《名古屋议定书》生效后的谈判焦点与对策

2014年10月12日, 《获取遗传资源和公正公平分享其利用所产生惠益的名古屋议定书》(以下简称议定书)正式生效, 10月13日在韩国平昌召开议定书缔约方大会第一次会议。这次会议重点审议了遵约机制、获取与惠益分享信息交换所、资金和财务机制、能力建设与意识提升、全球多边惠益分享机制的必要性等议题。最终各方在下列几个方面达成了一致: 建立议定书遵约机制, 通过获取与惠益分享信息交换所运作模式, 达成一揽子有关资金和财务安排的决议, 通过《支持有效执行议定书的能力建设和发展战略框架》和《议定书意识提升战略》, 启动建立全球多边惠益分享机制的进程。议定书的生效对我国遗传资源及相关传统知识的保护、利用和惠益分享可能带来多方面的影响。我国需要积极推动完善国内遗传资源相关法律法规, 积极推动加入议定书, 适时制定遗传资源获取与惠益分享行动计划, 研究建立获取与惠益分享基金, 以及积极开展议定书后续谈判研究。     

中药抑菌机制的研究方法

由于抗生素的滥用,使得细菌耐药性和食品中药物残留的问题日益严重,迫切需要寻找新的抗菌药物来应对上述问题。新抗生素开发周期长、费用高,并且易产生耐药性和药物残留等,而中药在我国已经有几千年的应用历史,多种中药具有的抗菌消炎作用也已被现代科学研究所证明。中药还具有低价、无毒、无残留和不易产生耐药性等优点。从细胞壁和细胞膜、蛋白质和遗传物质及呼吸代谢三个方面总结了中药抑菌机制的作用原理、研究方法和已取得的成果,以期为开展此类研究提供参考。     

Ethnobotanical Survey on Traditional Knowledge of Hodgsonia macrocarpa,Xishuangbanna, SW China

Hodgsonia macrocarpa, commonly known as lardfruit, is a perennial woody vine belongs to family Cucurbitaceae. Since the food value of its kernel was reported in the early 20th century, increasing studies have been focused on the introduction and cultivation of the wild populations and chemical analysis of the edible kernel oils. While its ethnobotanical details about local nomenclaetures, gathering techniques, form of consumption and folk resouce management are left unclear. In this study we collected these ethnobotanical data from 8 ethnic groups by conducting field survey in 23 ethnic villages in Xishuangbana. Methods including key informants interview and group discussion were used for recording the traditional medicinal and culinary knowledge of lardfruit. The results show an unexpected diversity of their folk names, which indicate the long history of folk uses. The baked edible kernel is favored by all the 8 ethnic groups. The root, stem, leaf, fruit and seed are widely used as herbal medicine for the treatment of intestinal diseases and skin ailments. The diverse folk names and multiple medicinal uses practice among different ethnic groups indicate that they exploited this plant resource in various perspectives for culture, economic and social reasons.     

基诺族传统文化中的生物多样性管理与利用

通过研究基诺族刀耕火种农耕文化,发现在传统土地分类、农事历、轮歇栽培、宗教信仰、采集和狩猎等方面,都包含着对生物多样性的管理和利用的许多内容,其中不少值得借鉴、研究和利用,阐述了古朴的民族传统文化中孕育着生物多样性管理的论点。首次报道了基诺族采集食用的无脊椎动物和传统使用的部分药用植物。     

Use of indigenous knowledge for rapidly assessing trends in biodiversity: a case study from Chiapas, Mexico

In order to evaluate the usefulness of rapid surveys of indigenous knowledge for assessing trends in biodiversity, a case study was undertaken in two rural communities, Juznajab and Muquenal, in Chiapas, Mexico. This involved the use of a variety of rapid rural appraisal (RRA) and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques, including semi-structured interviews, transect walks and participatory mapping. These approaches were used in conjunction with analysis of land use maps and aerial photographs to evaluate recent changes in vegetation cover and abundance of utilised species. In both communities, the extent of forest cover was considered by local people to have declined substantially in recent decades, with an annual decline in forest cover of 0.3% and 0.6% estimated by local people in Juznajab and Muquenal, respectively. Results from RRA indicated that this has been accompanied by significant declines in the abundance of useful species. In Juznajab 60% and 79%, and in Muquenal 96% and 85% of plants and animal species, respectively, were considered to have declined within living memory. These declines appear to result from over-utilization as well as habitat changes. For example, most of the tree species used for timber and the animal species used for meat were considered to have declined substantially in both communities. These results indicate that indigenous knowledge is potentially a valuable source of information about biodiversity trends, which could be assessed during Rapid Biodiversity Assessments and incorporated into the process of resource management by local communities. However, the contradictions recorded between assessments of vegetation change by local people and data obtained from other sources indicates the need for caution in the use of indigenous knowledge for this purpose.     

American acupuncture and efficacy: meanings and their points of insertion

By its very definition, efficacy's meanings remain fluid, their particularities contingent on context. The change seen as significant may occur on a symbolic level or through the removal of physical symptoms. It may address conditions of a social body. Some discussions differentiate between "healing" and "curing." Many of these meanings surface when examining what efficacy means in the practice of acupuncture in the United States. This complex phenomenon is possible largely because acupuncture draws on the qi paradigm on the one hand, allowing for the most ephemeral dimensions of experience to be included in considerations of efficacy. On the other hand, in the most material sense, acupuncture is also susceptible to being conceptualized as a device, independent of that same paradigm, allowing for the insertion of biomedical models and criteria. Pluralism within acupuncture itself intersects with, and even embodies, the medical pluralism of U.S. culture.     

A consistent set of statistical potentials for quantifying local side-chain and backbone interactions

The frequencies of occurrence of atom arrangements in high-resolution protein structures provide some of the most accurate quantitative measures of interaction energies in proteins. In this report we extend our development of a consistent set of statistical potentials for quantifying local interactions between side-chains and the polypeptide backbone, as well as nearby side-chains. Starting with phi/psi/chi1 propensities that select for optimal interactions of the 20 amino acid side-chains with the 2 flanking peptide bonds, the following 3 new terms are added: (1) a distance-dependent interaction between the side-chain at i and the carbonyl oxygens and amide protons of the peptide units at i +/- 2, i +/- 3, and i +/- 4; (2) a distance-dependent interaction between the side-chain at position i and side-chains at positions i + 1 through i + 4; and (3) an orientation-dependent interaction between the side-chain at position i and side-chains at i + 1 through i + 4. The relative strengths of these 4 pseudo free energy terms are estimated by the average information content of each scoring matrix and by assessing their performance in a simple fragment threading test. They vary from -0.4 - -0.5 kcal/mole per residue for phi/psi/chi1 propensities to a range of -0.15 - -0.6 kcal/mole per residue for each of the other 3 terms. The combined energy function, containing no interactions between atoms more than 4 residues apart, identifies the correct structural fragment for randomly selected 15 mers over 40% of the time, after searching through 232,000 alternative conformations. For 14 out of 20 sets of all-atom Rosetta decoys analyzed, the native structure has a combined score lower than any of the 1700-1900 decoy conformations. The ability of this energy function to detect energetically important details of local structure is demonstrated by its power to distinguish high-resolution crystal structures from NMR solution structures.     

What Limits the Number of Tītī (Puffinus griseus) Harvested by Rakiura Māori?

Mori continue a centuries old harvest of tt chicks (sooty shearwater, Puffinus griseus) on islands adjacent to Rakiura (Stewart Island). This study measured time limits on the number of Tttaken each day from Putauhinu Island. In the first period of the harvest (nanao) the chicks are extracted from the breeding burrows during daytime. In the second period of harvest (rama) the chicks are caught at night after they have emerged from their nesting burrows. Capture rate is much higher during the rama than the nanao. More time is spent processing (plucking, cutting-up, gutting, and packing) chicks during rama than the nanao because of a 1.3–1.7 increase in the number of chicks caught. Recently introduced motorized plucking machines decrease the time required to pluck each chick and make plucking less physically demanding and less painful. However, motorized pluckers did not increase the number of chicks harvested on Putauhinu. Other social limits may control harvest intensity and influence sustainability of muttonbirding.     

Folding in lipid membranes (FILM): a novel method for the prediction of small membrane protein 3D structures

We present the results of applying a novel knowledge-based method (FILM) to the prediction of small membrane protein structures. The basis of the method is the addition of a membrane potential to the energy terms (pairwise, solvation, steric, and hydrogen bonding) of a previously developed ab initio technique for the prediction of tertiary structure of globular proteins (FRAGFOLD). The method is based on the assembly of supersecondary structural fragments taken from a library of highly resolved protein structures using a standard simulated annealing algorithm. The membrane potential has been derived by the statistical analysis of a data set made of 640 transmembrane helices with experimentally defined topology and belonging to 133 proteins extracted from the SWISS-PROT database. Results obtained by applying the method to small membrane proteins of known 3D structure show that the method is able to predict, at a reasonable accuracy level, both the helix topology and the conformations of these proteins.