First case of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus in Spain

Background  

In August 2006 a major epidemic of bluetongue virus serotype 8 (BTV8) started off in North-West Europe. In the course of 2007 it became evident that BTV8 had survived the winter in North-West Europe, re-emerged and spread exponentially. Recently, the European Union decided to start vaccination against BTV8. In order to improve the understanding of the epidemiological situation, it was necessary to execute a cross-sectional serological study at the end of the BT vector season. Cattle were the target species for cross-sectional serological studies in Europe at the end of 2006 and 2007. However, there was no information on the BTV8-seroprevalence in sheep and goats.     

Spatial autocorrelation of assemblages of benthic invertebrates and its relationship to environmental factors in two upland rivers in southeastern Australia

The nature of spatial autocorrelation of biota may reveal much about underlying ecological and biological factors responsible for producing those patterns, especially dispersal processes (drift, adult flight, etc.). We report here on assemblage‐level autocorrelation in the benthic‐invertebrate assemblages (retained in sieves of 300 µm mesh) of riffles in two adjacent, relatively pristine rivers in southeastern Victoria, Australia (40‐km reaches of the Wellington and Wonnangatta Rivers). These are related to patterns of autocorrelation in physical and catchment conditions (‘environmental variables’) in the vicinity of the sampling points. Both the invertebrate assemblages and environmental variables were autocorrelated at small scales (= 8 km) in the Wellington River in one of the sampling years (1996). Dissimilarities of invertebrate assemblages were correlated with dissimilarities of environmental variables in both sampling years (1996 and 1997) in that river. Environmental variables were autocorrelated in the Wonnangatta River, but this was not expressed as autocorrelation in the assemblages of invertebrates, which were not autocorrelated at any scale studied. Individual environmental variables showed different spatial patterns between the two rivers. These results suggest that individual rivers have their own idiosyncratic patterns and one cannot assume that even similar, geographically adjacent rivers will have the same patterns, which is a difficulty for ecological assessment and restoration.     

Private specificities can dominate the humoral response to self-antigens in patients with cryptogenic fibrosing alveolitis

Background  

The pathogenetic mechanisms that underlie the interstitial lung disease cryptogenic fibrosing alveolitis (CFA) may involve an immunological reaction to unidentified antigens in the lung, resulting in tissue damage.     

Caulobacter crescentus bacteriophage phiCbK: structure and in vitro self-assembly of the tail

Electron micrographs of negatively stained and platinum-shadowed bacteriophage φCbK have been analyzed by optical diffraction and computer Fourier transformation. The results show that the phage tail is a helical “stacked disc” structure with an annular repeat of about 38 Å and with 3-fold rotational symmetry about the helix axis. Phage tails exhibited lateral and rotational flexibility and were found to possess variable helical parameters. The smaller angle of rotation about the helix axis between equivalent asymmetric units on adjacent discs measured from a number of tail images was found to have an average value of 41.5±0.9 °. Cross-sectional views of short tail fragments were obtained after sonication at 0 °C. These views confirmed the 3-fold symmetry of the 38 Å annular unit, which most probably consists of three identical subunits of the major tail protein. Formation of extended tail polymers, both linear and circular, was found to take place spontaneously in vitro after sonication. On the basis of these results, a low-resolution model for the tail helix is presented. The questions of head-tail symmetry mismatch in the phage and of tail length regulation are discussed.