based method for stateestimation. In a particle ﬁlter the distribution of possible states consistent with observations is represented by acloud of “particles” in a map of the state space. By regarding action potentials as particles in neural stateestimators, we may develop a realistic model of neural computation in the cerebellum. At the same time—andindependently of the biological verisimilitude of such a cerebellar model—we may develop useful new algo-rithms for state estimation. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 10: , 2005
Localization of implanted dipoles by magnetoencephalography

We attempted to validate the location of sources predicted by magnetoencephalography (MEG) by studying 19 specially designed dipole electrodes implanted in six patients with intractable partial seizures who were undergoing subdural electrode recording. We used a seven-channel magnetometer to measure the magnetic fields produced by passing through the dipoles a 40-μA, 5-msec square-wave pulse followed 40 msec later by a pulse of opposite polarity; 200 pulses were averaged for each magnetometer position. The actual dipole locations were measured from skull radiographs, and we based MEG localization on a spherical head model with the inclusion of volume currents. MEG estimates of the sources were within several centimeters (mean, 1.69 cm) of the measured locations. We conclude that MEG localization was promising.
A case of horizontal gene transfer from Wolbachia to Aedes albopictus C6/36 cell line

Horizontal gene transfer plays an essential role in evolution and ecological adaptation, yet this phenomenon has remained controversial, particularly where it occurs between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. There are a handful of reported examples of horizontal gene transfer occurring between prokaryotes and eukaryotes in the literature, with most of these documented cases pertaining to invertebrates and endosymbionts. However, the vast majority of these horizontally transferred genes were either eventually excluded or rapidly became nonfunctional in the recipient genome. In this study, we report the discovery of a horizontal gene transfer from the endosymbiont Wolbachia in the C6/36 cell line derived from the mosquito Aedes albopictus. Moreover, we report that this horizontally transferred gene displayed high transcription level. This finding and the results of further experimentation strongly suggest this gene is functional and has been expressed and translated into a protein in the mosquito host cells.
Stochastic assembly of chemoreceptor clusters in Escherichia coli

Chemoreceptors and cytoplasmic chemotaxis proteins in Escherichia coli form clusters that play a key role in signal processing. These clusters localize at cell poles and at specific positions along the cell body which correspond to future division sites, but the details of cluster formation and the mechanism of cluster distribution remain unclear. Here, we used fluorescence microscopy to investigate how the numbers and sizes of receptor clusters depend on the expression level of chemotaxis proteins and on the cell length. We show that the average cluster number saturates at high levels of protein expression at approximately 3.7 clusters per cell, well below the number of available positioning sites. Correspondingly, distances between clusters in filamentous cells saturate at an average of 1 μm but, even at saturating expression levels, individual cluster numbers and distances show a broad distribution around the mean. Our data imply a stochastic mode of cluster assembly, where a defined average interval between clusters along the cell body arises from competition between nucleation of new clusters and growth of existing clusters. Upon subsequent anchorage to defined lateral sites, clusters grow with rates that inversely depend on their size, and become polar upon several rounds of cell division.