The Mediterranean sponge Aplysina aerophoba kept in aquaria or cultivation tanks can stop pumping for several hours or even days. To investigate changes in the chemical microenvironments, we measured oxygen profiles over the surface and into the tissue of pumping and non-pumping A. aerophoba specimens with Clark-type oxygen microelectrodes (tip diameters 18-30 μm). Total oxygen consumption rate...

Microbes associated with marine sponges play significant roles in host physiology. Remarkable levels of microbial diversity have been observed in sponges worldwide through both culture-dependent and culture-independent studies. Most studies have focused on the structure of the bacterial communities in sponges and have involved sponges sampled from shallow waters. Here, we used pyrosequencing of...

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a novel type of universal and diverse endogenous noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) and they form a covalently closed continuous loop without 5' or 3' tails unlike linear RNAs. Most circRNAs are presented with characteristics of abundance, stability, conservatism, and often exhibiting tissue/developmental-stage-specific expression. CircRNAs are generated either from exons or i...

Sponges (Porifera) are currently considered to be the first branch off the Urmetazoa, common ancestors of all multicellular animals or metazoa. Research in the field of the developmental biology of sponges was restricted to morphological observations. Nowadays, research is mainly concentrated on larval development, primarily dealing with tissue formation. Already since 1907, methods for develop...

Lymphomas are solid-type tumors containing lymphoid cells. Some of latent herpesvirus infections established in B and/or T-lymphocytes could result in the formation of lymphomas. Marek's disease virus serotype 1 (MDV-1) is an avian herpes virus causing to lymphoproliferative tumors in birds, known as Marek's disease (MD). MD has often been used as an ideal biological model for studying the path...

Kitchen sponges are among the possible sources of contaminants in food establishments. The main purpose of the current study was, therefore, to assess the microbiological safety of sponges as it has been used in selected food establishments of Jimma town. Accordingly, the microbiological safety of a total of 201 kitchen sponges randomly collected from food establishments was evaluated against t...

Recently discovered histocompatibility-like phenomena in sponges (Phylum Porifera) have prompted attempts to measure the precision with which allogeneic grafts are recognized and rejected. The results of these investigations have been extremely varied, ranging from suggestions that allorecognition does not occur to suggestions that every genetically distinct individual may be unique in histocom...

Sponges stand out among sessile marine animals in the great variety of collaborative associations in which they participate. When intimately associated organisms represent taxa with very different characteristics, the ways in which they might benefit each other are readily apparent. For example, non-sponge partners can provide mobility (e.g. decorator crabs, Stachowicz & Hay 2000), solid stable...

The aim of this study was to obtain four collagen based porous scaffolds and to assess their in vitro biocompatibility and biodegradability in order to use them for skin tissue engineering. We have prepared four variants of collagen-based biodegradable sponges by liophilization of type I collagen solution and three variants of collagen-agarose mixture in different ratios 2:1 (A), 1:1 (B) and 1:...

The localisation of tumour deposits by a 131 1 labelled monoclonal antibody to carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) has been evaluated in 24 patients with primary gastric, oesophageal and colorectal cancer and in 26 patients with clinically suspected recurrent gastric and colorectal cancer. Seventeen of 20 primary sites and 6/15 associated secondary sites were correctly identified by external scannin...