Saldanha Bay,South Africa: recovery of Gracilaria verrucosa (Gracilariales,Rhodophyta)

Since World War II the greater Saldanha Bay lagoon system, South Africa, has been an important Gracilaria producer. Two agar factories, built in the 1960's, used Gracilaria from Saldanha Bay as their raw material. In the early 1970's the industry was destroyed as a result of dredging and marine construction operations to establish a harbor in the bay for loading ore. These environmental changes destroyed stocks and prevented the previously significant beachings of the seaweed from occurring. After a few years of no or very low commercial production, the resource slowly started to recover. The size of Gracilaria drifts increased over the following eight years to approximately one-third of the original output. This trend seems to continue. Although the stocks and resultant drifts are unlikely to recover fully to their original quantity, current production is already sufficient to ensure re-establishment of a seaweed industry in Saldanha Bay. This could have considerable socio-economic impact on the area.     

Autism-Misregulated eIF4G Microexons Control Synaptic Translation and Higher Order Cognitive Functions

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The Importance of Amine-degrading Enzymes on the Biogenic Amine Degradation in Fermented Foods: A review

Biogenic amines (BAs) are a class of harmful compounds often be found in high protein foods, especially naturally fermented foods. BAs derive from free amino acid decarboxylation through microbial activities and can cause toxic effects (headache, heart palpitations, vomiting) on humans, depending on individual sensitivity. Indigenous amine-degrading strains or strains producing amine-degrading enzymes (ADEs) have drawn great attention since they play an important role in affecting BA accumulation, and enzymes/genes involved in the biosynthetic mechanisms. They also help maintain the sensory quality of the final products. Besides, due to ADEs’ harmless catalytic products, they can be further utilized in fermented foods and beverages to reduce BAs. This review describes in detail the mechanisms of BAs formation, as well as the diversity of ADEs able to degrade BAs in a model or real food systems. A deeper knowledge of this issue is crucial because ADEs’ activities are often associated with strains rather than species or genera. Moreover, this information can help to improve the selection and characterization of strains for further applications as starters or bioprotective cultures, to obtain high-quality foods with reduced BAs contents.     

Prophylactic and curative effects of Bacopa monniera in gastric ulcer models.

Bacopa monniera Wettst. (BM, syn. Herpestis monniera L; Scrophulariaceae), is an Ayurvedic drug used as a rasayana. Its fresh juice was earlier reported to have significant antiulcerogenic activity. In continuation, methanolic extract of BM (BME) standardized to bacoside-A content (percentage-38.0 ± 0.9), when given in the dose of 10–50 mg/kg, twice daily for 5 days, showed dose-dependent anti-ulcerogenic on various gastric ulcer models induced by ethanol, aspirin, 2 h cold restraint stress and 4 h pylorus ligation. BME in the dose of 20 mg/kg, given for 10 days, twice daily showed healing effects against 50% acetic acid-induced gastric ulcers. Further work was done to investigate the possible mechanisms of its action by studying its effect on various mucosal offensive acid-pepsin secretion and defensive factors like mucin secretion, mucosal cell shedding, cell proliferation and antioxidant activity in rats. BME 20 mg/kg showed no effect on acid-pepsin secretion, increased mucin secretion, while it decreased cell shedding with no effect on cell proliferation. BME showed significant antioxidant effect per se and in stressed animals. Thus, the gastric prophylactic and curative effects of BME may be due to its predominant effect on mucosal defensive factors.     

Effect of Different Carbon and Nitrogen Sources on Clostridium argentinense Toxigenicity in Coculture withPseudomonas mendocina

The effect of different carbon and nitrogen sources on the production of toxin by Clostridium argentinense was examined. The toxin production by C. argentinense in coculture with Pseudomonas mendocina increased in all the cases in relation to that produced by monocultures independent of the nature of the source. Using dextrin as carbon source C. argentinense produced the highest levels of toxin both in monocultures (300 LD₅₀/mL) and in cocultures with P. mendocina (5000 LD₅₀/mL). Experiments run in a microfermenter showed that the slow growth of cocultures associated with the assimilation of dextrin and the pH and Eh profiles favoured the production of toxin. Of the nitrogen sources assayed, corn steep liquor sustained the highest levels of toxin in both monocultures and cocultures with 3 and 2.8 fold increases with respect to that obtained using proteose peptone. The toxin production by C. argentinense cultures and C. argentinense–P. mendocina cocultures was highly dependent on the nature of the carbon and nitrogen sources used in the culture media. Growth of C. argentinense on substrates slowly assimilated stimulated the production of toxin.     

追溯山茱萸科植物的性状进化和生物地理学历史——方法选择的影响?

This study compares results on reconstructing the ancestral state of characters and ancestral areas of distribution in Cornaceae to gain insights into the impact of using different analytical methods. Ancestral character state reconstructions were compared among three methods (parsimony, maximum likelihood, and stochastic character mapping) using MESQUITE and a full Bayesian method in BAYESTRAITS and inferences of ancestral area distribution were compared between the parsimony-based dispersal-vicariance analysis (DIVA) and a newly developed maximum likelihood (ML) method. Results indicated that among the six inflorescence and fruit characters examined, "perfect" binary characters (no homoplasy, no polymorphism within terminals, and no missing data) are little affected by choice of method, while homoplasious characters and missing data are sensitive to methods used. Ancestral areas at deep nodes of the phylogeny are substantially different between DIVA and ML and strikingly different between analyses including and excluding fossils at three deepest nodes. These results, while raising caution in making conclusions on trait evolution and historical biogeography using conventional methods, demonstrate a limitation in our current understanding of character evolution and biogeography. The biogeographic history favored by the ML analyses including fossils suggested the origin and early radiation of Cornus likely occurred in the late Cretaceous and earliest Tertiary in Europe and intercontinental disjunctions in three lineages involved movements across the North Atlantic Land Bridge (BLB) in the early and mid Tertiary. This result is congruent with the role of NALB for post-Eocene migration and in connecting tropical floras in North America and Africa, and in eastern Asia and South America. However, alternative hypotheses with an origin in eastern Asia and early Trans-Beringia migrations of the genus cannot be ruled out.     

Accelerated seedling emergence in interspecific competitive neighbourhoods

Seed dormancy models suggest that evaluation of environmental conditions should influence the decision to germinate and that waiting for more favourable conditions may increase potential fitness. However, because rapid emergence is often positively correlated with performance and survival, an alternative strategy to accelerate the rate of emergence may increase the potential for site pre-emption. This response is more likely to be found in seasonal environments with greater potential for rapid resource depletion in which early emergence may confer a competitive advantage. The experiments reported here found more rapid emergence in a perennial grass species when it was planted in potentially highly competitive interspecific neighbourhoods. This response suggests an inherent ability in seeds of this species to sense and respond to the competitive nature of the immediate neighbourhood.