Commodities into food

It is not surprising that past predictions of the extent of adoption of new technology by the food and agricultural industries have only been partly realized. This is a result of the difficulty of forecasting the take-up of technology that is capable of being transferred from other industries, for example, process control methods and the advent of new packaging materials. Most technology that is adopted is normally incremental over the existing technology and forecasting of this type is best done by specific experts within the industry. Factors which influence uptake of technology in the food industry include not only the available technology, but also the supply of raw materials, economics and disposable income, food habits, health and nutrition and market requirements. In addition to these there is legislation, which imposes compositional, labelling and trade requirements on grower, processor and retailer. New products and processes are determined by all these factors, the overriding influence being the consumer's requirement for palatable and nutritious foods that provide value for money. In the cereals-processing industry significant developments have taken place in the provision of U.K. wheat varieties for breadmaking. The U.K. is now in the position where the bulk of its breadmaking wheats are homegrown. Further advances can be make by investing in applied research into those characteristics of bread wheats which are determinants of good bread flours, that in turn will help in the provision of suitable bread wheat varieties. A less traditional area is that of flour fractionation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Influence of adenosine A(1)-receptor blockade and vagotomy on the gasping and heart rate response to hypoxia in rats during early postnatal maturation.

Failure to autoresuscitate from apnea has been suggested to play a role in sudden infant death. Little is known, however, about factors that influence the gasping and heart rate response to severe hypoxia that are fundamental to successful autoresuscitation in the newborn. The present experiments were carried out on 184 rat pups to investigate the influence of the parasympathetic nervous system, as well as adenosine, in mediating the profound bradycardia that occurs with the onset of hypoxic-induced primary apnea and in modulating hypoxic gasping. On days 1 to 2, days 5 to 6, and days 10 to 11 postpartum and following bilateral cervical vagotomy (VAG) or administration of a selective adenosine A(1) receptor antagonist (8-cyclopentyl-1,3-dipropylxanthine; DPCPX), each pup was exposed to a single period of severe hypoxia produced by breathing an anoxic gas mixture (97% N(2)-3% CO(2)). Exposure to severe hypoxia resulted in an age-dependent decrease in heart rate (P < 0.001), accentuated with increasing postnatal age, that was attenuated in all age groups by DPCPX but not by VAG. Furthermore, DPCPX but not VAG decreased the time to last gasp but increased the total number of gasps in the 1- to 2-day-old and 5- to 6-day-old pups but not in the 10- to 11-day-old pups during exposure to severe hypoxia. Thus our data provide evidence that adenosine acting via adenosine A(1) receptors plays a role in modulating hypoxic gasping and in mediating the profound bradycardia that occurs coincident with hypoxic-induced primary apnea in rats during early postnatal life.     

Emergence and Consequences of Division of Labor in Associations of Normally Solitary Sweat Bees

Division of labor is a pervasive feature of animal societies, but little is known about the causes or consequences of division of labor in non-eusocial cooperative groups. We tested whether division of labor self-organizes in an incipient social system: artificially induced nesting associations of the normally solitary sweat bee Lasioglossum ( Ctenonomia ) NDA-1 (Hymenoptera: Halictidae). We quantified task performance and construction output by females nesting either alone or with a conspecific. Within pairs, a division of labor repeatedly arose in which one individual specialized on excavation and pushing/tamping while her nestmate guarded the nest entrance. Task specialization could not be attributed to variation in overall activity, and the degree of behavioral differentiation was greater than would be expected due to random variation, indicating that division of labor was an emergent phenomenon generated in part by social dynamics. Excavation specialists did not incur a survival cost, in contrast to previous findings for ant foundress associations. Paired individuals performed more per capita guarding, and pairs collectively excavated deeper nests than single bees – potential early advantages of social nesting in halictine bees.     

The carboxy terminus of simian virus 40 large T antigen is required to disrupt the yeast cell cycle

Wild-type and J domain mutant simian virus 40 large T antigens alter the cell cycle and bud morphology of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In contrast, yeast cells expressing mutant T antigen lacking the carboxy-terminal 150 aa exhibit normal morphology, indicating that this region of T antigen is required for cell cycle disruption.     

Molecular chaperones in the yeast endoplasmic reticulum maintain the solubility of proteins for retrotranslocation and degradation

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-associated degradation (ERAD) is the process by which aberrant proteins in the ER lumen are exported back to the cytosol and degraded by the proteasome. Although ER molecular chaperones are required for ERAD, their specific role(s) in this process have been ill defined. To understand how one group of interacting lumenal chaperones facilitates ERAD, the fates of pro-alpha-factor and a mutant form of carboxypeptidase Y were examined both in vivo and in vitro. We found that these ERAD substrates are stabilized and aggregate in the ER at elevated temperatures when BiP, the lumenal Hsp70 molecular chaperone, is mutated, or when the genes encoding the J domain-containing proteins Jem1p and Scj1p are deleted. In contrast, deletion of JEM1 and SCJ1 had little effect on the ERAD of a membrane protein. These results suggest that one role of the BiP, Jem1p, and Scj1p chaperones is to maintain lumenal ERAD substrates in a retrotranslocation-competent state.     

Proinflammatory cytokine responses induced by influenza A (H5N1) viruses in primary human alveolar and bronchial epithelial cells

Background

Fatal human respiratory disease associated with influenza A subtype H5N1 has been documented in Hong Kong, and more recently in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. We previously demonstrated that patients with H5N1 disease had unusually high serum levels of IP-10 (interferon-gamma-inducible protein-10). Furthermore, when compared with human influenza virus subtype H1N1, the H5N1 viruses in 1997 (A/Hong Kong/483/97) (H5N1/97) were more potent inducers of pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g. tumor necrosis factor-a) and chemokines (e.g. IP-10) from primary human macrophages in vitro, which suggests that cytokines dysregulation may play a role in pathogenesis of H5N1 disease. Since respiratory epithelial cells are the primary target cell for replication of influenza viruses, it is pertinent to investigate the cytokine induction profile of H5N1 viruses in these cells.

Methods

We used quantitative RT-PCR and ELISA to compare the profile of cytokine and chemokine gene expression induced by H5N1 viruses A/HK/483/97 (H5N1/97), A/Vietnam/1194/04 and A/Vietnam/3046/04 (both H5N1/04) with that of human H1N1 virus in human primary alveolar and bronchial epithelial cells in vitro.

Results

We demonstrated that in comparison to human H1N1 viruses, H5N1/97 and H5N1/04 viruses were more potent inducers of IP-10, interferon beta, RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted) and interleukin 6 (IL-6) in primary human alveolar and bronchial epithelial cells in vitro. Recent H5N1 viruses from Vietnam (H5N1/04) appeared to be even more potent at inducing IP-10 than H5N1/97 virus.

Conclusion

The H5N1/97 and H5N1/04 subtype influenza A viruses are more potent inducers of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines in primary human respiratory epithelial cells than subtype H1N1 virus. We suggest that this hyper-induction of cytokines may be relevant to the pathogenesis of human H5N1 disease.