Mycobiota of the date palm phylloplane: description and interactions

We have analysed the mycobiota of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera, L.) leaves using several techniques. Profusely sporulating fungi (Penicillium spp. and Cladosporium spp.) developed when plating leaf fragments and leaf washings. Fusarium oxysporum, was particularly abundant in leaves infested with the red scale insect Phoenicococcus marlatti Cockerell, 1899, but an undescribed Lecanicillium cf. psalliotae was also found. Dual and overlay cultures showed interactions between palm pathogens, entomopathogenic and saprotrophic fungi. The most significant was the strong inhibition of the palm pathogen Penicillium vermoesenii caused by the entomopathogen Beauveria bassiana. No symptoms developed when F. oxysporum isolated from scale insects or the entomopathogens B. bassiana or Lecanicillium dimorphum were wound-inoculated on P. dactylifera petioles.     

Training in the laboratory animal science community: strategies to support adult learning

The essence of learning is change; learning is the process by which learners customize new information to make it personally meaningful and relevant. Training is the process of helping students make those changes. Research indicates that adults learn differently than children or adolescents and that adults consistently use the following six learning strategies: prior experiences; conversations; metacognition; reflection; authentic experiences; and images, pictures, or other types of visuals. Each of these learning strategies can be combined with the other strategies and often build upon each other. A recent study on how health care professionals learn indicated that the learning strategy they used most often was reflection, which supports learning before, during, and after training. Numerous examples are provided in this article describing how to integrate each of the six adult learning strategies into laboratory animal science training. While lectures and other types of direct instruction are appropriate, they are inadequate and ineffective unless they are integrated with and support adult learning strategies. Both the US Department of Agriculture regulations and the Public Health Service Policy mandate that research institutions must ensure that all personnel involved in animal care, treatment, or use are qualified to perform their duties. Applying adult learning strategies to training for the laboratory animal science community will enhance learning and improve both the science and the humane care of the animals, which is a goal our community must continuously strive to achieve.     

Fundamental training for individuals involved in the care and use of laboratory animals: a review and update of the 1991 NRC Core Training Module

Public trust demands that individuals who do research, testing, or teaching with animals use humane, ethical, and scientifically sound methods. Furthermore, the Animal Welfare Act and the Public Health Service Policy require research institutions to provide basic training and to ensure that anyone who cares for and/or works with laboratory animals has the appropriate training or experience relevant to their job responsibilities. Institutions accredited by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International must also provide training programs and ensure the qualifications of personnel. The primary goal of this training is to provide individuals with basic knowledge and to reinforce attitudes and behaviors that help to ensure humane animal care and use. This article provides an overview of the core training module outline and content from the 1991 report of the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research, Education and Training in the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals: A Guide for Developing Institutional Programs, as well as pertinent updates for introducing personnel to information regarding the care and use of laboratory animals. Both mandatory and suggested training topics are reviewed, including relevant regulations and standards, ethical considerations, humane methods of animal experimentation and maintenance, and other pertinent topics. Although the fundamental training course content and delivery will vary depending on the nature and complexity of an institution's animal care and use program, this basic training provides the foundation for more in-depth training programs and supports humane and ethical animal care and use.     

The phylogeny of the social Anelosimus spiders (Araneae: Theridiidae) inferred from six molecular loci and morphology

We use fragments of three nuclear genes (Histone 3, 18SrDNA, and 28SrDNA) and three mitochondrial genes (16SrDNA, ND1, and COI) totalling approximately 4.5kb, in addition to morphological data, to estimate the phylogenetic relationships among Anelosimus spiders, well known for their sociality. The analysis includes 67 individuals representing 23 of the 53 currently recognized Anelosimus species and all species groups previously recognized by morphological evidence. We analyse the data using Bayesian, maximum likelihood, and parsimony methods, considering the genes individually as well as combined (mitochondrial, nuclear, and both combined) in addition to a 'total evidence' analysis including morphology. Most of the data partitions are congruent in agreeing on several fundamental aspects of the phylogeny, and the combined molecular data yield a tree broadly similar to an existing morphological hypothesis. We argue that such congruence among data partitions is an important indicator of support that may go undetected by standard robustness estimators. Our results strongly support Anelosimus monophyly, and the monophyly of the recently revised American 'eximius lineage', although slightly altered by excluding A. pacificus. There was consistent support for the scattering of American Anelosimus species in three clades suggesting intercontinental dispersal. Several recently described species are reconstructed as monophyletic, supporting taxonomic decisions based on morphology and behaviour in this taxonomically difficult group. Corroborating previous results from morphology, the molecular data suggest that social species are scattered across the genus and thus that sociality has evolved multiple times, a significant finding for exploring the causes and consequences of social evolution in this group of organisms.     

Suberin--a biopolyester forming apoplastic plant interfaces

Suberized cell walls form physiologically important plant-environment interfaces because they act as barriers that limit water and nutrient transport and protect plants from invasion by pathogens. Plants respond to environmental stimuli by modifying the degree of suberization in root cell walls. Salt stress or drought-induced suberization leads to a decrease in radial water transport in roots. Although reinforced, suberized cell walls never act as absolutely impermeable barriers. Deeper insights into the structure and biosynthesis of suberin are required to elucidate what determines the barrier properties. Progress has been obtained from analytical methods that enabled the structural characterization of oligomeric building blocks in suberin, and from the opening of suberin research to molecular genetic approaches by the elucidation of the chemical composition and tissue distribution of suberin in the model species Arabidopsis.     

Dynamic exploration and editing of KEGG pathway diagrams

MOTIVATION: The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) Pathway database is a very valuable information resource for researchers in the fields of life sciences. It contains metabolic and regulatory processes in the form of wiring diagrams, which can be used for browsing and information retrieval as well as a base for modeling and simulation. Thus it helps in understanding biological processes and higher-order functions of biological systems. Currently the KEGG website uses semi-static visualizations for the presentation and navigation of its pathway information. While this visualization style offers a good pathway presentation and navigation, it does not provide some of the possibilities related to dynamic visualizations, most importantly, the creation and visualization of user-specific pathways. RESULTS: This paper presents methods for the dynamic visualization, interactive navigation and editing of KEGG pathway diagrams. These diagrams, given as KEGG Markup Language (KGML) files, can be visually explored using novel approaches combining semi-static and dynamic visualization, but also edited or even newly created and then exported into KGML files. AVAILABILITY: KGML-ED, a program implementing the presented methods, is available free of charge to the scientific community at http://kgml-ed.ipk-gatersleben.de.     

Calcium from LactoCalcium milk mineral after digestion with pepsin stimulates mineralized bone nodule formation in human osteoblast-like SaOS-2 cells in vitro and may be rendered bioavailable in vivo

Many individuals cannot obtain the optimum calcium requirement from food for a variety of reasons. Therefore, calcium supplements are important sources of dietary calcium. One of the calcium sources commercially available is LactoCalcium (milk minerals) that has 28% calcium, and a 2:1 ratio of calcium to phosphorus. The objectives of this study were (a) to examine whether calcium can be released from LactoCalcium by using digestive enzymes and (b) to determine its biological activity by examining its ability to stimulate bone formation. LactoCalcium was treated in vitro by using simulated gastric and intestinal fluids or porcine gastric, pancreatic and intestinal extracts. Our results indicate the role of enzymes or bile extract in the digestion of the product. We show that, by increasing the concentration of pepsin at a fixed concentration of LactoCalcium (substrate), the percentage of released calcium increased in a dose-dependent manner, showing that, at the right enzyme concentration, as much as 100% of the calcium present in LactoCalcium can be made available. The biological activity of the digested calcium was demonstrated by the stimulation of mineralized bone nodules in SaOS-2 cells in a dose-dependent manner. Thus, 1 mM and 3 mM calcium released from LactoCalcium increased the nodule area by 23.17 mm(2) (p<0.0001) and 77.78 mm(2) (p<0.0001), respectively, as compared to a value of 0.99 mm(2) at 0.5 mM calcium from LactoCalcium. These results demonstrate the in vitro bioavailability and bioactivity of calcium from LactoCalcium and serve as a basis for carrying out in vivo analyses to determine the suitability of using LactoCalcium as a source of calcium for individuals at risk of developing osteoporosis.     

Degradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in soil by a two-step sequential treatment

The objectives of this work were to isolate the microorganisms responsible for a previously observed degradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in soil and to test a method for cleaning a PAH-contaminated soil. An efficient PAH degrader was isolated from an agricultural soil and designated as Mycobacterium LP1. In liquid culture, it degraded phenanthrene (58%), pyrene (24%), anthracene (21%) and benzo(a)pyrene (10%) present in mixture (initial concentration 50 μg ml⁻¹ each) and phenanthrene (92%) and pyrene (94%) as sole carbon sources after 14 days of incubation at 30°C. In soil, Mycobacterium LP1 mineralised ¹⁴C-phenanthrene (45%) and ¹⁴C-pyrene (65%) after 10 days. The good ability of this Mycobacterium was combined with the benzo(a)pyrene oxidation effect obtained by 1% w/w rapeseed oil in a sequential treatment of a PAH-spiked soil (total PAH concentration 200 mg kg⁻¹). The first step was incubation with the bacterium for 12 days and the second step was the addition of the rapeseed oil after this time and a further incubation of 22 days. Phenanthrene (99%), pyrene (95%) and anthracene (99%) were mainly degraded in the first 12 days and a total of 85% of benzo(a)pyrene was transformed during the whole process. The feasibility of the method is discussed.     

Fungal rDNA signatures in coronary atherosclerotic plaques

Bacterial DNA has been found in coronary plaques and it has therefore been concluded that bacteria may play a role as trigger factors in the chronic inflammatory process underlying coronary atherosclerosis. However, the microbial spectrum is complex and it is not known whether microorganisms other than bacteria are involved in coronary disease. Fungal 18S rDNA signatures were systematically investigated in atherosclerotic tissue obtained through catheter-based atherectomy of 38 patients and controls (unaffected coronary arteries) using clone libraries, denaturating gradient gel analysis (DGGE), in situ hybridization and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Fungal DNA was found in 35 of 38 (92.11%) coronary heart disease patients by either polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with universal primers or in situ hybridization analysis (n = 5), but not in any control sample. In a clone library with more than 350 sequenced clones from pooled patient DNA, an overall richness of 19 different fungal phylotypes could be observed. Fungal profiles of coronary heart disease patients obtained by DGGE analysis showed a median richness of fungal species of 5 (range from 2 to 9) with a high interindividual variability (mean similarity 18.83%). For the first time, the presence of fungal components in atherosclerotic plaques has been demonstrated. Coronary atheromatous plaques harbour diverse and variable fungal communities suggesting a polymicrobial contribution to the chronic inflammatory aetiology.