国产萱草属夜间开花类群的分类研究

在《中国植物志》第14卷中,萱草属Hemerocallis夜间开花类群被处理为3个独立的物种,北黄花菜、黄花菜和小黄花菜。但是,它们之间因严重的性状重叠和交叉,用单个性状如花数、花被管长度、根的直径等区分它们极为困难。本文根据国产干标本和栽培材料,对9个常用检索性状以及核型做了定量分析。另外,这3个类群的地理分布式样表明,它们似乎是不同的地理宗,因为三者替代性分布在由暖湿到旱冷的气候梯度中。本文结论是,将三者处理为同一物种北黄花菜的3个亚种也许更令人信服,即原亚种北黄花菜,亚种黄花菜和亚种小黄花菜。     

无患子科三个单种属植物的染色体计数

报道无患子科（Sapindaceae）3个单种属植物的染色体数目,其中掌叶木属和茶条木属为首次报道。掌叶木属（Handeliodendron Rehd．）、茶条木属（Delayaya Franch．）、伞花木属（Eurycorymbus Hand．-Mazz．）植物的染色体数目分别为2n=40,28和26,且它们的染色体皆为小染色体。     

三江源牧户参与草地生态保护的意愿

牧民对环境保护的响应是生态保护战略有效实施的关键,主体参与意愿直接影响生态保护项目实施的成效和可持续性,是区域生态经济可持续发展的前提。通过对三江源地区约283户藏族牧民通过翻译进行结构式访谈,采用Logistic模型从主体角度探讨了牧户愿意参与生态保护行为响应的主要影响因素。结果表明:(1)三江源区域约87%的牧户认为生态保护对牧户有好处,但受各种内外部因素的影响只有近70%的牧户是在政府主导下基于有限理性而被动的参与生态保护行为响应。(2)三江源牧户参与生态保护行为响应的意愿主要受当地政府的保护力度及牧户对生态保护外部性的认知水平、生计水平、外界接触程度、工作机会的正影响,并受牧户的年龄、离中心城镇的距离和区域气候恶劣情况等因素的负影响,系数依次为:2.22、3.98、1.93、2.26、1.48、-1.63、-2.43、-0.92。(3)牧户的生计水平、退化感知和外部性认知是影响三江源牧户参与生态保护意愿的关键因素,牧户参与生态保护意愿的概率不仅仅是牧户出于自身利益和未知风险考虑下被动的响应,更是当地政府的环境知识宣传和保护投入影响下个体的抉择结果。(4)创造更多的就业机会和解决牧户的单一化生计问题,构建完善地生态补偿机制让牧户分享生态保护的外部性效益,并激励牧户主动参与生态保护行为响应,才能最终实现区域生态保护、牧户幸福和生态经济可持续发展的多赢局面。     

Benzo(a)pyrene-induced mitochondrial dysfunction and cell death in p53-null Hep3B cells

Benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) has been shown to induce apoptosis and necrosis in various cell types. However, the effect of BaP on mitochondria function and p73, and their possible roles in BaP-induced cell death have not been well studied. This study focused on mitochondria-mediated cell death and the occurrence of p73 protein accumulation in BaP-treated human hepatoma Hep3B (p53-null) cells. We found that BaP (8, 16, 32 and 64μM) induced early necrosis at 12h and delayed apoptosis at 24h. BaP dramatically induced ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase activity and led to significant increase in oxidative stress at early time points (6 and 12h). Necrotic cell death was concurrent with loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, decrease in the ATP level and activities of Na(+)/K(+)-ATPase and Ca(2+)/Mg(2+)-ATPase. However, these changes were reversed in the process of apoptosis. In addition, after BaP treatment, c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and Bax were activated during apoptosis and no change in p73 protein level was observed. These results revealed that the cells with mitochondria dysfunction and ATP depletion underwent necrosis at early time point and apoptosis afterward when they recovered from mitochondrial dysfunction and ATP depletion. Activation of JNK and Bax possibly contributed to BaP-induced apoptosis.     

中国Btken-Ag的特性及其杀虫毒肽的研究

苏芸金芽孢杆菌肯尼亚亚种Ag株(Bacillus thuringiensis serovar.kenyae strainAg,以下简称为Btken-Ag)是血清型H4a-4c中对棉铃虫、粘虫等多种夜蛾科害虫具有高毒力的优良品系,经生理生化、H抗原、酯酶谱、抗生谱和质粒谱等性状比较分析,与标准株肯尼亚亚种023大体相同,但其质粒谱及伴孢晶体多肽组分与023明显有别.该菌株伴孢晶体多形,其主要杀虫成分为61000多肽,经ELISA同源分析,此毒肽与同血清型中的023、7501晶体蛋白高度同源,与商品生产株H3a-3b—HD-1株部分同源,与对蚊虫高效的H14-1897及球形芽孢杆菌Ts-1无同源性.此外,对H4中10株相关株、H7-5、HD-1及1897共13株进行了对棉铃虫、粘虫及蚊虫的杀虫毒力比较测定,其中Btken-Ag的优选株H4-1及b1-4对棉铃虫的毒力高于023株及HD-1株.     

Zooplankton community structure along a pollution gradient at fine geographical scales in river ecosystems: The importance of species sorting over dispersal

The release of anthropogenic pollution into freshwater ecosystems has largely transformed biodiversity and its geographical distribution patterns globally. However, for many communities including ecologically crucial ones such as zooplankton, it is largely unknown how different communities respond to environmental pollution. Collectively, dispersal and species sorting are two competing processes in determining the structure and geographical distribution of zooplankton communities in running water ecosystems such as rivers. At fine geographical scales, dispersal is usually considered as the dominant factor; however, the relative role of species sorting has not been evaluated well, mainly because significant environmental gradients rarely exist along continuously flowing rivers. The Chaobai River in northern China represents a rare system, where a significant environmental gradient exists at fine scales. Here, we employed high‐throughput sequencing to characterize complex zooplankton communities collected from the Chaobai River, and tested the relative roles of dispersal and species sorting in determining zooplankton community structure along the pollution gradient. Our results showed distinct patterns of zooplankton communities along the environmental gradient, and chemical pollutant‐related factors such as total phosphorus and chlorophyll‐a were identified as the major drivers for the observed patterns. Further partial redundancy analyses showed that species sorting overrode the effect of dispersal to shape local zooplankton community structure. Thus, our results reject the dispersal hypothesis and support the concept that species sorting caused by local pollution can largely determine the zooplankton community structure when significant environmental gradients exist at fine geographical scales in highly polluted running water ecosystems.     

Ectopic overexpression of porcine DGAT1 increases intramuscular fat content in mouse skeletal muscle

The microsomal enzyme 1, 2-acyl CoA: diacylglyceroltransferase-1 (DGAT1) plays an important role in triglyceride storage in adipose tissue and expresses in skeletal muscle as well. The primary goal of the present study was to investigate the effect of porcine DGAT1 on intramuscular fat (IMF) content of transgenic mice produced by pronuclear microinjection with muscle specific promoter of porcine muscle creatine kinase (MCK). In normal chow-fed diet, 4 month-old male transgenic mice expressed more DGAT1, ACC1, UCP1, and FABP4 mRNAs and proteins in skeletal muscle than control mice by real-time PCR and western blot. No significant changes were detected for ACC2, CD36, ADRP, PPAR gamma and LPL. Triacylglycerol assay and soleus muscle sections showed overexpression of porcine DGAT1 in skeletal muscle increased intramyocellular triglyceride and percent of the total cell surface covered by lipid droplets. Thus, upregulation of porcine DGAT1 in skeletal muscle increases IMF content. The present study may further serve to develop transgenic pigs with higher IMF content and improved meat quality.     

Expression level of heterologous tat genes is crucial for in vivo reconstitution of a functional Tat translocase in Escherichia coli

The Tat system has the remarkable capacity of exporting proteins in folded conformation across the cytoplasmic membrane. The functional Tat translocase from Gram-negative bacteria consists of TatA, TatB and TatC proteins. To gain information about the species specificity of the Tat translocase, we cloned tat genes from Gram-negative pathogens Shigella flexneri 2a str. 301, Vibrio cholerae El Tor N16961, Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1, thermophilic Sulfolobus solfataricus P2, Thermus thermophilus HB8 and from three Magnetospirillum species (AMB-1, MS-1 and MSR-1), and assessed the capacity of these Tat systems to restore the Tat-dependent growth defect of Escherichia coli tat mutants. We found that whereas the tat genes from the thermophilic bacterial and archaeal species were not functional in E. coli, other tat genes could all complement the phenotype of the E. coli tat mutants. In addition, a chimera composed of the N-terminus of V. cholerae TatE and C-terminus of M. magneticum TatA was functional. Whereas the expression of the tatABC genes from P. aeruginosa and Magnetospirillum strains must be induced to obtain a functional Tat system, overproduction of the V. cholerae TatABC proteins abolished the complementation. The complementation impairment seemed to be correlated with increasing level of slow-migrating TatC isoforms. In vitro studies showed that slow-migrating TatC isoforms in the purified V. cholerae TatABC complex increased with storage time. Together these results showed that the Tat translocases from the Gram-negative bacteria are generally functional in E. coli and the expression level is crucial for in vivo reconstitution of a functional Tat translocase.