Biological properties of human melanoma cells in culture

Summary Three human melanoma cell lines derived from one primary and two metastatic tumors from three different patients were characterized for growth properties usually associated with malignant transformation; these include cell morphology, growth rate, saturation density, growth in semisolid media, colony-forming ability on contact-inhibited monolayers of normal fibroblasts and epithelial cells, and tumorigenicity in immunosuppressed mice. Variations in expression of aberrant properties were evident among the lines. One of the metastatic lines satisfied all the parameters of malignancy tested and the other showed a number of these properties, whereas the primary essentially fulfilled only one. These results suggest that cultured melanoma cells reflect the clinical variability often observed among melanoma patients and the metastatic melanoma seems to display a higher degree of malignant transformation than the primary. THis work was supported in part by USPHS Grant No. 5 T01 AI00332-06 from the National Institutes of Health, Contract E73-2001-N01-CP-3-3237 from the Virus Cancer Program of the National Cancer Institute, and USPHS Grant No. 0H00714-02 from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.     

The contribution of corals to reef structural complexity in Kāne‘ohe Bay

Coral Reefs - The structural complexity of coral reefs provides important ecosystem functions, such as wave attenuation for coastal protection, surfaces for coral growth, and habitat for other...     

Faunal breaks and species composition of Indo-Pacific corals: the role of plate tectonics,environment and habitat distribution

Species richness gradients are ubiquitous in nature, but the mechanisms that generate and maintain these patterns at macroecological scales remain unresolved. We use a new approach that focuses on overlapping geographical ranges of species to reveal that Indo-Pacific corals are assembled within 11 distinct faunal provinces. Province limits are characterized by co-occurrence of multiple species range boundaries. Unexpectedly, these faunal breaks are poorly predicted by contemporary environmental conditions and the present-day distribution of habitat. Instead, faunal breaks show striking concordance with geological features (tectonic plates and mantle plume tracks). The depth range over which a species occurs, its larval development rate and genus age are important determinants of the likelihood that species will straddle faunal breaks. Our findings indicate that historical processes, habitat heterogeneity and species colonization ability account for more of the present-day biogeographical patterns of corals than explanations based on the contemporary distribution of reefs or environmental conditions.     

Grazing rates for three life history stages of the doliolid Dolioletta gegenbauri Uljanin (Tunicata, Thaliacea)

Grazing rates for Dolioletta gegenbauri averaged 2.5 ml zooid^–1h^–1 for trophozooids, 2.7 for phorozooids and 5.8 forgonozooids. In situ and laboratory rates were comparable forboth trophozooids and phorozooids.     

Owlifier: Creating OWL-DL ontologies from simple spreadsheet-based knowledge descriptions

Discovery and integration of data is important in many ecological studies, especially those that concern broad-scale ecological questions. Data discovery and integration are often difficult and time consuming tasks for researchers, which is due in part to the use of informal, ambiguous, and sometimes inconsistent terms for describing data content. Ontologies offer a solution to this problem by providing consistent definitions of ecological concepts that in turn can be used to annotate, relate, and search for data sets. However, unlike in molecular biology or biomedicine, few ontology development efforts exist within ecology. Ontology development often requires considerable expertise in ontology languages and development tools, which is often a barrier for ontology creation in ecology. In this paper we describe an approach for ontology creation that allows ecologists to use common spreadsheet tools to describe different aspects of an ontology. We present conventions for creating, relating, and constraining concepts through spreadsheets, and provide software tools for converting these ontologies into equivalent OWL-DL representations. We also consider inverse translations, i.e., to convert ontologies represented using OWL-DL into our spreadsheet format. Our approach allows large lists of terms to be easily related and organized into concept hierarchies, and generally provides a more intuitive and natural interface for ontology development by ecologists.     

Effects of turbulence on the feeding rate of a pelagic predator: The planktonic hydroid Clytia gracilis

Relatively little is known about the role of turbulence in a predator-prey system where the predator is a passive, pelagic forager. The Campanulariid hydroid Clytia gracilis (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa) is unusual because it occurs as planktonic colonies and is reported to forage passively in the water column on Georges Bank, Massachusetts, USA. In this study, we investigated the role of various turbulence conditions on the feeding rate of C. gracilis colonies in laboratory experiments. We found a positive relationship between turbulence velocities and feeding rates up to a turbulent energy dissipation rate of ca. 1 cm² s^− 3. Beyond this threshold feeding rate decreased slightly, indicating a dome-shaped relationship. Additionally, a negative relationship was found between feeding efficiency and hydroid colony size under lower turbulent velocities, but this trend was not significant under higher turbulence regimes.