Nucleotide sequence and molecular characterization of a gene encoding GTP-binding protein from Streptococcus gordonii

A 1286-bp fragment of chromosomal DNA from Streptococcus gordonii strain Challis was cloned and sequenced. The gene sgg consisted of 897-bp nucleotides encoding a 299-amino acid polypeptide (33 200 Da). The deduced amino acid sequence exhibited significant similarity to Era, G protein of Escherichia coli. The nucleotide binding assay demonstrated that recombinant Sgg bound [³²P]GTP but not [³²P]ATP, [³²P]CTP, or [³²P]UTP. These findings indicate that Sgg is a member of the G protein superfamily in the genus Streptococcus.     

Female wolf spiders exert cryptic control drastically reducing ejaculate size

Sexes' roles in post‐copulatory processes have important effects on individual fitness and are promising to study in species showing complex mating behaviours. In the spider Schizocosa malitiosa, males perform two different copulatory patterns, pattern 1 includes 80% of total pedipalp insertions and pattern 2 includes 20%. Both patterns produce similar number of offspring, but pattern 1 induces higher female reluctance to remating than pattern 2. We hypothesised that the complex copulatory patterns are linked to post‐copulatory sexual selection, affecting males' sperm transfer and the resulting sperm storage by females. First, we examined amounts of sperm in males and live females from uninterrupted (pattern 1 + 2) and interrupted matings (pattern 1, pattern 2). Second, in order to disentangle male and female actions, we induced males to mate with dead females and examined amounts of sperm. Males transfer in total 71% of the sperm available in their pedipalps, being higher but not significant in pattern 1 than in pattern 2. Females drastically reduced the amount of sperm stored in their spermathecae and such control is stronger in pattern 1 compared to pattern 2 matings. We propose that cryptic female control is a main factor driving males to strengthen sperm transfer. Active female reduction in ejaculate most probably diminished her reluctance to remate.     

重症手足口病合并脑炎患儿血清VCAM-1, VEGF水平及其临床意义

目的:分析重症手足口病合并脑炎患儿血清血管细胞粘附因子-1(VCAM-1)、血管内皮生长因子(VEGF)水平及其临床意义。方法:以2013年1月至2016年5月我院诊治的手足口病患儿90例为研究对象,根据是否合并脑炎将其分为观察组(合并脑炎)45例、对照组(未合并脑炎)45例。观察组中重型22例,危重型23例。统计分析患儿脑脊液常规分析指标(脑脊液蛋白质、脑脊液白细胞计数)水平及脑脊液和血清中VCAM-1、VEGF水平。结果:观察组患儿入院时脑脊液中蛋白质、白细胞计数水平,脑脊液和血清中VCAM-1、VEGF水平均显著高于对照组(P0.05),观察组中,危重症患儿的脑脊液白细胞计数和脑脊液中VCAM-1水平显著高于重症患儿,差异有统计学意义(P0.05),危重症患儿的脑脊液蛋白质、血清VCAM-1、VEGF水平、脑脊液VEGF均高于对照组,但差异无统计学意义(P0.05)。患儿血清VCAM-1水平与脑脊液蛋白质、白细胞计数和VCAM-1水平均呈显著正相关(相关系数r=0.852,0.791,0.775,P0.05),患儿血清VEGF水平与脑脊液蛋白质、白细胞计数和VEGF水平均呈显著正相关(相关系数r=0.809,0.882,0.813,P0.05)。结论:重症手足口病合并脑炎患儿血清和脑脊液中VCAM-1、VEGF水平显著上调,且均与脑脊液蛋白质、白细胞计数和VEGF水平显著相关,对于重症手足口病合并脑炎的辅助诊断具有重要的临床意义。     

Reindeer habitat use in relation to two small wind farms,during preconstruction,construction, and operation

Worldwide there is a rush toward wind power development and its associated infrastructure. In Fennoscandia, large‐scale wind farms comprising several hundred windmills are currently built in important grazing ranges used for Sámi reindeer husbandry. In this study, reindeer habitat use was assessed using reindeer fecal pellet group counts in relation to two relatively small wind farms, with 8 and 10 turbines, respectively. In 2009, 1,315 15‐m² plots were established and pellet groups were counted and cleaned from the plots. This was repeated once a year in May, during preconstruction, construction, and operation of the wind farms, covering 6 years (2009–2014) of reindeer habitat use in the area. We modeled the presence/absence of any pellets in a plot at both the local (wind farm site) and regional (reindeer calving to autumn range) scale with a hierarchical logistic regression, where spatial correlation was accounted for via random effects, using vegetation type, and the interaction between distance to wind turbine and time period as predictor variables. Our results revealed an absolute reduction in pellet groups by 66% and 86% around each wind farm, respectively, at local scale and by 61% at regional scale during the operation phase compared to the preconstruction phase. At the regional, scale habitat use declined close to the turbines in the same comparison. However, at the local scale, we observed increased habitat use close to the wind turbines at one of the wind farms during the operation phase. This may be explained by continued use of an important migration route close to the wind farm. The reduced use at the regional scale nevertheless suggests that there may be an overall avoidance of both wind farms during operation, but further studies of reindeer movement and behavior are needed to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms behind this suggested avoidance.     

Pre-treatment neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio is elevated in epithelial ovarian cancer and predicts survival after treatment

Purpose  Inflammatory cells can both suppress and stimulate tumor growth, and the influence of inflammatory cells on clinical outcome has been the focus of many studies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), a measure of the systemic inflammatory response, as an additional discriminative biomarker in epithelial ovarian cancer and to determine whether it predicts survival and recurrence. Methods  We studied 192 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, 173 with benign ovarian tumors, 229 with benign gynecologic disease, and 405 healthy controls. Serum CA125 levels and leukocyte counts according to subtypes were recorded prior to treatment in all study subjects. In epithelial ovarian cancer, the diagnostic usefulness of NLR, in combination with CA125, was evaluated. The correlation between NLR and overall and disease-free survival was analyzed using both univariate and multivariate analyses adjusting for the known prognostic factors (age, stage, cell type, and grade). Results  Preoperative NLR in ovarian cancer subjects (mean 6.02) was significantly higher than that in benign ovarian tumor subjects (mean 2.57), benign gynecologic disease subjects (mean 2.55), and healthy controls (mean 1.98) (P < 0.001). The sensitivity and specificity of NLR in detecting ovarian cancer was 66.1% (95% CI, 59.52–72.68%) and 82.7% (95% CI, 79.02–86.38%), respectively (cutoff value: 2.60). In early stage ovarian cancer, CA125 was not elevated in 19 out of 49 patients. Seven (36.8%) of these 19 patients were NLR positive. On Cox multivariate analysis, NLR positive, stage III/IV, and older age were independent poor prognostic factors, and being NLR positive was the most powerful predictive variable (Hazard Ratio = 8.42 [95% CI: 1.09–64.84], P = 0.041). Conclusions  Our findings provide evidence for the association between NLR and epithelial ovarian cancer. Preoperative NLR, in combination with CA125, may represent a simple and cost-effective method of identifying ovarian cancers, and an elevated NLR may predict an adverse outcome in ovarian cancer.     

HIV感染者/AIDS病人高迁移率族蛋白1的表达及其临床意义

通过检测74例处于不同病期的HIV感染者/AIDS患者和10例健康对照者PBMCs中HMGB1 mRNA的表达水平及其外周血浆HMGB1、TNF-a和IL-2水平,比较各组之间表达水平的差异及其与CD4＋T淋巴细胞的关系.发现HMGB1 mRNA的表达水平及血浆HMGB1含量在AIDS病人组明显高于感染者组和正常对照组（P〈0.05）;AIDS患者经HAART治疗后疗效差组HMGB1 mRNA的表达水平及血浆HMGB1含量也明显高于疗效好组（P〈0.05）;而经HAART治疗后效果好且免疫功能恢复的患者HMGB1 mRNA的表达及血浆HMGB1含量均较治疗前明显下降（P〈0.05）;当CD4＋T细胞数低于200/μL时,血浆HMGB1含量以及PBMCs中HMGB1 mRNA表达水平与CD4＋T细胞数呈负相关.显示HMGB1在HIV/AIDS发病及病情进展过程中可能起重要作用,HMGB1血浆含量及PBMCs中HMGB1 mRNA的表达水平高低与HIV/AIDS患者病情轻重密切相关.     

Comparing Dirichlet normal surface energy of tooth crowns, a new technique of molar shape quantification for dietary inference, with previous methods in isolation and in combination

Inferred dietary preference is a major component of paleoecologies of extinct primates. Molar occlusal shape correlates with diet in living mammals, so teeth are a potentially useful structure from which to reconstruct diet in extinct taxa. We assess the efficacy of Dirichlet normal energy (DNE) calculated for molar tooth surfaces for reflecting diet. We evaluate DNE, which uses changes in normal vectors to characterize curvature, by directly comparing this metric to metrics previously used in dietary inference. We also test whether combining methods improves diet reconstructions. The study sample consisted of 146 lower (mandibular) second molars belonging to 24 euarchontan taxa. Five shape quantification metrics were calculated on each molar: DNE, shearing quotient, shearing ratio, relief index, and orientation patch count rotated (OPCR). Statistical analyses were completed for each variable to assess effects of taxon and diet. Discriminant function analysis was used to assess ability of combinations of variables to predict diet. Values differ significantly by diets for all variables, although shearing ratios and OPCR do not distinguish statistically between insectivores and folivores or omnivores and frugivores. Combined analyses were much more effective at predicting diet than any metric alone. Alone, relief index and DNE were most effective at predicting diet. OPCR was the least effective alone but is still valuable as the only quantitative measure of surface complexity. Of all methods considered, DNE was the least methodologically sensitive, and its effectiveness suggests it will be a valuable tool for dietary reconstruction.     

Nonparametric comparison for panel count data with unequal observation processes

This article considers nonparametric comparison of several treatment groups based on panel count data, which often occur in, among others, medical follow-up studies and reliability experiments concerning recurrent events. For the problem, most of the existing procedures require that observation processes are identical across different treatment groups among other requirements. We propose a new class of nonparametric test procedures that allow different observation processes. The new test statistics are constructed based on the integrated weighted differences between the estimated mean functions of the underlying recurrent event processes. The asymptotic distributions of the proposed test statistics are established and their finite-sample properties are examined through Monte Carlo simulations, which indicate that the proposed approach works well for practical situations. An illustrative example is provided.