Validação laboratorial e fisiológica de conjunto comercial para a quantificação de corticóides fecais em chimpanzé (Pan troglodytes) e orangotango (Pongo pygmaeus), cativos e submetidos a enriquecimentos ambientais / Laboratorial and physiological validation of comercial kits for quantification of fecal corticoids of captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and orangutangs (Pongo pygmaeus) under environmental enriched conditions

Neste trabalho foi realizado estudo comparativo dos níveis de corticóides fecais (CF) de chimpanzé (Pan troglodytes) e orangotango(Pongo pygmaeus). Foram analisadas amostras coletadas em duas fases distintas, relacionadas com a introdução de técnicas de enriquecimento ambiental, a saber: Base (antes da introdução) e Habituação(imediatamente após). Realizamos as validações do conjunto comercial para radioimunoensaio ImmunuChem™ Double Antibody Corticosterone da MP Biomedicals, para mensuração de CF. A validação laboratorial dos conjuntos diagnósticos para uso em extrato fecal de primatas foi realizada pelo método de paralelismo, no qual, para cada espécie, concentrações conhecidas de corticosterona foram adicionadas a um pool de extratos fecais, sendo estas amostras analisadas em seguida. As inclinações das curvas obtidas nestes ensaios e da curva padrão do ensaio foram então comparadas. Os resultados obtidos para chimpanzé e orangotango, foram respectivamente, Y=17,23+1,31*X;R...

A comparative study of fecal corticoids (FC) concentrations was carried out with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) e orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). Fecal samples were collected before (Basal) and just after (Habituation)enrichment introduction and analyzed. We performed biochemical and physiological validations of the ImmunuChem™ Double Antibody Corticosterone kit for radioimmunoassay from MP Biomedicals for quantifying FC concentrations. To establish the biochemical validity of our assay we performed parallelism assays in which pooled fecal extracts from both species were spiked with known quantities of corticosterone standard and the slopes of the curves obtained with these samples and the standard curves of the kits were compared. The correlation coefficients were R

Mental rotation of anthropoid hands: a chronometric study

It has been shown that mental rotation of objects and human body parts is processed differently in the human brain. But what about body parts belonging to other primates? Does our brain process this information like any other object or does it instead maximize the structural similarities with our homologous body parts? We tried to answer this question by measuring the manual reaction time (MRT) of human participants discriminating the handedness of drawings representing the hands of four anthropoid primates (orangutan, chimpanzee, gorilla, and human). Twenty-four right-handed volunteers (13 males and 11 females) were instructed to judge the handedness of a hand drawing in palm view by pressing a left/right key. The orientation of hand drawings varied from 0° (fingers upwards) to 90° lateral (fingers pointing away from the midline), 180° (fingers downwards) and 90° medial (finger towards the midline). The results showed an effect of rotation angle (F(3, 69) = 19.57, P < 0.001), but not of hand identity, on MRTs. Moreover, for all hand drawings, a medial rotation elicited shorter MRTs than a lateral rotation (960 and 1169 ms, respectively, P < 0.05). This result has been previously observed for drawings of the human hand and related to biomechanical constraints of movement performance. Our findings indicate that anthropoid hands are essentially equivalent stimuli for handedness recognition. Since the task involves mentally simulating the posture and rotation of the hands, we wondered if "mirror neurons" could be involved in establishing the motor equivalence between the stimuli and the participants' own hands.

Recent integrations of mammalian Hmg retropseudogenes.

We propose that select retropseudogenes of the high mobility group nonhistone chromosomal protein genes have recently integrated into mammalian genomes on the basis of the high sequence identity of the copies to the cDNA sequences derived from the original genes. These include the Hmg1 gene family in mice and the Hmgn2 family in humans. We investigated orthologous loci of several strains and species of Mus for presence or absence of apparently young Hmg1 retropseudogenes. Three of four analysed elements were specific to Mus musculus, two of which were not fixed, indicative of recent evolutionary origins. Additionally, we datamined a presumptive subfamily (Hmgz) of mouse Hmg1, but only identified one true element in the GenBank database, which is not consistent with a separate subfamily status. Two of four analysed Hmgn2 retropseudogenes were specific for the human genome, whereas a third was identified in human, chimpanzee and gorilla genomes, and a fourth additionally found in orangutan but absent in African green monkey. Flanking target-site duplications were consistent with LINE integration sites supporting LINE machinery for their mechanism of amplification. The human Hmgn2 retropseudogenes were full length, whereas the mouse Hmg1 elements were either full length or 3'-truncated at specific positions, most plausibly the result of use of alternative polyadenylation sites. The nature of their recent amplification success in relation to other retropseudogenes is unclear, although availability of a large number of transcripts during gametogenesis may be a reason. It is apparent that retropseudogenes continue to shape mammalian genomes, and may provide insight into the process of retrotransposition, as well as offer potential use as phylogenetic markers.

Chromosomes and spermatozoa of the great apes and man

The chromosome complement of four species phylogenetically related to man, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), the pygmy chimpanzee (Pan paniscus), the gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), and the orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) have been analysed with chromosome banding techiniques and compared to the human chomosome complement. This has shown remarkable homologies between species, and presumed mechanism of chromosome evolution have been proposed. Chromosome heteromorphism in the great apes have been compared to those found in human populations, and most o them affected the distribution or the amount of constitutive heterochromatin and/or brilliantly fluorescent material, a situation comparable to man where such variation have been established as chromossome polymorphisms. However, a balanced polymorphic structural rearregement involving large segments of euchromatic material has been found in two populations of orangutan. This rearrangement consisted of two pericentric inversions, one inside the other, comprising an unusual kind of chromosome polymorphism in mammalian populations. Moreover, it showed that pericentric inversions, the most probable chromosome rearrangements in the phylogeny of the chromosome of man and the great apes, might not necessarialy be restricted by infertility barriers, but may spread successfully in the popluation. The patterns of late replication of the chromossome of the great apes and man have been compared, using BUrd as a thymidine substitute in the cell cycle. This has show remarkable similarities in the patters of the pattehumam of late replication between species, and, as in the human chromosome, most regions of late replication in the chromosome of the great apes corresponded to areas of positive G-banding...