Considering Intra-individual Genetic Heterogeneity to Understand Biodiversity

In this chapter, I am concerned with the concept of Intra-individual Genetic Hetereogeneity (IGH) and its potential influence on biodiversity estimates. Definitions of biological individuality are often indirectly dependent on genetic sampling -and vice versa. Genetic sampling typically focuses on a particular locus or set of loci, found in the the mitochondrial, chloroplast or nuclear genome. If ecological function or evolutionary individuality can be defined on the level of multiple divergent genomes, as I shall argue is the case in IGH, our current genetic sampling strategies and analytic approaches may miss out on relevant biodiversity. Now that more and more examples of IGH are available, it is becoming possible to investigate the positive and negative effects of IGH on the functioning and evolution of multicellular individuals more systematically. I consider some examples and argue that studying diversity through the lens of IGH facilitates thinking not in terms of units, but in terms of interactions between biological entities. This, in turn, enables a fresh take on the ecological and evolutionary significance of biological diversity

Impaired perceptual learning in a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome is mediated by parvalbumin neuron dysfunction and is reversible.

To uncover the circuit-level alterations that underlie atypical sensory processing associated with autism, we adopted a symptom-to-circuit approach in the Fmr1-knockout (Fmr1-/-) mouse model of Fragile X syndrome. Using a go/no-go task and in vivo two-photon calcium imaging, we find that impaired visual discrimination in Fmr1-/- mice correlates with marked deficits in orientation tuning of principal neurons and with a decrease in the activity of parvalbumin interneurons in primary visual cortex. Restoring visually evoked activity in parvalbumin cells in Fmr1-/- mice with a chemogenetic strategy using designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs was sufficient to rescue their behavioral performance. Strikingly, human subjects with Fragile X syndrome exhibit impairments in visual discrimination similar to those in Fmr1-/- mice. These results suggest that manipulating inhibition may help sensory processing in Fragile X syndrome

Factors that affect proliferation of Salmonella in tomatoes post-harvest: the roles of seasonal effects, irrigation regime, crop and pathogen genotype

MAIN OBJECTIVES: Fresh fruits and vegetables become increasingly recognized as vehicles of human salmonellosis. Physiological, ecological, and environmental factors are all thought to contribute to the ability of Salmonella to colonize fruits and vegetables pre- and post-harvest. The goal of this study was to test how irrigation levels, fruit water congestion, crop and pathogen genotypes affect the ability of Salmonella to multiply in tomatoes post-harvest. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Fruits from three tomato varieties, grown over three production seasons in two Florida locations, were infected with seven strains of Salmonella and their ability to multiply post-harvest in field-grown tomatoes was tested. The field experiments were set up as a two-factor factorial split plot experiment, with the whole-plot treatments arranged in a randomized complete-block design. The irrigation treatment (at three levels) was the whole-plot factor, and the split-plot factor was tomato variety, with three levels. The significance of the main, two-way, and three-way interaction effects was tested using the (type III) F-tests for fixed effects. Mean separation for each significant fixed effect in the model was performed using Tukey's multiple comparison testing procedure. MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES AND SIGNIFICANCE: The irrigation regime per se did not affect susceptibility of the crop to post-harvest proliferation of Salmonella. However, Salmonella grew significantly better in water-congested tissues of green tomatoes. Tomato maturity and genotype, Salmonella genotype, and inter-seasonal differences were the strongest factors affecting proliferation. Red ripe tomatoes were significantly and consistently more conducive to proliferation of Salmonella. Tomatoes harvested in the driest, sunniest season were the most conducive to post-harvest proliferation of the pathogen. Statistically significant interactions between production conditions affected post-harvest susceptibility of the crop to the pathogen. UV irradiation of tomatoes post-harvest promoted Salmonella growth

Developmental differences in children’s interpersonal emotion regulation

Previous research on interpersonal emotion regulation (ER) in childhood has been rather unsystematic, focusing mainly on children’s prosocial behaviour, and has been conducted in the absence of an integrative emotion theoretical framework. The present research relied on the interpersonal affect classification proposed by Niven, Totterdell, and Holman (2009) to investigate children’s use of different interpersonal ER strategies. The study drew on two samples: 180 parents of children aged between 3 and 8 years reported about a situation where their child was able to change what another person was feeling in order to make them feel better. In addition, 126 children between 3- and 8-years old answered two questions about how they could improve others’ mood. Results from both samples showed age differences in children’s use of interpersonal ER strategies. As expected, ‘affective engagement’ (i.e., focusing on the person or the problem) and ‘cognitive engagement’ (i.e., appraising the situation from a different perspective) were mainly used by 7-8 years-old, whereas ‘attention’ (i.e., distracting and valuing) was most used by 3-4 and 5-6 years-old. ‘Humor’ (i.e., laughing with the target) remained stable across the different age groups. The present research provides more information about the developmental patterns for each specific interpersonal emotion regulation strategy

Consequences of a large-scale fragmentation experiment for Neotropical bats : disentangling the relative importance of local and landscape-scale effects

Context Habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation are widespread drivers of biodiversity decline. Understanding how habitat quality interacts with landscape context, and how they jointly affect species in human-modified landscapes, is of great importance for informing conservation and management. Objectives We used a whole-ecosystem manipulation experiment in the Brazilian Amazon to investigate the relative roles of local and landscape attributes in affecting bat assemblages at an interior-edge-matrix disturbance gradient. Methods We surveyed bats in 39 sites, comprising continuous forest (CF), fragments, forest edges and intervening secondary regrowth. For each site, we assessed vegetation structure (local-scale variable) and, for five focal scales, quantified habitat amount and four landscape configuration metrics. Results Smaller fragments, edges and regrowth sites had fewer species and higher levels of dominance than CF. Regardless of the landscape scale analysed, species richness and evenness were mostly related to the amount of forest cover. Vegetation structure and configurational metrics were important predictors of abundance, whereby the magnitude and direction of response to configurational metrics were scale-dependent. Responses were ensemble-specific with local-scale vegetation structure being more important for frugivorous than for gleaning animalivorous bats. Conclusions Our study indicates that scale-sensitive measures of landscape structure are needed for a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of fragmentation on tropical biota. Although forest fragments and regrowth habitats can be of conservation significance for tropical bats our results further emphasize that primary forest is of irreplaceable value, underlining that their conservation can only be achieved by the preservation of large expanses of pristine habitat

Characterisation of a 3-hydroxypropionic acid-inducible system from Pseudomonas putida for orthogonal gene expression control in Escherichia coli and Cupriavidus necator

3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) is an important platform chemical used as a precursor for production of added-value compounds such as acrylic acid. Metabolically engineered yeast, Escherichia coli, cyanobacteria and other microorganisms have been developed for the biosynthesis of 3-HP. Attempts to overproduce this compound in recombinant Pseudomonas denitrificans revealed that 3-HP is consumed by this microorganism using the catabolic enzymes encoded by genes hpdH, hbdH and mmsA. 3-HP-inducible systems controlling the expression of these genes have been predicted in proteobacteria and actinobacteria. In this study, we identify and characterise 3-HP-inducible promoters and their corresponding LysR-type transcriptional regulators from Pseudomonas putida KT2440. A newly-developed modular reporter system proved possible to demonstrate that PpMmsR/PmmsA and PpHpdR/PhpdH are orthogonal and highly inducible by 3-HP in E. coli (12.3- and 23.3-fold, respectively) and Cupriavidus necator (51.5- and 516.6-fold, respectively). Bioinformatics and mutagenesis analyses revealed a conserved 40-nucleotide sequence in the hpdH promoter, which plays a key role in HpdR-mediated transcription activation. We investigate the kinetics and dynamics of the PpHpdR/PhpdH switchable system in response to 3-HP and show that it is also induced by both enantiomers of 3-hydroxybutyrate. These findings pave the way for use of the 3-HP-inducible system in synthetic biology and biotechnology applications

Neuroscience and education: prime time to build the bridge

As neuroscience gains social traction and entices media attention, the notion that education has much to benefit from brain research becomes increasingly popular. However, it has been argued that the fundamental bridge toward education is cognitive psychology, not neuroscience. We discuss four specific cases in which neuroscience synergizes with other disciplines to serve education, ranging from very general physiological aspects of human learning such as nutrition, exercise and sleep, to brain architectures that shape the way we acquire language and reading, and neuroscience tools that increasingly allow the early detection of cognitive deficits, especially in preverbal infants. Neuroscience methods, tools and theoretical frameworks have broadened our understanding of the mind in a way that is highly relevant to educational practice. Although the bridge’s cement is still fresh, we argue why it is prime time to march over it

Off the Couch and Onto the Streets: Toward an Ethnographic Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis has much to gain by incorporating ethnographic methods into its repertoire. Recent works in ethnographic psychoanalysis demonstrate how psychoanalysis stands to function better as both community intervention and participatory action research. This article describes the historical convergence between psychoanalysis and cultural anthropology and situates ethnographic psychoanalysis within interdisciplinary theory and practice

Green Sturgeon Physical Habitat Use in the Coastal Pacific Ocean

The green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris) is a highly migratory, oceanic, anadromous species with a complex life history that makes it vulnerable to species-wide threats in both freshwater and at sea. Green sturgeon population declines have preceded legal protection and curtailment of activities in marine environments deemed to increase its extinction risk. Yet, its marine habitat is poorly understood. We built a statistical model to characterize green sturgeon marine habitat using data from a coastal tracking array located along the Siletz Reef near Newport, Oregon, USA that recorded the passage of 37 acoustically tagged green sturgeon. We classified seafloor physical habitat features with high-resolution bathymetric and backscatter data. We then described the distribution of habitat components and their relationship to green sturgeon presence using ordination and subsequently used generalized linear model selection to identify important habitat components. Finally, we summarized depth and temperature recordings from seven green sturgeon present off the Oregon coast that were fitted with pop-off archival geolocation tags. Our analyses indicated that green sturgeon, on average, spent a longer duration in areas with high seafloor complexity, especially where a greater proportion of the substrate consists of boulders. Green sturgeon in marine habitats are primarily found at depths of 20–60 meters and from 9.5–16.0°C. Many sturgeon in this study were likely migrating in a northward direction, moving deeper, and may have been using complex seafloor habitat because it coincides with the distribution of benthic prey taxa or provides refuge from predators. Identifying important green sturgeon marine habitat is an essential step towards accurately defining the conditions that are necessary for its survival and will eventually yield range-wide, spatially explicit predictions of green sturgeon distribution

EhMAPK, the Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase from Entamoeba histolytica Is Associated with Cell Survival

Mitogen Activated Protein Kinases (MAPKs) are a class of serine/threonine kinases that regulate a number of different cellular activities including cell proliferation, differentiation, survival and even death. The pathogen Entamoeba histolytica possess a single homologue of a typical MAPK gene (EhMAPK) whose identification was previously reported by us but its functional implications remained unexplored. EhMAPK, the only mitogen-activated protein kinase from the parasitic protist Entamoeba histolytica with Threonine-X-Tyrosine (TXY) phosphorylation motif was cloned, expressed in E. coli and functionally characterized under different stress conditions. The expression profile of EhMAPK at the protein and mRNA level remained similar among untreated, heat shocked and hydrogen peroxide-treated samples in all cases of dose and time. But a significant difference was obtained in the phosphorylation status of the protein in response to different stresses. Heat shock at 43°C or 0.5 mM H2O2 treatment enhanced the phosphorylation status of EhMAPK and augmented the kinase activity of the protein whereas 2.0 mM H2O2 treatment induced dephosphorylation of EhMAPK and loss of kinase activity. 2.0 mM H2O2 treatment reduced parasite viability significantly but heat shock and 0.5 mM H2O2 treatment failed to adversely affect E. histolytica viability. Therefore, a distinct possibility that activation of EhMAPK is associated with stress survival in E. histolytica is seen. Our study also gives a glimpse of the regulatory mechanism of the protein under in vivo conditions. Since the parasite genome lacks any typical homologue of mammalian MEK, the dual specificity kinases which are the upstream activators of MAPK, indications of the existence of some alternate regulatory mechanisms of the EhMAPK activity is perceived. These may include the autophosphorylation activity of the protein itself in combination with some upstream phosphatases which are not yet identified