Modelling various sculptures in the Cretaceous bivalve Inoceramus hobetsensis

The geometry of the external shell sculpture in the Late Cretaceous inoceramid bivalve Inoceramus hobetsensis Nagao & Matsumoto, 1939 was studied both empirically and theoretically. A large sample, collected from the Upper Cretaceous of Hokkaido, Japan, shows remarkably high intraspecific variation in the shell sculptural pattern. Quasi-commarginal ribs, slightly oblique to the external growth increments, occur in some specimens. These sculptures are commonly irregular in strength and spacing, and their features are successfully modelled by computer simulations when the commarginal ribs are superposed with nearly concentric divaricate rib. Computer models indicate that the divergent sculpture element, often found in other inoceramids, was present throughout the evolution of I. hobetsensis and was developing in the evolutionary lineage from I. hobetsensis nonsulcatus to I. hobetsensis hobetsensis, although it was only weakly expressed. The results also suggest that some apparently distinct sculptural patterns of I. hobetsensis are the result of minor changes in the morphogenetic program.     

The influence of stomach distention on feeding in the nudibranch mollusk Melibe leonina

Although research on satiation has revealed much about the effect of sensory inputs on motivational state, we have yet to fully understand exactly how satiating signals influence the neural circuits underlying specific behaviors. One organism that is well suited for addressing this question is the nudibranch Melibe leonina, because its feeding activity is easily quantified, it has translucent skin that makes the stomach easy to observe, and it has large, identifiable neurons that are very suitable for subsequent analysis of the neural correlates of satiation. In this study our goal was to document the time course of satiation in Melibe, and determine if stomach distention contributes to satiation. When exposed to brine shrimp (Artemia), Melibe immediately commenced stereotypic oral hood movements to capture prey, and continued to do so for approximately five hours. Individuals eventually stopped, despite the continued presence of food, and the slowing and eventual termination of oral hood closures was correlated with distension of the stomach caused by the ingested Artemia. We obtained further evidence that stomach distension is one of the underlying causes of satiation by injecting artificial non-nutritive food into the stomach, and by cutting open part of the stomach wall to prevent it from filling and distending. The first treatment caused satiation to occur more rapidly, while the second treatment delayed satiation. Both results demonstrate that in Melibe stomach distention has a major impact on the motivation to feed. These findings provide the framework for subsequent studies designed to determine precisely how stomach distention influences feeding circuits.     

Solution structures of purine base analogues 9-deazaguanine and 9-deazahypoxanthine

Deaza analogues of nucleobases are potential drugs against infectious diseases caused by parasites. A caveat is that apart from binding their target parasite enzymes, they also bind and inhibit enzymes of the host. In order to design derivatives of deaza analogues which specifically bind target enzymes, knowledge of their molecular structure, protonation state, and predominant tautomers at physiological conditions is essential. We have employed resonance Raman spectroscopy at an excitation wavelength of 260 nm, to decipher solution structure of 9-deazaguanine (9DAG) and 9-deazahypoxanthine (9DAH). These are analogues of guanine and hypoxanthine, respectively, and have been exploited to study static complexes of nucleobase binding enzymes. Such enzymes are known to perturb pK_a of their ligands, and thus, we also determined solution structures of these analogues at two, acidic and alkaline, pH. Structure of each possible protonation state and tautomer was computed using density functional theoretical calculations. Species at various pHs were identified based on isotopic shifts in experimental wavenumbers and by comparing these shifts with corresponding computed isotopic shifts. Our results show that at physiological pH, N1 of pyrimidine ring in 9DAG and 9DAH bears a proton. At lower pH, N3 is place of protonation, and at higher pH, deprotonation occurs at N1 position. The proton at N7 of purine ring remains intact even at pH 12.5. We have further compared these results with naturally occurring nucleotides. Our results identify key vibrational modes which can report on hydrogen bonding interactions, protonation and deprotonation in purine rings upon binding to the active site of enzymes.     

Physiological model using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for nonmelanoma skin cancer diagnosis

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) is a noninvasive, fast, and low‐cost technology with potential to assist cancer diagnosis. The goal of this study was to test the capability of our physiological model, a computational Monte Carlo lookup table inverse model, for nonmelanoma skin cancer diagnosis. We applied this model on a clinical DRS dataset to extract scattering parameters, blood volume fraction, oxygen saturation and vessel radius. We found that the model was able to capture physiological information relevant to skin cancer. We used the extracted parameters to classify (basal cell carcinoma [BCC], squamous cell carcinoma [SCC]) vs actinic keratosis (AK) and (BCC, SCC, AK) vs normal. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve achieved by the classifiers trained on the parameters extracted using the physiological model is comparable to that of classifiers trained on features extracted via Principal Component Analysis. Our findings suggest that DRS can reveal physiologic characteristics of skin and this physiologic model offers greater flexibility for diagnosing skin cancer than a pure statistical analysis. Physiological parameters extracted from diffuse reflectance spectra data for nonmelanoma skin cancer diagnosis.     

Background selection and FST: Consequences for detecting local adaptation

Background selection is a process whereby recurrent deleterious mutations cause a decrease in the effective population size and genetic diversity at linked loci. Several authors have suggested that variation in the intensity of background selection could cause variation in F_ST across the genome, which could confound signals of local adaptation in genome scans. We performed realistic simulations of DNA sequences, using recombination maps from humans and sticklebacks, to investigate how variation in the intensity of background selection affects F_ST and other statistics of population differentiation in sexual, outcrossing species. We show that, in populations connected by gene flow, Weir and Cockerham's (1984; Evolution, 38 , 1358) estimator of F_ST is largely insensitive to locus‐to‐locus variation in the intensity of background selection. Unlike F_ST, however, d_XY is negatively correlated with background selection. Moreover, background selection does not greatly affect the false‐positive rate in F_ST outlier studies in populations connected by gene flow. Overall, our study indicates that background selection will not greatly interfere with finding the variants responsible for local adaptation.     

Physiological dynamics,reproduction‐maintenance allocations,and life history evolution

Allocation of resources to competing processes of growth, maintenance, or reproduction is arguably a key process driving the physiology of life history trade‐offs and has been shown to affect immune defenses, the evolution of aging, and the evolutionary ecology of offspring quality. Here, we develop a framework to investigate the evolutionary consequences of physiological dynamics by developing theory linking reproductive cell dynamics and components of fitness associated with costly resource allocation decisions to broader life history consequences. We scale these reproductive cell allocation decisions to population‐level survival and fecundity using a life history approach and explore the effects of investment in reproduction or tissue‐specific repair (somatic or reproductive) on the force of selection, reproductive effort, and resource allocation decisions. At the cellular level, we show that investment in protecting reproductive cells increases fitness when reproductive cell maturation rate is high or reproductive cell death is high. At the population level, life history fitness measures show that cellular protection increases reproductive value by differential investment in somatic or reproductive cells and the optimal allocation of resources to reproduction is moulded by this level of investment. Our model provides a framework to understand the evolutionary consequences of physiological processes underlying trade‐offs and highlights the insights to be gained from considering fitness at multiple levels, from cell dynamics through to population growth.     

慢性乙型肝炎舌红苔黄和舌淡苔白不同舌象的尿代谢组研究

目的：探索慢性乙型肝炎舌红苔黄和舌淡苔白不同舌象者的尿代谢差异指标,为中医舌象生物学物质基础微观辨证提供证据。方法：采用气相色谱／质谱联用（GC／MS ）技术方法获取慢性乙型肝炎舌红苔黄和舌淡苔白不同舌象者的尿液样本代谢指纹谱,用无监督的学习模式进行多变量统计分析,观察不同组别的人群之间是否存在“自然”的分类结构。利用有监督的学习模式进行数据分类模型的建立和检验,寻找造成样本聚集和离散的主要差异变量。利用商业化的代谢物谱库以及标准品数据库,进行物质鉴定。结果：慢性乙型肝炎舌红苔黄和舌淡苔白者在有监督的学习模式下具有良好的分开趋势,慢乙肝不同舌象者较健康者的差异代谢物谱主要与能量代谢、氨基酸代谢、核苷酸代谢以及肠道菌群代谢相关。结论：舌象是机体变化的重要窗口,不同舌象的外在表观潜在体内的代谢差异。     

13种栎属植物叶片的气孔特征及其相关性分析和分类学意义

以13种栎属(Quercus Linn.)植物〔包括产自辽宁省的槲栎组(Sect. Quercus)8种和麻栎组(Sect. Aegilops)2种以及引自北美洲的沼生栎组(Sect. Erythobalanus)2种和引自波兰的白栎组(Sect. Lepidabalanus)1种〕为试材,观察了这些种类叶片的气孔形态,并分析了气孔器和气孔的形态参数,还对各形态参数间的相关性进行了分析;在此基础上,对13种栎属植物进行了聚类分析。结果表明：栎属植物叶片的气孔仅分布于下表皮;气孔器排列属无规则型;气孔保卫细胞呈肾形,内壁加厚;气孔下陷,呈椭圆形或狭长椭圆形。供试种类的气孔和气孔器的形态参数差异明显,变异系数差异较大;气孔器的长轴长度、短轴长度和面积分别为18.24~27.46μm、14.63~23.18μm和221.56~501.70μm2,变异系数分别为7.73%~15.90%、7.10%~17.44%和14.13%~32.73%,气孔器指数为0.73~0.85;气孔的长轴长度、短轴长度、面积和密度分别为8.69~15.41μm、1.94~8.49μm、15.15~104.93μm2和462.32~984.44 mm-2,变异系数分别为12.03%~22.17%、13.65%~34.10%、27.95%~54.13%和8.10%~16.99%,气孔指数为0.22~0.57;总体上,按照多数气孔器和气孔参数从大至小的变化趋势依次排序为沼生栎组、白栎组、麻栎组、槲栎组。相关性分析结果表明：供试种类的气孔密度与气孔器和气孔的长轴及短轴长度均呈极显著(P<0.01)负相关;气孔器面积与气孔器指数和气孔指数分别呈极显著和显著(P<0.05)正相关;气孔面积与气孔器和气孔的长轴和短轴长度、气孔器指数和气孔指数呈极显著正相关,但与气孔密度呈显著负相关。聚类分析结果表明：在欧氏距离10处可将13种栎属植物分为3类,第Ⅰ类包含槲栎组的8种,第Ⅱ类包含麻栎组和白栎组的3种,第Ⅲ类包含沼生栎组的2种。研究结果显示：栎属植物叶片的气孔特征具有一定的稳定性,可作为栎属植物组间分类及亲缘关系分析的依据之一。     

Early detection surveillance for an emerging plant pathogen: a rule of thumb to predict prevalence at first discovery

Emerging plant pathogens are a significant problem for conservation and food security. Surveillance is often instigated in an attempt to detect an invading epidemic before it gets out of control. Yet in practice many epidemics are not discovered until already at a high prevalence, partly due to a lack of quantitative understanding of how surveillance effort and the dynamics of an invading epidemic relate. We test a simple rule of thumb to determine, for a surveillance programme taking a fixed number of samples at regular intervals, the distribution of the prevalence an epidemic will have reached on first discovery (discovery-prevalence) and its expectation E(q*). We show that E(q*) = r/(N/Δ), i.e. simply the rate of epidemic growth divided by the rate of sampling; where r is the epidemic growth rate, N is the sample size and Δ is the time between sampling rounds. We demonstrate the robustness of this rule of thumb using spatio-temporal epidemic models as well as data from real epidemics. Our work supports the view that, for the purposes of early detection surveillance, simple models can provide useful insights in apparently complex systems. The insight can inform decisions on surveillance resource allocation in plant health and has potential applicability to invasive species generally.