Tropical medicine for the 21st century.

The specialty of tropical medicine originated from the needs of the colonial era and is removed from many of the health care requirements of tropical countries today. Tropical medicine concentrates on parasitic diseases of warm climates, although other infections and diseases related to poverty rather than climate dominate medicine in developing countries challenged by population pressure, civil strife, and migration. In the new century, tropical medicine would best be absorbed into the specialty of infectious diseases, which should incorporate parasitic diseases, travel medicine, and sexually transmitted diseases. Pressing questions for health care and research in developing countries concern the provision of appropriate services for problems such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, and injuries. The question of how to provide appropriate clinical care in resource poor settings for the major causes of morbidity and premature mortality has been neglected by donors, academic institutions, and traditional tropical medicine.     

Biotechnology in the 21st century

Although the future is unpredictable, it is highly likely that biotechnology will play a much more visible and significant role in the 21st century than it did in the 20th century. The number and kinds of drugs provided by biotechnology will expand markedly and biotechnology will stand at the center of the oncoming revolution in bioinformatics.     

21世纪初农业生态系统健康研究方向

农业生态系统健康是指农业生态系统免受发生“失调综合症”,处理胁迫的状态和满足持续生产农产品的能力,目前,农业生态系统健康研究范围主要涉及农业生态系统健康评价方法,土壤质量和水质与农业生态系统健康的联系,农业生态系统健康与人类健康的关系,害虫生态管理对农业生态系统健康的贡献,杂草综合管理在农业生态系统健康中的作用,从生态病理学到农业生态系统健康,线虫群落作为农业生态系统健康指示生物的研究,转基因作物对农业生态系统健康的生态影响评价,农业投入政策对农业生态系统健康的影响,景观生态学在农业生态系统健康评价中的应用,农业生态系统健康与绿色食品开发等,首先论述了农业生态系统健康研究的现状,介绍了农业生态系统健康研究实例-土壤健康的生物指标,最后提出了今后农业生态系统健康的研究方向,为保障农产品安全和增进人类健康提供依据。     

Comparative endocrinology in the 21st century

Hormones coordinate developmental, physiological, and behavioral processes within and between all living organisms. They orchestrate and shape organogenesis from early in development, regulate the acquisition, assimilation, and utilization of nutrients to support growth and metabolism, control gamete production and sexual behavior, mediate organismal responses to environmental change, and allow for communication of information between organisms. Genes that code for hormones; the enzymes that synthesize, metabolize, and transport hormones; and hormone receptors are important targets for natural selection, and variation in their expression and function is a major driving force for the evolution of morphology and life history. Hormones coordinate physiology and behavior of populations of organisms, and thus play key roles in determining the structure of populations, communities, and ecosystems. The field of endocrinology is concerned with the study of hormones and their actions. This field is rooted in the comparative study of hormones in diverse species, which has provided the foundation for the modern fields of evolutionary, environmental, and biomedical endocrinology. Comparative endocrinologists work at the cutting edge of the life sciences. They identify new hormones, hormone receptors and mechanisms of hormone action applicable to diverse species, including humans; study the impact of habitat destruction, pollution, and climatic change on populations of organisms; establish novel model systems for studying hormones and their functions; and develop new genetic strains and husbandry practices for efficient production of animal protein. While the model system approach has dominated biomedical research in recent years, and has provided extraordinary insight into many basic cellular and molecular processes, this approach is limited to investigating a small minority of organisms. Animals exhibit tremendous diversity in form and function, life-history strategies, and responses to the environment. A major challenge for life scientists in the 21st century is to understand how a changing environment impacts all life on earth. A full understanding of the capabilities of organisms to respond to environmental variation, and the resilience of organisms challenged by environmental changes and extremes, is necessary for understanding the impact of pollution and climatic change on the viability of populations. Comparative endocrinologists have a key role to play in these efforts.     

Haldane's rule in the 21st century

Haldane's Rule (HR), which states that 'when in the offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous (heterogametic) sex', is one of the most general patterns in speciation biology. We review the literature of the past 15 years and find that among the ～85 new studies, many consider taxa that traditionally have not been the focus for HR investigations. The new studies increased to nine, the number of 'phylogenetically independent' groups that comply with HR. They continue to support the dominance and faster-male theories as explanations for HR, although due to increased reliance on indirect data (from, for example, differential introgression of cytoplasmic versus chromosomal loci in natural hybrid zones) unambiguous novel results are rare. We further highlight how research on organisms with sex determination systems different from those traditionally considered may lead to more insight in the underlying causes of HR. In particular, haplodiploid organisms provide opportunities for testing specific predictions of the dominance and faster X chromosome theory, and we present new data that show that the faster-male component of HR is supported in hermaphrodites, suggesting that genes involved in male function may evolve faster than those expressed in the female function.     

Crop improvement in the 21st century

Crop yields increased dramatically in the 20th century as recorded on Broadbalk or in world averages. The vast majority of that increase has occurred since the last world war and has been powered by changes in the genetic potential of the crop and in the way in which it has been managed. Nevertheless, the challenge to feed a world population that is likely to rise to 8 billion is formidable, particularly since recent analyses suggest that the rate of increase in yields of several crops may have dropped over the last decade. What are the opportunities to meet this challenge and to continue to improve the yields of our crops? Improvements in agronomy are likely to be more concerned with efficiency and elegance rather than in major breakthroughs. More sophisticated crop protection chemicals designed on the basis of vastly increased screening potentials and (at last?) possibilities of rational design will be supplemented by a battery of decision support systems to aid management choices which can be precisely implemented. Genetic improvement is the area in which to-look for the major breakthroughs. The broad potential of recombinant DNA technology will provide the possibility of both molecular analyses of crop productivity and ways in which it may be possible to improve that productivity. The goal of analysis may be approached in three ways: starting at the beginning by generating complete sequences of the plant genome; starting at the end by genetic analysis of phenotypes using genetic marker technology; or, starting in the middle, by metabolic analysis. Improvements may be obtained by re-assorting what has been achieved through enhanced breeding technologies, by randomly induced change, and by generation of totally new possibilities through biochemical engineering. Examples of all approaches will be given. The onset of genomics will provide massive amounts of information, but the success will depend on using that to improve crop phenotypes. The ability to meet the challenges of the 21st century will depend on the ability to close that 'phenotype gap'.     

Avian genomics in the 21st century

The chicken has long been an important model organism for developmental biology, as well as a major source of protein with billions of birds used in meat and egg production each year. Chicken genomics has been transformed in recent years, with the characterisation of large EST collections and most recently with the assembly of the chicken genome sequence. As the first livestock genome to be fully sequenced it leads the way for others to follow--with zebra finch later this year. The genome sequence and the availability of three million genetic polymorphisms are expected to aid the identification of genes that control traits of importance in poultry. As the first bird genome to be sequenced it is a model for the remaining 9,600 species thought to exist today. Many of the features of avian biology and organisation of the chicken genome make it an ideal model organism for phylogenetics and embryology, along with applications in agriculture and medicine. The availability of new tools such as whole-genome gene expression arrays and SNP panels, coupled with information resources on the genes and proteins are likely to enhance this position.     

Rotamer libraries in the 21st century

Rotamer libraries are widely used in protein structure prediction, protein design, and structure refinement. As the size of the structure data base has increased rapidly in recent years, it has become possible to derive well-refined rotamer libraries using strict criteria for data inclusion and for studying dependence of rotamer populations and dihedral angles on local structural features.     

Interdisciplinary sciences in the 21st century

With the advance of genome projects the search for the order of cellular processes has become a realistic goal. Yet this order is hidden behind a screen of data, which obscures the actual connectivity of genes and proteins. In order to expose the true nature of these networks it becomes necessary to apply in silico analysis based on certain parallels between biological and complex technical systems. These efforts far exceed current notions of computational biology.     

Marine biological collections in the 21st century

From the time of Linnaeus forward, it has been appreciated that collections, not least marine biological collections, are fundamental to the understanding of the biodiversity of life on earth, especially when they contain type specimens which define individual species. Historical collections are particularly rich in types and also represent a model of the biodiversity of marine life at the time of the collection, often centuries ago. The taxonomic and systematic importance of collections is well appreciated, as is the significance of time series of data in this period of anthropogenic environmental change. The application of new techniques increases the value of collected material even further, for example, molecular biology techniques allowing the recognition of new (often cryptic) taxa and their distributions, and stable isotope analyses releasing information on past and present ontogenies, geographical distributions and diets. Moreover the new era of information technology with associated digitization enables the release of the information stored in the collections to the scientists of the world.