Effects of salinity,N-nutrition and humidity on photosynthesis and protein metabolism ofChloris gayana Kunth

Summary Under high atmospheric humidity, Rhodes grass plants responded favourably to an increase in nitrate fertilization. Under low atmospheric humidity an optimum point was reached at lower N-treatment.Plants' growth was improved by a salinity treatment of up to 100 mM, at high atmospheric humidity. A higher salt concentration cancelled the favourable effect of added nitrate.The rise in yield which follows salt or nitrate treatments is apparently combined with an increase in activity of the key photosynthetic enzymes, Phosphoenol pyruvate carboxylase and Ribulose biphosphate carboxylase. A similar rise in activity is seen in nitrate reductase, a key enzyme in nitrogen metabolism. Evidently, all three enzymatic systems are not damaged in high salt treatments, and the potential photosynthetic capacity remained practically uneffected in all treatments. As no correlation could be found between transpiration and growth curves, it is assumed that the supply of CO₂ is also unhampered. Thus, the major negative effect of salinity, seems to be on protein synthesis, which eventually leads to disturbed growth.Agricultural Research Organization. The Volcanic Center.     

Ecological studies onTamarix aphylla (L.) Karst

Summary Young saplings ofTamarix aphylla were investigated for their growth intensity under saline irrigation, as well as for the lethal limits of salinity they can tolerate. The saplings were found to be quite sensitive to the addition of NaCl to the irrigation solutions and died when the concentration of the solutions was raised to about 0.7.M NaCl. Growth was depressed even by irrigation with a 0.1M NaCl solution, and no increase in the plant weight was obtained under irrigation with a 0.3M NaCl solution. It, thus, appears thatT. aphylla is not suitable for afforestation of saline habitats.Some aspects of the salt excretion ofT. aphylla were investigated. Sodium and chlorine were found to be excreted most readily and exhibit an optimum type of curve, when the excretion is plotted against the concentration of the irrigation solution. Interrelations between the various ions in the irrigation solutions and the amounts of salts excreted, were found to take place and to parallel the behaviour of these ions in their uptake by the roots. T. aphylla seems to be able to reflect the soil's salinity and the composition of its salts, by the excreted salt crystals.     

Associating quantitative behavioral traits with gene expression in the brain: searching for diamonds in the hay

Gene expression and phenotypic functionality can best be associated when they are measured quantitatively within the same experiment. The analysis of such a complex experiment is presented, searching for associations between measures of exploratory behavior in mice and gene expression in brain regions. The analysis of such experiments raises several methodological problems. First and foremost, the size of the pool of potential discoveries being screened is enormous yet only few biologically relevant findings are expected, making the problem of multiple testing especially severe. We present solutions based on screening by testing related hypotheses, then testing the hypotheses of interest. In one variant the subset is selected directly, in the other one a tree of hypotheses is tested hierarchical; both variants control the False Discovery Rate (FDR). Other problems in such experiments are in the fact that the level of data aggregation may be different for the quantitative traits (one per animal) and gene expression measurements (pooled across animals); in that the association may not be linear; and in the resolution of interest only few replications exist. We offer solutions to these problems as well. The hierarchical FDR testing strategies presented here can serve beyond the structure of our motivating example study to any complex microarray study. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.     

Clustering of raft-associated proteins in the external membrane leaflet modulates internal leaflet H-ras diffusion and signaling

One of the least-explored aspects of cholesterol-enriched domains (rafts) in cells is the coupling between such domains in the external and internal monolayers and its potential to modulate transbilayer signal transduction. Here, we employed fluorescence recovery after photobleaching to study the effects of antibody-mediated patching of influenza hemagglutinin (HA) proteins [raft-resident wild-type HA and glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored HA, or the nonraft mutant HA(2A520)] on the lateral diffusion of internal-leaflet raft and nonraft Ras isoforms (H-Ras and K-Ras, respectively). Our studies demonstrate that the clustering of outer-leaflet or transmembrane raft-associated HA proteins (but not their nonraft mutants) retards the lateral diffusion of H-Ras (but not K-Ras), suggesting stabilized interactions of H-Ras with the clusters of raft-associated HA proteins. These modulations were paralleled by specific effects on the activity of H-Ras but not of the nonraft K-Ras. Thus, clustering raft-associated HA proteins facilitated the early step whereby H-Ras is converted to an activated, GTP-loaded state but inhibited the ensuing step of downstream signaling via the Mek/Erk pathway. We propose a model for the modulation of transbilayer signaling by clustering of raft proteins, where external clustering (antibody or ligand mediated) enhances the association of internal-leaflet proteins with the stabilized clusters, promoting either enhancement or inhibition of signaling.