THE EVALUATION OF SYSTEMIC FUNGICIDES BY MEANS OF ALTERNARIA SOLANI ON TOMATO

I wish to deal briefly with the method we use at the Hawthorndale Laboratories for investigating the systemic fungicidal activity of griseofulvin and other materials. Our work on systemic fungicides has necessarily depended on our working out a suitable and reliable technique.     

The mosasaur fossil record through the lens of fossil completeness

The quality of the fossil record affects our understanding of macroevolutionary patterns. Palaeodiversity is filtered through geological and human processes; efforts to correct for these biases are part of a debate concerning the role of sampling proxies and standardization in biodiversity models. We analyse the fossil record of mosasaurs in terms of fossil completeness as a measure of fossil quality, using three novel, correlating metrics of fossil completeness and 4083 specimens. A new qualitative measure of character completeness (QCM) correlates with the phylogenetic character completeness metric. Mean completeness by species decreases with specimen count; average completeness by substage varies significantly. Mean specimen completeness is higher for species‐named fossils than those identified to genus and family. We consider the effect of tooth‐only specimens. Importantly, we find that completeness of species does not correlate with completeness of specimens. Completeness varies by palaeogeography: North American specimens show higher completeness than those from Eurasia and Gondwana. These metrics can be used to identify exceptional preservation; specimen completeness varies significantly by both formation and lithology. The Belgian Ciply Formation displays the highest completeness; clay lithologies show higher completeness values. Neither species diversity nor sea level correlates significantly with fossil completeness. A generalized least squares (GLS) analysis using multiple variables agrees with this result, but reveals two variables with significant predictive value for modelling averaged diversity: sea level, and mosasaur and plesiosaur‐bearing formations (the latter is redundant with diversity). Mosasaur completeness is not driven by sea level, nor does completeness limit the mosasaur diversity signal.     

DNA synthesis at selective sites during pachytene in mouse spermatocytes

DNA repair replication has been previously demonstrated to occur in mouse spermatocytes during the pachytene stage. The results reported in this study provide a more detailed characterization of pachytene repair by focusing upon specific properties of the sites of replication. Our data demonstrate that single-strand breaks persist within replicated sequences throughout a period which corresponds to a defined interval of the pachytene stage. A large fraction of the sites may be nicked more than once within the same DNA strand, allowing the selective release of replicated DNA sequences from gently denatured spermatocyte DNA. DNA fragments thus prepared from pachytene spermatocytes are not of random sequence composition, but are derived from a specific subset of the mouse genome. Sites of replication are also associated with chromatin of distinctive structure in pachytene spermatocytes, as evidenced by the sensitivity of replicated chromatin to DNase II, and its solubility in the presence of Mg²⁺. In each of these respects, sequences replicated in pachytene spermatocytes closely resemble their counterparts in the LiHum genome.     

Recent colonization and expansion through the Lesser Sundas by seven amphibian and reptile species

The Lesser Sundas Archipelago is comprised of two parallel chains of islands that extend between the Asian continental shelf (Sundaland) and Australo‐Papuan continental shelf (Sahul). These islands have served as stepping stones for taxa dispersing between the Asian and Australo‐Papuan biogeographical realms. While the oceanic barriers have prevented many species from colonizing the archipelago, a number of terrestrial vertebrate species have colonized the islands either by rafting/swimming or by human introduction. Here, we examine phylogeographic structure within the Lesser Sundas for three snake, two lizard and two frog species that each has a Sunda Shelf origin. These species are suspected to have recently colonized the archipelago, though all have inhabited the Lesser Sundas for over 100 years. We sequenced mtDNA from 231 samples to test whether there is sufficiently deep genetic structure within any of these taxa to reject human‐mediated introduction. Additionally, we tested for genetic signatures of population expansion consistent with recent introduction and estimated the ages of Lesser Sundas clades, if any exist. Our results show little to no genetic structure between populations on different islands in five species and moderate structure in two species. Nucleotide diversity is low for all species, and the ages of the most recent common ancestor for species with monophyletic Lesser Sundas lineages date to the Holocene or late Pleistocene. These results support the hypothesis that these species entered the archipelago relatively recently and either naturally colonized or were introduced by humans to most of the larger islands in the archipelago within a short time span.     

Differetiation of the spoilage yeast Zygosaccharomyces bailii from other Zygosaccharomyces species using 18S rDNA as target for a non-radioactive ligase detection reaction

A non-radioactive PCR coupled ligase detection reaction was developed to discriminate the food spoilage yeasts Zygosaccharomyces bailii and Z. bisporus from each other and from other members of the genus. A short region of the 18S rRNA gene was amplified from boiled cell lysates and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products used as target in the template directed ligation of two adjacent oligonucleotides. Ligated products were captured using biotin-streptavidin chemistry and detected using digoxigenin
immuno-chemiluminescence. The ligase detection reaction was able to discriminate to the species level, targeting a single base deletion. The specificity of the reaction was assessed using seven species of the genus Zygosaccharomyces . Only strains of Z. bailii and Z. bisporus gave positive results with their respective primer sets. The lower detection limit of the strategy was 10pg (3 times 10⁷ targets) of amplified product.     

Deadenylation—a piece of PANcake

Pan is a poly(A)‐specific 3′ exoribonuclease that, together with the CCR4‐NOT complex, is responsible for initiating and controlling mRNA decay by degradation of the poly(A) tail. Now, more than twenty years after the enzyme's discovery, a surge of recent papers, including one in this issue of The EMBO Journal (Wolf et al, 2014 ) has revealed details of its unusual asymmetric structure and aspects of its mode of substrate binding.