Distinctive features of dietary phosphate supply.

Dietary phosphate has profound effects on growth and renal handling of the compound. On the basis of changes in growth rate and food intake, after alterations in phosphate load, our laboratory previously suggested that these effects are mediated by intestinal signals (Landsman A, Lichtstein D, Bacaner M, and Ilani A. Br J Nutr 86: 217-223, 2001). The aim of this study was to further evaluate the role of dietary phosphate on food intake and appetite and specific organ growth, and to test for the presence of a serum factor that may affect renal phosphate handling in phosphate-resupplied rats. The experimental design was based on a comparison between groups of rats receiving identical low-phosphate diets but drinking water containing either phosphate or chloride. We show that 1) changes in food intake after alterations in phosphate load occurred in parallel with variations in digestive system distention, suggesting that dietary phosphate has also a direct effect on appetite; 2) dietary phosphate-dependent growth has a specific effect on the growth of liver and epididymal fat; and 3) serum of rats supplied with phosphate contains a factor that inhibits sodium-dependent phosphate transport in a model of renal proximal tubule cells. Collectively, these observations are in accord with the hypothesis that factor(s) emanating from the digestive system in response to dietary phosphate load may be involved in growth, appetite and renal handling of phosphate.     

Transverse myelitis following measles vaccination in a rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta)

A 16-year-old rhesus macaque presented with progressive, ascending quadriparesis following measles vaccination. He was diagnosed with transverse myelitis following MRI, gross necropsy, and histopathology. This is the first report of transverse myelitis in a rhesus macaque following measles vaccination.     

Carbon and Electron Flow in Mud and Sandflat Intertidal Sediments at Delaware Inlet, Nelson, New Zealand

An investigation of carbon and electron flow in mud and sandflat intertidal sediments showed that the terminal electron acceptor was principally sulfate and that the carbon flow was mainly to CO₂. Studies with thin layers of sediment exposed to H₂ showed that methane production accounted for virtually none of the H₂ utilized, whereas sulfate reduction accounted for a major proportion of the gas uptake. At all sampling sites except one (site B7), rates of methanogenesis were low but sulfate concentrations in the interstitial water were high (>18 mM). At site B7, the sulfate concentrations declined with depth from 32 mM at 2 cm to <1 mM at 10 cm or below, and active methanogenesis occurred in the low-sulfate zone. Sulfate-reducing activity at this site initially decreased and then increased with depth so that elevated rates occurred in both the active and nonactive methanogenic zones. The respiratory index (RI) [RI = ¹⁴CO₂/(¹⁴CO₂ + ¹⁴CH₄)] for [2-¹⁴C]acetate catabolism at site B7 ranged from 0.98 to 0.2 in the depth range of 2 to 14 cm. Addition of sulfate to sediment from the low-sulfate zone resulted in an increase in RI and a decrease in methanogenesis. At all other sites examined, RI ranged from 0.97 to 0.99 and was constant with depth. The results suggested that although methanogenesis was inhibited by sulfate (presumably through the activity of sulfate-reducing bacteria), it was not always limited by sulfate reduction.     

High nucleotide polymorphism and rapid decay of linkage disequilibrium in wild populations of Caenorhabditis remanei

The common ancestor of the self-fertilizing nematodes Caenorhabditis elegans and C. briggsae must have reproduced by obligate outcrossing, like most species in this genus. However, we have only a limited understanding about how genetic variation is patterned in such male-female (gonochoristic) Caenorhabditis species. Here, we report results from surveying nucleotide variation of six nuclear loci in a broad geographic sample of wild isolates of the gonochoristic C. remanei. We find high levels of diversity in this species, with silent-site diversity averaging 4.7%, implying an effective population size close to 1 million. Additionally, the pattern of polymorphisms reveals little evidence for population structure or deviation from neutral expectations, suggesting that the sampled C. remanei populations approximate panmixis and demographic equilibrium. Combined with the observation that linkage disequilibrium between pairs of polymorphic sites decays rapidly with distance, this suggests that C. remanei will provide an excellent system for identifying the genetic targets of natural selection from deviant patterns of polymorphism and linkage disequilibrium. The patterns revealed in this obligately outcrossing species may provide a useful model of the evolutionary circumstances in C. elegans' gonochoristic progenitor. This will be especially important if self-fertilization evolved recently in C. elegans history, because most of the evolutionary time separating C. elegans from its known relatives would have occurred in a state of obligate outcrossing.     

Dental eruption in afrotherian mammals

Background  

Afrotheria comprises a newly recognized clade of mammals with strong molecular evidence for its monophyly. In contrast, morphological data uniting its diverse constituents, including elephants, sea cows, hyraxes, aardvarks, sengis, tenrecs and golden moles, have been difficult to identify. Here, we suggest relatively late eruption of the permanent dentition as a shared characteristic of afrotherian mammals. This characteristic and other features (such as vertebral anomalies and testicondy) recall the phenotype of a human genetic pathology (cleidocranial dysplasia), correlations with which have not been explored previously in the context of character evolution within the recently established phylogeny of living mammalian clades.