Apical Chlorosis Disease of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) Caused by Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus in Brazil

A severe new disease was observed in field-grown chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) plants in Brasilia-DF, central Brazil. Symptoms were mainly general chlorosis accompanied by necrosis of the new growth and plant stunting, but pods were symptomless. Host range studies, serology, particle morphology, and cytopathology showed that tomato-spotted wilt tospovirus (TSWV) was the cause of the disease. This is apparently the first report of a chickpea disease caused by natural infection of a tospovirus.     

In vivo bromodeoxyuridine incorporation in human gastric cancer: A study on formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded sections

Summary Bromodeoxyuridine (BUDR) is a non-radioactive thymidine analogue which is incorporated into the DNA of proliferating cells. This allows evaluation of the size of the S-phase as the BUDR labelling index (BUDR-LI) not onlyin vitro but alsoin vivo, since BUDR is not toxic at the doses needed to label cells. To ascertain whetherin vivo BUDR incorporation can be detected on routine histological material we tested several different procedures prior to immunoperoxidase staining, on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded sections from five patients with gastric cancer, who received BUDR (250 mg m^–2, intravenous) 4 h before surgery. To determine the optimal conditions for detecting BUDR in formalin-fixed tissues, immunohistochemical testing for BUDR was performed simultaneously on duplicate sections fixed with 70% ethanol. It was found that hydrolysis with 3N HCl at 37° C for 30 min and digestion with 0.5% in at 37° C for 30 min were sufficient to detect BUDR immunoreactivity in formalin-fixed sections.The method presented extends the range of applications of thein vivo BUDR technique for cell kinetics studies in human neoplasms because it can be used on routinely fixed archival material, with the advantage of correlating the kinetic data with histopathological characters.     

Chlorpromazine as permeabilizer and reagent for detection of microbial peroxidase and peroxidaselike activities

Chlorpromazine was used to perform a test for the detection of microbial peroxidase activities. The compound acts as both a cell permeabilizer and a reagent in the procedure developed which allows the detection of peroxidase and peroxidase like reactions both semiquantitatively in whole cell determinations and quantitatively in cell-free supernatants.     

Escherichia coli molybdoenzymes can be activated by protein FA from several gram-negative bacteria

Six Gram-negative bacteria (Klebsiella pneumoniae, Erwinia chrysanthemi, Proteus vulgaris, Serratia marescens, Salmonella typhimurium, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) were shown to contain an FA-type protein capable of activating aponitrate reductase, apotrimethylamine N-oxide reductase and apoformate dehydrogenase of Escherichia coli. Protein FA activity was highest in Erwinia chrysanthemi and lowest in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. All the species also contained the low-Mr (less than or equal to 1500) heat-resistant material previously reported to be necessary for the protein-FA-dependent activation of E. coli chlB nitrate reductase.     

‘Cool’ adaptations to cold environments: globins in Notothenioidei (Actynopterygii,Perciformes)

Notothenioidei, the taxonomic group of teleosts that dominates the Southern Ocean and dwell in the Ross Sea at large, provide an example of marine species that underwent unique adaptations to life at low temperatures and high oxygen concentrations, resulting in morphological, physiological, genomic, and biochemical peculiarities in comparison with warm-water fish. Global Warming raises concerns over the fate of these stenothermal fish, as their adaptation has been accompanied by irreversible genomic losses, which suggest a poor genetic potential to adapt to warmer climates. Specifically, this review focuses on adaptation of proteins belonging to the globin superfamily, which include the respiratory proteins hemoglobin and myoglobin and the non-respiratory proteins neuroglobin and cytoglobin. Here, we describe their molecular adaptations to cold temperatures in the framework of the physiology of oxygen transport and management of oxidative stress in fish species largely populating the Ross Sea.