their downstream targets in the lamprey head. In jawed vertebrates, Edn signaling patterns the pharyngeal skeleton and positions the jaw joint through the action of target genes such as Hand, Bapx, Chordin, Gdf5, Gsc, Dlx, and Barx. We find gnathostome-like expression of Edns and most Edn target genes in the lamprey head, indicating that Ednmediated pharyngeal skeleton patterning predates the e...

The phonemic inventory of Arabic includes sounds that involve a pharyngeal constriction. Sounds referred to as ‘pharyngeal’ (/ʕ/ and /ħ/) are reported to have a primary constriction in the pharynx, while sounds referred to as ‘pharyngealized’ (/sʕ/, /tʕ/, /dʕ/, and /ðʕ/ or /zʕ/) are reported to have a secondary constriction in the pharynx. Some studies propose grouping both types of sounds toge...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of gonorrhea of the pharynx among select samples of men who have sex with men (MSM) ranges from 9% to 15%. To our knowledge, there have been no longitudinal studies in a prospective MSM cohort to estimate pharyngeal gonorrhea incidence or predictors of infection. We examined the prevalence, incidence, and sociodemographic and behavioral predictors of pharyngeal gonorrh...

The majority of male patients with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) have an abnormal pharyngeal structure and function, with episodic complete airway occlusion during sleep. Since OSA is less common in females than in males, it is possible that other abnormalities are active in female patients with OSA. Consequently, we measured pharyngeal area and its lung volume-related changes (LVRC) from func...

To cite: Varadharajan K, Hassan D, Hay A, et al. BMJ Case Rep Published online: [please include Day Month Year] doi:10.1136/bcr-2014208495 DESCRIPTION An 86-year-old man presented to accident and emergency with symptoms and signs of a lower respiratory tract infection. He had a history of severe dysphagia and regurgitation of food associated with two-stone weight loss and a significant reductio...

We studied the control of pharyngeal excitation in Caenorhabditis elegans. By laser ablating subsets of the pharyngeal nervous system, we found that the MC neuron type is necessary and probably sufficient for rapid pharyngeal pumping. Electropharyngeograms showed that MC transmits excitatory postsynaptic potentials, suggesting that MC acts as a neurogenic pacemaker for pharyngeal pumping. Mutat...

The pharyngeal mesoderm of developing embryos contributes to broad regions of head and heart musculature. We have developed a novel method to study head and heart progenitor cell development with pharyngeal arches (also known as branchial arches) ex vivo. Using this method, we have recently described that the second pharyngeal arch contains self-renewing heart progenitors and serves as a microe...