Nitrogen and phosphorus content of flow from drains fertilized with cow manure slurry

Summary The rate of flow and nitrate and phosphorus content of the water from four drained sandy and clayey plots of size 12×60 m cropped to continuous corn were determined following two annual applications of different rates (0, 260, 390 and 520 kg N/ha) of cow manure slurry. The drain flow was directly related to the rainfall and was greatly influenced by soil texture. The N losses were greater in 1972 (7.8 to 19.1 kg N/ha) than in 1971 (0.4 to 7.8 kg N/ha) because of more summer rainfall. Nitrogen and phosphorus losses were larger from the sandy plots than from the clayey plots. The manure application rates had no apparent effect on nitrogen losses in the drain water.     

Critical ontologies: rethinking relations to other-than-humans from the Bolivian Andes

Drawing from fieldwork and archival research carried out in Bolivia between 2010 and 2017, this article undertakes a rethinking of Indigenous ontologies in light of Bolivian interlocutors’ efforts to navigate deeply precarious ties to named places and saints. Attention to such instabilities challenges romantic accounts of ontology that presume a stable domain of materiality or religiosity outside of practice. During fieldwork in central Bolivia, I learned about the ways that Quechua farmers negotiated the relational and ecological effects of a divisive history of indentured labour and sexual violence through acts of devotion including paraman purina (‘walking for rain’), feasting, flute-play, dance, and chapel prayer each February for the Patron Saint La Virgen de la Candelaria, named places, and the Pachamama. These practices sought to rebuild ties to named places that were interrupted by the forbidding of offerings by the prior hacienda master and reshaped by state projects of Indigenous revivalism. These devotional practices, and participants’ narrations of them, offer insight into the political workings of Indigenous ontologies in twenty-first-century Bolivia. I propose critical ontologies as a scholarly lens that insists upon placing relations with other-than-humans within broader fields of legal and political contestation over rights, nature, and Indigeneity.     

Design and preclinical testing of an anti-CD41 CAR T cell for the treatment of acute megakaryoblastic leukaemia

Acute megakaryoblastic leukaemia (AMkL) is a rare subtype of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) representing 5% of all reported cases, and frequently diagnosed in children with Down syndrome. Patients diagnosed with AMkL have low overall survival and have poor outcome to treatment, thus novel therapies such as CAR T cell therapy could represent an alternative in treating AMkL. We investigated the effect of a new CAR T cell which targets CD41, a specific surface antigen for M7-AMkL, against an in vitro model for AMkL, DAMI Luc2 cell line. The performed flow cytometry evaluation highlighted a percentage of 93.8% CAR T cells eGFP-positive and a limited acute effect on lowering the target cell population. However, the interaction between effector and target (E:T) cells, at a low ratio, lowered the cell membrane integrity, and reduced the M7-AMkL cell population after 24 h of co-culture, while the cytotoxic effect was not significant in groups with higher E:T ratio. Our findings suggest that the anti-CD41 CAR T cells are efficient for a limited time spawn and the cytotoxic effect is visible in all experimental groups with low E:T ratio.     

Crown gall transformation of lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) with virulent strains of Agrobacterium tumefaciens

Summary Four diverse strains of Agrobacterium tumefaciens (C58, Ach5, GV3111, and A281) were capable of inducing tumors at a high frequency on inoculated stems of lentil (Lens culinaris Medik. cultivar Laird) in vivo, and on excised shoot apices in vitro. GV3111 and Ach5 produced the largest and heaviest tumors in vivo, while A281 produced the heaviest tumors in vitro. Tumor formation and opine production are indicative of plant cell transformation and tumors produced appropriate opines: nopaline (C58), octopine (Ach5 and GV3111), and agropine and mannopine (A281). Southern analysis of DNA from a tumor line produced by strain C58 showed that a T-DNA fragment had been transferred into the lentil genome.     

Identification of Pyrus Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and Evaluation for Genetic Mapping in European Pear and Interspecific Pyrus Hybrids

We have used new generation sequencing (NGS) technologies to identify single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers from three European pear (Pyrus communis L.) cultivars and subsequently developed a subset of 1096 pear SNPs into high throughput markers by combining them with the set of 7692 apple SNPs on the IRSC apple Infinium® II 8K array. We then evaluated this apple and pear Infinium® II 9K SNP array for large-scale genotyping in pear across several species, using both pear and apple SNPs. The segregating populations employed for array validation included a segregating population of European pear (‘Old Home’בLouise Bon Jersey’) and four interspecific breeding families derived from Asian (P. pyrifolia Nakai and P. bretschneideri Rehd.) and European pear pedigrees. In total, we mapped 857 polymorphic pear markers to construct the first SNP-based genetic maps for pear, comprising 78% of the total pear SNPs included in the array. In addition, 1031 SNP markers derived from apple (13% of the total apple SNPs included in the array) were polymorphic and were mapped in one or more of the pear populations. These results are the first to demonstrate SNP transferability across the genera Malus and Pyrus. Our construction of high density SNP-based and gene-based genetic maps in pear represents an important step towards the identification of chromosomal regions associated with a range of horticultural characters, such as pest and disease resistance, orchard yield and fruit quality.     

Structure of the (E)-4-hydroxy-3-methyl-but-2-enyl-diphosphate reductase from Plasmodium falciparum

Terpenoid precursor biosynthesis occurs in human and many pathogenic organisms via the mevalonate and 2-C-methyl-d-erythritol-4-phosphate (MEP) pathways, respectively. We determined the X-ray structure of the Fe/S containing (E)-4-hydroxy-3-methyl-but-2-enyl-diphosphate reductase (LytB) of the pathogenic protozoa Plasmodium falciparum which catalyzes the terminal step of the MEP pathway. The cloverleaf fold and the active site of P. falciparum LytB corresponds to those of the Aquifex aeolicus and Escherichia coli enzymes. Its distinct electron donor [2Fe–2S] ferredoxin was modeled to its binding site by docking calculations. The presented structural data provide a platform for a rational search of anti-malarian drugs.