Isolation and characterization of eight compound microsatellite markers in a mangrove tree Kandelia candel (L.) Druce

Kandelia candel is an important mangrove tree species of family Rhizophoraceae. Here we isolated eight codominant compound microsatellite simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci from K. candel. Our isolated loci provided compound SSR markers with polymorphism of three to 11 alleles per locus. The expected and observed heterozygosities ranged from 0.230 to 0.887 and from 0.083 to 1.00, respectively. These markers would be the useful tools for analysing questions concerning population genetic structure and mating system of K. candel.     

Significance of mirex-caused hypoglycemia and hyperlipidemia in rats

Treatment of rats with mirex (40 ppm in diet) caused hypoglycemia, liver enlargement, and inhibition of adrenal corticosteroid-synthesizing enzyme activity. At toxic dosages (20,000 ppm mirex in diet, which has a lethal toxicity-50 [LT-50] of ten days) poisoned female rats showed severe hypoglycemia, fatty liver, adrenal hyperplasia, hypophagia, lipid mobilization, and body weight (bw) loss. A 50 μg/kg intraperitoneal (IP) dose of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) in male rats caused similar effects two days posttreatment. Hypoglycemia could be overcome by prednisone (which also inhibited adrenocorticoid-synthesizing enzyme activities) but not by streptozotocin treatment, indicating that hypoglycemia may be related to glucocorticoid deficiency resulting from inhibition of their synthesis and not by direct effects on pancreatic β-cells. Glucocorticoid deficiency could also cause increased release of adrenocorticoid hormone (ACTH), which may enhance fat mobilization caused by hypophagia.     

Bayesian Quantile Regression for Longitudinal Studies with Nonignorable Missing Data

Summary .  We study quantile regression (QR) for longitudinal measurements with nonignorable intermittent missing data and dropout. Compared to conventional mean regression, quantile regression can characterize the entire conditional distribution of the outcome variable, and is more robust to outliers and misspecification of the error distribution. We account for the within-subject correlation by introducing a   ℓ₂   penalty in the usual QR check function to shrink the subject-specific intercepts and slopes toward the common population values. The informative missing data are assumed to be related to the longitudinal outcome process through the shared latent random effects. We assess the performance of the proposed method using simulation studies, and illustrate it with data from a pediatric AIDS clinical trial.     

Identity between the novel integrin beta 7 subunit and an antigen found highly expressed on intraepithelial lymphocytes in the small intestine.

A cDNA clone encoding the N-terminal sequence of the murine integrin beta 7 subunit, a novel member of the leukocyte cell adhesion molecule subset (Leu-CAM), has been isolated. An N-terminal region of 13 contiguous amino acids deduced from the cDNA shows complete identity with the N-terminus of the 120 kDa subunit of the M290 antigen, a surface molecule found highly expressed on mouse intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL). This unexpected result focuses two previously unconnected areas of research and suggests that integrins may have a special role to play in the defence of the gut mucosa.     

Auditory segregation of competing voices: absence of effects of FM or AM coherence.

Four experiments sought evidence that listeners can use coherent changes in the frequency or amplitude of harmonics to segregate concurrent vowels. Segregation was not helped by giving the harmonics of competing vowels different patterns of frequency or amplitude modulation. However, modulating the frequencies of the components of one vowel was beneficial when the other vowel was not modulated, provided that both vowels were composed of components placed randomly in frequency. In addition, staggering the onsets of the two vowels, so that the amplitude of one vowel increased abruptly while the amplitude of the other was stationary, was also beneficial. Thus, the results demonstrate that listeners can group changing harmonics and can segregate them from stationary harmonics, but cannot use coherence of change to separate two sets of changing harmonics.     

Effect of a Low-Protein Diet Supplemented with Ketoacids on Skeletal Muscle Atrophy and Autophagy in Rats with Type 2 Diabetic Nephropathy

A low-protein diet supplemented with ketoacids maintains nutritional status in patients with diabetic nephropathy. The activation of autophagy has been shown in the skeletal muscle of diabetic and uremic rats. This study aimed to determine whether a low-protein diet supplemented with ketoacids improves muscle atrophy and decreases the increased autophagy observed in rats with type 2 diabetic nephropathy. In this study, 24-week-old Goto-Kakizaki male rats were randomly divided into groups that received either a normal protein diet (NPD group), a low-protein diet (LPD group) or a low-protein diet supplemented with ketoacids (LPD+KA group) for 24 weeks. Age- and weight-matched Wistar rats served as control animals and received a normal protein diet (control group). We found that protein restriction attenuated proteinuria and decreased blood urea nitrogen and serum creatinine levels. Compared with the NPD and LPD groups, the LPD+KA group showed a delay in body weight loss, an attenuation in soleus muscle mass loss and a decrease of the mean cross-sectional area of soleus muscle fibers. The mRNA and protein expression of autophagy-related genes, such as Beclin-1, LC3B, Bnip3, p62 and Cathepsin L, were increased in the soleus muscle of GK rats fed with NPD compared to Wistar rats. Importantly, LPD resulted in a slight reduction in the expression of autophagy-related genes; however, these differences were not statistically significant. In addition, LPD+KA abolished the upregulation of autophagy-related gene expression. Furthermore, the activation of autophagy in the NPD and LPD groups was confirmed by the appearance of autophagosomes or autolysosomes using electron microscopy, when compared with the Control and LPD+KA groups. Our results showed that LPD+KA abolished the activation of autophagy in skeletal muscle and decreased muscle loss in rats with type 2 diabetic nephropathy.     

Involvement of Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases BcPtpA and BcPtpB in Regulation of Vegetative Development,Virulence and Multi-Stress Tolerance in Botrytis cinerea

Tyrosine phosphorylation and dephosphorylation have emerged as fundamentally important mechanisms of signal transduction and regulation in eukaryotic cells, governing many processes, but little has been known about their functions in filamentous fungi. In this study, we deleted two putative protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTP) genes (BcPTPA and BcPTPB) in Botrytis cinerea, encoding the orthologs of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Ptp2 and Ptp3, respectively. Although BcPtpA and BcPtpB have opposite functions in conidiation, they are essential for sclerotial formation in B. cinerea. BcPTPA and BcPTPB deletion mutants ΔBcPtpA-10 and ΔBcPtpB-4 showed significantly increased sensitivity to osmotic and oxidative stresses, and to cell wall damaging agents. Inoculation tests showed that both mutants exhibited dramatically decreased virulence on tomato leaves, apples and grapes. In S. cerevisiae, it has been shown that Ptp2 and Ptp3 negatively regulate the high-osmolarity glycerol (HOG) pathway and the cell wall integrity (CWI) pathway. Although both BcPtpA and BcPtpB were able to inactive Hog1 and Mpk1 in S. cerevisiae, in contrast to S. cerevisiae, they positively regulate phosphorylation of BcSak1 (the homologue of Hog1) and BcBmp3 (the homologue of Mpk1) in B. cinerea under stress conditions. These results demonstrated that functions of PTPs in B. cinerea are different from those in S. cerevisiae, and BcPtpA and BcPtpB play important roles in regulation of vegetative development, virulence and in adaptation to oxidative, osmotic and cell-wall damage stresses in B. cinerea.