The number of DIV required for the elaboration of all differentiated progeny was determined to satisfy several essential developmental and cellular criteria, including homogeneity of the developmental lineage species examined (>95%) and the absence of alternative neural species.
The age-diagnosis interaction was examined for differences in correlations between age and local functional homogeneity (i.e., the developmental effect) between ASD and HC subjects.
Another consequence of the modeling approach presented here is that positional information in developmental processes can be described by the non-homogeneity in the spatial distribution of the concentration of regulators, and is not necessarily associated with other physical processes of transport or diffusion.
Cell culture composition and homogeneity remained similar for the two subsequent developmental stages of OL lineage maturation.
An attractive feature of this developmental step is that stumpy forms accumulate to near homogeneity at the peak of each wave of parasitaemia and can be induced to undergo efficient differentiation to the next life-cycle stage, procyclic forms, if harvested from blood and incubated in culture media at 27°C containing citrate/cis-aconitate (CCA) [ 31- 33].
This culture paradigm eliminates intermediate neural progenitor species and other proliferating neural developmental cell types present in primary NSC clones and yields >98% homogeneity.
In our set-up, all injections were performed using polyvinylpyrrolidone as a polymer-based carrier for the bacteria, which showed several benefits: (1) restriction of early bacterial spread into the embryo, precluding developmental problems arising from the early injection stage; (2) higher concentration homogeneity; (3) clear visibility of injected inoculum as a spheroid (Video S1).
In order to increase the homogeneity of the experimental samples, COCs were further screened for developmental competence using brilliant cresyl blue (BCB) staining as described in [ 50- 52].
As in many other areas of biomedical research, animals have nevertheless proven valuable experimental models of fetal programming due to their genetic homogeneity, more controlled environment, accessibility to obtain fetuses at different developmental stages, and feasibility for interventions during gestation.
Although the homogeneity in ages of our sample is a strength because of its developmental specificity, it also limits the generalizability of our findings, as does the sample demographics that included a majority of white and more educated families.
