Proteomic approach: Identification of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Medicago truncatula</Emphasis> proteins induced in roots after infection with the pathogenic oomycete <Emphasis Type="Italic">Aphanomyces euteiches</Emphasis>

The legume root rot disease caused by the oomycete pathogen Aphanomyces euteiches is one major yield reducing factor in legume crop production. A comparative proteomic approach was carried out in order to identify proteins of the model legume Medicago truncatula which are regulated after an infection with A. euteiches. Several proteins were identified by two dimensional gel electrophoresis to be differentially expressed after pathogen challenge. Densitometric evaluation of expression values showed different regulation during the time-course analysed. Proteins regulated during the infection were identified by matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight-mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS). Among the differentially expressed proteins, two encoded putative cell wall proteins and two were designated as small heat shock proteins. Furthermore, an isoform of the chalcone-O-methyltransferase was found to be increased in infected roots. The majority of induced proteins belonged to the family of class 10 of pathogenesis related proteins (PR10). Previously, various PR10-like proteins have been shown to be regulated by general stress or abscisic acid (ABA). Therefore, these proteins were further investigated concerning their regulation in response to drought stress and exogenous ABA-application. Complex regulation patterns were identified: three of the A. euteiches-induced PR10-like proteins were also induced by exogenous ABA- but none of them is induced after drought stress. In contrast, three of these proteins are down-regulated by drought stress. Hence, the strong expression of different PR10-family members and their regulation profiles indicates that this set of proteins plays a major role during root adaptations to various stress conditions.     

Individual wealth rank, community wealth inequality, and self-reported adult poor health: a test of hypotheses with panel data (2002-2006) from native Amazonians, Bolivia

Growing evidence suggests that economic inequality in a community harms the health of a person. Using panel data from a small-scale, preindustrial rural society, we test whether individual wealth rank and village wealth inequality affects self-reported poor health in a foraging-farming native Amazonian society. A person's wealth rank was negatively but weakly associated with self-reported morbidity. Each step up/year in the village wealth hierarchy reduced total self-reported days ill by 0.4 percent. The Gini coefficient of village wealth inequality bore a positive association with self-reported poor health that was large in size, but not statistically significant. We found small village wealth inequality, and evidence that individual economic rank did not change. The modest effects may have to do with having used subjective rather than objective measures of health, having small village wealth inequality, and with the possibly true modest effect of a person's wealth rank on health in a small-scale, kin-based society. Finally, we also found that an increase in mean individual wealth by village was related to worse self-reported health. As the Tsimane' integrate into the market economy, their possibilities of wealth accumulation rise, which may affect their well-being. Our work contributes to recent efforts in biocultural anthropology to link the study of social inequalities, human biology, and human-environment interactions.     

Does the Future Affect the Present? The Effects of Future Weather on the Current Collection of Planted Crops and Wildlife in a Native Amazonian Society of Bolivia

Unlike neighboring disciplines, anthropology rarely studies how actual future events affect current behavior. Such studies could lay the groundwork for studies of ethno-forecasting. Psychologists argue that people forecast poorly, but some empirical work in cultural anthropology suggests that at least with weather, rural people might make reasonably accurate forecasts. Using data from a small-scale, pre-industrial rural society in the Bolivian Amazon, this study estimates the effects of future weather on the current collection of planted crops and wildlife. If actual future events affect current behavior, then this would suggest that people must forecast accurately. Longitudinal data covering 11 consecutive months (10/2002–8/2003, inclusive) from 311 women and 326 men ≥age 14 in 13 villages of a contemporary society of forager-farmers in Bolivia’s Amazon (Tsimane’) are used. Individual fixed-effect panel linear regressions are used to estimate the effect of future weather (mean hourly temperature and total daily rain) over the next 1–7 days from today on the probability of collecting wildlife (game, fish, and feral plants excluding firewood) and planted farm crops (annuals and perennials) today. Daily weather records come from a town next to the Tsimane’ territory and data on foraging and farming come from scans (behavioral spot observations) and surveys of study participants done during scans. Short-term future weather (≤3 days) affected the probability of collecting planted crops and wildlife today, although the effect was greater on the amount of planted crops harvested today than on the amount of wildlife collected today. Future weather beyond 3 days bore no significant association with the amount of planted crops harvested today nor with the amount of wildlife collected today. After controlling for future and past weather, today’s weather (mean hourly temperature, but not rain) affected the probability of collecting wildlife today, but today’s weather (temperature or rain) did not affect the probability of collecting planted crops today. The study supports prior work by anthropologists suggesting that rural people forecast accurately. If future weather affects the probability of harvesting planted crops and collecting wildlife today, then this suggests that Tsimane’ must forecast accurately. We discuss possible reasons for the finding. The study also supports growing evidence from rural areas of low-income nations that rural people tend to protect their food production and food consumption well against small idiosyncratic shocks or, in our case, against ordinary daily weather that is not extreme. However, the greater responsiveness of daily foraging output compared with daily farming output to today’s weather suggests that foraging might not protect food consumption as well as farming against adverse climate perturbations.     

Identification of mycorrhiza-regulated genes with arbuscule development-related expression profile

Suppressive subtractive hybridisation was applied to the analysis of late stage arbuscular mycorrhizal development in pea. 96 cDNA clones were amplified and 81, which carried fragments more than 200 nt in size, were sequence analysed. Among 67 unique fragments, 10 showed no homology and 10 were similar to sequences with unknown function. RNA accumulation of the corresponding 67 genes was analysed by hybridisation of macro-arrays. The cDNAs used as probes were derived from roots of wild type and late mutant pea genotypes, inoculated or not with the AM fungus Glomus mosseae. After calibration, a more than 2.5-fold mycorrhiza-induced RNA accumulation was detected in two independent experiments in the wild type for 25 genes, 22 of which seemed to be induced specifically during late stage AM development. Differential expression for 7 genes was confirmed by RT-PCR using RNA from mycorrhiza and from controls of a different pea cultivar. In order to confirm arbuscule-related expression, the Medicago truncatula EST data base was screened for homologous sequences with putative mycorrhiza-related expression and among a number of sequences with significant similarities, a family of trypsin inhibitor genes could be identified. Mycorrhiza-induced RNA accumulation was verified for five members by real-time PCR and arbuscule-related activation of the promoter could be shown in transgenic roots for one of the genes, MtTi1.     

A mutation in CHN-1/CHIP suppresses muscle degeneration in Caenorhabditis elegans

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is one of the most severe X-linked, inherited diseases of childhood, characterized by progressive muscle wasting and weakness as the consequence of mutations in the dystrophin gene. The protein encoded by dystrophin is a huge cytosolic protein that links the intracellular F-actin filaments to the members of the dystrophin-glycoprotein-complex (DGC). Dystrophin deficiency results in the absence or reduction of complex components that are degraded through an unknown pathway. We show here that muscle degeneration in a Caenorhabditis elegans DMD model is efficiently reduced by downregulation of chn-1, encoding the homologue of the human E3/E4 ubiquitylation enzyme CHIP. A deletion mutant of chn-1 delays the cell death of body-wall muscle cells and improves the motility of animals carrying mutations in dystrophin and MyoD. Elimination of chn-1 function in the musculature, but not in the nervous system, is sufficient for this effect, and can be phenocopied by proteasome inhibitor treatment. This suggests a critical role of CHIP/CHN-1-mediated ubiquitylation in the control of muscle wasting and degeneration and identifies a potential new drug target for the treatment of this disease.     

Synthesis of pyrazole substituted methyl pheophorbide-a derivatives and their preliminary in vitro cell viabilities

The unique ability of chlorophyll derivatives to accumulate in tumorous tissues and to cause a photodynamic effect under laser radiation has been successively used in photodynamic therapy. In this connection, enormous research on modifications of the peripheral substituents in chlorophyll has shown that the presence and position of the substituents in the chlorin derivatives make a remarkable difference in biological activity. As a result, we directed our attention to synthesize methyl pheophorbide-a derivatives, chlorophyll-a derivatives, possessing heterocyclic aromatic substituents or pyrazole moieties on the peripheral positions and to examine preliminary in vitro effects of these new derivatives on A549 cancer cells for PDT. From our experimental results, it was observed that the biological effect induced by photosensitizers on cancer cells may also depend upon the chemical structure of the photosensitizers.     

Grazing effects on intraspecific trait variability vary with changing precipitation patterns in Mongolian rangelands

Functional traits are proxies for plant physiology and performance, which do not only differ between species but also within species. In this work, we hypothesized that (a) with increasing precipitation, the percentage of focal species which significantly respond to changes in grazing intensity increases, while under dry conditions, climate‐induced stress is so high that plant species hardly respond to any changes in grazing intensity and that (b) the magnitude with which species change their trait values in response to grazing, reflected by coefficients of variation (CVs), increases with increasing precipitation. Chosen plant traits were canopy height, plant width, specific leaf area (SLA), chlorophyll fluorescence, performance index, stomatal pore area index (SPI), and individual aboveground biomass of 15 species along a precipitation gradient with different grazing intensities in Mongolian rangelands. We used linear models for each trait to assess whether the percentage of species that respond to grazing changes along the precipitation gradient. To test the second hypothesis, we assessed the magnitude of intraspecific trait variability (ITV) response to grazing, per species, trait, and precipitation level by calculating CVs across the different grazing intensities. ITV was most prominent for SLA and SPI under highest precipitation, confirming our first hypothesis. Accordingly, CVs of canopy height, SPI, and SLA increased with increasing precipitation, partly confirming our second hypothesis. CVs of the species over all traits increased with increasing precipitation only for three species. This study shows that it remains challenging to predict how plant performance will shift under changing environmental conditions based on their traits alone. In this context, the implications for the use of community‐weighted mean trait values are discussed, as not only species abundances change in response to changing environmental conditions, but also values of traits considerably change. Including this aspect in further studies will improve our understanding of processes acting within and among communities.     

Human's Cognitive Ability to Assess Facial Cues from Photographs: A Study of Sexual Selection in the Bolivian Amazon

Background

Evolutionary theory suggests that natural selection favors the evolution of cognitive abilities which allow humans to use facial cues to assess traits of others. The use of facial and somatic cues by humans has been studied mainly in western industrialized countries, leaving unanswered whether results are valid across cultures.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Our objectives were to test (i) if previous finding about raters'' ability to get accurate information about an individual by looking at his facial photograph held in low-income non western rural societies and (ii) whether women and men differ in this ability. To answer the questions we did a study during July-August 2007 among the Tsimane'', a native Amazonian society of foragers-farmers in Bolivia. We asked 40 females and 40 males 16–25 years of age to rate four traits in 93 facial photographs of other Tsimane'' males. The four traits were based on sexual selection theory, and included health, dominance, knowledge, and sociability. The rating scale for each trait ranged from one (least) to four (most). The average rating for each trait was calculated for each individual in the photograph and regressed against objective measures of the trait from the person in the photograph. We found that (i) female Tsimane'' raters were able to assess facial cues related to health, dominance, and knowledge and (ii) male Tsimane'' raters were able to assess facial cues related to dominance, knowledge, and sociability.

Conclusions/Significance

Our results support the existence of a human ability to identify objective traits from facial cues, as suggested by evolutionary theory.     

Gene-environment interactions and obesity traits among postmenopausal African-American and Hispanic women in the Women’s Health Initiative SHARe Study

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of obesity measures have identified associations with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). However, no large-scale evaluation of gene-environment interactions has been performed. We conducted a search of gene-environment (G × E) interactions in post-menopausal African-American and Hispanic women from the Women’s Health Initiative SNP Health Association Resource GWAS study. Single SNP linear regression on body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip circumference ratio (WHR) adjusted for multidimensional-scaling-derived axes of ancestry and age was run in race-stratified data with 871,512 SNPs available from African-Americans (N = 8,203) and 786,776 SNPs from Hispanics (N = 3,484). Tests of G × E interaction at all SNPs for recreational physical activity (m h/week), dietary energy intake (kcal/day), alcohol intake (categorical), cigarette smoking years, and cigarette smoking (ever vs. never) were run in African-Americans and Hispanics adjusted for ancestry and age at interview, followed by meta-analysis of G × E interaction terms. The strongest evidence for concordant G × E interactions in African-Americans and Hispanics was for smoking and marker rs10133840 (Q statistic P = 0.70, beta = ?0.01, P = 3.81 × 10^?7) with BMI as the outcome. The strongest evidence for G × E interaction within a cohort was in African-Americans with WHR as outcome for dietary energy intake and rs9557704 (SNP × kcal = ?0.04, P = 2.17 × 10^?7). No results exceeded the Bonferroni-corrected statistical significance threshold.