Scanning electron microscopy of glochidia and juveniles of the freshwater mussel,Hyriopsis myersiana

Summary

The ultrastructure of early stages of the mussel, Hyriopsis (Limnoscapha) myersiana (Lea, 1856), was observed by scanning electron microscopy from the glochidial period until the onset of the juvenile stage 10 days later. Further observations were performed for an additional 13 days to assess juvenile development. Glochidia extracted from the brood chambers have a hookless, semi-oval and equivalve calcareous shell with numerous pores in the internal surface, pits in the external surface and cuticular spines in the ventral region. Keratin fibers with a random arrangement in the cuticle of the glochidial shell were also detected. The appearance of the foot within 10 days of in vitro glochidial culture was considered the main feature of metamorphosis to the juvenile stage. Another change during the following 13 days was the formation of a new periostracum exhibiting growth lines under the old glochidial shell. This development occurs mainly in the anterior region and is followed by hardening of the periostracum matrix by calcium deposition. Periostracum growth gradually became apparent in the lateral and posterior regions at the end of this period. The retraction of spines and the alteration of the external surface of the old shell are also described. It is speculated that transcuticular filaments identified in the juvenile stage may have sensory or metabolic exchange functions. The prominent foot, gradually covered by long dense cilia, shows rhythmical movements which suggest a role in feeding. Similarly, cilia present in the mantle may also be involved in the capture of food, while microvilli may facilitate absorption of dissolved materials. Longer cilia, sparsely distributed in the mantle, may function as chemo- or tactile sensors.     

EFFECT OF ECDYSTERONE ON VITELLOGENIN CONCENTRATION IN HAEMOLYMPH OF MALE AND FEMALE SARCOPHAGA BULLATA

Using Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, cycloheximide, incorporation of ³H-labelled amino acids and immunological methods, we have demonstrated that injection of ecdy- sterone induces de novo synthesis and release of vitellogenin in both sexes of Sarcophaga bullata. Vitellogenin concentrations were measured by the Mancini-radial immunodiffusion technique. In males a dose as low as 1 ng always makes vitellogenin appear in the haemolymph but very reproducible results are only obtained when doses varying from 10 to 250 ng were injected. In this range, the dose-response curve was linear on a semi- logarithmic scale.

In females, vitellogenin concentration remained low until a few hours after liver feeding and thereafter it rose sharply and reached its maximum about 24 h after the protein meal. 100 μg 6-hydroxydopamine HCl, injected before liver feeding in 4-day-old females, inhibited vitellogenin synthesis and yolk deposition, probably by interfering with the release of a brain hormone. This inhibitory effect on vitellogenin synthesis, but not that on yolk deposition, could be overruled by injection of ecdysterone. Juvenile hormone was ineffective on both. Females, ovariectomized on day 2 or 3, accumulated vitellogenin in their haemolymph, indicating that the continuous presence of the ovaries was not required for vitellogenin synthesis. The possible relation between the gonadotrophs hormone from the brain, vitellogenin synthesis and moulting hormone metabolism is discussed.     

The ecdysoid RH5849 induces yolk polypeptide synthesis in male flies

Summary

RH5849 is a benzoyl hydrazine analog which has been reported to mimic several effects of the arthropod steroid hormone ecdysone to which it is chemically totally unrelated. In adult Diptera, ecdysone is the hormone that triggers vitellogenin synthesis. We report here that RH5849, upon oral ingestion, is able to induce vitellogenin synthesis in male Drosophila, Neobellieria, Phormia and Lucilia. This contrasts to data in the literature which showed that RH5849 could not mimic the pupariation-inducing effect of ecdysone in last instar fly larvae. RH5849 neither exerts a juvenile hormone mimicking effect nor behaves as an anti-juvenile hormone in both the Colorado potato beetle and Galleria.     

Factors affecting the bionomics of the eastern African egg parasitoid Trichogramma bournieri Pintureau & Babault (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae)

The trichogrammatid Trichogramma bournieri Pintureau & Babault is a polyphagous parasitoid of eggs of several cereal stemborer species in eastern Africa. The effects of host species, host age and duration of host deprivation on the performance of the parasitoid were studied in the laboratory. Host acceptance and suitability were tested using five stemborer species. The noctuids Sesamia calamistis Hampson, Sesamia nonagrioides (Lefebvre), Busseola fusca (Fuller) the crambid Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) and the pyralid Eldana saccharina Walker were successfully parasitized by T. bournieri. Parasitism, number of progeny and developmental time varied significantly with host species. The eggs of S. calamistis and B. fusca were the most suitable, whereas those of E. saccharina were the least suitable. While parasitism and number of progeny tended to decrease with age of hosts, there were no significant differences in sex ratio. Longevity of the parasitoid increased with increase in deprivation of hosts from 0 to 12 days. Average lifetime fecundity per female decreased, indicating resorption of eggs.     

Dynamic compressive loading differentially regulates chondrocyte anabolic and catabolic activity with age

Dynamic loading has emerged as an important part of cartilage tissue engineering strategies for enhancing tissue production and producing cartilage with functionally competent mechanical properties. As patients in need of cartilage span a range of age groups, questions arise as to the role of age in a cell's ability to respond to dynamic loading. Therefore, this study's goal was to characterize age‐related anabolic and catabolic responses of chondrocytes to dynamic compressive loading. Bovine chondrocytes isolated from juvenile (3‐week‐old) and adult (2‐ to 3‐year‐old) donors were encapsulated in poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogels and subjected to dynamic loading applied intermittently in a sinusoidal waveform at 1 or 0.3 Hz with 5 or 10% amplitude strain up to 2 weeks. Loading significantly enhanced total sulfated glycosaminoglycan (sGAG) production by 220% for juvenile chondrocytes with 0.3 Hz/5% loading and by 88% for adult chondrocytes with 1 Hz/5% loading, while all other loading regimes did not affect or inhibited total sGAG production. Contrarily, deposition of larger matrix molecules of aggrecan and collagen II was either not affected or inhibited by loading. Collagen VI deposition was significantly upregulated by loading but only in adult chondrocytes and under different loading regimes (1 Hz/10% and 0.3 Hz/5%) when compared to total sGAGs. Both cell populations displayed catabolic activity, which appeared to be stimulated by loading. Taken together, findings from this study suggest that loading differentially regulates matrix synthesis and the response is highly dependent on donor age. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2013; 110: 2046–2057. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Predicting the timing of maturational spurts in skeletal age

Measures of maturity provide windows into the timing and tempo of childhood growth and maturation. Delayed maturation in a single child, or systemically in a population, can result from either genetic or environmental factors. In terms of the skeleton, delayed maturation may result in short stature or indicate another underlying issue. Thus, prediction of the timing of a maturational spurt is often desirable in order to determine the likelihood that a child will catch up to their chronological age peers. Serial data from the Fels Longitudinal Study were used to predict future skeletal age conditional on current skeletal age and to predict the timing of maturational spurts. For children who were delayed relative to their chronological age peers, the likelihood of catch‐up maturation increased through the average age of onset of puberty and decreased prior to the average age of peak height velocity. For boys, the probability of an imminent maturational spurt was higher for those who were less mature. For girls aged 11 to 13 years, however, this probability was higher for those who were more mature, potentially indicating the presence of a skeletal maturation plateau between multiple spurts. The prediction model, available on the web, is most relevant to children of European ancestry living in the Midwestern US. Our model may also provide insight into the tempo of maturation for children in other populations, but must be applied with caution if those populations are known to have high burdens of environmental stressors not typical of the Midwestern US. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Estimating the age structure of a buried adult population: A new statistical approach applied to archaeological digs in France

Paleodemographers have developed several methods for estimating the age structure of historical populations in absence of civil registration data. Starting from biological indicators alone, they use a reference population of known sex and age to assess the conditional distribution of the biological indicator given age. However, the small amount of data available and the unstable nature of the related statistical problem mean that most methods are disappointing. Using the most reliable reference data possible, we propose a simple statistical method, integrating the maximum amount of information included in the actual data, which quite significantly improves age estimates for a buried population. Here the method is applied to a French cemetery used from Late Antiquity to the end of the Early Middle Ages. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Sequence and hydropathy profile analysis of two classes of secondary transporters

A structural class in the MemGen classification of membrane proteins is a set of evolutionary related proteins sharing a similar global fold. A structural class contains both closely related pairs of proteins for which homology is clear from sequence comparison and very distantly related pairs, for which it is not possible to establish homology based on sequence similarity alone. In the latter case the evolutionary link is based on hydropathy profile analysis. Here, we use these evolutionary related sets of proteins to analyze the relationship between E-values in BLAST searches, sequence similarities in multiple sequence alignments and structural similarities in hydropathy profile analyses. Two structural classes of secondary transporters termed ST[3], which includes the Ion Transporter (IT) superfamily and ST[4], which includes the DAACS family (TC# 2.A.23) were extracted from the NCBI protein database. ST[3] contains 2051 unique sequences distributed over 32 families and 59 subfamilies. ST[4] is a smaller class containing 399 unique sequences distributed over 2 families and 7 subfamilies. One subfamily in ST[4] contains a new class of binding protein dependent secondary transporters. Comparison of the averaged hydropathy profiles of the subfamilies in ST[3] and ST[4] revealed that the two classes represent different folds. Divergence of the sequences in ST[4] is much smaller than observed in ST[3], suggesting different constraints on the proteins during evolution. Analysis of the correlation between the evolutionary relationship of pairs of proteins in a class and the BLAST E-value revealed that: (i) the BLAST algorithm is unable to pick up the majority of the links between proteins in structural class ST[3], (ii) ‘low complexity filtering’ and ‘composition based statistics’ improve the specificity, but strongly reduce the sensitivity of BLAST searches for distantly related proteins, indicating that these filters are too stringent for the proteins analyzed, and (iii) the E-value cut-off, which may be used to evaluate evolutionary significance of a hit in a BLAST search is very different for the two structural classes of membrane proteins.     

不同苗龄沙地柏抗旱生理特性比较研究

以相同来源的1、3、5年生沙地柏幼苗为材料,采用室内生长池人工控水模拟不同干旱胁迫条件,对10个抗旱相关生理指标进行考察,探讨沙地柏苗龄对其抗旱特性影响。结果表明:（1）沙地柏叶片的保水力、细胞膜透性、RuBP羧化酶活性在胁迫前不同苗龄间差异显著,而叶片相对水分亏缺、气孔导度等指标不同龄苗间差异不显著。（2）在干旱胁迫条件下,随土壤含水量的降低,不同苗龄沙地柏的叶片水分亏缺、气孔导度差异一直不显著,而其净光合速率、蒸腾速率、水分利用率、胞间CO₂浓度在6.78%土壤水分含量时出现显著差异;当土壤水分含量降低到4.52%时,不同苗龄的叶片光量子效率也出现显著差异。（3）各苗龄组随着干旱胁迫的加剧,5年生沙地柏净光合速率、RuBP羧化酶活性、光量子效率显著低于1年生沙地柏,而其胞间CO₂浓度显著高于1、3年生沙地柏,并且其气孔导度、蒸腾速率随土壤水分含量降低而下降的幅度最大,水分利用率增加幅度比1、3年生的更多。研究表明,不同苗龄沙地柏幼苗抗旱性指标对干旱胁迫的响应程度存在差异,抗旱指标对苗龄的稳定性不同;干旱胁迫条件下低苗龄沙地柏比高苗龄的生长势更强,更有生命活力,但高苗龄沙地柏对水分胁迫的适应能力强于低苗龄;另外,在进行抗旱鉴定时,试验苗木年龄最好一致,抗旱鉴定指标选取也需考虑其对材料年龄的敏感性及稳定性。     

Isolation of 1-(1′-2′ S-Nornicotino)-1-deoxy-β-d-fructofuranose and Its Formation in Flue-curing Process of Tobacco Leaves

1-(1′-2′ S-Nornicotino)-1-deoxy-β-d-fructofuranose was first isolated from flue-cured leaves of Cherry Red tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum, cv. Bright Yellow. Its structure was established spectrometrically and synthetically. This substance was shown to be formed from nornicotine during flue-curing. Its smoking effect was mild.