Dynamics of macrozoobenthos productivity characteristics on shelves of the Far Eastern seas in the 2000s

The trophic structure of benthic communities in the Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea was analyzed based on the results of macrobenthic survey catches conducted in the Far Eastern seas in the 2000s. The production of trophic levels and entire communities was determined. It was shown that production of benthic communities is still at a high level and has almost not changed since the 1980s. The arrangement of the communities of some shelf areas by productivity characteristics was made.     

SERPINs shelter the endowed migrants in a hostile land

Since metastatic lesions of solid tumors are the major cause of mortality in cancer patients, understanding the molecular mechanisms of metastasis is of paramount importance. Although extensive knowledge has been accumulated regarding the early steps in metastasis—starting with the departure of cancer cells from their primary sites, to their transit through the hematogenous and/or lymphatic systems, and ending with their entrance into the parenchyma of distant organs—it is difficult if not impossible to translate such knowledge into medicine due to the challenge of identifying patients with only primary tumors but otherwise pristine organs. In other words, autopsy studies indicate that a large proportion of patients already harbor dormant, undetectable micrometastases at the time of cancer diagnosis (Hensel et al, 2013 ). Accordingly, stopping tumor cell dissemination is too late for these patients. Therefore, understanding the survival and outgrowth of micrometastases may hold greater promise to combat metastatic disease.     

Probing the U-Shaped Conformation of Caveolin-1 in a Bilayer

Caveolin induces membrane curvature and drives the formation of caveolae that participate in many crucial cell functions such as endocytosis. The central portion of caveolin-1 contains two helices (H1 and H2) connected by a three-residue break with both N- and C-termini exposed to the cytoplasm. Although a U-shaped configuration is assumed based on its inaccessibility by extracellular matrix probes, caveolin structure in a bilayer remains elusive. This work aims to characterize the structure and dynamics of caveolin-1 (D82–S136; Cav1_82–136) in a DMPC bilayer using NMR, fluorescence emission measurements, and molecular dynamics simulations. The secondary structure of Cav1_82–136 from NMR chemical shift indexing analysis serves as a guideline for generating initial structural models. Fifty independent molecular dynamics simulations (100 ns each) are performed to identify its favorable conformation and orientation in the bilayer. A representative configuration was chosen from these multiple simulations and simulated for 1 μs to further explore its stability and dynamics. The results of these simulations mirror those from the tryptophan fluorescence measurements (i.e., Cav1_82–136 insertion depth in the bilayer), corroborate that Cav1_82–136 inserts in the membrane with U-shaped conformations, and show that the angle between H1 and H2 ranges from 35 to 69°, and the tilt angle of Cav1_82–136 is 27 ± 6°. The simulations also reveal that specific faces of H1 and H2 prefer to interact with each other and with lipid molecules, and these interactions stabilize the U-shaped conformation.     

Repeated pre-training sleep restriction in adolescent rats impaired spatial performance

Sleep and Biological Rhythms - Chronic sleep deprivation (SD) is an overwhelming problem in young students. Firstly, we investigated whether different levels of pre-training SD had effects on...     

Deconstructing the long-standing a priori assumption that serial homology generally involves ancestral similarity followed by anatomical divergence

It has long been assumed that serial homologues are ancestrally similar—polysomerism resulting from a “duplication” or “repetition” of forms—and then often diverge—anisomerism, for example, as they become adapted to perform different tasks as is the case with the forelimb and hind limbs of humans. However, such an assumption, with crucial implications for comparative, evolutionary, and developmental biology, and for evolutionary developmental biology, has in general not really been tested by a broad analysis of the available empirical data. Perhaps not surprisingly, more recent anatomical comparisons, as well as molecular knowledge of how, for example, serial appendicular structures are patterned along with different anteroposterior regions of the body axis of bilateral animals, and how “homologous” patterning domains do not necessarily mark “homologous” morphological domains, are putting in question this paradigm. In fact, apart from showing that many so-called “serial homologues” might not be similar at all, recent works have shown that in at least some cases some “serial” structures are indeed more similar to each other in derived taxa than in phylogenetically more ancestral ones, as pointed out by authors such as Owen. In this article, we are taking a step back to question whether such assumptions are actually correct at all, in the first place. In particular, we review other cases of so-called “serial homologues” such as insect wings, arthropod walking appendages, Dipteran thoracic bristles, and the vertebrae, ribs, teeth, myomeres, feathers, and hairs of chordate animals. We show that: (a) there are almost never cases of true ancestral similarity; (b) in evolution, such structures—for example, vertebra—and/or their subparts—for example, “transverse processes”—many times display trends toward less similarity while in many others display trends toward more similarity, that is, one cannot say that there is a clear, overall trend to anisomerism.