Human dorsal and ventral auditory streams subserve rehearsal-based and echoic processes during verbal working memory

To hear a sequence of words and repeat them requires sensory-motor processing and something more-temporary storage. We investigated neural mechanisms of verbal memory by using fMRI and a task designed to tease apart perceptually based ("echoic") memory from phonological-articulatory memory. Sets of two- or three-word pairs were presented bimodally, followed by a cue indicating from which modality (auditory or visual) items were to be retrieved and rehearsed over a delay. Although delay-period activation in the planum temporale (PT) was insensible to the source modality and showed sustained delay-period activity, the superior temporal gyrus (STG) activated more vigorously when the retrieved items had arrived to the auditory modality and showed transient delay-period activity. Functional connectivity analysis revealed two topographically distinct fronto-temporal circuits, with STG co-activating more strongly with ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and PT co-activating more strongly with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These argue for separate contributions of ventral and dorsal auditory streams in verbal working memory.     

Elucidating the role of the phenylacetic acid metabolic complex in the pathogenic activity of Rhizoctonia solani anastomosis group 3

The soil fungus Rhizoctonia solani produces phytotoxic phenylacetic acid (PAA) and hydroxy (OH-) and methoxy (MeO-) derivatives of PAA. However, limited information is available on the specific role that these compounds play in the development of Rhizoctonia disease symptoms and concentration(s) required to induce a host response. Reports that PAA inhibits the growth of R. solani conflict with the established ability of the fungus to produce and metabolize PAA. Experiments were conducted to clarify the role of the PAA metabolic complex in Rhizoctonia disease. In this study the concentration of PAA and derivatives required to induce tomato root necrosis and stem canker, in the absence of the fungus, and the concentration that inhibits mycelial growth of R. solani were determined. The effect of exogenous PAA and derivatives of PAA on tomato seedling growth also was investigated. Growth of tomato seedlings in medium containing 0.1-7.5 mM PAA and derivatives induced necrosis of up to 85% of root system. Canker development resulted from injection of tomato seedling stems with 7.5 mM PAA, 3-OH-PAA, or 3-MeO-PAA. PAA in the growth medium reduced R. solani biomass, with 50% reduction observed at 7.5 mM. PAA, and derivatives were quantified from the culture medium of 14 isolates of R. solani belonging to three distinct anastomosis groups by GC-MS. The quantities ranged from below the limit of detection to 678 nM, below the concentrations experimentally determined to be phytotoxic. Correlation analyses revealed that isolates of R. solani that produced high PAA and derivatives in vitro also caused high mortality on tomato seedlings. The results of this investigation add to the body of evidence that the PAA metabolic complex is involved in Rhizoctonia disease development but do not indicate that production of these compounds is the primary or the only determinant of pathogenicity.     

The ED strategy: how species-level surrogates indicate general biodiversity patterns through an 'environmental diversity' perspective

Biodiversity assessment requires that we use surrogate information in practice to indicate more general biodiversity patterns. ‘ED’ refers to a surrogates framework that can link species data and environmental information based on a robust relationship of compositional dissimilarities to ordinations that indicate underlying environmental variation. In an example analysis of species and environmental data from Panama, the environmental and spatial variables that correlate with an hybrid multi‐dimensional scaling ordination were able to explain 83% of the variation in the corresponding Bray Curtis dissimilarities. The assumptions of ED also provide the rationale for its use of p‐median optimization criteria to measure biodiversity patterns among sites in a region. M.B. Araújo, P.J. Densham & P.H. Williams (2004, Journal of Biogeography 31 , 1) have re‐named ED as ‘AD’ in their evaluation of the surrogacy value of ED based on European species data. Because lessons from previous work on ED options consequently may have been neglected, we use a corroboration framework to investigate the evidence and ‘background knowledge’ presented in their evaluations of ED. Investigations focus on the possibility that their weak corroboration of ED surrogacy (non‐significance of target species recovery relative to a null model) may be a consequence of Araújo et al.'s use of particular evidence and randomizations. We illustrate how their use of discrete ED, and not the recommended continuous ED, may have produced unnecessarily poor species recovery values. Further, possible poor optimization of their MDS ordinations, due to small numbers of simulations and/or low resolution of stress values appears to have provided a possible poor basis for ED application and, consequently, may have unnecessarily favoured non‐corroboration results. Consideration of Araújo et al.'s randomizations suggests that acknowledged sampling biases in the European data have not only artefactually promoted the non‐significance of ED recovery values, but also artefactually elevated the significance of competing species surrogates recovery values. We conclude that little credence should be given to the comparisons of ED and species‐based complementarity sets presented in M.B. Araújo, P.J. Densham & P.H. Williams (2004, Journal of Biogeography 31 , 1), unless the factors outlined here can be analysed for their effects on results. We discuss the lessons concerning surrogates evaluation emerging from our investigations, calling for better provision in such studies of the background information that can allow (i) critical examination of evidence (both at the initial corroboration and re‐evaluation stages), and (ii) greater synthesis of lessons about the pitfalls of different forms of evidence in different contexts.     

Modulation of the mitogenic response of an epidermal growth factor-dependent keratinocyte cell line by dexamethasone, insulin, and transforming growth factor-beta

The stimulation of DNA synthesis by epidermal growth factor (EGF) has been studied for a cell line having properties useful for investigating the mechanism of action of EGF in epithelial cell populations. These studies employ a mouse keratinocyte cell line (MK), isolated by Weissman and Aaronson (1983), which is stringently dependent on exogenous EGF for growth in serum containing medium. The studies reported here characterize the compliment of EGR receptors present on the surface of MK cells and demonstrate the regulatory influence of other hormones on the capacity of EGF to stimulate DNA synthesis. Up-regulated MK cells contain approximately 22,000 EGF receptors per cell, but when the cells are grown in the presence of EGF the receptor number is reduced to about 4,000. It is estimated that only a small number of high-affinity receptors (less than 500) are required for EGF-dependent cell proliferation. In contrast to its action in fibroblastic cells, dexamethasone is a strong inhibitor of EGF-stimulated DNA synthesis of MK cells. Insulin at high concentrations, or insulin-like growth factors I or II (IGF-I, IGF-II) at physiological concentrations, synergistically enhance the EGF response. Interestingly, insulin or IGF-I or II are also able to reverse most of the dexamethasone inhibition of DNA synthesis. Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) inhibits, in reversible manner, the EGF stimulation of DNA synthesis and this inhibition is not overcome by insulin. TGF-beta receptors have been measured in MK cells and Scatchard analysis indicates approximately 20,000 receptors per cell. None of the modulatory hormones (insulin, dexamethasone, TGF-beta) significantly altered 125I-EGF binding characteristics in MK cells, suggesting a point of action distal to 125I-EGF binding.     

The Genome Sequence DataBase: towards an integrated functional genomics resource.

During 1998 the primary focus of the Genome Sequence DataBase (GSDB; http://www.ncgr.org/gsdb ) located at the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) has been to improve data quality, improve data collections, and provide new methods and tools to access and analyze data. Data quality has been improved by extensive curation of certain data fields necessary for maintaining data collections and for using certain tools. Data quality has also been increased by improvements to the suite of programs that import data from the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (IC). The Sequence Tag Alignment and Consensus Knowledgebase (STACK), a database of human expressed gene sequences developed by the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI), became available within the last year, allowing public access to this valuable resource of expressed sequences. Data access was improved by the addition of the Sequence Viewer, a platform-independent graphical viewer for GSDB sequence data. This tool has also been integrated with other searching and data retrieval tools. A BLAST homology search service was also made available, allowing researchers to search all of the data, including the unique data, that are available from GSDB. These improvements are designed to make GSDB more accessible to users, extend the rich searching capability already present in GSDB, and to facilitate the transition to an integrated system containing many different types of biological data.     

Infection with the Lyme disease pathogen suppresses innate immunity in mice with diet‐induced obesity

Obesity is a major global public health concern. Immune responses implicated in obesity also control certain infections. We investigated the effects of high‐fat diet‐induced obesity (DIO) on infection with the Lyme disease bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi in mice. DIO was associated with systemic suppression of neutrophil‐ and macrophage‐based innate immune responses. These included bacterial uptake and cytokine production, and systemic, progressive impairment of bacterial clearance, and increased carditis severity. B. burgdorferi‐infected mice fed normal diet also gained weight at the same rate as uninfected mice fed high‐fat diet, toll‐like receptor 4 deficiency rescued bacterial clearance defects, which greater in female than male mice, and killing of an unrelated bacterium (Escherichia coli) by bone marrow‐derived macrophages from obese, B. burgdorferi‐infected mice was also affected. Importantly, innate immune suppression increased with infection duration and depended on cooperative and synergistic interactions between DIO and B. burgdorferi infection. Thus, obesity and B. burgdorferi infection cooperatively and progressively suppressed innate immunity in mice.