Human Respiratory Syncytial Virus and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Streptococcus pneumoniae</Emphasis> Infection in Wild Bonobos

Despite being important conservation tools, tourism and research may cause transmission of pathogens to wild great apes. Investigating respiratory disease outbreaks in wild bonobos, we identified human respiratory syncytial virus and Streptococcus pneumoniae as causative agents. A One Health approach to disease control should become part of great ape programs.     

Eating and conserving bushmeat in Africa

In Africa, overhunting of tropical wildlife for food remains an intractable issue. Donors and governments remain committed to invest in efforts to both conserve and allow the sustainable use of wildlife. Four principal barriers need to be overcome: (i) communities are not motivated to conserve wildlife long‐term because they have no formal rights to benefit from wildlife, or to exclude others from taking it on their land; (ii) multispecies harvests, typical of bushmeat hunting scenarios, place large‐bodied species at risk of extinction; (iii) wildlife production cannot expand, in the same way that livestock farming can, to meet the expected growth in consumer demand; and (iv) wildlife habitat is lost through conversion to agriculture, housing, transportation networks and extractive industries. In this review, we examine the actors involved in the use of wildlife as food and discuss the possible solutions required to address urban and rural bushmeat consumption. Interventions must tackle use and conservation of wildlife through the application of context‐relevant interventions in a variety of geographies across Africa. That said, for any bushmeat solution to work, there needs to be concurrent and comparable investment in strengthening the effectiveness of protected area management and enforcement of wildlife conservation laws.     

Camera‐trapping provides insights into adult sex ratio variability in felids

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Marine microbial community structure assessed from combined metagenomic analysis and ribosomal amplicon deep-sequencing

The microbial taxonomic composition of the three domains of life in two coastal plankton samples was assessed by random total community metagenomic sequencing and PCR-based rDNA amplicon deep-sequencing in order to compare the resulting diversity and investigate possible limitations and complementarities of each method. The various universal primer sets, used to amplify different hypervariable rDNA regions, revealed the same major high-level taxonomic groups in Bacteria and unicellular Eukaryota, and showed a scarce Archaea apparent richness. However, significant differences were found between the different primer sets (p-value < 0.05, with the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test), regarding both operational taxonomic unit (OTU) richness and relative abundance of the major high-level taxonomic groups detected. Based on the metagenomic approach, the phylum Bacteroidetes dominated the prokaryotic community, followed by Proteobacteria, while the detected eukaryotic unicellular taxa belonged to the groups of Alveolata, Fungi, Chlorophyta, Stramenopiles and Phaeophyceae. These groups were found to carry genes typically found in microbial communities, which are linked to DNA, RNA and protein metabolism and the synthesis of nucleotides, amino acids, carbohydrates and vitamins. Although our findings suggest that the total community metagenomic approach can provide a more comprehensive picture of the planktonic microbial community structure, a number of issues associated with this approach emerged. These issues include the still relatively high cost compared to amplicon sequencing, the possible low coverage of the full marine diversity, the insufficiency of databases for other gene markers than the small subunit gene, and the bias towards bacterial sequences because of their higher abundance relative to eukaryotes in marine environments.     

The program structure does not reliably recover the correct population structure when sampling is uneven: subsampling and new estimators alleviate the problem

Inferences of population structure and more precisely the identification of genetically homogeneous groups of individuals are essential to the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation biology. Such population structure inferences are routinely investigated via the program structure implementing a Bayesian algorithm to identify groups of individuals at Hardy–Weinberg and linkage equilibrium. While the method is performing relatively well under various population models with even sampling between subpopulations, the robustness of the method to uneven sample size between subpopulations and/or hierarchical levels of population structure has not yet been tested despite being commonly encountered in empirical data sets. In this study, I used simulated and empirical microsatellite data sets to investigate the impact of uneven sample size between subpopulations and/or hierarchical levels of population structure on the detected population structure. The results demonstrated that uneven sampling often leads to wrong inferences on hierarchical structure and downward‐biased estimates of the true number of subpopulations. Distinct subpopulations with reduced sampling tended to be merged together, while at the same time, individuals from extensively sampled subpopulations were generally split, despite belonging to the same panmictic population. Four new supervised methods to detect the number of clusters were developed and tested as part of this study and were found to outperform the existing methods using both evenly and unevenly sampled data sets. Additionally, a subsampling strategy aiming to reduce sampling unevenness between subpopulations is presented and tested. These results altogether demonstrate that when sampling evenness is accounted for, the detection of the correct population structure is greatly improved.     

Hepcidin secretion was not directly proportional to intracellular iron-loading in recombinant-TfR1 HepG2 cells: short communication

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry - Hepcidin is the master regulator of systemic iron homeostasis and its dysregulation is observed in several chronic liver diseases. Unlike the extracellular...     

Xenopsylla cheopis (Siphonaptera: Pulicidae) Susceptibility to Deltamethrin in Madagascar

The incidence of bubonic plague in Madagascar is high. This study reports the susceptibility of 32 different populations of a vector, the flea Xenopsylla cheopis (Siphonaptera: Pulicidae), to the insecticide Deltamethrin. Despite the use of Deltamethrin against fleas, plague epidemics have re-emerged in Madagascar. The majority of the study sites were located in the Malagasy highlands where most plague cases have occurred over the last 10 years. X. cheopis fleas were tested for susceptibility to Deltamethrin (0.05%): only two populations were susceptible to Deltamethrin, four populations were tolerant and 26 populations were resistant. KD50 (50% Knock-Down) and KD90 (90% Knock-Down) times were determined, and differed substantially from 9.4 to 592.4 minutes for KD50 and 10.4 min to 854.3 minutes for KD90. Susceptibility was correlated with latitude, but not with longitude, history of insecticide use nor date of sampling. Combined with the number of bubonic plague cases, our results suggest that an immediate switch to an insecticide other than Deltamethrin is required for plague vector control in Madagascar.     

Benzopyridooxathiazepine derivatives as novel potent antimitotic agents

Herein, we describe the structure–activity relationship study of a new 1-(arylalkyl)-11H-benzo[f]-1,2-dihydropyrido[3,2,c][1,2,5]oxathiazepine 5,5-dioxide series of antimitotic agents. The pharmacological results obtained from previous works allowed us to identify compound 1 as a new cytotoxic agent inhibiting tubulin polymerization. We have undertaken the synthesis of its non-methylated analogue 7 and have extended our investigations to a novel, structurally related benzopyridooxathiazepine dioxide series. Among all analogues synthesized in this study, compound 10b was the most promising, being 12-fold more potent than compound 1. Its activity over a panel of five tumoral cell lines was in the nanomolar range for all of the histological types tested and flow cytometric studies performed on L1210 cells showed an accumulation of the cells in the G2/M phases of the cell cycle with a significant percentage of tetraploid cells (8N DNA content). This interesting pharmacological profile, resulting from inhibition of tubulin polymerization, encouraged us to perform preliminary in vivo studies.     

Focus on Weed Control: Dual Function of the Cytochrome P450 CYP76 Family from Arabidopsis thaliana in the Metabolism of Monoterpenols and Phenylurea Herbicides

Comparative genomics analysis unravels lineage-specific bursts of gene duplications related to the emergence of specialized pathways. The CYP76C subfamily of cytochrome P450 enzymes is specific to Brassicaceae. Two of its members were recently associated with monoterpenol metabolism. This prompted us to investigate the CYP76C subfamily genetic and functional diversification. Our study revealed high rates of CYP76C gene duplication and loss in Brassicaceae, suggesting the association of the CYP76C subfamily with species-specific adaptive functions. Gene differential expression and enzyme functional specialization in Arabidopsis thaliana, including metabolism of different monoterpenols and formation of different products, support this hypothesis. In addition to linalool metabolism, CYP76C1, CYP76C2, and CYP76C4 metabolized herbicides belonging to the class of phenylurea. Their ectopic expression in the whole plant conferred herbicide tolerance. CYP76Cs from A. thaliana. thus provide a first example of promiscuous cytochrome P450 enzymes endowing effective metabolism of both natural and xenobiotic compounds. Our data also suggest that the CYP76C gene family provides a suitable genetic background for a quick evolution of herbicide resistance.Although extensive monoterpenol (especially linalool) oxidative metabolism has been described in many plant species, leading to fragrant and bioactive compounds as diverse as alcohols, aldehydes, acids, and epoxides (Williams et al., 1982; Matich et al., 2003, 2011; Luan et al., 2005, 2006; Ginglinger et al., 2013), pyranoid or furanoid linalool derivatives (Pichersky et al., 1994; Raguso and Pichersky, 1999), and geraniol-derived iridoids and secoiridoids (Dinda et al., 2007a, 2007b, 2011; Tundis et al., 2008), limited information is available on the enzymes generating these oxygenated compounds. Involvement of a cytochrome P450 (P450) enzyme extracted from Vinca rosea (now renamed Catharanthus roseus) in the hydroxylation of geraniol and nerol was suggested as early as 1976 (Madyastha et al., 1976). The first plant P450 gene to be isolated, CYP71A1 from avocado (Persea americana) fruit, was later shown to encode an enzyme with geraniol/nerol epoxidase activity (Hallahan et al., 1992, 1994). To our knowledge, a connection with compounds formed in the fruit has not yet been established. The geraniol 8-hydroxylase (often named geraniol 10-hydroxylase) CYP76B6, involved in the biosynthesis of secoiridoids and monoterpene indole alkaloid anticancer drugs in C. roseus, was found to belong to the CYP76 family in 2001 (Collu et al., 2001). The catalytic function of this enzyme was recently revised, and was shown to include a second oxidation activity, the conversion of 8-hydroxygeraniol into 8-oxogeraniol (Höfer et al., 2013). The same work also revealed a geraniol 8- and 9-hydroxylase activity of CYP76C4 from Arabidopsis thaliana. More recently, another CYP76 enzyme (CYP76A226) from C. roseus was found to metabolize oxidized geraniol derivatives and to have an iridoid oxidase activity, catalyzing the triple oxygenation of cis-trans-nepetalactol into 7-deoxyloganetic acid for the biosynthesis of secoiridoids and terpene indole alkaloids (Miettinen et al., 2014; Salim et al., 2014). Not all CYP76 enzymes seem to be devoted to the metabolism of monoterpenols. In most cases, however, CYP76s seem to be involved in terpenoid metabolism. CYP76Ms from monocots were found to metabolize diterpenoids for the synthesis of antifungal phytocassanes (Swaminathan et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2013), CYP76AH1 from Salvia miltiorhizza and its ortholog CYP76AH4 from rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) were shown to hydroxylate the norditerpene abietatriene in the pathway to labdane-related compounds (Zi and Peters, 2013), whereas CYP76Fs from sandalwood (Santalum album) were found to hydroxylate the sesquiterpenes santalene and bergamotene (Diaz-Chavez et al., 2013). CYP76B1 from Helianthus tuberosus was, however, found to metabolize herbicides belonging to the class of phenylurea (Robineau et al., 1998; Didierjean et al., 2002), but its physiological function was not reported. Other P450s from soybean (Glycine max; CYP71A10; Siminszky et al., 1999) or tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum; CYP71A11 and CYP81B1; Yamada et al., 2000) were also reported to metabolize phenylurea, but their physiological function was not investigated.A. thaliana ecotype Columbia-0 (Col-0) emits no geraniol and only tiny amounts of linalool, and extensive volatile profiling of different tissues detected only minor amounts of lilac aldehydes (oxygenated linalool derivatives; Rohloff and Bones, 2005). However, ectopic expression of a linalool/nerolidol synthase of strawberry (Fragaria × anannasa cv Elsanta) revealed a potentially efficient oxidative linalool metabolism in A. thaliana rosette leaves (Aharoni et al., 2003). Only recent work started to explore linalool metabolism in A. thaliana, which was found mainly localized in the flowers (Ginglinger et al., 2013). This work demonstrated the existence of two linalool synthases producing different enantiomers, and the concomitant involvement of two P450 enzymes, CYP76C3 and CYP71B31, with predominance of CYP76C3, in linalool oxidation. It also suggested the presence of partially redundant enzymes that may contribute to floral linalool metabolism.A family of eight CYP76 genes is detected in the A. thaliana genome. We report here an evolutionary and functional analysis of this family. We show that members of the CYP76C subfamily, when successfully expressed in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), all metabolize monoterpenols with different substrate specificities. Although CYP76Cs seem specific to Brassicaceae, they share common functions with CYP76s from other plants, such as CYP76B1 from H. tuberosus and CYP76B6 from C. roseus. These functions include not only monoterpenol oxidation, but also metabolism and detoxification of herbicides belonging to the class of phenylurea. Because of this property, CYP76Cs can be used simultaneously for monoterpenol oxidation and as selectable markers for plant transformation.