The relation between growth cessation and frost hardening in Scots pines of different origins

The cessation of shoot elongation, diameter growth and needle elongation were compared with the initiation of frost hardening of the stems and needles in an 8-year-old provenance trial of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) established in central Finland. The saplings were of six different origins ranging from Estonia to northern Finland, forming a latitudinal gradient of ca. 10°N. The frost hardiness of the stems of current-year shoots was assessed by electrical impedance analysis and that of current-year needles by electrolyte leakage and visual scoring of damage. Artificial freezing tests were used in the assessments. The pattern of growth cessation (shoot and needle elongation, diameter growth) tended to follow the latitude of origin, i.e. growth ceased in the northernmost provenance first and in the southernmost one last. Both stems and needles of the northern provenances hardened earlier than the southern ones, but the differences in hardiness disappeared as hardening progressed. Growth cessation and initial hardening to -15°C were clearly correlated at the provenance level, indicating that growth must cease prior to hardening, and that earlier cessation of growth predicts earlier frost hardening of stems and needles. No differences in frost hardiness of stems were found at the provenance level at the end of the growing period in August. At that time, the frost hardiness of needles of the northernmost provenance was higher than that of other origins. Within the provenance, the stems were less hardy than the needles.     

Selective Influences of Precision and Power Grips on Speech Categorization

Recent studies have shown that articulatory gestures are systematically associated with specific manual grip actions. Here we show that executing such actions can influence performance on a speech-categorization task. Participants watched and/or listened to speech stimuli while executing either a power or a precision grip. Grip performance influenced the syllable categorization by increasing the proportion of responses of the syllable congruent with the executed grip (power grip—[ke] and precision grip—[te]). Two follow-up experiments indicated that the effect was based on action-induced bias in selecting the syllable.     

A Novel Fibrosis Index Comprising a Non-Cholesterol Sterol Accurately Predicts HCV-Related Liver Cirrhosis

Diagnosis of liver cirrhosis is essential in the management of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Liver biopsy is invasive and thus entails a risk of complications as well as a potential risk of sampling error. Therefore, non-invasive diagnostic tools are preferential. The aim of the present study was to create a model for accurate prediction of liver cirrhosis based on patient characteristics and biomarkers of liver fibrosis, including a panel of non-cholesterol sterols reflecting cholesterol synthesis and absorption and secretion. We evaluated variables with potential predictive significance for liver fibrosis in 278 patients originally included in a multicenter phase III treatment trial for chronic HCV infection. A stepwise multivariate logistic model selection was performed with liver cirrhosis, defined as Ishak fibrosis stage 5–6, as the outcome variable. A new index, referred to as Nordic Liver Index (NoLI) in the paper, was based on the model: Log-odds (predicting cirrhosis) = −12.17+ (age×0.11) + (BMI (kg/m²)×0.23) + (D₇-lathosterol (μg/100 mg cholesterol)×(−0.013)) + (Platelet count (x10⁹/L)×(−0.018)) + (Prothrombin-INR×3.69). The area under the ROC curve (AUROC) for prediction of cirrhosis was 0.91 (95% CI 0.86–0.96). The index was validated in a separate cohort of 83 patients and the AUROC for this cohort was similar (0.90; 95% CI: 0.82–0.98). In conclusion, the new index may complement other methods in diagnosing cirrhosis in patients with chronic HCV infection.     

Eight bacterial proteins, including UDP-N-acetylglucosamine acyltransferase (LpxA) and three other transferases of Escherichia coli, consist of a six-residue periodicity theme

Only a few prokaryotic or eukaryotic enzymes are known to consist of a tandem-repeat structure. This report describes a common hexapeptide-repeat theme in four Escherichia coli transferases and in four less-characterized bacterial proteins. The proteins are the Ssc protein of Salmonella typhimurium (25), UDP-N-acetylglucosamine acyltransferase of E. coli (24), the hypothetical proteins Tms of Bacillus subtilis (23) and Yglm of E. coli (22), succinyldiaminopimelate aminotransferase of E. coli (14), serine acetyltransferase of E. coli (13), NodL of Rhizobium leguminasorum (13), and thiogalactoside acetyltransferase of E. coli (8) (number of repeats indicated in parentheses). In UDP-N-acetylglucosamine acyltransferase, the repeats constitute 55% of the total protein. Each hexapeptide repeat of the eight proteins starts with Ile, Leu, or Val. Position b is occupied by Gly, position d by Gly, Asn, or Asp, and position e by Val or Ala in 52%, 54%, and 56% of the hexapeptide repeats, respectively.     

Decreased sensitivity of cholecystokinin receptors in the brain as affected by the prolonged administration of haloperidol

The authors have used behavioural and radioreceptor methods of investigation, that helped to find correlates of the behavioural phenomena on the receptor level.     

Identification of alpha-1 acid glycoprotein as a lysophospholipid binding protein: a complementary role to albumin in the scavenging of lysophosphatidylcholine

Alpha-1 acid glycoprotein (AGP, orosomucoid), a major acute phase protein in plasma, displays potent cytoprotective and anti-inflammatory activities whose molecular mechanisms are largely unknown. Because AGP binds various exogenous drugs, we have searched for endogenous ligands for AGP. We found that AGP binds lysophospholipids in a manner discernible from albumin in several ways. First, mass spectrometric analyses showed that AGP isolated from plasma and serum contained lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) enriched in mono and polysaturated acyl chains, whereas albumin contained mostly saturated LPC. Second, AGP bound LPC in a 1:1 molar ratio and with a higher affinity than free fatty acids, whereas albumin bound LPC in a 3:1 ratio but with a lower affinity than that of free fatty acids. Consequently, free fatty acids displaced LPC more avidly from albumin than from AGP. Competitive ligand displacement indicated the highest affinity for AGP to LPC20:4, 18:3, 18:1, and 16:0 (150-180 nM), lysophosphatidylserine (Kd 190 nM), and platelet activating factor (PAF) (Kd 235 nM). The high affinity of AGP to LPC in equilibrium was verified by stopped-flow kinetics, which implicated slow dissociation after fast initial binding, being consistent with an induced-fit mechanism. AGP also bound pyrene-labeled phospholipids directly from vesicles and more efficiently than albumin. AGP prevented LPC-induced priming and PAF-induced activation of human granulocytes, thus indicating scavenging of the cellular effects of the lipid ligands. The results suggest that AGP complements albumin as a lysophospholipid scavenging protein, particularly in inflammatory conditions when the capacity of albumin to sequester LPC becomes impaired.     

A neural network model for the simulation of word production errors of Finnish nouns

We constructed a connectionist model with multilayer perceptron networks for the simulation of word production errors in the Finnish language. Such errors occur as slips of the tongue in healthy subjects and even more often in aphasic patients suffering from brain damage. Word production errors are of theoretical interest as they open an avenue to inner workings of the language production system. Here we present our coding schemes for semantic and phoneme information of words, investigate the general properties of the model, and compare the results of the model against empirical naming error data from ten aphasic patients. The model was reasonable in simulating word production errors in this heterogeneous group of aphasic patients.     

Two Improved Methods for Obtaining Axenic Cultures of Cyanobacteria

Scoring the agar plate before incubation under unidirectional light led to a rapid separation of gliding filamentous cyanobacteria from their contaminating bacteria. Twenty strains were purified by the method. Additionally, 13 axenic cyanobacterial strains were isolated from pour plates made after treatment of cyanobacterial cultures in tryptone-yeast extract-glucose broth with cycloserine in darkness to select for obligate photoautotrophs.