Incidence of major chromosome aberrations in 12,319 newborn infants in Tokyo

Summary In order to ascertain the frequency of chromosome aberrations among newborn infants in Japan, a chromosome survey of a large number of newborn infants is in progress. A consecutive series of 12,319 newborn babies, 6382 male and 5937 female, have been screened for clinical manifestations of autosomal aberrations and for sex chromatin and sex chromosome aberrations. Chromosome studies were carried out on 694 infants with suspected chromosome aberrations. The clinically abnormal infants were screened by conventional staining, and banding techniques have been used in the part of the study performed since 1974. Of the clincally abnormal infants, 25 had abnormal karyotypes, including two males with a 47,XXY complement, one female with a 45,X complement, three male infants with a 47,XYY complement, two with trisomy 13 syndrome, three with trisomy 18 (including one case of mosaicism), eleven with Down's syndrome (including one case of mosaicism), one with B5p partial trisomy, one with cri-du-chat syndrome, and one with Y/D translocation. The overall results are comparable to those of previous population cytogenetic studies only in the autosomal trisomies and sex chromosome abnormalities and in that the observed frequencies were comparable to those found in studies in Caucasians.To whom offprint requests should be sent     

Selective degradation of altered tomato β-fructofuranosidase molecules by neutral protease

Evidence is presented for the selective breakdown of altered tomato β-fructofuranosidase molecules by a neutral protease from Bacillus subtilis.     

Possible Role of Mother-Daughter Vocal Interactions on the Development of Species-Specific Song in Gibbons

Mother-infant vocal interactions play a crucial role in the development of human language. However, comparatively little is known about the maternal role during vocal development in nonhuman primates. Here, we report the first evidence of mother-daughter vocal interactions contributing to vocal development in gibbons, a singing and monogamous ape species. Gibbons are well known for their species-specific duets sung between mates, yet little is known about the role of intergenerational duets in gibbon song development. We observed singing interactions between free-ranging mothers and their sub-adult daughters prior to emigration. Daughters sang simultaneously with their mothers at different rates. First, we observed significant acoustic variation between daughters. Co-singing rates between mother and daughter were negatively correlated with the temporal precision of the song’s synchronization. In addition, songs of daughters who co-sang less with their mothers were acoustically more similar to the maternal song than any other adult female’s song. All variables have been reported to be influenced by social relationships of pairs. Therefore those correlations would be mediated by mother-daughter social relationship, which would be modifiable in daughter’s development. Here we hypothesized that daughters who co-sing less often, well-synchronize, and converge acoustically with the maternal acoustic pattern would be at a more advanced stage of social independence in sub-adult females prior to emigration. Second, we observed acoustic matching between mothers and daughters when co-singing, suggesting short-term vocal flexibility. Third, we found that mothers adjusted songs to a more stereotyped pattern when co-singing than when singing alone. This vocal adjustment was stronger for mothers with daughters who co-sang less. These results indicate the presence of socially mediated vocal flexibility in gibbon sub-adults and adults, and that mother-daughter co-singing interactions may enhance vocal development. More comparative work, notably longitudinal and experimental, is now needed to clarify maternal roles during song development.     

A modified cornish pasty method for ex ovo culture of the chick embryo development

Chick embryos grown in ex ovo culture by the modified Cornish pasty method reported in Nagai, Lin and Sheng in this issue.     

Environmental DNA analysis shows high potential as a tool for estimating intraspecific genetic diversity in a wild fish population

Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis has recently been used as a new tool for estimating intraspecific diversity. However, whether known haplotypes contained in a sample can be detected correctly using eDNA‐based methods has been examined only by an aquarium experiment. Here, we tested whether the haplotypes of Ayu fish (Plecoglossus altivelis altivelis) detected in a capture survey could also be detected from an eDNA sample derived from the field that contained various haplotypes with low concentrations and foreign substances. A water sample and Ayu specimens collected from a river on the same day were analysed by eDNA analysis and Sanger sequencing, respectively. The 10 L water sample was divided into 20 filters for each of which 15 PCR replications were performed. After high‐throughput sequencing, denoising was performed using two of the most widely used denoising packages, unoise3 and dada2 . Of the 42 haplotypes obtained from the Sanger sequencing of 96 specimens, 38 (unoise3 ) and 41 (dada2 ) haplotypes were detected by eDNA analysis. When dada2 was used, except for one haplotype, haplotypes owned by at least two specimens were detected from all the filter replications. Accordingly, although it is important to note that eDNA‐based method has some limitations and some risk of false positive and false negative, this study showed that the eDNA analysis for evaluating intraspecific genetic diversity provides comparable results for large‐scale capture‐based conventional methods. Our results suggest that eDNA‐based methods could become a more efficient survey method for investigating intraspecific genetic diversity in the field.     

Land-cover changes and distribution of wetland species in small valley habitats that developed in a Late Pleistocene middle terrace region

Wetlands Ecology and Management - Small valley topology on terraced uplands is a unique groundwater-dependent ecosystem in East Asia. Traditionally, this characteristic valley topology has been...