Hemolin expression in the silk glands of Galleria mellonella in response to bacterial challenge and prior to cell disintegration

Hemolin, a member of the immunoglobulin protein superfamily, functions in Lepidoptera as an opsonin in defence against potential pathogens and seems to play a role in tissue morphogenesis. We show that hemolin gene is expressed in several organs of Galleria mellonella larvae, including the nervous system and the silk glands. The expression in the silk glands of the wandering larvae and their isolated abdomens is enhanced within 6 h after an injection of bacteria, lipopolysaccharides, or peptidoglycans. The magnitude of silk gland response to bacterial challenge is similar to that seen in the fat body. A profound rise of hemolin expression without bacterial inoculation occurs in the silk glands of isolated abdomens when they are induced to pupate by a topical application of 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E). The induction of pupation is associated with silk gland programming for disintegration by apoptosis and phagocytosis. Administration of a juvenile hormone agonist prevents pupation and abolishes the stimulatory 20E effect on the hemolin expression. Hemolin protein can be immunodetected in the silk glands as well as in the spun-out cocoon silk. The results suggest that silk glands are a component of the insect immune system and that hemolin may mark the apoptic cells for the elimination by hemocytes.     

Effects of integrated use of organic and inorganic nutrient sources with effective microorganisms (EM) on seed cotton yield in Pakistan

A field experiment was conducted to determine the effects of integrated use of organic and inorganic nutrient sources with effective microorganisms on growth and yield of cotton. Treatments included: control; organic materials (OM); effective microorganisms (EM); OM+EM; mineral NPK (170:85:60 kg); 1/2 mineral NPK+EM; 1/2 mineral NPK+OM+EM and mineral NPK+OM+EM. OM and EM alone did not increase the yield and yield attributing components significantly but integrated use of both resulted in a 44% increase over control. Application of NPK in combination with OM and EM resulted in the highest seed cotton yield (2470 kg ha-1). Integrated use of OM+EM with 1/2 mineral NPK yielded 2091 kg ha-1, similar to the yield (2165 kg ha-1) obtained from full recommended NPK, indicating that this combination can substitute for 85 kg N ha-1. Combination of both N sources with EM also increased the concentrations of NPK in plants. Economic analysis suggested the use of 1/2 mineral NPK with EM+OM saves the mineral N fertilizer by almost 50% compared to a system with only mineral NPK application. This study indicated that application of EM increased the efficiency of both organic and mineral nutrient sources but alone was ineffective in increasing yield.     

MPDB 1.0: a medicinal plant database of Bangladesh

The term of medicinal plants include a various types of plants used in herbalism with medicinal activities. These plants are considered as rich resources of ingredients which can be used as complementary and alternative medicines and, also in drug developments and synthesis. In addition, some plants regarded as valuable origin of nutrition. Thus, all these plants are recommended as therapeutic agents. Information related to medicinal plants and herbal drugs accumulated over the ages are scattered and unstructured which make it prudent to develop a curated database for medicinal plants. MPDB 1.0 database is dedicated to provide the first window to find the plants around Bangladesh claimed to have medicinal and/or nutritive values by accumulating data from the published literatures. This database contains 406 medicinal plants with their corresponding scientific, family and local names as well as utilized parts for treatment from different districts of Bangladesh. Information regarding ailments is available for 353 plants. In addition, we have found active compounds for 78 plants with their corresponding PubMed ID.

Availability

www.medicinalplantbd.net     

Physiological parameters of salt tolerance during germination and seedling growth of Sorghum bicolor cultivars of the same subtropical origin

Salt-tolerant ecotypes (or cultivars, varieties, etc.) of different plant species have been long known to evolve in nature. In the past few years, plant breeders have made significant achievements regarding salt tolerance in a number of potential crops using artificial selection. The aim of this work was to evaluate and screening of the natural sea water (Red sea) tolerance of 7 Saudi local (Baish, Jazan; 17.388086, 42.524070) cultivars of sorghum (Sorghumbicolor L., Moench; Poaceae) with respect to the performance of some physiological parameters such as germination, shoot and root development which could be recommended to local farmers and plant breeders. The shoot growth of the studied sorghum cultivars were significantly affected by the exposure to sea water. Root growth was different among cultivars even when treated with normal water. The cultivar C3 (mix white and red seeds) was observed as more salt tolerant and cultivar C4 (whitish seeds) was more salt sensitive on the basis of the germination-ability and shoot development. Cultivar C3 was also observed to produce better seeds compared with the other cultivars. Results of this experiment can be useful to the local sorghum growing farmers or as a genetic resource for the development of sorghum cultivars with improved germination under salt stress.     

Thermodynamic heuristics with case-based reasoning: combined insights for RNA pseudoknot secondary structure

The secondary structure of RNA pseudoknots has been extensively inferred and scrutinized by computational approaches. Experimental methods for determining RNA structure are time consuming and tedious; therefore, predictive computational approaches are required. Predicting the most accurate and energy-stable pseudoknot RNA secondary structure has been proven to be an NP-hard problem. In this paper, a new RNA folding approach, termed MSeeker, is presented; it includes KnotSeeker (a heuristic method) and Mfold (a thermodynamic algorithm). The global optimization of this thermodynamic heuristic approach was further enhanced by using a case-based reasoning technique as a local optimization method. MSeeker is a proposed algorithm for predicting RNA pseudoknot structure from individual sequences, especially long ones. This research demonstrates that MSeeker improves the sensitivity and specificity of existing RNA pseudoknot structure predictions. The performance and structural results from this proposed method were evaluated against seven other state-of-the-art pseudoknot prediction methods. The MSeeker method had better sensitivity than the DotKnot, FlexStem, HotKnots, pknotsRG, ILM, NUPACK and pknotsRE methods, with 79% of the predicted pseudoknot base-pairs being correct.     

Identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) for oil and protein contents and their relationships with other seed quality traits in Brassica juncea

A detailed RFLP-genomic map was used to study the genetics of oil, seed and meal protein and sum of oil and seed/meal protein contents in a recombinant doubled-haploid population developed by crossing black- and yellow-seeded Brassica juncea lines. Two yellow seed color genes (SC-B4, SC-A6) and one QTL for erucic acid content (E_1b) showed pleiotropic effect for oil, protein and sum of oil and seed/meal protein contents. Six (O-A1, O-A6, O-A9, O-B3, O-B4, O-B5) and five (SP-A1, SP-A9, SP-B4, SP-B6, SP-C) QTLs were significant for oil and seed protein contents, respectively. Tight linkage of three of these QTLs (SP-A1, SP-A9, SP-B4, O-A1, O-A9, O-B4), with opposite effects, poses challenge to the plant breeders for simultaneous improvement of negatively correlated (r = −0.7**) oil and seed protein contents. However, one QTL for oil content (O-B3) and two for seed protein content (SP-B6, SP-C) were found to be unlinked, which offer the possibility for simultaneous improvement of these two traits. QTLs significant for meal protein (MP-A1, MP-A6, MP-A9, MP-B5, MP-B6) were significant at least for oil, seed protein or sum of oil and seed/meal protein contents (T-A6, T-A7, T-B4, T-B5). Sum of oil and seed protein contents and sum of oil and meal protein contents had a perfect correlation, as well as same epistatic interactions and QTLs with similar additive effect. This indicates that protein in seed or meal has practically the same meaning for breeding purposes. Epistatic interactions were significant for the quality traits, and their linkage reflected association among the traits.     

Visual-Olfactory Integration in the Human Disease Vector Mosquito Aedes aegypti

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Kinetic analysis of amyloid protofibril dissociation and volumetric properties of the transition state

We present here the first detailed kinetic analysis of the dissociation reaction of amyloid protofibrils by utilizing pressure as an accelerator of the reaction. The experiment is carried out on an excessively diluted typical protofibril solution formed from an intrinsically denatured disulfide-deficient variant of hen lysozyme with Trp fluorescence as the reporter in the pressure range 3-400 MPa. From the analysis of the time-dependent fluorescence decay and the length distribution of the protofibrils measured on atomic force microscopy, we conclude that the protofibril grows or decays by attachment or detachment of a monomer at one end of the protofibril with a monomer dissociation rate independent of the length of the fibril. Furthermore, we find that the dissociation reaction is strongly dependent on pressure, characterized with a negative activation volume DeltaV(odouble dagger) = -50.5 +/- 1.60 ml mol(-1) at 0.1 MPa and with a negative activation compressibility Deltakappa(double dagger) = -0.013 +/- 0.001 ml mol(-1) bar(-1) or -0.9 x 10(-6) ml g(-1) bar(-1). These results indicate that the protofibril is a highly compressible high-volume state, but that it becomes less compressible and less voluminous in the transition state, most probably due to partial hydration of the existing voids. The system eventually reaches the lowest-volume state with full hydration of the monomer in the dissociated state.     

Cell cycle inhibitor, p19INK4d, promotes cell survival and decreases chromosomal aberrations after genotoxic insult due to enhanced DNA repair

Genome integrity and cell proliferation and survival are regulated by an intricate network of pathways that includes cell cycle checkpoints, DNA repair and recombination, and programmed cell death. It makes sense that there should be a coordinated regulation of these different processes, but the components of such mechanisms remain unknown. In this report, we demonstrate that p19INK4d expression enhances cell survival under genotoxic conditions. By using p19INK4d-overexpressing clones, we demonstrated that p19INK4d expression correlates with the cellular resistance to UV treatment with increased DNA repair activity against UV-induced lesions. On the contrary, cells transfected with p19INK4d antisense cDNA show reduced ability to repair DNA damage and increased sensitivity to genotoxic insult when compared with their p19INK4d-overexpressing counterparts. Consistent with these findings, our studies also show that p19INK4d-overexpressing cells present not only a minor accumulation of UV-induced chromosomal aberrations but a lower frequency of spontaneous chromosome abnormalities than p19INK4d-antisense cells. Lastly, we suggest that p19INK4d effects are dissociated from its role as CDK4/6 inhibitor. The results presented herein support a crucial role for p19INK4d in regulating genomic stability and overall cell viability under conditions of genotoxic stress. We propose that p19INK4d would belong to a protein network that would integrate DNA repair, apoptotic and checkpoint mechanisms in order to maintain the genomic integrity.     

The SUVR4 histone lysine methyltransferase binds ubiquitin and converts H3K9me1 to H3K9me3 on transposon chromatin in Arabidopsis

Chromatin structure and gene expression are regulated by posttranslational modifications (PTMs) on the N-terminal tails of histones. Mono-, di-, or trimethylation of lysine residues by histone lysine methyltransferases (HKMTases) can have activating or repressive functions depending on the position and context of the modified lysine. In Arabidopsis, trimethylation of lysine 9 on histone H3 (H3K9me3) is mainly associated with euchromatin and transcribed genes, although low levels of this mark are also detected at transposons and repeat sequences. Besides the evolutionarily conserved SET domain which is responsible for enzyme activity, most HKMTases also contain additional domains which enable them to respond to other PTMs or cellular signals. Here we show that the N-terminal WIYLD domain of the Arabidopsis SUVR4 HKMTase binds ubiquitin and that the SUVR4 product specificity shifts from di- to trimethylation in the presence of free ubiquitin, enabling conversion of H3K9me1 to H3K9me3 in vitro. Chromatin immunoprecipitation and immunocytological analysis showed that SUVR4 in vivo specifically converts H3K9me1 to H3K9me3 at transposons and pseudogenes and has a locus-specific repressive effect on the expression of such elements. Bisulfite sequencing indicates that this repression involves both DNA methylation-dependent and -independent mechanisms. Transcribed genes with high endogenous levels of H3K4me3, H3K9me3, and H2Bub1, but low H3K9me1, are generally unaffected by SUVR4 activity. Our results imply that SUVR4 is involved in the epigenetic defense mechanism by trimethylating H3K9 to suppress potentially harmful transposon activity.