The carotenoids of a black variety of the larva of the moth, Manduca sexta

The black mutant larva of Manduca sexta contains approximately the same quantity of carotenoids as the normal green type, but there is possibly a slight qualitative difference between them, the former storing more β-carotene and less violaxanthin.     

939. STROBILANTHES GLUTINOSA

Strobilanthes glutinosa is described and illustrated. It is a winter‐flowering species native to the foothills of the northwestern Himalayas. Although frost sensitive, it appears to flourish as a cultivated plant in shaded places enjoying a mild moist climate.     

Cultivable fungi present in deep-sea sediments of Antarctica: taxonomy,diversity, and bioprospecting of bioactive compounds

Extremophiles - We accessed the culturable mycobiota present in marine sediments at different depths in Antarctica Ocean. Acremonium fusidioides, Penicillium allii-sativi, Penicillium chrysogenum,...     

Nucleic Acid Tools for Invasive Fungal Disease Diagnosis

Current Fungal Infection Reports - This review has incorporated the knowledge and experience of the leads of each of the laboratory working parties of the fungal PCR initiative in order to provide...     

Are you what you eat? A highly transient and prey‐influenced gut microbiome in the grey house spider Badumna longinqua

Stable core microbial communities have been described in numerous animal species and are commonly associated with fitness benefits for their hosts. Recent research, however, highlights examples of species whose microbiota are transient and environmentally derived. Here, we test the effect of diet on gut microbial community assembly in the spider Badumna longinqua. Using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing combined with quantitative PCR, we analyzed diversity and abundance of the spider's gut microbes, and simultaneously characterized its prey communities using nuclear rRNA markers. We found a clear correlation between community similarity of the spider's insect prey and gut microbial DNA, suggesting that microbiome assembly is primarily diet‐driven. This assumption is supported by a feeding experiment, in which two types of prey—crickets and fruit flies—both substantially altered microbial diversity and community similarity between spiders, but did so in different ways. After cricket consumption, numerous cricket‐derived microbes appeared in the spider's gut, resulting in a rapid homogenization of microbial communities among spiders. In contrast, few prey‐associated bacteria were detected after consumption of fruit flies; instead, the microbial community was remodelled by environmentally sourced microbes, or abundance shifts of rare taxa in the spider's gut. The reshaping of the microbiota by both prey taxa mimicked a stable core microbiome in the spiders for several weeks post feeding. Our results suggest that the spider's gut microbiome undergoes pronounced temporal fluctuations, that its assembly is dictated by the consumed prey, and that different prey taxa may remodel the microbiota in drastically different ways.     

Analysis of chemometric models applied to Raman spectroscopy for monitoring key metabolites of cell culture

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) initiative of Process Analytical Technology (PAT) encourages the monitoring of biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes by innovative solutions. Raman spectroscopy and the chemometric modeling tool partial least squares (PLS) have been applied to this aim for monitoring cell culture process variables. This study compares the chemometric modeling methods of Support Vector Machine radial (SVMr), Random Forests (RF), and Cubist to the commonly used linear PLS model for predicting cell culture components—glucose, lactate, and ammonia. This research is performed to assess whether the use of PLS as standard practice is justified for chemometric modeling of Raman spectroscopy and cell culture data. Model development data from five small-scale bioreactors (2 × 1 L and 3 × 5 L) using two Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell lines were used to predict against a manufacturing scale bioreactor (2,000 L). Analysis demonstrated that Cubist predictive models were better for average performance over PLS, SVMr, and RF for glucose, lactate, and ammonia. The root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of Cubist modeling was acceptable for the process concentration ranges of glucose (1.437 mM), lactate (2.0 mM), and ammonia (0.819 mM). Interpretation of variable importance (VI) results theorizes the potential advantages of Cubist modeling in avoiding interference of Raman spectral peaks. Predictors/Raman wavenumbers (cm⁻¹) of interest for individual variables are X1139–X1141 for glucose, X846–X849 for lactate, and X2941–X2943 for ammonia. These results demonstrate that other beneficial chemometric models are available for use in monitoring cell culture with Raman spectroscopy.     

Living phosphatic stromatolites in a low‐phosphorus environment: Implications for the use of phosphorus as a proxy for phosphate levels in paleo‐systems

In the geological record, fossil phosphatic stromatolites date back to the Great Oxidation Event in the Paleoproterozoic, but living phosphatic stromatolites have not been described previously. Here, we report on cyanobacterial stromatolites in a supratidal freshwater environment at Cape Recife, South African southern coast, precipitating Ca carbonate alternating with episodes of Ca phosphate deposition. In their structure and composition, the living stromatolites from Cape Recife closely resemble their fossilized analogues, showing phosphatic zonation, microbial casts, tunnel structures and phosphatic crusts of biogenic origin. The microbial communities appear to be also similar to those proposed to have formed fossil phosphatic stromatolites. Phosphatic domains in the material from Cape Recife are spatially and texturally associated with carbonate precipitates, but form distinct entities separated by sharp boundaries. Electron Probe Micro‐Analysis shows that Ca/P ratios and the overall chemical compositions of phosphatic precipitates are in the range of octacalcium phosphate, amorphous tricalcium phosphate and apatite. The coincidence in time of the emergence of phosphatic stromatolites in the fossil record with a major episode of atmospheric oxidation led to the assumption that at times of increased oxygen release the underlying increased biological production may have been linked to elevated phosphorus availability. The stromatolites at Cape Recife, however, form in an environment where ambient phosphorus concentrations do not exceed 0.28 μM, one to two orders of magnitude below the previously predicted minimum threshold of >5 μM for biogenic phosphate precipitation in paleo‐systems. Accordingly, we contest the previously proposed suitability of phosphatic stromatolites as a proxy for high ambient phosphate concentrations in supratidal to shallow ocean settings in earth history.