he attenuation of exercise ventilatory response with increasing BMI in men and women with obesity.
 These findings suggest that obesity presents a unique challenge to augmenting ventilatory output relative to CO2 elimination, such that the increase in the exercise ventilatory response becomes blunted as the magnitude of obesity increases. Further studies are required to investigate the clinical consequences and the mechanisms that may explain the attenuation of exercise ventilatory response with increasing BMI in men and women with obesity.
  In a cohort of eight families (11 patients) with autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa (arRP), we clinically characterized disease associated with mutations in 
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  Visual function was determined by measuring the patients' visual acuity, dark- and light-adapted perimetry, and by full-field electroretinography. Retinal structure was evaluated with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography, fundus imaging, and autofluorescence imaging.
 
  Age of onset ranged from 4 to 49years (mean [SD] 26 [17], median 27years). The age at visit was 27-54years, mean 37 (17). The range of visual acuity was logMAR -0.1 to 1.3 (Snellen 20/16 to 20/400) in the right eye and -0.1 to 0.9 (Snellen 20/16 to 20/160) in the left eye. Electrophysiological testing in five patients showed an absence of the rod response. Cone responses ranged from normal to severely reduced. The patients exhibited loss of rod vision more severe than cone vision. Funduscopic images showed widespread retinal degeneration with pigment clumping, optic dition. Additionally, findings demonstrated variable penetrance and expressivity of disease in these patients.
  Cat eye syndrome (CES) is a rare chromosomal disorder with a known incidence of 1 per 50,000-150,000 live newborns. The classic triad of iris coloboma, anorectal malformations, and auricular abnormalities is present in 40% of patients. In addition, other ocular malformations and systemic defects can be present. The aim of this report is to present a patient with unilateral iris coloboma related to a mosaicism of cat eye syndrome.
 
  A complete ophthalmological and systemic evaluation was performed in a three-year-old male. He also underwent a standard karyotype and FISH analysis with a probe against the 22q11.2 locus.
 
  The ophthalmological and systemic evaluation revealed a unilateral iris coloboma and ipsilateral auricular malformations. Karyotype analysis of blood leukocytes indicated the presence of a marker chromosome in 6% of the analyzed cells. FISH analysis showed three positive signals in 5.5% of the analyzed nucleus.
 
  This patient presented two of the three classic manifestations of CES; interestingly, they were unilateral. The 22q11 duplication was identified by standard karyotype and confirmed with FISH. The present case demonstrates the importance of conducting a multidisciplinary approach in patients with congenital malformations associated with known syndromes.
 This patient presented two of the three classic manifestations of CES; interestingly, they were unilateral. The 22q11 duplication was identified by standard karyotype and confirmed with FISH. The present case demonstrates the importance of conducting a multidisciplinary approach in patients with congenital malformations associated with known syndromes.Parametric phylogenetic approaches that attempt to delineate between distinct 'modes' of speciation (splitting cladogenesis, budding cladogenesis and anagenesis) between fossil taxa have become increasingly popular among comparative biologists. But it is not yet well understood how clearly morphological data from fossil taxa speak to detailed questions of speciation mode when compared with the lineage diversification models that serve as their basis. In addition, the congruence of inferences made using these approaches with geographical patterns has not been explored. Here, I extend a previously introduced maximum-likelihood approach for the examination of ancestor-descendant relationships to accommodate budding speciation and apply it to a dataset of fossil hominins. I place these results in a phylogeographic context to better understand spatial dynamics underlying the hypothesized speciation patterns. The spatial patterns implied by the phylogeny hint at the complex demographic processes underlying the spread and diversification of hominins throughout the Pleistocene. I also find that inferences of budding are driven primarily by stratigraphic, versus morphological, data and discuss the ramifications for interpretations of speciation process in hominins specifically and from phylogenetic data in general.The somasteroids are Lower Palaeozoic star-shaped animals widely regarded as ancestors of Asterozoa, the group of echinoderms that includes brittle stars and starfish. However, the origin of asterozoans, the assembly of their distinctive body organization, and their relationships with other Cambrian and Ordovician echinoderms remain problematic owing to the difficulties of comparing the endoskeleton between disparate groups. Here, we describe the new somasteroid Cantabrigiaster fezouataensis, a primitive asterozoan from the Early Ordovician Fezouata Lagerstätte in Morocco. Cantabrigiaster shares with other somasteroids a unique endoskeletal arm organization and the presence of rod-like virgal ossicles that articulate with the ambulacrals, but differs from all other known asterozoans in the absence of adambulacral ossicles defining the arm margins, evoking parallels with non-asterozoan echinoderms. Developmentally informed Bayesian and parsimony phylogenetic analyses, which reflect the homology of the biserial ambulacral ossicles in Palaeozoic echinoderms according to the extraxial-axial theory, recover Cantabrigiaster as the earliest divergent stem-group asterozoan. Our results illuminate the ancestral morphology of Asterozoa, and clarify the affinities of problematic Ordovician Asterozoa.  https://www.selleckchem.com/JAK.html  Bayesian inference and parsimony demonstrate that somasteroids represent a paraphyletic grade within stem- and crown-group Asterozoa, whereas stenuroids are paraphyletic within stem-group Ophiuroidea. Our results also offer potential insights on the evolutionary relationships between asterozoans, crinoids and potential Cambrian stem-group representatives.