Ants adjust their pheromone deposition to a changing environment and their probability of making errors

Animals must contend with an ever-changing environment. Social animals, especially eusocial insects such as ants and bees, rely heavily on communication for their success. However, in a changing environment, communicated information can become rapidly outdated. This is a particular problem for pheromone trail using ants, as once deposited pheromones cannot be removed. Here, we study the response of ant foragers to an environmental change. Ants were trained to one feeder location, and the feeder was then moved to a different location. We found that ants responded to an environmental change by strongly upregulating pheromone deposition immediately after experiencing the change. This may help maintain the colony''s foraging flexibility, and allow multiple food locations to be exploited simultaneously. Our treatment also caused uncertainty in the foragers, by making their memories less reliable. Ants which had made an error but eventually found the food source upregulated pheromone deposition when returning to the nest. Intriguingly, ants on their way towards the food source downregulated pheromone deposition if they were going to make an error. This may suggest that individual ants can measure the reliability of their own memories and respond appropriately.     

Biotransformation of 2,2-Dimethyl-1,3-Propanediol to 3-Hydroxypivalic Acid by Acetobacter Acetii DSMZ3508 and Related Bacteria

Acetobacter acetii DSMZ3508 and related bacteria converted 2,2-dimethyl-1,3-propanediol into 3-hydroxypivalic acid (2,2-dimethyl-3-hydroxypropionic acid; 3HP) during submerged cultivation in mineral salt medium. The maximum yield of 3-hydroxypivalic acid was 24.4% of the fed substrate after 18 days. Cultivation parameters, as pH, cell density, optimal substrate concentration, and oxygen supply for the bioconversion process were determined.     

The oncolytic peptide LTX-315 triggers necrotic cell death

The oncolytic peptide LTX-315 has been designed for killing human cancer cells and turned out to stimulate anti-cancer immune responses when locally injected into tumors established in immunocompetent mice. Here, we investigated the question whether LTX-315 induces apoptosis or necrosis. Transmission electron microscopy or morphometric analysis of chromatin-stained tumor cells revealed that LTX-315 failed to induce apoptotic nuclear condensation and rather induced a necrotic phenotype. Accordingly, LTX-315 failed to stimulate the activation of caspase-3, and inhibition of caspases by means of Z-VAD-fmk was unable to reduce cell killing by LTX-315. In addition, 2 prominent inhibitors of regulated necrosis (necroptosis), namely, necrostatin-1 and cycosporin A, failed to reduce LTX-315-induced cell death. In conclusion, it appears that LTX-315 triggers unregulated necrosis, which may contribute to its pro-inflammatory and pro-immune effects.     

Oat mesophyll protoplasts: their response to various feeder cultures

Oat (Avena sativa L.) mesophyll protoplasts were recently demonstrated to be capable of dedifferentiation, repeated divisions, and colony formation. Since the development of oat mesophyll protoplasts is decisively influenced by the nature of the used feeder culture (species, variety and concentration), we conducted a systematic study of this parameter. Generally, graminaceous feeders promoted protoplast proliferation, while dicot species repressed protoplast divisions. The beneficial effect of those feeders that promote divisions was counterbalanced by a factor that causes necrosis. The correct balance between promotion of divisions or necrosis depended on the nature of the feeder and its plating density.     

A Candidate Subspecies Discrimination System Involving a Vomeronasal Receptor Gene with Different Alleles Fixed in M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus

Assortative mating, a potentially efficient prezygotic reproductive barrier, may prevent loss of genetic potential by avoiding the production of unfit hybrids (i.e., because of hybrid infertility or hybrid breakdown) that occur at regions of secondary contact between incipient species. In the case of the mouse hybrid zone, where two subspecies of Mus musculus (M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus) meet and exchange genes to a limited extent, assortative mating requires a means of subspecies recognition. We based the work reported here on the hypothesis that, if there is a pheromone sufficiently diverged between M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus to mediate subspecies recognition, then that process must also require a specific receptor(s), also sufficiently diverged between the subspecies, to receive the signal and elicit an assortative mating response. We studied the mouse V1R genes, which encode a large family of receptors in the vomeronasal organ (VNO), by screening Perlegen SNP data and identified one, Vmn1r67, with 24 fixed SNP differences most of which (15/24) are nonsynonymous nucleotide substitutions between M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus. We observed substantial linkage disequilibrium (LD) between Vmn1r67 and Abpa27, a mouse salivary androgen-binding protein gene that encodes a proteinaceous pheromone (ABP) capable of mediating assortative mating, perhaps in conjunction with its bound small lipophilic ligand. The LD we observed is likely a case of association rather than residual physical linkage from a very recent selective sweep, because an intervening gene, Vmn1r71, shows significant intra(sub)specific polymorphism but no inter(sub)specific divergence in its nucleotide sequence. We discuss alternative explanations of these observations, for example that Abpa27 and Vmn1r67 are coevolving as signal and receptor to reinforce subspecies hybridization barriers or that the unusually divergent Vmn1r67 allele was not a product of fast positive selection, but was derived from an introgressed allele, possibly from Mus spretus.     

Dynamic and steady state characteristics of the rabbit gastrocnemius muscle determined in series measurements

1. Within the range of the given conditions of measuring static and dynamic properties of the rabbit gastrocnemius muscle the following results were obtained: a) the dependence of the maxima of isotonic shortening upon the relative length of the muscle at constant load is linear; b) the parameters of the non-linear dependence of the passive elastic force of the muscle upon its relative length (measured in series) were identified using asymptotic regression; c) the time course of isotonic contractions (at an interval from 0 to 0.3 s after the beginning of stimulation) could be satisfactorily approximated by responses of a linear system to a step-function; d) the time course of isometric contractions (at an interval from 0 to 0.3 s after the beginning of stimulation) could be closely approximated by responses of a linear system to a step-function. 2. The time constants of isotonic and isometric contractions were determined as the parameters of the corresponding linear systems. 3. The maximum rates of the isometric and isotonic contractions were determined as maxima of the first derivatives of the responses of the corresponding models. 4. The experimental set-up made it possible to compare the values of the parameters concomitantly followed at various muscle lengths and at various loads.     

SuperSAGE analysis of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Nicotiana attenuata</Emphasis> transcriptome after fatty acid-amino acid elicitation (FAC): identification of early mediators of insect responses

Background  

Plants trigger and tailor defense responses after perception of the oral secretions (OS) of attacking specialist lepidopteran larvae. Fatty acid-amino acid conjugates (FACs) in the OS of the Manduca sexta larvae are necessary and sufficient to elicit the herbivory-specific responses in Nicotiana attenuata, an annual wild tobacco species. How FACs are perceived and activate signal transduction mechanisms is unknown.     

Influence of nitrate and nitrite on electrolyte transport by the rat small and large intestine

1. The influence of nitrate and nitrite on net absorption of electrolytes (Na+, K+, Cl-) and water from ligated loops was studied at various intestinal sites in rats. 2. Nitrate strikingly reduced Cl- absorption in rat proximal and distal colon, whereas Na+ absorption was reduced only moderately. Nitrite also reduced Cl- absorption in the colon. 3. Nitrate showed no significant effect on electrolyte absorption in the small intestine. 4. The results suggest that Cl-/HCO3- on exchange is the major route of Cl- absorption in the colon, whereas this mechanism seems not to be of importance for Cl- absorption by the small intestine.