The Probe, Issue #143 -- May 1994

First Eastern Nuisance Wildlife Control Operators Shortcourse A Huge Success, by Thomas G. Barnes, Department of Forestry, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky NRA Internships Available PETA Rallies for Rats Wild Pigs Pork Out on California Grape

Reflecting on the human dimensions of wild dolphin tourism in marine environments

Purpose – Many studies report on the potential ecological impacts of wild dolphin tourism, risks to people, and economic benefits to local communities. Fewer studies report the social aspects (human dimensions) of dolphin tourism, such as visitor satisfaction and attitudes of participants. This communication postulates that human dimensions are an important consideration in any strategy to keep wild dolphin tourism operations sustainable by balancing the welfare of the dolphins and the desires and expectations of tourists to interact with these charismatic, iconic creatures. Methodology – This communication synthesizes learning gained from a recent quantitative systematic literature review of marine wildlife tourism, a previously unreported review of wild dolphin tourism literature, and a recent study from the Dolphin Discovery Centre in Bunbury, Western Australia. Findings – Human attitudes towards marine mammals ultimately reflect how dolphin tourism is developed and managed. It is therefore important to understand how people experience and perceive dolphin tourism. Wild dolphin tourism is of great value to local economies, tour operators, and visitors who enjoy those experiences. The potential impacts that can arise from dolphin tourism need to be understood and minimised by actions under the control of tour operators and government authorities. This is important to make the satisfaction visitors gain from such experiences worthwhile and to ensure the long-term sustainability of wild dolphin tourism experiences. Originality of the research – Most wild dolphin tourism research has an ecological focus. This communication demonstrates that equally important social research, concerned with understanding visitor awareness, knowledge, expectations, and satisfaction, has a vital role to play in developing best practice management for wild dolphin tourism experiences

ClgR regulation of chaperone and protease systems is essential for Mycobacterium tuberculosis parasitism of the macrophage

Chaperone and protease systems play essential roles in cellular homeostasis and have vital functions in controlling the abundance of specific cellular proteins involved in processes such as transcription, replication, metabolism and virulence. Bacteria have evolved accurate regulatory systems to control the expression and function of chaperones and potentially destructive proteases. Here, we have used a combination of transcriptomics, proteomics and targeted mutagenesis to reveal that the clp gene regulator (ClgR) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis activates the transcription of at least ten genes, including four that encode protease systems (ClpP1/C, ClpP2/C, PtrB and HtrA-like protease Rv1043c) and three that encode chaperones (Acr2, ClpB and the chaperonin Rv3269). Thus, M. tuberculosis ClgR controls a larger network of protein homeostatic and regulatory systems than ClgR in any other bacterium studied to date. We demonstrate that ClgR-regulated transcriptional activation of these systems is essential for M. tuberculosis to replicate in macrophages. Furthermore, we observe that this defect is manifest early in infection, as M. tuberculosis lacking ClgR is deficient in the ability to control phagosome pH 1 h post-phagocytosis

The Probe, Issue 220 – January/February 2002

HSUS Draft Recommendations For the Oversight of Wildlife Control Operators -- Arthur E. Smith One-hundred and forty five persons attended the 8th Annual Wildlife Control Instructional Seminar, in Las Vegas, February 4-6. The seminar was sponsored by Wildlife Control Technology (WCT) and the National Wildlife Control Operators Association (NWCOA). Attending Regular Fish and Wildlife Conferences -- Chad Richardson:” I think the wildlife damage field should get back into the practice of attending and presenting at these conferences.” Book Review: Joy and Celebration of Mole Control by Jeff Holper. NATIONAL ANIMAL DAMAGE CONTROL ASSOCIATION 2002 Membership Directory The Arizona office of USDA/APHIS Wildlife Services has reported the positive identification of roof rats (Rattus rattus) in Arizona. The most recent photograph of a jaguar in Arizona was taken in early December 2001 by a remote, motion-activated camera that was set out to monitor potential jaguar corridors near the U.S.-Mexico border. An estimated 5,000 wild descendants of a herd of domestic pigs are wreaking havoc on Santa Cruz Island, the largest of the Channel Islands, a group of islands off the southern California coast, and part of the Channel Islands National Park

Stochastic dynamics of macromolecular-assembly networks

The formation and regulation of macromolecular complexes provides the backbone of most cellular processes, including gene regulation and signal transduction. The inherent complexity of assembling macromolecular structures makes current computational methods strongly limited for understanding how the physical interactions between cellular components give rise to systemic properties of cells. Here we present a stochastic approach to study the dynamics of networks formed by macromolecular complexes in terms of the molecular interactions of their components. Exploiting key thermodynamic concepts, this approach makes it possible to both estimate reaction rates and incorporate the resulting assembly dynamics into the stochastic kinetics of cellular networks. As prototype systems, we consider the lac operon and phage lambda induction switches, which rely on the formation of DNA loops by proteins and on the integration of these protein-DNA complexes into intracellular networks. This cross-scale approach offers an effective starting point to move forward from network diagrams, such as those of protein-protein and DNA-protein interaction networks, to the actual dynamics of cellular processes.Comment: Open Access article available at http://www.nature.com/msb/journal/v2/n1/full/msb4100061.htm

Effect of promoter architecture on the cell-to-cell variability in gene expression

According to recent experimental evidence, the architecture of a promoter, defined as the number, strength and regulatory role of the operators that control the promoter, plays a major role in determining the level of cell-to-cell variability in gene expression. These quantitative experiments call for a corresponding modeling effort that addresses the question of how changes in promoter architecture affect noise in gene expression in a systematic rather than case-by-case fashion. In this article, we make such a systematic investigation, based on a simple microscopic model of gene regulation that incorporates stochastic effects. In particular, we show how operator strength and operator multiplicity affect this variability. We examine different modes of transcription factor binding to complex promoters (cooperative, independent, simultaneous) and how each of these affects the level of variability in transcription product from cell-to-cell. We propose that direct comparison between in vivo single-cell experiments and theoretical predictions for the moments of the probability distribution of mRNA number per cell can discriminate between different kinetic models of gene regulation.Comment: 35 pages, 6 figures, Submitte

Certifying Out of Home Operators in Europe. European Forum for Certification. Summary of a Forum held at the BioFach Congress 2009

As in previous years the annual meeting on organic certification in the out-of-home sector took place at the congress of the BioFach Trade Fair, on the 22nd of February 2009. As a conclusion to this meeting this report now summarizes the main topics of the “European Forum for Certification” with the focus on the presentations in Nuremberg. The presenters delivered insight into the various situations in their countries and indicated the challenges that they currently are dealing with. Depictions included developments in Belgium, Finland, Italy, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and The Netherlands. After describing and discussing the issues the country presenters agreed to have this paper developed by the organisers, which gives a short overview of the proceedings to all participants and to all interested in this topic. The Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 on organic production and labelling of organic products came into force on January 1, 2009. It repeals the former Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91 and for the first time explicitly refers to mass catering (out of home). The Regulation excludes catering and eating enterprises from mandatory certification whilst at the same time giving each country the option how best to proceed. How do member countries deal with this new situation? The presenters go into detail and this summary characterizes some detailed situations in the following pages

Operator Sequence Alters Gene Expression Independently of Transcription Factor Occupancy in Bacteria

A canonical quantitative view of transcriptional regulation holds that the only role of operator sequence is to set the probability of transcription factor binding, with operator occupancy determining the level of gene expression. In this work, we test this idea by characterizing repression in vivo and the binding of RNA polymerase in vitro in experiments where operators of various sequences were placed either upstream or downstream from the promoter in Escherichia coli. Surprisingly, we find that operators with a weaker binding affinity can yield higher repression levels than stronger operators. Repressor bound to upstream operators modulates promoter escape, and the magnitude of this modulation is not correlated with the repressor-operator binding affinity. This suggests that operator sequences may modulate transcription by altering the nature of the interaction of the bound transcription factor with the transcriptional machinery, implying a new layer of sequence dependence that must be confronted in the quantitative understanding of gene expression