Isolation and characterization of a cDNA clone encoding an auxin influx carrier in carnation cuttings. Expression in different organs and cultivars and its relationship with cold storage

Polar auxin transport (PAT) is necessary for the formation of adventitious roots in the base of leafy stem cuttings, as has been demonstrated in several studies in which the application of PAT inhibitors strongly inhibited the rooting of cuttings. However, unlike in the case of lateral roots, there is almost no information on the molecular mechanism that controls PAT in the formation of adventitious roots. A novel cDNA encoding an auxin influx carrier has been isolated and characterized from carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) cuttings. The full length of DcAUX1 was obtained and the deduced aminoacid sequence revealed a high degree of identity with the corresponding auxin carrier proteins from several species. The expression of this gene depended on the organ, the carnation cultivar and the length of time cuttings had been stored in a cold chamber. As a rule, expression was higher in stem than in leaves, in the basal than in the first internode and in mature than in young leaves irrespective of the cultivar and the duration of the storage. This pattern of expression agrees with the results of a previous study showing that auxin from mature leaves was essential for rooting, while exogenous auxin applied to mature leaves was polarly transported in the stem and accumulated in the basal internode (the rooting zone). Variations in the expression observed during storage (depending of the cultivar) might be related to the variation in PAT and rooting reported in previous studies.     

Threatened fishes of the world: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Menidia riojai</Emphasis> Solórzano and López 1965 (Atheriniformes: Atherinopsidae)

Menidia riojai is endemic of the Lerma River headwaters considered critically endangered because its populations have been severely fragmented.     

Premarin improves memory, prevents scopolamine-induced amnesia and increases number of basal forebrain choline acetyltransferase positive cells in middle-aged surgically menopausal rats

Conjugated equine estrogen (CEE) is the most commonly prescribed estrogen therapy, and is the estrogen used in the Women's Health Initiative study. While in-vitro studies suggest that CEE is neuroprotective, no study has evaluated CEE's effects on a cognitive battery and brain immunohistochemistry in an animal model. The current experiment tested whether CEE impacted: I) spatial learning, reference memory, working memory and long-term retention, as well as ability to handle mnemonic delay and interference challenges; and, II) the cholinergic system, via pharmacological challenge during memory testing and ChAT-immunoreactive cell counts in the basal forebrain. Middle-aged ovariectomized (Ovx) rats received chronic cyclic injections of either Oil (vehicle), CEE-Low (10 μg), CEE-Medium (20 μg) or CEE-High (30 μg) treatment. Relative to the Oil group, all three CEE groups showed less overnight forgetting on the spatial reference memory task, and the CEE-High group had enhanced platform localization during the probe trial. All CEE groups exhibited enhanced learning on the spatial working memory task, and CEE dose-dependently protected against scopolamine-induced amnesia with every rat receiving the highest CEE dose maintaining zero errors after scopolamine challenge. CEE also increased number of ChAT-immunoreactive neurons in the vertical diagonal band of the basal forebrain. Neither the ability to remember after a delay nor interference, nor long-term retention, was influenced by the CEE regimen used in this study. These findings are similar to those reported previously for 17 β-estradiol, and suggest that CEE can provide cognitive benefits on spatial learning, reference and working memory, possibly through cholinergic mechanisms.     

Selection of high affine peptide ligands for detection of Clostridium Tyrobutyricum spores

Clostridium tyrobutyricum is the main agent responsible for “late blowing” in cheese, which causes severe economic losses. Nowadays, the reference method for its detection is the Most-Probable-Number (MPN), however, is time consuming and non-specific. Thus, in order to check milk contamination with spores of C. tyrobutyricum, a more specific and rapid method would be required. The objective of this work was to obtain a ligand to establish the basis to develop a biomagnetic separation method for detection of C. tyrobutyricum spores. This study describes the selection of thirteen highly affine peptides to C. tyrobutyricum spores from a phage-display peptide library. In order to test the ability of the peptides attached to a solid support to bind the spores, the most frequent peptide was synthesised and used to coat paramagnetic beads.     

Thermal biology of Phymaturus lizards: evolutionary constraints or lack of environmental variation?

Several aspects of the biology of Phymaturus lizards including their herbivorous diet, specialized microhabitat use, and viviparous reproductive mode are highly conserved within the group. Here, we explore two aspects of Phymaturus thermal biology and test for the co-evolution among aspects of the thermal biology in these lizards, such as thermal preferenda and critical temperatures. Secondly, we explore correlations among variation in thermal biology with elevation and latitude. To do so, we used phylogenetically based comparative analyses (PCM) together with conventional statistics. Our results show that thermal biology for Phymaturus is conservative and our data do not suggest the co-evolution of thermal variables. Moreover, we detected low levels of variation in the thermal parameters studied, and no clear relationships between climatic and thermal variables. As a significant association between climatic and thermal variables could be demonstrated for a set of syntopic Liolaemus lizards, we suggest that thermal biology in Phymaturus lizards may be evolutionarily or ecologically constrained.     

Seasonality and Outbreaks in West Nile Virus Infection

In this paper we analyze the impact of seasonal variations on the dynamics of West Nile Virus infection. We are interested in the generation of new epidemic peaks starting from an endemic state. In many cases, the oscillations generated by seasonality in the dynamics of the infection are too small to be observable. The interplay of this seasonality with the epidemic oscillations can generate new outbreaks starting from the endemic state through a mechanism of parametric resonance. Using experimental data we present specific cases where this phenomenon is numerically observed.     

Immunization protected well nourished mice but not undernourished ones from lung injury in Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection

Background  

Staphylococcus aureus methicillin-resistant (MRSA) has been frequently isolated from endotracheal and lung puncture aspirates in malnourished children with pneumonia. In this work we evaluated the susceptibility of undernourished BALB/c mice and its ability to mount a protective immunity against MRSA with emphasis on the lung involvement.     

Ancestry Analysis in the 11-M Madrid Bomb Attack Investigation

The 11-M Madrid commuter train bombings of 2004 constituted the second biggest terrorist attack to occur in Europe after Lockerbie, while the subsequent investigation became the most complex and wide-ranging forensic case in Spain. Standard short tandem repeat (STR) profiling of 600 exhibits left certain key incriminatory samples unmatched to any of the apprehended suspects. A judicial order to perform analyses of unmatched samples to differentiate European and North African ancestry became a critical part of the investigation and was instigated to help refine the search for further suspects. Although mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome markers routinely demonstrate informative geographic differentiation, the populations compared in this analysis were known to show a proportion of shared mtDNA and Y haplotypes as a result of recent gene-flow across the western Mediterranean, while any two loci can be unrepresentative of the ancestry of an individual as a whole. We based our principal analysis on a validated 34plex autosomal ancestry-informative-marker single nucleotide polymorphism (AIM-SNP) assay to make an assignment of ancestry for DNA from seven unmatched case samples including a handprint from a bag containing undetonated explosives together with personal items recovered from various locations in Madrid associated with the suspects. To assess marker informativeness before genotyping, we predicted the probable classification success for the 34plex assay with standard error estimators for a naïve Bayesian classifier using Moroccan and Spanish training sets (each n = 48). Once misclassification error was found to be sufficiently low, genotyping yielded seven near-complete profiles (33 of 34 AIM-SNPs) that in four cases gave probabilities providing a clear assignment of ancestry. One of the suspects predicted to be North African by AIM-SNP analysis of DNA from a toothbrush was identified late in the investigation as Algerian in origin. The results achieved illustrate the benefit of adding specialized marker sets to provide enhanced scope and power to an already highly effective system of DNA analysis for forensic identification.     

Coding and traceability used by tissue banks in Mexico

This short communication describes how some Mexican tissue banks have established their own system for coding and traceability of tissues.