Evaluation of parasitic contamination and effects on estimates of mitochondrial enzymatic activities in infected fish livers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Parasites can impair host performance through various physiological processes, including alterations to host metabolism. Since mitochondria are responsible for cellular energy production, it is likely that disruptions in host cellular metabolism contribute to changes in metabolism at the organismal level. However, some studies investigating parasite-induced alteration in cellular metabolism have not taken the presence of parasites in the target tissues into account, potentially biasing results. It is therefore critical to confirm that the measured enzyme activities reflect those of the hosts rather than the parasites themselves. Here, we tested a parasite extraction protocol to evaluate the extent to which parasite contamination impacts estimates of cellular enzyme activities in hepatic tissues of wild pumpkinseed sunfish ( Lepomis gibbosus ) infected with bass tapeworm cestodes ( Proteocephalus ambloplitis ). We tested four treatments: uninfected livers, cleaned infected livers, infected livers (repopulated) and parasites alone. We then compared the activity of key metabolic enzymes among groups. PCR tests were used to assess parasitic contamination of samples after applying the parasite extraction protocol on hepatic tissue. Enzyme activities of cleaned livers and contaminated livers were similar despite PCR tests revealing contamination. The intensity of cestode infection also did not influence enzyme activity, which suggests that parasite presence in liver tissues does not impact the accuracy of the enzyme activity estimates. These results suggest that studying the organs of heavily parasitized individuals is possible. Nevertheless, we recommend that our cleaning protocol is applied to infected organs to avoid any perception of biases in highly infected individuals.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 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".