Seasonal and temporal dynamics of arbuscular mycorrhizal and dark septate endophytic fungi in a tallgrass prairie ecosystem are minimally affected by nitrogen enrichment

Root colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM) and dark septate endophytic (DSE) fungi in nitrogen amended and unamended mixed tallgrass prairie communities were analyzed monthly over two growing seasons. Roots were stained with Trypan blue and Sudan IV and fungal structures quantified using the modified magnified intersections method. Root length colonized (RLC) by DSE exceeded AM colonization during early part of the growing season. Fungal colonization varied among the years and was greater in 2003 than in 2002. Seasonal variation among the months within a growing season was observed in 2002 but not in 2003 for both AM and DSE. AM fungi were most abundant during the peak growing season of dominant C₄ vegetation while DSE were most abundant during the early part of the growing season. Hyperparasitism of AM hyphal coils by melanized septate fungi was frequently observed and increased with AM coil frequency. Although nitrogen amendment had altered the plant community composition, it had no impact on the colonization by AM or DSE fungi.     

Thermodynamics of Cd2+ and Zn2+ binding by the phytochelatin (gamma-Glu-Cys)4-Gly and its precursor glutathione

Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) was used to study the binding of Cd(2+) and Zn(2+) by glutathione (GSH) and phytochelatins (PC(n)), the metal sequestering compounds in plants and algae. The results are compared with those obtained by differential pulse polarography (DPP) assisted by multivariate curve resolution with alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) and by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). ITC allows one to determine (i) the stoichiometries of the different complexes (and confirms those found by DPP/MCR-ALS and ESI-MS) and (ii) their binding and thermodynamic parameters. For Cd-PC(4), the sequential binding sites model with two identical sites yields the best fitting of ITC curves and confirms the presence of CdPC(4) and Cd(2)PC(4) complexes. For Zn-PC(4), exothermic formation of ZnPC(4) is reported. Conditional stability and formation constants for Cd-GSH and Zn-GSH are determined from the fitting of the proper model to experimental ITC curves. The effect of different buffers in the complexation processes shows the key role of the choice of the buffer in calorimetric study.     

Auditory ERPs to stimulus deviance in an awake chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes): towards hominid cognitive neurosciences

Background

For decades, the chimpanzee, phylogenetically closest to humans, has been analyzed intensively in comparative cognitive studies. Other than the accumulation of behavioral data, the neural basis for cognitive processing in the chimpanzee remains to be clarified. To increase our knowledge on the evolutionary and neural basis of human cognition, comparative neurophysiological studies exploring endogenous neural activities in the awake state are needed. However, to date, such studies have rarely been reported in non-human hominid species, due to the practical difficulties in conducting non-invasive measurements on awake individuals.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) of a fully awake chimpanzee, with reference to a well-documented component of human studies, namely mismatch negativity (MMN). In response to infrequent, deviant tones that were delivered in a uniform sound stream, a comparable ERP component could be detected as negative deflections in early latencies.

Conclusions/Significance

The present study reports the MMN-like component in a chimpanzee for the first time. In human studies, various ERP components, including MMN, are well-documented indicators of cognitive and neural processing. The results of the present study validate the use of non-invasive ERP measurements for studies on cognitive and neural processing in chimpanzees, and open the way for future studies comparing endogenous neural activities between humans and chimpanzees. This signifies an essential step in hominid cognitive neurosciences.     

Inhibition of the transforming growth factor beta (TGFbeta) pathway by interleukin-1beta is mediated through TGFbeta-activated kinase 1 phosphorylation of SMAD3

Transforming growth factor β is the prototype of a large family of secreted factors that regulate multiple biological processes. In the immune system, TGFβ acts as an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive molecule, whereas the cytokine interleukin (IL)-1β is a crucial mediator of inflammatory responses and induces proinflammatory genes and acute phase proteins. Here, we present evidence for the existence of a direct inhibitory interaction between the IL-1β and TGFβ signaling cascades that is not dependent on IL-1β–induced SMAD7 expression. IL-1β and its downstream mediator TAK1 inhibit SMAD3-mediated TGFβ target gene activation, whereas SMAD3 nuclear translocation and DNA binding in response to TGFβ are not affected. IL-1β transiently induces association between TAK1 and the MAD homology 2 domain of SMAD3, resulting in SMAD3 phosphorylation. Furthermore, IL-1β alleviates the inhibitory effect of TGFβ on in vitro hematopoietic myeloid colony formation. In conclusion, our data provide evidence for the existence of a direct inhibitory effect of the IL-1β-TAK1 pathway on SMAD3-mediated TGFβ signaling, resulting in reduced TGFβ target gene activation and restored proliferation of hematopoietic progenitors.     

Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis repressed by microglial paralysis

Although microglial activation occurs in inflammatory, degenerative and neoplastic central nervous system (CNS) disorders, its role in pathogenesis is unclear. We studied this question by generating CD11b-HSVTK transgenic mice, which express herpes simplex thymidine kinase in macrophages and microglia. Ganciclovir treatment of organotypic brain slice cultures derived from CD11b-HSVTK mice abolished microglial release of nitrite, proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Systemic ganciclovir administration to CD11b-HSVTK mice elicited hematopoietic toxicity, which was prevented by transfer of wild-type bone marrow. In bone marrow chimeras, ganciclovir blocked microglial activation in the facial nucleus upon axotomy and repressed the development of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. We conclude that microglial paralysis inhibits the development and maintenance of inflammatory CNS lesions. The microglial compartment thus provides a potential therapeutic target in inflammatory CNS disorders. These results validate CD11b-HSVTK mice as a tool to study the impact of microglial activation on CNS diseases in vivo.     

COX-2 inhibitors and genetic background reduce mammary tumorigenesis in cyclooxygenase-2 transgenic mice

Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) overexpression is a widely recognized feature of human breast cancer and inhibitors of the enzyme have antitumor effects in a subset of tumor settings. Previously, we demonstrated that direct overexpression of COX-2 under control of the mammary-specific MMTV promoter/enhancer, was itself oncogenic and lead to the induction of mammary tumors in multiparous, outbred CD1 mice. In the present study, we provide evidence that COX-2 dependent tumor progression can also be studied in FVB/N, an inbred strain widely used for analysis of breast cancer progression. In these mice, the human COX-2 transgene was strongly induced during pregnancy/lactation and mammary tumors developed after multiple pregnancies. However, crossing the COX-2 FVB/N mice with the C57BL6 strain resulted in loss of the mammary tumorigenic phenotype despite the fact that the human COX-2 gene was induced. Treatment of the COX-2 transgenic mice in the FVB/N strain with celecoxib (1600 ppm), a COX-2 selective inhibitor, resulted significant reduction in tumor size and multiplicity when compared to transgenic mice fed with control chow. SC-560 (20 ppm), a COX-1 selective inhibitor did not have significant effect on tumorigenesis. These studies suggest that FVB/N is a susceptible mouse strain well suited to the study of COX-2 mediated tumor progression and may provide a tool for the identification of interacting genes and therapeutic treatments for this clinically important target.     

Peptide sequence tags for fast database search in mass-spectrometry

Filtration techniques in the form of rapid elimination of candidate sequences while retaining the true one are key ingredients of database searches in genomics. Although SEQUEST and Mascot perform a conceptually similar task to the tool BLAST, the key algorithmic idea of BLAST (filtration) was never implemented in these tools. As a result MS/MS protein identification tools are becoming too time-consuming for many applications including search for post-translationally modified peptides. Moreover, matching millions of spectra against all known proteins will soon make these tools too slow in the same way that "genome vs genome" comparisons instantly made BLAST too slow. We describe the development of filters for MS/MS database searches that dramatically reduce the running time and effectively remove the bottlenecks in searching the huge space of protein modifications. Our approach, based on a probability model for determining the accuracy of sequence tags, achieves superior results compared to GutenTag, a popular tag generation algorithm. Our tag generating algorithm along with our de novo sequencing algorithm PepNovo can be accessed via the URL http://peptide.ucsd.edu/.