Development of Midbrain Dopaminergic Neurons and the Advantage of Using hiPSCs as a Model System to Study Parkinson's Disease.

Midbrain dopaminergic (mDA) neurons are significantly impaired in patients inflicted with Parkinson's disease (PD), subsequently affecting a variety of motor functions. There are four pathways through which dopamine elicits its function, namely, nigrostriatal, mesolimbic, mesocortical and tuberoinfundibular dopamine pathways. SHH and Wnt signalling pathways in association with favourable expression of a variety of genes, promotes the development and differentiation of mDA neurons in the brain. However, there is a knowledge gap regarding the complex signalling pathways involved in development of mDA neurons. hiPSC models have been acclaimed to be effective in generating complex disease phenotypes. These models mimic the microenvironment found in vivo thus ensuring maximum reliability. Further, a variety of therapeutic compounds can be screened using hiPSCs since they can be used to generate neurons that could carry an array of mutations associated with both familial and sporadic PD. Thus, culturing hiPSCs to study gene expression and dysregulation of cellular processes associated with PD can be useful in developing targeted therapies that will be a step towards halting disease progression.

Devices and techniques used to obtain and analyze three-dimensional cell cultures.

Cell cultures are indispensable for both basic and applied research. Advancements in cell culture and analysis increase their utility for basic research and translational applications. A marked development in this direction is advent of three-dimensional (3D) cultures. The extent of advancement in 3D cell culture methods over the past decade has warranted referring to a single cell type being cultured as an aggregate or spheroid using simple scaffolds as "traditional." In recent years, the development of "next-generation" devices has enabled cultured cells to mimic their natural environments much better than the traditional 3D culture systems. Automated platforms like chip-based devices, magnetic- and acoustics-based assembly devices, di-electrophoresis (DEP), micro pocket cultures (MPoC), and 3D bio-printing provide a dynamic environment compared to the rather static conditions of the traditional simple scaffold-based 3D cultures. Chip-based technologies, which are centered on principles of microfluidics, are revolutionizing the ways in which cell culture and analysis can be compacted into table-top instruments. A parallel evolution in analytical devices enabled efficient assessment of various complex physiological and pathological endpoints. This is augmented by concurrent development of software enabling rapid large-scale automated data acquisition and analysis like image cytometry, elastography, optical coherence tomography, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), and biosensors. The techniques and devices utilized for the purpose of 3D cell culture and subsequent analysis depend primarily on the requirement of the study. We present here an in-depth account of the devices for obtaining and analyzing 3D cell cultures.

Prenatal diagnosis: A connotation on genetic counseling being indispensable.

Prenatal testing and diagnosis are gaining a strong foothold in a progressively developing country like India, and an estimated boom in the market of noninvasive prenatal testing is predicted by the year 2024. Having said this, every technique needs an adequate amount of supplementation to increase its worth and that is where genetic counseling proves to be indispensable. Postdiagnosis, the women classified as high-risk individuals likely to give birth to infants inflicted with congenital and structural anomalies are appropriately counseled regarding the clinical aspects of the disease, life expectancy associated with the same, and the consequences associated with the decision to go ahead and conceive the child. Genetic counseling is majorly done for Down syndrome as the other aneuploidies have a highly reduced life expectancy. Although there are a variety of techniques available for testing various chromosomal anomalies, information regarding the appropriate time of the test and emphasis on pre- and posttest counseling is usually not supplied to primary physicians. A considerable amount of confusion dominates the decision of which test should be employed for testing of which anomaly as an array of rather efficient techniques has been identified. Furthermore, there is no nation-wide consensus of the timing and nature of these screening protocols. Moreover, ambiguous guidelines along with an impending lacuna in terms of awareness have led to India being at the backseat of the era that has ushered in tons of technological advancement in this field.

Will they stay or will they go? The role of job embeddedness in predicting turnover in individualistic and collectivistic cultures.

Although turnover is an issue of global concern, paradoxically there have been few studies of turnover across cultures. We investigated the cross-cultural generalizability of the job embeddedness model (Mitchell & Lee, 2001) by examining turnover in an individualistic country (United States) and a collectivistic country (India). Using cross-cultural data from call centers (N = 797), we demonstrated that although organization job embeddedness predicted turnover in both countries, different dimensions of job embeddedness predicted turnover in the United States and India. As hypothesized, on the basis of individualism-collectivism theory, person-job fit was a significant predictor of lower turnover in the United States, whereas person-organization fit, organization links, and community links were significant predictors of lower turnover in India. We also explored whether a newly developed construct of embeddedness-family embeddedness-predicts turnover above and beyond job embeddedness and found initial support for its utility in both the United States and India. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Manager personality, manager service quality orientation, and service climate: test of a model.

This article conceptually and empirically explores the relationships among manager personality, manager service quality orientation, and climate for customer service. Data were collected from 1,486 employees and 145 managers in grocery store departments (N = 145) to test the authors' theoretical model. Largely consistent with hypotheses, results revealed that core self-evaluations were positively related to managers' service quality orientation, even after dimensions of the Big Five model of personality were controlled, and that service quality orientation fully mediated the relationship between personality and global service climate. Implications for personality and organizational climate research are discussed.