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Acinar cells are the principal secretory units of multiple exocrine organs. A single-cell, layered, lumenized acinus forms from a large cohort of epithelial progenitors that must initiate and coordinate three cellular programs of acinar specification, namely, lineage progression, secretion, and polarization. Despite this well-known outcome, the mechanism(s) that regulate these complex programs are unknown. Here, we demonstrate that neuronal-epithelial cross-talk drives acinar specification through neuregulin (NRG1)-ERBB3-mTORC2 signaling. Using single-cell and global RNA sequencing of developing murine salivary glands, we identified NRG1-ERBB3 to precisely overlap with acinar specification during gland development. Genetic deletion of Erbb3 prevented cell lineage progression and the establishment of lumenized, secretory acini. Conversely, NRG1 treatment of isolated epithelia was sufficient to recapitulate the development of secretory acini. Mechanistically, we found that NRG1-ERBB3 regulates each developmental program through an mTORC2 signaling pathway. Thus, we reveal that a neuronal-epithelial (NRG1/ERBB3/mTORC2) mechanism orchestrates the creation of functional acini.

This study investigated the protective effect of rutin on reproductive and blood–testis barrier (BTB) damage induced by perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) exposure. In this study, male ICR mice were randomly divided into three groups, Ctrl group (ddH2O, 5 mL/kg), PFOA group (PFOA, 20 mg/kg/d, 5 mL/kg), PFOA + rutin group (PFOA, 20 mg/kg/d, 5 mL/kg; rutin, 20 mg/kg/d, 5 mL/kg). Mice were exposed to PFOA for 28 days by gavage once daily in the presence or absence of rutin. Histopathological observations demonstrated that rutin treatment during PFOA exposure can reduce structural damage to testis and epididymis such as atrophy of spermatogenic epithelium and stenosis of epididymal lumen, while increase in the number and layers of spermatogenic cells. Biochemical detection demonstrated that rutin can reduce 8-hydroxy-2′-desoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) concentration in the serum and testis tissues. Rutin can also ameliorate glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) content, and reduce malondialdehyde (MDA) and total cholesterol (TC) content in testis tissues. Biotin tracking immunofluorescence and transmission electron microscopy demonstrated that rutin can ameliorate BTB structural damage during PFOA exposure. Rutin ameliorated the stress expression of tight junction proteins occludin and claudin-11. In conclusion, our findings suggested that rutin has a degree of protection in reproductive and BTB damage, which could put forward a new perspective on the application of rutin to prevent reproductive damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the nexus of stigmatisation and environmental activism in the Campaign to Protect Pont Valley against open-cast mining in the northeast of England. Drawing on Imogen Tyler's work, our analysis examines stigma power as embedded in wider efforts to police and repress environmental dissent and defend core neoliberal values. Examination of qualitative interviews with campaigners, drive-past insults shouted at activists, online police statements and public responses, and online trolling of activists by mining employees and the wider public reveals stigmatisation to be a process of power, informed by neoliberal ideologies (of the threat and danger of worklessness), and reproduced through neoliberal power structures (the state, corporate power, and popular culture), shaped by the insecurities that are specific to social and political contexts. We show how the state mobilises stigma through ideologies associated with austerity and the hostile environment to delegitimate activism through association with worklessness/idleness and the inaccurate representation of activists as part of broader processes of criminalisation, policing, and management of protest. In an area renowned for its work ethic and high levels of unemployment, the work of environmental activists is dismissed as illegitimate, drawing on tropes associated with the disciplining of the so-called deviant working classes. The historical importance of coal and activism in the defence of the 'mining way of life' feeds into dominant narratives associated with work and individualism. Pride associated with coal mining is reconfigured and forms the basis of insults against those (working class and otherwise) who are recast as 'outsiders', 'wasting time and money' in resisting environmental destruction. Finally, we examine how activists were able to largely deflect stigmatisation through collective engagement, solidarity, and political analysis of the process they were subject to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article conceptualises animal liberation direct action in green-cultural criminological terms. To do this, it draws on Johnston and Johnston's methodological approach and undertakes qualitative content analysis of animal liberation communiqués published on the website, Bite Back. Whilst a significant body of scholarly literature has discussed animal liberation struggles, this article develops an understanding of these often-criminal acts and events within a cultural criminological context. Findings from this analysis reveal three themes. First, activists variously resist and embrace the state and media's 'terrorisation' and discursive delegitimating of animal liberation struggle. Activists wilfully play on the framing of themselves as terrorists. Second, activists are also able to re-contextualise what might otherwise be seen as minor, apolitical events into a much broader liberation struggle. Third, animal liberation activism is frequently and explicitly connected to other emancipatory struggles. To conclude, the article argues that animal liberation activists engage in direct action on a local level, and strategically promote hyper localised instances of direct action globally through online communiqués. In doing so, animal liberation activists engage in a 'prefigurative integration' of what might otherwise be dismissed as isolated hyper local 'petty events' within a global struggle against violence, exploitation and oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental justice (EJ) activists have long worked with abolitionists in their communities, critiquing the ways policing, prisons, and pollution are entangled and racially constituted. Yet, much EJ scholarship reflects a liberal Western focus on a more equal distribution of harms, rather than challenging the underlying systems of exploitation these harms rest upon. This article argues that policing facilitates environmentally unjust developments that are inherently harmful to nature and society. Policing helps enforce a social order rooted in the 'securing' of property, hierarchy, and human-nature exploitation. Examining the colonial continuities of policing, we argue that EJ must challenge the assumed necessity of policing, overcome the mythology of the state as 'arbiter of justice', and work to create social conditions in which policing is unnecessary. This will help open space to question other related harmful hegemonic principles. Policing drives environmental injustice, so EJ must embrace abolition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildlife faces a number of threats due to human activity, including overexploitation from excessive and/or illegal trade. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is the main international legal instrument to address such overexploitation. However, not all species threatened by excessive trade are protected by CITES, leading to criticism that it is an instrument for the preservation of exploitation as opposed to the protection of wildlife (Goyes and Sollund 2016). This article explores whether CITES classifications can be said to perpetuate speciesist thinking. We highlight which species are more likely to receive protection by analysing which species are listed and how some species move between the CITES Appendices and comparing this to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) classifications for traded wildlife. We find that a species' market value, charisma, and survival status form a complex set of characteristics that lead (or not) to the continual trade of some species, even though they are facing extinction from human consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]