不同气象条件下小麦冷源的品质变异

小麦冷源是一种冷温供体材料,有较强的降温作用,当受体小麦接受冷温供体的配子后,其后代冠温呈普遍下降态势,且部分受体小麦的温度型可由非冷型转化为后代的冷型,而冷型小麦具有代谢功能好且利于高产、稳产的特征,故小麦冷源不但对冷型小麦的问世有重要诱导作用,且能更好促进小麦的高产、稳产.将小麦冷源材料放置在不同的气象条件之下,以研究其籽粒品质的变异状况.结果表明,小麦冷源和非冷源相比,17项籽粒品质性状变异等级的加权平均值为1.9877,后者为2 8171,显示出小麦冷源的籽粒品质具有明显变异小、较稳定的特征,这和籽粒形成过程中蛋白质、淀粉及其组分的含量,相互间的比例变异小密切相关.由于小麦冷源具有籽粒品质变异小的特性,因而,这种特性就利于在其后代冷型小麦上显现,从而使冷型小麦的一些优良品质性状能在生产上反复重演,这不但进一步赋予了利于高产、稳产的冷型小麦以优质、稳质的性状,并能最终促进小麦生产的较大发展,其意义是十分重要的.     

稳定氢氧同位素定量植物水分来源的不确定性解析

稳定氢氧同位素技术被广泛运用于生态系统、特别是干旱区生态系统中植物水分来源的研究,其理论假设为"水分被植物根系吸收并向木质部运输过程中不发生氢氧同位素分馏"。生态系统中不同水源的氢氧同位素组成普遍存在显著差异,为从水源混合体中区分出各水源的贡献率提供了前提条件。但在实际应用过程中,诸多因素导致稳定氢氧同位素技术定量植物水分来源的结果具有不确定性。综合已有研究并加以分析,举证说明植物吸收水分相对于水源同位素变化的滞后性、水源同位素的季节性变化、蒸发作用和水源之间的混合作用对水源同位素的影响等导致植物水分来源定量结果不确定性的几个因素,以期为今后稳定氢氧同位素技术在植物水分来源领域的应用提供参考。     

Pleiotropic mutants affecting the control of nitrogen metabolism in Aspergillus nidulans

Summary Mutants of Aspergillus nidulans with lesions in gene amdT are pleiotropically affected in their ability to utilize a wide variety of nitrogen sources in the presence of glucose. Ability to utilize a number of these compounds as sole sources of carbon and nitrogen is not altered. One of these mutants, amdT102, has properties consistent with it being derepressed for glucose repression of the utilization of most (but not all) nitrogen sources. The amdT102 mutant can grow strongly on histidine, lysine and cystine as sole nitrogen sources while the wild type strain grows extremely poorly on these amino acids. Similar but less extreme effects apply to many other nitrogen sources. The amdT19 mutant is unable to utilize most nitrogen sources in the presence of glucose, suggesting that it is subject to greatly increased repression of nitrogen source utilization. The amdT mutants are not affected in their ability to use many compounds as sole carbon sources. Carbon sources other than glucose also affect utilization of nitrogen sources in the amdT mutants.     

Correlations in the utilization of carbon sources in the range of griseus species of the genus Streptomyces

The author proposes a new scheme for arranging the data about the assimilation of carbon sources in tables; this is illustrated with the Griseus species belonging to the Streptomyces genus and with the information about them presented by Bergey [2]. In the scheme, carbon sources in the tables are arranged in the order of their diminishing availability for streptomycetes, and the lists of species within the morphological groups are constructed according to the property of a carbon source not being assimilated. Such an arrangement of data in the tables is very clear and convenient to use; it allows one to make optimal schemes for determining the assimilation of carbon sources by actinomycetes, and makes it easy to divide any large number of cultures into groups according to a similar assimilation of carbon sources. The scheme has been used to analyse the data available in science and to establish correlations in the assimilation of carbon sources by species of the Griseus series belonging to the Streptomyces genus.     

Evaluation of Electroencephalography Source Localization Algorithms with Multiple Cortical Sources

Background

Source localization algorithms often show multiple active cortical areas as the source of electroencephalography (EEG). Yet, there is little data quantifying the accuracy of these results. In this paper, the performance of current source density source localization algorithms for the detection of multiple cortical sources of EEG data has been characterized.

Methods

EEG data were generated by simulating multiple cortical sources (2–4) with the same strength or two sources with relative strength ratios of 1:1 to 4:1, and adding noise. These data were used to reconstruct the cortical sources using current source density (CSD) algorithms: sLORETA, MNLS, and LORETA using a p-norm with p equal to 1, 1.5 and 2. Precision (percentage of the reconstructed activity corresponding to simulated activity) and Recall (percentage of the simulated sources reconstructed) of each of the CSD algorithms were calculated.

Results

While sLORETA has the best performance when only one source is present, when two or more sources are present LORETA with p equal to 1.5 performs better. When the relative strength of one of the sources is decreased, all algorithms have more difficulty reconstructing that source. However, LORETA 1.5 continues to outperform other algorithms. If only the strongest source is of interest sLORETA is recommended, while LORETA with p equal to 1.5 is recommended if two or more of the cortical sources are of interest. These results provide guidance for choosing a CSD algorithm to locate multiple cortical sources of EEG and for interpreting the results of these algorithms.     

Possible sources of new information in the magnetocardiogram

The theoretical basis for the relationship between the electric and magnetic fields of the heart is examined in terms of impressed currents, J^j, from a biologically active region imbedded in an Ohmic conductor. For quasistatic sources in a uniform conductor, it is shown that the problem of measuring the electrocardiogram or magnetocardiogram is an inverse problem rendered non-unique by the presence of so-called silent sources. An important class of sources, toroidal J^j, are silent electrically and not silent magnetically and these sources result in inherent differences between the information content of the electric and magnetic measurement techniques. A hypothetical example of cardiac activation departing from the conventional uniform double-layer model is presented to indicate that electrically silent sources cannot be ruled out a priori without careful magnetic measurements.     

Original Articles: Sources of Dissolved Organic Carbon Supporting Planktonic Bacterial Production in the Tidal Freshwater Hudson River

Planktonic bacterial production in the tidal freshwater Hudson River is a major component of secondary productivity and is uncoupled from planktonic primary productivity. There are several major sources of allochthonous dissolved organic carbon (DOC) whose potential contribution to heterotrophic bacterial growth was examined with bioassays. Supply of DOC from the upper Hudson drainage basin and a large tributary in the mid-Hudson together comprise 70 kT DOC/year, which is the bulk of the DOC load to the tidal freshwater Hudson River. Two contrasting tidal wetlands contribute DOC to the main-stem river but were only a few percent of the tributary load even during summer low-flow conditions. The quantity of DOC released from fine sediments was intermediate to the other two loadings considered. Bacterial growth in bioassays receiving water from the sources varied, but differences in thymidine incorporation between reference and DOC sources were small, usually less than 2 nmol/L/h. Similarity in thymidine incorporation suggests that all sources of DOC were capable of supporting bacterial growth at approximately equal rates. Seasonal shifts in carbon availability were clear in several cases, for example, greater growth on wetland-derived DOC at times of peak plant productivity. Seasonal differences in tributary DOC bioavailability were not large despite the well-known seasonality of tributary inputs. Activities of a suite of extracellular enzymes were used as a biologically based characterization of DOC from the various sources. Shifts in allocation among enzymes were apparent, indicating that there are biologically relevant differences in composition among the sources. Fluorescence characteristics and absorbance per unit carbon also varied among sources, providing an independent confirmation of compositional differences among sources. The absence of large differences in bacterial productivity among sources suggests that growth is supported by a wide range of DOC, and the relative importance of the sources is probably related to the quantitative differences in inputs. Efforts to classify carbon supplies to ecosystems must recognize that organism plasticity in carbon use and physical mixing processes will both act to homogenize what might initially appear to be quite distinctive carbon inputs. Received 15 April 1997; accepted 17 February 1998     

Identification of sources of cerebral activity in the cat

The identification of sources of cerebral activity is investigated, and the resulting methodology is applied to the simple case of hippocampal afterdischarges in the cat. We develop an “imagery” technique which consists in defining, in a preliminary step, the number and the power spectrum density of unknown sources (identification of sources) assumed to emit independent signals in the ill-defined noisy cerebral medium. The technique assumes the medium to be quasilinear and quasistationary, and these assumptions have to be checked. It is based upon the interspectral matrix and its diagonal form. It makes it clear that (1) the problem of estimating the number of sources is closely dependent on the estimation method used to assess the power spectrum density, and (2) the coherence matrix should be preferred to the interspectral matrix for reasons linked with the estimation variance of its elements and the proximity of the sources and sensors. In order to assess the validity of the methodology, a source of hippocampal afterdischarges has been created by threshold stimulation of the ventral hippocampus of the cat. The resulting EEG signals are used to show that there is a single source and to estimate its power density spectrum, which can then be compared with the true one.     

脑磁图神经活动源数目的估计

在脑磁图信号的分析中,正确估计出脑磁图神经活动源的数目是进一步分析脑磁图信号的前提。目前广泛采用的信息论方法和主成分分析方法都是根据特征值来确定源的数目,这两种方法在源数目较多、噪声较强的情况下,会导致误判。该文提出了一种噪声调节自动阈值的脑磁图源数目判断方法,利用基于噪声调节的主成分分析并结合聂曼- 皮尔逊准则对脑磁图源数目进行估计。同时,该方法采用了基于小波的噪声方差估计,实现了脑磁图信号中噪声方差的精确估计。通过对基于信息论方法、主成分分析方法以及该文所提议方法的实验结果的比较,表明该文所提议方法能更准确地估计脑磁图源数目,特别是在源数目较多、信噪比较小的情况下,仍能准确地估计脑磁图源数目,具有较大的实际意义。     

Combining sources in stable isotope mixing models: alternative methods

Stable isotope mixing models are often used to quantify source contributions to a mixture. Examples include pollution source identification; trophic web studies; analysis of water sources for soils, plants; or water bodies, and many others. A common problem is having too many sources to allow a unique solution. We discuss two alternative procedures for addressing this problem. One option is a priori to combine sources with similar signatures so the number of sources is small enough to provide a unique solution. Aggregation should be considered only when isotopic signatures of clustered sources are not significantly different, and sources are related so the combined source group has some functional significance. For example, in a food web analysis, lumping several species within a trophic guild allows more interpretable results than lumping disparate food sources, even if they have similar isotopic signatures. One result of combining mixing model sources is increased uncertainty of the combined end-member isotopic signatures and consequently the source contribution estimates; this effect can be quantified using the IsoError model (). As an alternative to lumping sources before a mixing analysis, the IsoSource mixing model () can be used to find all feasible solutions of source contributions consistent with isotopic mass balance. While ranges of feasible contributions for each individual source can often be quite broad, contributions from functionally related groups of sources can be summed a posteriori, producing a range of solutions for the aggregate source that may be considerably narrower. A paleohuman dietary analysis example illustrates this method, which involves a terrestrial meat food source, a combination of three terrestrial plant foods, and a combination of three marine foods. In this case, a posteriori aggregation of sources allowed strong conclusions about temporal shifts in marine versus terrestrial diets that would not have otherwise been discerned.     

微生物与能源的可持续开发

微生物技术在新能源开发领域中有广阔的应用潜力,对能源的可持续发展具有重要的理论和现实意义.简要叙述了生物柴油、燃料酒精、生物制沼气、生物制氢和微生物电池等新能源的原理、优缺点和开发现状,概述了微生物资源在能源领域的应用,指出发掘新的微生物资源或构建工程菌株、明确微生物作用机理、开发新工艺将会是今后研究的重点.     

Toxins of the entomophagous fungus Beauveria bassiana. II. Effect of nitrogen sources on formation of the toxic protease in submerged culture

A series of 24 nitrogen sources including inorganic, organic nonprotein, proteins and complex natural media were examined to determine their stimulatory effects on the production of a toxic proteolytic complex in Beauveria bassiana in submerged cultures. It was found that this effect is enhanced by the sources in the order presented. The best sources are maize meal, yeast extract, and beef extract. The production optimum on these sources occurs on the third day of fermentation. The composition of the protease complex may be influenced by the type of nitrogen source.     

The role of pH in the 'glucose effect' on prodigiosin production by non-proliferating cells of Serratia marcescens

The production of prodigiosin by non-proliferating cells of Serratia marcescens is inhibited by addition of glucose or different carbon sources to the induction medium. The induction in acidic external pH, mimicking the effects produced by the carbon sources, reduced prodigiosin synthesis, and the prodigiosin production seems to be related to the length of the low pH period. Buffering at pH 7·5 increased pigment production in media with repressing carbon sources. This study reveals that the inhibitory effect of carbon sources on prodigiosin production may be due to a lowering of the pH of the medium.     

Sporulation of Streptomyces antibioticus ETHZ 7451 in submerged culture.

Streptomyces antibioticus ETHZ 7451 formed spores in cultures grown in a liquid medium from either a spore or a mycelium inoculum. The spores formed were similar to those formed on surface-grown cultures, except for reduced heat resistance. Both types of spores were sensitive to lysozyme, which is unusual for Streptomyces spores. Glucose and other carbon sources, which promoted different growth rates, did not affect sporulation efficiency. Nitrogen sources, such as casamino acids, that allowed high growth rates suppressed the sporulation. A remarkable repression was also observed in media with some nitrogen sources that promoted noticeably lower growth rates. In permissive media, with nitrogen sources that permitted relatively high growth rates, sporulation was conditioned to the consumption of ammonium in the medium, but not to that of other nitrogen sources, such as asparagine. Phosphate did not show a repressive effect on sporulation in the assayed conditions.     

液体培养蛹虫草虫草素和腺苷的代谢量

为提高虫草素和腺苷的代谢量,用高效液相色谱法作检测手段,以二者含量为检测指标,对液体培养的氮源种类、氮源水平、碳源水平、动态变化、培养体系的虫草素及腺苷含量和总量进行研究,结果表明:不仅蚕蛹粉,豆粕和豆粉也是很好的氮源;培养液以3%氮源、4%碳源为佳;振荡培养8d,培养液中虫草素总量是菌丝体中虫草素总量的6倍多;振荡培养7~9d,可使每瓶培养物的虫草素和腺苷总量达到10mg以上。     

菌核侧耳液体培养条件优化研究

运用液体深层培养法,采用不同pH值、不同碳源和氮源对菌核侧耳菌丝体生长的影响进行了探讨。结果表明:菌核侧耳菌丝体生长的培养基适宜pH值为5.0～6.5,葡萄糖、蔗糖、乳糖和纤维素是菌核侧耳菌丝体生长的适用碳源;黄豆、麦麸、酵母膏和蛋白胨等为适宜氮源;其中以黄豆浆作为氮源,蔗糖作为碳源,初始pH5.0为最佳条件组合。     

Correlations of PDE-4 inhibition between enzymes of smooth muscle and inflammatory cell sources

The sensitivities of PDE-4 enzymes from smooth muscle and inflammatory cell sources from different species to a range of structurally diverse compounds were compared. All inflammatory cell PDE-4 sources displayed good crosscorrelations in their sensitivity to inhibition by these compounds. Similarly, PDE-4 enzymes from smooth muscle sources were well-correlated; however, there was no crosscorrelation between PDE-4 from smooth muscle sources and those of inflammatory cell sources, possibly reflecting differences in subcellular location of enzymes as well as subtype expression. The present study concludes that PDE-4 preparations from smooth muscle sources as well as those from inflammatory cell sources may be used to model the potential smooth muscle cell relaxing properties and anti-inflammatory properties of a compound in relation to human asthma.     

Synthesis of oxaloacetate in Bacillus subtilis mutants lacking the 2-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase enzymatic complex.

Bacillus subtilis mutants deficient in the 2-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase enzymatic complex required aspartate for growth at wild-type rates on carbon sources for which synthesis of the degradative enzymes is sensitive to catabolite repression (e.g., poor carbon sources), but did not require aspartate for growth on carbon sources which exert catabolite repression (e.g., good carbon sources). Measurement of metabolite pools in a mutant lacking the 2-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase active complex showed that the aspartate requirement for growth on poor carbon sources resulted from a deficiency in intracellular oxaloacetate pools even through pyruvate carboxylase was present at levels corresponding to those in wild-type cells. The oxaloacetate deficiency most likely resulted from the inability of the mutant to regenerate oxaloacetate from citrate due to the enzymatic block in the tricarboxylic acid cycle. Mutants in the enzymes of the dicarboxylic acid half of the citric acid cycle similarly required aspartate for wild-type growth in minimal medium. These results suggested that the complete turning of the tricarboxylic acid cycle is involved in the maintainance of oxaloacetate levels in B. subtilis. The ability of the mutants lacking the 2-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase enzymatic complex to grow at wild-type rates on media containing good carbon sources in the absence of exogenous aspartate is not understood.     

利用稳定氢氧同位素定量区分白刺水分来源的方法比较

水是影响植物分布的重要生态因子之一,对植物水源的研究有助于在全球变化背景下了解植物的时空分布格局.根据同位素质量守恒,利用稳定氢氧同位素可以确定植物水分来源,相关的方法也不断改进.利用三源线性混合模型、多源线性混合模型、吸水深度模型以及动态模型分别对格尔木白刺(Nitraria Tangutorum)的水分来源进行了对比研究,发现格尔木白刺主要吸收利用50-100 cm处的土壤水及地下水.在研究方法上,各模型都有自己的应用范围和局限:三源线性混合模型一般只能在植物吸收的水分来源不超过3个的情况下运行;多源线性混合模型弥补了三源线性混合模型的不足,可以同时比较多种来源水各自对白刺的贡献率及贡献范围;吸水深度模型弥补了混合模型中不能计算白刺对土壤水的平均吸水深度的缺陷;动态模型则会为未来降水格局变化对植物的时空分布的影响研究起很大作用.针对不同的适用范围,模型的选择及综合应用会更广泛.但是,该技术还存在一些不足,需要结合测定土水势,富氘水的示踪等方法来弥补.