Making Technology Familiar: Orthodox Jews and Infertility SUPPORT, Advice, and Inspiration

This paper examines how orthodox Jews use traditional strategies and new media simultaneously to cope with infertility in the age of new reproductive technologies. Not only have they used the Internet to establish support, information, and educational networks, but also they have created frameworks for unique professional collaborations among rabbis, doctors, and clinic personnel in order to ensure that their fertility treatments are conducted with strict attention to Jewish legal concerns, particularly with regard to incest, adultery, and traditional practices regarding bodily emissions. Throughout these processes, they have innovated a hybrid language for describing and explaining infertility treatments that blends Hebrew prayers, Yiddish aphorisms, English slang, Gematria (numerology), and biomedical terminology. By using idiomatic language and folk practice, orthodox Jews construct a unique terrain that shapes and makes familiar their experience and understanding of fertility treatment. Biomedicine in this context is understood as a set of tools and strategies that can be readily appropriated and harnessed to a particular set of individual and collective goals.     

PAMP recognition and the plant-pathogen arms race

Plants have evolved systems analogous to animal innate immunity that recognise pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). PAMP detection is an important component of non-host resistance in plants and serves as an early warning system for the presence of potential pathogens. Binding of a PAMP to the appropriate pattern recognition receptor leads to downstream signalling events and, ultimately, to the induction of basal defence systems. To overcome non-host resistance, pathogens have evolved effectors that target specific regulatory components of the basal defence system. In turn, this has led to the evolution in plants of cultivar-specific resistance mediated by R proteins, which guard the targets of effectors against pathogen manipulation; the arms race continues.     

Effects of acute hyperosmolality on blood-brain barrier function in ovine fetuses and lambs

We examined the effects of hyperosmolality on blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability during development to test the vulnerability of the immature barrier to stress. The BBB response to hyperosmolality was quantified using the blood-to-brain transfer constant (Ki) with alpha-aminoisobutyric acid in fetuses at 60% and 90% gestation, premature, newborn, and older lambs. Ki plotted against osmolality increased as a function of increases in osmolality in all groups and brain regions. The relationship was described (P < 0.05) by a segmented regression model. At lower osmolalities, changes in Ki were minimal, but after a break point (threshold) was reached, the increase (P < 0.05) was linear. We examined the responses of Ki to hyperosmolality within each brain region by comparing the thresholds and slopes of the second regression segment. Lower thresholds and higher slopes imply greater vulnerability to hyperosmolality in the younger groups. Thresholds increased (P < 0.05) with development in the thalamus, superior colliculus, pons, and spinal cord, and slopes of the second regression segment decreased (P < 0.05) in the cerebellum, hippocampus, inferior colliculus, medulla, and spinal cord. BBB resistance to hyperosmolality increased (P < 0.05) with development in most brain regions. The pattern of the Ki plotted against osmolality was (P < 0.05) heterogenous among brain regions in fetuses and premature and newborn lambs, but not in older lambs. We conclude that 1) BBB permeability increased as a function of changes in osmolality, 2) the barrier becomes more resistant to hyperosmolality during development, and 3) the permeability response to hyperosmolality is heterogenous among brain regions in fetuses and premature and newborn lambs.     

Does ecological filtering across a productivity gradient explain variation in species pool‐richness relationships?

Concerns about the impact of species diversity loss has heightened the importance of determining what limits local diversity and the relative roles of the available species pool and local interactions. Recent theory suggests that local diversity may exhibit linear or asymptotic responses to regional variation in species pools depending resource supply rates. We tested this idea by augmenting species pools in three sites along a natural productivity gradient (a surrogate for resource supply) in a mid-successional old-field. Augmentation of the species pool, enhanced local diversity more at medium than low productivity sites in this field and seed addition had no effect at high productivity, suggesting that diversity was saturated in high resource areas of this field. These results suggest that resource supply rates may mediate species pool-richness relationships. Species additions into cleared plots demonstrated that the observed differences in species recruitment along this gradient were largely driven by abiotic filtering at low and competitive filtering at high productivity. Furthermore, we observed that augmentation of the species pool shifted the productivity–diversity relationship from a negative linear to unimodal suggesting that species pools may influence reported productivity–diversity patterns.     

Fitness consequences for copepods feeding on a red tide dinoflagellate: deciphering the effects of nutritional value, toxicity, and feeding behavior

Phytoplankton exhibit a diversity of morphologies, nutritional values, and potential chemical defenses that could affect the feeding and fitness of zooplankton consumers. However, how phytoplankton traits shape plant–herbivore interactions in the marine plankton is not as well understood as for terrestrial or marine macrophytes and their grazers. The occurrence of blooms of marine dinoflagellates such as Karenia brevis suggests that, for uncertain reasons, grazers are unable to capitalize on, or control, this phytoplankton growth—making these systems appealing for testing mechanisms of grazing deterrence. Using the sympatric copepod Acartia tonsa, we conducted a mixed diet feeding experiment to test whether K. brevis is beneficial, toxic, nutritionally inadequate, or behaviorally rejected as food relative to the palatable and nutritionally adequate phytoplankter Rhodomonas lens. On diets rich in K. brevis, copepods experienced decreased survivorship and decreased egg production per female, but the percentage of eggs that hatched was unaffected. Although copepods showed a 6–17% preference for R. lens over K. brevis on some mixed diets, overall high ingestion rates eliminated the possibility that reduced copepod fitness was caused by copepods avoiding K. brevis, leaving nutritional inadequacy and toxicity as remaining hypotheses. Because egg production was dependent on the amount of R. lens consumed regardless of the amount of K. brevis eaten, there was no evidence that fitness costs were caused by K. brevis toxicity. Copepods limited to K. brevis ate 480% as much as those fed only R. lens, suggesting that copepods attempted to compensate for low food quality with increased quantity ingested. Our results indicate that K. brevis is a poor food for A. tonsa, probably due to nutritional inadequacy rather than toxicity, which could affect bloom dynamics in the Gulf of Mexico where these species co-occur.     

Genetic characterization of Anaplasma ovis strains from bighorn sheep in Montana

Wildlife reservoir species and genetic diversity of Anaplasma ovis (Rickettsiales: Anaplasmataceae) have been poorly characterized. Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), captured in Montana from December 2004 to January 2005, were tested for antibodies to Anaplasma spp.; the presence of A. ovis was determined by the characterization of major surface protein msp4 sequences. Anaplasma antibodies were detected in 25/180 (14%) sampled bighorn sheep and A. ovis msp4 sequences were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequenced from 9/23 (39%) of seropositive animals. All animals were negative by PCR for the related pathogens, Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Anaplasma marginale. All msp4 sequences identified in the bighorn sheep were identical and corresponded to a single A. ovis genotype that was identical to a sheep isolate reported previously from Idaho. The finding of a single genotype of A. ovis in this wild herd of bighorn sheep was in contrast to the genetic diversity reported for A. marginale in cattle herds in the western United States and worldwide. These results demonstrated that bighorn sheep may be a wildlife reservoir of A. ovis in Montana.     

Lipid phosphate phosphatase-2 activity regulates S-phase entry of the cell cycle in Rat2 fibroblasts

Lipid phosphates are potent mediators of cell signaling and control processes including development, cell migration and division, blood vessel formation, wound repair, and tumor progression. Lipid phosphate phosphatases (LPPs) regulate the dephosphorylation of lipid phosphates, thus modulating their signals and producing new bioactive compounds both at the cell surface and in intracellular compartments. Knock-down of endogenous LPP2 in fibroblasts delayed cyclin A accumulation and entry into S-phase of the cell cycle. Conversely, overexpression of LPP2, but not a catalytically inactive mutant, caused premature S-phase entry, accompanied by premature cyclin A accumulation. At high passage, many LPP2 overexpressing cells arrested in G(2)/M and the rate of proliferation declined severely. This was accompanied by changes in proteins and lipids characteristic of senescence. Additionally, arrested LPP2 cells contained decreased lysophosphatidate concentrations and increased ceramide. These effects of LPP2 activity were not reproduced by overexpression or knock-down of LPP1 or LPP3. This work identifies a novel and specific role for LPP2 activity and bioactive lipids in regulating cell cycle progression.     

Viscoelastic study of the mechanical unfolding of a protein by AFM

We have applied a dynamic force modulation technique to the mechanical unfolding of a homopolymer of immunoglobulin (Ig) domains from titin, (C47S C63S I27)5, [(I27)5] to determine the viscoelastic response of single protein molecules as a function of extension. Both the stiffness and the friction of the homopolymer system show a sudden decrease when a protein domain unfolds. The decrease in measured friction suggests that the system is dominated by the internal friction of the (I27)5 molecule and not solvent friction. In the stiffness-extension spectrum we detected an abrupt feature before each unfolding event, the amplitude of which decreased with each consecutive unfolding event. We propose that these features are a clear indication of the formation of the known unfolding intermediate of I27, which has been observed previously in constant velocity unfolding experiments. This simple force modulation AFM technique promises to be a very useful addition to constant velocity experiments providing detailed viscoelastic characterization of single molecules under extension.