The diet of Little Owls Athene noctua in Gloucestershire,England

Capsule Little Owls take a wide variety of food, most of which is made up of earthworms, but also includes bats.     

Provisioning with cereal grain depresses the body condition of insectivorous Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella nestlings

Capsule The body condition of nestling Yellowhammers was negatively correlated with the amount of cereal grain in the diet. This supports the hypothesis that cereal grain is an inferior nestling food relative to invertebrates. Cereal grain is frequently provisioned to nestlings in a range of bunting species breeding on farmland, suggesting that invertebrates may be limiting in these habitats.     

Shadow enhancers flanking the HoxB cluster direct dynamic Hox expression in early heart and endoderm development

The products of Hox genes function in assigning positional identity along the anterior–posterior body axis during animal development. In mouse embryos, Hox genes located at the 3′ end of HoxA and HoxB complexes are expressed in nested patterns in the progenitors of the secondary heart field during early cardiogenesis and the combined activities of both of these clusters are required for proper looping of the heart. Using Hox bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs), transposon reporters, and transgenic analyses in mice, we present the identification of several novel enhancers flanking the HoxB complex which can work over a long range to mediate dynamic reporter expression in the endoderm and embryonic heart during development. These enhancers respond to exogenously added retinoic acid and we have identified two retinoic acid response elements (RAREs) within these control modules that play a role in potentiating their regulatory activity. Deletion analysis in HoxB BAC reporters reveals that these control modules, spread throughout the flanking intergenic region, have regulatory activities that overlap with other local enhancers. This suggests that they function as shadow enhancers to modulate the expression of genes from the HoxB complex during cardiac development. Regulatory analysis of the HoxA complex reveals that it also has enhancers in the 3′ flanking region which contain RAREs and have the potential to modulate expression in endoderm and heart tissues. Together, the similarities in their location, enhancer output, and dependence on retinoid signaling suggest that a conserved cis-regulatory cassette located in the 3′ proximal regions adjacent to the HoxA and HoxB complexes evolved to modulate Hox gene expression during mammalian cardiac and endoderm development. This suggests a common regulatory mechanism, whereby the conserved control modules act over a long range on multiple Hox genes to generate nested patterns of HoxA and HoxB expression during cardiogenesis.     

Benzoic acid and specific 2-oxo acids activate hepatic efflux of glutamate at OAT2

The liver is the principal source of glutamate in blood plasma. Recently we have discovered that efflux of glutamate from hepatocytes is catalyzed by the transporter OAT2 (human gene symbol SLC22A7). Organic anion transporter 2 (OAT2) is an integral membrane protein of the sinusoidal membrane domain; it is primarily expressed in liver and much less in kidney, both in rats and humans. Many years ago, Häussinger and coworkers have demonstrated in isolated perfused rat liver that benzoic acid or specific 2-oxo acid analogs of amino acids like e.g. 2-oxo-4-methyl-pentanoate (‘2-oxo-leucine’) strongly stimulate release of glutamate (up to 7-fold); ‘2-oxo-valine’ and the corresponding amino acids were without effect. The molecular mechanism of efflux stimulation has remained unclear. In the present study, OAT2 from human and rat were heterologously expressed in 293 cells. Addition of 1 mmol/l benzoic acid to the external medium increased OAT2-specific efflux of glutamate up to 20-fold; ‘2-oxo-leucine’ was also effective, but not ‘2-oxo-valine’. Similar effects were seen for efflux of radiolabeled orotic acid. Expression of OAT2 did not increase uptake of benzoic acid; thus, benzoic acid is no substrate, and trans-stimulation can be excluded. Instead, further experiments suggest that increased efflux of glutamate is caused by direct interaction of benzoic acid and specific 2-oxo acids with OAT2. We propose that stimulators bind to a distinct extracellular site and thereby accelerate relocation of the empty substrate binding site to the intracellular face. Increased glutamate efflux at OAT2 could be the main benefit of benzoate treatment in patients with urea cycle defects.     

Design and synthesis of MMP inhibitors with appended fluorescent tags for imaging and visualization of matrix metalloproteinase enzymes

We describe the synthesis, MMP-2 and 9 potency, and in vitro evaluation of a series of α-sulfone hydroxmate MMP inhibitors conjugated to a series of dyes with different absorption/emission lamina maxima’s that can be used to visualize tumors.     

Design,synthesis and structure–activity relationships of zwitterionic spirocyclic compounds as potent CCR1 antagonists

A series of zwitterionic spirocyclic compounds were synthesised. In vitro data revealed that these compounds were potent CCR1 antagonists. In particular, 2, 4, 11 and 20 inhibited CCR1 mediated chemotaxis of THP-1 cells in a functional assay.     

Integrating multiple lines of evidence to better understand the evolutionary divergence of humpback dolphins along their entire distribution range: a new dolphin species in Australian waters?

The conservation of humpback dolphins, distributed in coastal waters of the Indo‐West Pacific and eastern Atlantic Oceans, has been hindered by a lack of understanding about the number of species in the genus (Sousa) and their population structure. To address this issue, we present a combined analysis of genetic and morphologic data collected from beach‐cast, remote‐biopsied and museum specimens from throughout the known Sousa range. We extracted genetic sequence data from 235 samples from extant populations and explored the mitochondrial control region and four nuclear introns through phylogenetic, population‐level and population aggregation frameworks. In addition, 180 cranial specimens from the same geographical regions allowed comparisons of 24 morphological characters through multivariate analyses. The genetic and morphological data showed significant and concordant patterns of geographical segregation, which are typical for the kind of demographic isolation displayed by species units, across the Sousa genus distribution range. Based on our combined genetic and morphological analyses, there is convincing evidence for at least four species within the genus (S. teuszii in the Atlantic off West Africa, S. plumbea in the central and western Indian Ocean, S. chinensis in the eastern Indian and West Pacific Oceans, and a new as‐yet‐unnamed species off northern Australia).