Immunoprotection of guinea pigs against experimental acute pyelonephritis after the administration of Escherichia coli purified fimbriae

Experimental results of the present study evidenced the following aspects: a) the antigen, prepared from type I Escherichia coli purified fimbriae (H. 2946 strain), induced immunity at urinary tract level; b) the immunoprotection induced by oral vaccination with multiple doses of fimbriated antigen produced a significant decrease of acute pyelonephritis in newborn guinea pigs and at the same time, a local protection of the urinary tract; c) the immunoprophylaxis by vaccine prepared from fimbriae represents a preferential solution for urinary tract infections prevention in general and especially in children; d) the frequency distribution differences between "protected" and "non-protected" animals were evaluated by chi-square--test with YATES correction and proved to be statistically significant at probability levels.     

Species loss of stoneflies (Plecoptera) in the Czech Republic during the 20th century

1. Rapid expansion and intensification of anthropogenic activities in the 20th century has caused profound changes in freshwater assemblages. Unfortunately, knowledge of the extent and causes of species loss (SL) is limited due to the lack of reliable historical data. An unusual data set allows us to compare changes in the most sensitive of aquatic insect orders, the Plecoptera, at some 170 locations in the Czech Republic between two time periods, 1955–1960 and 2006–2010. Historical data (1890–1911) on assemblages of six lowland rivers allow us to infer even earlier changes. 2. Regional stonefly diversity decreased in the first half of the 20th century. Streams at lower altitudes lost a substantial number of species, which were never recovered. In the second half of the century, large‐scale anthropogenic pressure caused SL in all habitats, leading to a dissimilarity of contemporary and previous assemblages. The greatest changes were found at sites affected by organic pollution and a mixture of organic pollution and channelisation or impoundment. Colonisation of new habitats was observed in only three of the 80 species evaluated. 3. Species of moderate habitat specialisation and tolerance to organic pollution were most likely to be lost. Those with narrow specialisations in protected habitats were present in both historical and contemporary collections. 4. Contemporary assemblages are the consequence of more than a 100 years of anthropogenic impacts. In particular, streams at lower altitude and draining intensively exploited landscapes host a mere fragment of the original species complement. Most stonefly species are less frequently present than before, although their assemblages remain almost intact in near‐natural mountain streams. Our analyses demonstrate dramatic restriction of species ranges and, in some cases, apparent changes in altitudinal preference throughout the area.     

Changes in belowground carbon in Acacia crassicarpa and Eucalyptus urophylla plantations after tree girdling

Limitations in the techniques used to separate root-derived and soil-organic-matter (SOM)-derived respiration have hampered the understanding of forest carbon cycling. Tree girdling is considered to be a robust approach with little disturbance to the root–soil system. Using this approach, we tried to separate root-derived respiration from SOM-derived respiration under Acacia crassicarpa and Eucalyptus urophylla plantations in South China. We found that girdling reduced soil respiration and temperature sensitivity of respiration (Q ₁₀) under both plantations compared to controls, but the intensity of girdling effects was species specific. Six months after girdling, live fine root biomass was lower than the control in A. crassicarpa but not in E. urophylla. Soil microbial biomass (C _mic) under A. crassicarpa was increased by girdling 17 days after treatment, but decreased thereafter. In contrast, there was no difference in C _mic between girdled and control treatments under E. urophylla. Girdling significantly decreased soil organic carbon (SOC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) under A. crassicarpa, but not under E. urophylla. We ascribe differences in girdling effects on belowground carbon between the two species to differences in resprouting traits.     

Moderate alcohol consumption is associated with better endothelial function: a cross sectional study

Background

Natural heterologous valved conduits with a diameter greater than 22 mm that can be used for right ventricular outflow tract reconstruction in adults are not commercially available. The purpose of this study was to measure by ultrasonography the maximum diameter of the distended jugular veins of horses and cattle, respectively, to identify a population of animals that would be suitable for post-mortem collection of jugular veins at sizes greater than 22 mm.

Methods

The study population included 60 Warmblood horses, 25 Freiberger horses, 20 Brown Swiss cows, and 20 Holstein cows (including 10 Holstein and 10 Red Holstein). The maximum cross-sectional diameter of the distended jugular veins was measured at a location half-way between the mandibular angle and the thoracic inlet. The thoracic circumference (heart girth length) was used as a surrogate of body size. The jugular vein diameters of the different populations were compared by analysis of variance and the association between heart girth length and jugular vein diameter was determined in each of the four study populations by linear regression analysis.

Results

There was considerable individual variation of jugular vein diameters within each of the four study populations. There was no statistically significant relationship between thoracic circumference and jugular vein diameter in any of the populations. The jugular vein diameters of Brown Swiss cows were significantly larger than those of any of the other populations. Warmblood horses had significantly larger jugular vein diameters compared to Freiberger horses.

Conclusion

The results of this study suggest that the production of bovine or equine xenografts with diameters of greater than 22 mm would be feasible. Differences between species and breeds need to be considered. However, prediction of the jugular vein diameter based on breed and heart girth length in an individual animal is inaccurate.     

ClusPro FMFT-SAXS: Ultra-fast Filtering Using Small-Angle X-ray Scattering Data in Protein Docking

We have recently demonstrated that incorporation of small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS)-based filtering in our heavily used docking server ClusPro improves docking results. However, the filtering step is time consuming, since ≈ 10⁵ conformations have to be sequentially processed. At the same time, we have demonstrated the possibility of ultra-fast systematic energy evaluation for all rigid body orientations of two proteins, by sampling using Fast Manifold Fourier Transform (FMFT), if energies are represented as a combination of convolution-like expressions. Here we present a novel FMFT-based algorithm FMFT-SAXS for massive SAXS computation on multiple conformations of a protein complex. This algorithm exploits the convolutional form of SAXS calculation function. FMFT-SAXS allows computation of SAXS profiles for millions of conformations in a matter of minutes, providing an opportunity to explore the whole conformational space of two interacting proteins. We demonstrate the application of the new FMFT-SAXS approach to significantly speed up SAXS filtering step in our current docking protocol (1 to 2 orders of magnitude faster, running in several minutes on a modern 16-core CPU) without loss of accuracy. This is demonstrated on the benchmark set as well as on the experimental data. The new approach is available as a part of ClusPro server (https://beta.cluspro.org) and as an open source C library (https://bitbucket.org/abc-group/libfmftsaxs).     

Chlorophyll distribution pattern in inner stem tissues: evidence from epifluorescence microscopy and reflectance measurements in 20 woody species

The occurrence of functional chloroplasts in internal stem tissues and their distribution profiles in 20 woody species have been investigated. Chloroplasts were identified from the red chlorophyll auto-fluorescence using epi-fluorescence microscopy. Chloroplasts were detected in the cortex of all species examined, in the xylem rays of 19 and in the perimedullar and the pith cells of 16 out of the 20 investigated species. Chloroplast containing cell clusters in the pith were identified in some species. In addition, we report on the semi-quantitative distribution of chlorophylls in various internal stem tissues. Chlorophyll level was estimated by reflectance measurements at specific wave bands. Although decreasing chlorophyll gradients from cortex to pith were observed in half of the species, chlorophyll distribution in the remaining species was irregular with occasionally high levels in the pith. According to our data, chlorophyll occurrence in stem internal tissues is quite widespread, even in the light remote, deeply shaded central compartments like pith, provided that corresponding cells are viable. The species-specific tissue distribution of chlorophyll levels may be used to select suitable plants to investigate further this neglected area of photosynthesis research.