Mechanistic basis for loss of water balance in green tree frogs infected with a fungal pathogen
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Chytridiomycosis, a lethal skin disease caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis ( Bd), disrupts skin function of amphibians, interfering with ionic and osmotic regulation. To regulate fungal loads, amphibians increase their rate of skin sloughing. However, sloughing also causes a temporary loss of ionic and osmotic homeostasis due to disruption of the skin, a key osmoregulatory organ. The combined effects of increased sloughing frequency and chytridiomycosis contribute to the high rates of mortality from Bd infections. However, the mechanisms responsible for the loss of cutaneous osmotic regulation remain unknown. We measured the changes in whole animal water uptake rates, in vitro transcutaneous water fluxes across the ventral skin, and the mRNA expression of epithelial water transport proteins (aquaporins, AQPs) and junctional proteins in Bd-infected and uninfected Litoria caerulea skin. We hypothesize that infected frogs would show reduction/inhibition in cutaneous water transporters responsible for regulating water balance, and sloughing would exacerbate cutaneous water fluxes. We found that infected, nonsloughing frogs had an impaired rate of water uptake and showed increased rates of in vitro water efflux across the ventral skin. In uninfected frogs, the expression of AQPs and junction genes increased significantly with sloughing, which may assist in regulating cutaneous water movements and barrier function in the newly exposed skin. In contrast, infected frogs did not show this postsloughing increase in AQP gene expression. The combination of increased sloughing frequency, impaired water uptake rates, and increased rates of water loss likely contributes to the loss of osmotic homeostasis in frogs infected with Bd.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".