Insect Colonisation of Fruiting Bodies of the Wood-decaying Fungus Fomitopsis pinicola at Different Distances from an Old-growth Forest

We studied the colonisation rate of insects inhabiting fruiting bodies of the wood-decaying fungus Fomitopsis pinicola both within and at different distances (up to 1610 m) from an old-growth forest reserve. The colonisation rate of most species was not affected by the distance from the reserve, and none of the species were affected by the size of local sources of fruiting bodies in the managed forest. We suggest that many insect species inhabiting fruiting bodies of wood-decaying fungi can colonise fruiting bodies at a high enough rate to persist in managed forests of Fennoscandia. However, the colonisation rates of the fungivorous beetle Cis quadridens and the predatory fly Medetera apicalis were negatively affected by distance from the reserve. Cis quadridens is rare in many managed forests, but often quite common at sites with high substrate densities. The rarity of this species may therefore be due to weak ability to colonize distant patches. The same may also be true for M. apicalis, but less is known about the biology of this species. Medetera apicalis was the most common insect predator in the old-growth forest, but it was rare at the largest distances from it in the managed forest. Therefore, it seems likely that the overall pressure from natural enemies significantly declined with distance from the reserve.     

苹果花期至幼果期花朵和果实对低温的敏感性研究北大核心CSCD

为了确立不同苹果品种在花蕾期到幼果期的抗冻性类型,建立精准苹果晚霜抗冻性评价方法,以宁夏2个主栽苹果品种‘嘎啦’和‘富士’花蕾期、盛花期、坐果期和幼果期的花朵和果实为试验材料,利用野外霜冻试验箱分别模拟不同时期自然降温过程,在20%、50%和80%受冻率下分别建立Logistic方程,确定轻、中、重度受冻的临界温度;并检测各品种不同物候期的过冷却点、结冰点、电导率、可溶性糖和可溶性蛋白等抗寒性指标,结合多元线性回归法综合判断苹果花期至幼果期抗寒能力差异的主要影响因素。结果显示,(1)‘嘎啦’各个物候期的抗寒能力均强于‘富士’;(2)同一苹果品种不同物候期抗寒能力不同,表现为花蕾期>盛花期>坐果期>幼果期;(3)2个苹果品种各物候期轻度、中度、重度受冻临界温度随着物候期推移呈现升高的趋势;(4)受冻率与半致死温度呈极显著正相关(0.909**),与可溶性蛋白含量呈极显著负相关(-0.874**)。研究表明,‘嘎啦’和‘富士’4个物候期花器官相对电导率和可溶性蛋白含量对子房受冻率有较强的响应关系,过冷却点和结冰点温度等对子房受冻率也有一定的响应,可将相对电导率、可溶性蛋白含量、过冷却点和结冰点作为评价苹果抗寒性状的重要指标。     

The Return of the Intruder: Immediate and Later Effects of Different Approach Distances in a Territorial Songbird

Male songbirds often maintain territories throughout the breeding season, and one of the main functions of song is to deter invaders. Therefore, the distance of an unknown singing rival should play a crucial role within territorial singing interactions of males. This distance is expected to be assessed as more threatening the closer the rival approaches. Here, we tested this assumption by conducting nocturnal playbacks from two different distances in territorial Common nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos). Immediate vocal responses of birds were examined by analysing changes in song structure as well as temporal response features. The next morning, follow‐up playbacks from an intermediate distance allowed us to investigate longer‐lasting effects of nocturnal playbacks. We found that the distance of a simulated rival had an effect on both immediate and later vocal responses of territorial male nightingales with different song parameters being affected during nocturnal and diurnal singing. This indicates that birds perceive intruder distances and adjust their response behaviour both immediately and in later interactions.     

Effect of Neonatal Asphyxia on the Impairment of the Auditory Pathway by Recording Auditory Brainstem Responses in Newborn Piglets: A New Experimentation Model to Study the Perinatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Damage on the Auditory System

IntroductionHypoxia–ischemia (HI) is a major perinatal problem that results in severe damage to the brain impairing the normal development of the auditory system. The purpose of the present study is to study the effect of perinatal asphyxia on the auditory pathway by recording auditory brain responses in a novel animal experimentation model in newborn piglets.MethodHypoxia-ischemia was induced to 1.3 day-old piglets by clamping 30 minutes both carotid arteries by vascular occluders and lowering the fraction of inspired oxygen. We compared the Auditory Brain Responses (ABRs) of newborn piglets exposed to acute hypoxia/ischemia (n = 6) and a control group with no such exposure (n = 10). ABRs were recorded for both ears before the start of the experiment (baseline), after 30 minutes of HI injury, and every 30 minutes during 6 h after the HI injury.ResultsAuditory brain responses were altered during the hypoxic-ischemic insult but recovered 30-60 minutes later. Hypoxia/ischemia seemed to induce auditory functional damage by increasing I-V latencies and decreasing wave I, III and V amplitudes, although differences were not significant.ConclusionThe described experimental model of hypoxia-ischemia in newborn piglets may be useful for studying the effect of perinatal asphyxia on the impairment of the auditory pathway.     

水稻愈伤组织对不同培养基的适应性、潮霉素的敏感性及其在遗传转化中的利用

取粳稻 (Oryza sativa L.japonica) 品种中花11号开花授粉后15天的幼胚诱导愈伤组织, 在N6D、N6B5D、MsD和B5D 4种培养基上比较愈伤组织生长情况,证明3种培养基均可以用于水稻愈伤组织的培养,但B5D的效果不如另3种培养基,N6D和N6B5D的培养效果优于Ms培养基,N6B5D的效果略好于N6D。后续实验主要采用N6D培养基。进一步对愈伤组织的HygB敏感性试验,发现30mg/L的HygB对愈伤组织生长有明显的抑制作用,50mg/L的浓度对愈伤的生长抑制作用更彻底,因此认为采用50mg/L的浓度进行抗HygB的愈伤组织筛选比较可靠。利用上述结果,在水稻遗传转化方面进行了应用和验证,发现效果比较明显。     

Studies on the Transfer of Copper from Soil to Pastures at Different Sampling Periods: A Case Study of a Semiarid Region (Sargodha) in Pakistan

The present investigation was carried out to assess the transfer of copper element from the soil to forage plants consumed by the ruminants in two different pastures at the Livestock Experimental Station at Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan. Soil and forage samples were collected periodically from two different pastures and analyzed after wet digestion. The survey of copper flow from forage from both pastures in the grazing period exhibited a consistent pattern of decrease from sampling periods 1 to 4 across all the sampling periods. In the legumes and grass pastures, it was decreased regularly and reduced up to 50% to that at the beginning across all the samplings. The copper concentration was higher in the legume pasture than that of grass pasture and sufficient to fulfill the requirement of grazing animals, while in grass pasture, it was higher at the first two sampling periods but dropped to a marginal deficient level at sampling period 3 and reached at the severe deficient level at the fourth sampling period during this investigation. The soil–plant transfer factor for Cu was higher in legume pasture compared to its counterpart. It was found that with the increase of forage maturity, a significant reduction in the forage Cu concentration was observed reaching its minimum level at the last sampling period in the grass pasture. These concentrations were within the marginal and severe deficient levels and provide for only 76% of the ruminant requirements. The naturally upset balance of Cu offers a potential hazard not only to both pastures, but also to the Cu status of grazing ruminants therein. This necessitates the provision of additional amount of Cu mixture in the nutrition of livestock for health and reproduction potential enhancement of the animals being reared at that farm. Supplementing the deficient mineral with locally available Cu feed sources like green fodders, cakes, and brans or providing region-specific mineral supplements would alleviate the deficiency of copper during the late season at the livestock farm.     

Metabolic Implications of Exposure to Light at Night: Lessons from Animal and Human Studies

Lately, the incidence of overweight, obesity, and type 2 diabetes has shown a staggering increase. To prevent and treat these conditions, one must look at their etiology. As life on earth has evolved under the conditions of nature’s 24‐hour light/dark cycle, it seems likely that exposure to artificial light at night (LAN) would affect physiology. Indeed, ample evidence has shown that LAN impacts many metabolic parameters, at least partly via the biological clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus. This review focuses on the impact of chronic and acute effects of LAN of different wavelengths on locomotor activity, food intake, the sleep/wake cycle, body temperature, melatonin, glucocorticoids, and glucose and lipid metabolism. While chronic LAN disturbs daily rhythms in these parameters, experiments using short‐term LAN exposure also have shown acute negative effects in metabolically active peripheral tissues. Experiments using LAN of different wavelengths not only have indicated an important role for melanopsin, the photopigment found in intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, but also provided evidence that each wavelength may have a specific impact on energy metabolism. Importantly, exposure to LAN has been shown to impact glucose homeostasis also in humans and to be associated with an increased incidence of overweight, obesity, and atherosclerosis.     

The Embryos Obtained from the Karyoplasts of Starfish Oocytes: Their Development and Sensitivity to Cytostatic Neurotransmitter Antagonists

Karyoplasts obtained from full-grown oocytes of the starfish Aphelasterias japonica have practically no cytoplams and are incapable of maturation. Karyoplasts of oocytes of starfishes Marthasterias glacialis and Acanthaster planci have the cytoplasm (10%–15% of the total karyoplast volume) and are often capable of maturation, fertilization and one or several cleavage divisions. The embryoskaryoplasts completely lose supersensitivity and retain usual sensitivity to cytostatic antagonists of neurotransmitters. The assumption is made that the incapability or limited capability of this embryos for development might be due to a deficiency of certain components of the "prenervous" neurotransmitter systems.     

Transitions from Wakefulness to Sleep at Different Times of Day: Old vs. Young Subjects

In order to assess age effects upon the daytime level of alertness, both subjective and objective measures of alertness were obtained in 19 healthy elderly males (mean age 65 years) and 19 healthy young males (mean age 21 years). Subjects were recorded during a Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT), administered at 5 different times of day (9 a.m., 12 a.m., 3 p.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m.). Before each test, subjects filled out an alertness questionnaire. During the entire 20 minutes of each test electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were made and transformed into 40 averaged spectra, one for each 30 s epoch. For the delta, theta, alpha, sigma and beta bands of the EEG 6 consecutive values were averaged to obtain 1 value per 3 minutes. On the basis of the visually guided detection of the first spindle, sleep onset was determined. The elderly subjects obtained a higher overall level of subjective alertness than the young subjects. No age effect was observed for sleep latency, which followed a U-shaped diurnal trend. Overall, the mean relative EEG energy values followed a diurnal trend that was the reverse of that for sleep latency. The mean relative delta EEG energy gradually increased, and the mean relative alpha EEG energy gradually decreased across the MSLT. For the young subjects the respective ranges of variation of these EEG bands were very similar, while for the elderly subjects the range of variation of the alpha values was less than half of that for the delta band. Apparently, alpha EEG activity during the wake-sleep transition does not simply covary with delta EEG activity. Moreover, age appears to have a significant effect upon the dynamics of alpha EEG activity during the wake-sleep transition.     

Further Studies on Staphylococci in Meats, : IV. The Bacteriophage Pattern and Antibiotic Sensitivity of Isolates from Nonfrozen Meats

Of 272 isolates of Staphylococcus aureus recovered from 173 samples of 10 market meats from 27 stores, 173 (63.2%) were phage typable, employing 28 phages. Sixty per cent of the phage-typable strains belonged to group III, followed by 14.5% to mixed groups I and III, 10.4% to Group I, 8.7% to all mixed groups, 4.6% to group II, and 1.7% to group IV. The most commonly recovered patterns were 83, 53/83, and other similar combinations of 53. The nonpigmented strains which did not have bound coagulase were less phage sensitive than the pigmented strains having bound coagulase. None of the isolates were resistant to novobiocin, kanamycin, chloramphenicol, and erythromycin. Twenty-three per cent were resistant to streptomycin, 17% to ristocetin, 11% to penicillin, and 4.4% to chlortetracycline. The phage types are compared to those of other food and human isolates and found not to differ too greatly. Their possible origins into the meats are discussed.     

赤楠叶不同极性提取物体外抗菌活性比较研究

对经过不同极性提取剂处理的赤楠叶提取物进行抗菌实验,结果表明：极性较大的提取剂所获得的提取物有较强的抗菌活性,其中水提物、水提醇沉物和醇提物对金黄色葡萄球菌、枯草芽孢杆菌、大肠杆菌、普通变形杆菌、八叠球菌等均有较强的抑菌活性,以水提物尤为突出。     

The Challenges of Genome-Wide Interaction Studies: Lessons to Learn from the Analysis of HDL Blood Levels

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have revealed 74 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) blood levels. This study is, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide interaction study (GWIS) to identify SNP×SNP interactions associated with HDL levels. We performed a GWIS in the Rotterdam Study (RS) cohort I (RS-I) using the GLIDE tool which leverages the massively parallel computing power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to perform linear regression on all genome-wide pairs of SNPs. By performing a meta-analysis together with Rotterdam Study cohorts II and III (RS-II and RS-III), we were able to filter 181 interaction terms with a p-value<1 · 10⁻⁸ that replicated in the two independent cohorts. We were not able to replicate any of these interaction term in the AGES, ARIC, CHS, ERF, FHS and NFBC-66 cohorts (N_total = 30,011) when adjusting for multiple testing. Our GWIS resulted in the consistent finding of a possible interaction between rs774801 in ARMC8 (ENSG00000114098) and rs12442098 in SPATA8 (ENSG00000185594) being associated with HDL levels. However, p-values do not reach the preset Bonferroni correction of the p-values. Our study suggest that even for highly genetically determined traits such as HDL the sample sizes needed to detect SNP×SNP interactions are large and the 2-step filtering approaches do not yield a solution. Here we present our analysis plan and our reservations concerning GWIS.     

The bronchoalveolar lymphocyte: Studies on the life history and lymphocyte traffic from blood to the lung

Although recent work has shed some light on the identity and function of lymphocytes that reside in the bronchoalveolar air space (lung lymphocytes), little is known about the origin and life history of these cells. To determine the proportion of recently divided lung lymphocytes, DA-strain rats were labeled in vivo for 3 days with tritiated thymidine ([³H]dTR). Autoradiographs of lavaged lung and peritoneal cells indicated that a large fraction (44–77%) of lung lymphocytes was labeled and that these values were comparable to the proportion of labeled lymphocytes in peritoneal exudates (61–74%). To determine if some newly divided lung lymphocytes might come via the blood, additional experiments were performed in which rats were labeled ([³H]dTR) in vivo for 7 days. Lymphocytes were then obtained in labeled rats by thoracic duct drainage and were adoptively transferred (by vein) into syngeneic recipients. The percentage recovery of labeled lymphocytes in lung aspirates of recipient rats was determined from cell counts and autoradiographs. These results demonstrate that blood may be a source of recently divided lymphocytes but they do not indicate the relative contribution blood makes toward these cells in the lung.     

数量遗传学理论框架下的进化生态学研究：以动物模型的运用为例

目前,生态学家越来越关注深入的生物学问题,例如,1)理解生态和进化过程的互作和关系;2)种群中一个重要的表型特征,受遗传基因影响多大?即其可遗传程度,表示该性状的进化潜能;3)基因是怎样影响表型性状,及其对应的个体适合度以及种群动态?4)决定多个重要表型性状的基因之间关系和互作如何?随着生物统计软件尤其是线性混合模型的发展,结合经典数量遗传学的理论,发展出了针对上述问题的动物模型(Animal Model),使得我们可以对野外种群进行上述研究。本文首先介绍了经典数量遗传学的重要概念,随后在其理论框架下,举例介绍了动物模型的操作和使用,最后探讨和展望了利用数量遗传学方法进行进化生态学研究的前景。     

Characteristics of Photoassimilates Transportation and Distribution to the Fruits from Leaves at Different Branch Positions in Apple

Journal of Plant Growth Regulation - Clarifying the characteristics of photoassimilates transport and distribution to the fruits from leaves located on different branches can guide the branch...     

The Pendulum Model for Genome Compositional Dynamics:from the Four Nucleotides to the Twenty Amino Acids

The genetic code serves as one of the natural links for life’s two conceptual frameworks-the informational and operational tracks- bridging the nucleotide sequence of DNA and RNA to the amino acid sequence of protein and thus its structure and function.On the informational track,DNA and its four building blocks have four basic variables:order,length,GC and purine contents;the latter two exhibit unique characteristics in prokaryotic genomes where protein-coding sequences dominate.Bridging the two tracks,tRNAs and their aminoacyl tRNA synthases that interpret each codon-nucleotide triplet,together with ribosomes,form a complex machinery that translates genetic information encoded on the messenger RNAs into proteins.On the operational track,proteins are selected in a context of cellular and organismal functions constantly.The principle of such a functional selection is to minimize the damage caused by sequence alteration in a seemingly random fashion at the nucleotide level and its function-altering consequence at the protein level;the principle also suggests that there must be complex yet sophisticated mechanisms to protect molecular interactions and cellular processes for cells and organisms from the damage in addition to both immediate or short-term eliminations and long-term selections.The twocentury study of selection at species and population levels has been leading a way to understand rules of inheritance and evolution at molecular levels along the informational track,while ribogenomics,epigenomics and other operationally-defined omics(such as the metabolite-centric metabolomics) have been ushering biologists into the new millennium along the operational track.