With advancements in high-resolution scanners and high-performance computers, the use of whole slide imaging (WSI) in digital pathology has increased. WSI scans glass slides and stores them in digital format, making them immune to damage or discoloration, and enabling remote pathology review and peer review. Additionally, with the development of artificial intelligence, research using deep learning models in pathology has become more widespread. In this study, the You Only Look Once (YOLO)v8 model was used to train artificial intelligence to detect apoptotic bodies commonly observed in rodent livers. A total of 1,558 rat liver images containing apoptotic bodies were collected and followed by labeling and data augmentation using flipping and rotation techniques to expand the dataset to 3,738 images. The dataset was then divided into training, validation, and test sets to develop and evaluate a model for object recognition. The training was conducted with an epoch set to 300. The YOLOv8 model detected apoptotic bodies with a mean average precision at 50% value of 0.882. Although the model’s accuracy for detecting individual apoptotic bodies may not seem extremely high, it is important to note that the size of apoptotic bodies is very small compared to hepatocytes, making them harder to detect. However, the model’s overall performance is expected to improves significantly with a larger dataset. The YOLOv8 model successfully detected apoptotic bodies with high accuracy. This can help reduce the workload of toxicologic pathologists and decrease the time and cost involved in pathology review. Furthermore, with an increased dataset, even higher accuracy can be expected in the future.

Most traditional genome sequencing projects involving infectious viruses include culturing and purification of the virus. This can present difficulties as an analysis of multiple populations from multiple locations may be required to acquire sufficient amount of high-quality DNA for sequence analysis. The electrophoretic method provides a strategy whereby the genomic DNA sequences of the Korean isolate of Pieris rapae granulovirus (PiraGV-K) were analyzed by purifying it from host DNA by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, thus simplifying sampling and labor time. The genomic DNA of infected P. rapae was embedded in agarose plugs, digested with a restriction nuclease and methylase, and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was used to separate PiraGV-K DNA from the DNA of P. rapae, followed by mapping of fosmid clones of the separated viral DNA. The double-stranded circular genome of PiraGV-K encodes 120 open reading frames (ORFs), covering 92% of the sequenced genome. BLAST and ORF arrangement showed the presence of 78 homologs to other genes in the database. The mean overall amino acid identity of PiraGV-K ORFs was highest with the Chinese isolate of PiraGV (~99%), followed up with Choristoneura occidentalis ORFs at 58%. PiraGV-K ORFs were grouped, according to function, into 10 genes involved in transcription, 11 involved in replication, 25 structural protein genes, and 15 auxiliary genes. Genes for Chitinase (ORF 10) and cathepsin (ORF11), involved in the liquefaction of the host, were found in the genome. The recovery of PiraGV-K DNA genome by pulse-field electrophoretic separation from host genomic DNA had several advantages, compared with its isolation from particles harvested as virions or inclusions from the P. rapae host. We have sequenced and analyzed the 108,658 bp PiraGV-K genome purified by the pulsed field electrophoretic method. The method appears to be applicable to the analysis of genomes of large viruses. The chitinase, identified by PiraGV-K genome sequence, was functionally characterized by quantitative PCR, Western blot analysis, immunohistochemistry and transmission electron microscopy.

We determined the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of the jewel beetle, Chrysochroa fulgidissima (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) from two overlapping fragments and subsequent sub fragments. The 15,592-bp long C. fulgidissima mitogenome contains gene arrangement and content identical to the most common arrangement found in insects. Most individual C. fulgidissima mitochondrial (mt) genes were well within the range found in the respective genes of other insects. The 875-bp A+T-rich region is shortest among the coleopteran mitogenomes sequenced in their entirety. The region is interesting in that it contains several stem-and-loop structures and tRNA-like structure found in the A+T-rich regions of other insect mitogenomes. As seen in other insect motogenomes the start codon of C. fulgidissima COI gene also is unusual because no typical start codon is available. Three of the 13 protein-coding genes have incomplete termination codon T or TA. All tRNA formed stable stem-and-loop structure, except for tRNASer(AGN), the DHU arm of which formed a simple loop as seen in many other metazoan mt tRNASer(AGN).