VI Symposium on "Chemistry of Proteolytic Enzymes"

The VI Symposium on the Chemistry of Proteolytic Enzymes took place in Moscow on April 23-25, 2007. It was dedicated to the memory of Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Konstantinovich Antonov. At the symposium, 40 reports were delivered and 103 posters were presented in the following sections: (1) expression of genes, isolation and general characterization of proteases; (2) structure-function studies of proteases; (3) regulation of the activity of proteolytic enzymes; (4) regulatory functions of proteolytic enzymes; (5) proteases in biotechnology, protein engineering, and peptide synthesis; and (6) proteolysis and medicine. In addition to Russian scientists, researchers from the United States, the Netherlands, France, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan took part in the work of the symposium. Note that, in the five years since the V Symposium, the geography of Russian scientific centers working in the area of proteolysis has been considerably extended. Participating in the forum were researchers from, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Penza, and Stavropol in addition to scientists from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Petrozavodsk, Kazan, Nizhni Novgorod, and Krasnodar.     

A Report on "One Day Symposium on Numerical Cladistics"

A recent symposium on numerical cladistics held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, addressed novel methods for searching tree space, applications of randomizations in cladistic analysis, and data management. One of the major concerns in systematics is that of finding the global optimum in tree length. The space to search is complex because it includes many local optima. It is a difficult task to escape local optima without a great loss in efficiency. The ideal is to search among suboptimal topologies and still obtain an answer in a reasonable amount of time. Nixon presented a new family of methods called "parsimony ratchet," which are successful at escaping local optima. Moilanen presented a new program which may have similar advantages. Two presentations, one by Goloboff and Farris and another by Farris, Goloboff, Källersjö, and Oxelman, introduced modifications to parsimony jackknifing that improved its accuracy when compared to normal heuristic searches. Wheeler discussed the advantages of new methods of analyzing DNA and protein sequence data, which eliminate multiple alignment; the most recent one packs nucleotides into strings which constitute the new characters. Siddall discussed different applications of randomization in cladistics and their logical consistency, finding some more acceptable than others. Nixon and Carpenter presented a new program for managing data. This symposium will probably be a landmark judging from the originality and practicality of the points presented.     

Symposium report: Inaugural Australian Coastal Restoration Symposium

Summary

Globally, coastal habitat restoration is growing in recognition as a viable management tool to repair and reinstate valuable coastal habitats and species, such as mangrove and macroalgae forests, salt marshes, seagrass meadows, shellfish and coral reefs (Aronson & Alexander ( 2013 ), Restoration Ecology, 293; Anthony et al. ( 2017 ) Nature Ecology and Evolution, 1420; TNC ( 2017 ) Caribbean: A revolution to save coral reefs in the Caribbean and beyond). In Australia, there is increasing interest and investment in coastal restoration and habitat conservation, particularly with respect to growing national concerns around habitat loss, coastal inundation and erosion, loss of fisheries and climate change (Maggini et al. ( 2013 ) Protecting and restoring habitat to help Australia's threatened species adapt to climate change; GBRMPA ( 2017 ) Reef summit sets new course of action for the Great Barrier Reef). This has led to new community of practices being formed for shellfish reef restoration (Shellfish Reef Restoration Network shellfishrestoration.org.au), seagrass restoration (Seagrass Restoration Network seagrassrestoration.net), and saltmarsh and mangrove (Saltmarsh and Mangrove Network, amsn.net.au) conservation. However, despite this interest, there has been no national coordination, network or society with coastal restoration as a primary focus. The inaugural Australian Coastal Restoration Symposium brought together 60 Australian restoration practitioners, researchers and managers at James Cook University, Townsville for three days from the 31st of August 2017. The symposium goals were to enhance collaboration and national coordination amongst coastal restoration projects and practitioners, as well as to connect researchers and practitioners working in the restoration space with one another. Three international keynote speakers shared their experiences and advice. Delegates were enthusiastic about continuing to meet at future symposiu, meetings and workshops, and noted the value of being able to connect, share project experiences and learnings, and collaborate. The Australian Coastal Restoration Network has been formed with the goal of meeting annually to continue to share knowledge and improve collaboration. View a video about the symposium by following this link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lukSpo3mM-4     

西南地区首届动物学学术研讨会论文摘要汇编

１．细胞因子和活化枯氏细胞培养上清对约氏疟原虫红外期发育影响的研究郝宏兴黄复生况明书段建华（第三军医大学寄生虫学教研室）研究了重组人ＩＬ－１、ＩＬ－６和枯氏细胞（Ｋｃ）分泌物对约氏疟原虫红外期（ＥＥＦ）发育的影响。材料和方法：１．约氏疟原虫ＢＹ２６５...     

Symposium 6: 1

Endogenous neural stem cells have been identified in diverse areas of the adult mammalian central nervous system including the subventricular zone, cerebral cortex and hippocampus. These cells have been demonstrated to participate actively in postnatal neurogenesis in restricted territories within the adult brain. They have further been characterized as having a committed neural fate in vivo, capable of generating neurons, astroglia and oligodendroglia. Endogenous CNS stem cells, when cultured in vitro, have been shown to have a much broader potential, capable of differentiating into diverse tissues such as blood, muscle, bone and kidney. Conversely, stem cells taken from other organs and grown in vitro have been demonstrated to differentiate into neurons, and hematopoietic stem cells injected intravenously have been shown to migrate into mature CNS, and differentiate into neurons. We have previously reported the mobilization of endogenous neural stem cells in vivo. Further work to determine if the stem cells so mobilized may include hematopoietic stem cells is reported here. Using immunohistochemical localization of antigens known to be present on primitive hematopoietic stem cells, or antigens present on neural stem cells, we report the presence of cells closely resembling hematopoietic stem cells in the mature CNS whose response to a mobilization paradigm is similar to that of endogenous neural stem cells. We further propose a lineage relationship between primitive hematopoietic stem cells and neural stem cells.