Abscisic Acid Insensitive 4 transcription factor is an important player in the response of Arabidopsis thaliana to two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae) feeding.

Plants growing in constantly changeable environmental conditions are compelled to evolve regulatory mechanisms to cope with biotic and abiotic stresses. Effective defence to invaders is largely connected with phytohormone regulation, resulting in the production of numerous defensive proteins and specialized metabolites. In our work, we elucidated the role of the Abscisic Acid Insensitive 4 (ABI4) transcription factor in the plant response to the two-spotted spider mite (TSSM). This polyphagous mite is one of the most destructive herbivores, which sucks mesophyll cells of numerous crop and wild plants. Compared to the wild-type (Col-0) Arabidopsis thaliana plants, the abi4 mutant demonstrated increased susceptibility to TSSM, reflected as enhanced female fecundity and greater frequency of mite leaf damage after trypan blue staining. Because ABI4 is regarded as an important player in the plastid-to-nucleus retrograde signalling process, we investigated the plastid envelope membrane dynamics using stroma-associated fluorescent marker. Our results indicated a clear increase in the number of stroma-filled tubular structures deriving from the plastid membrane (stromules) in the close proximity of the site of mite leaf damage, highlighting the importance of chloroplast-derived signals in the response to TSSM feeding activity

Noise drives sharpening of gene expression boundaries in the zebrafish hindbrain

Morphogens provide positional information for spatial patterns of gene expression during development. However, stochastic effects such as local fluctuations in morphogen concentration and noise in signal transduction make it difficult for cells to respond to their positions accurately enough to generate sharp boundaries between gene expression domains. During development of rhombomeres in the zebrafish hindbrain, the morphogen retinoic acid (RA) induces expression of hoxb1a in rhombomere 4 (r4) and krox20 in r3 and r5. Fluorescent in situ hybridization reveals rough edges around these gene expression domains, in which cells co-express hoxb1a and krox20 on either side of the boundary, and these sharpen within a few hours. Computational analysis of spatial stochastic models shows, surprisingly, that noise in hoxb1a/krox20 expression actually promotes sharpening of boundaries between adjacent segments. In particular, fluctuations in RA initially induce a rough boundary that requires noise in hoxb1a/krox20 expression to sharpen. This finding suggests a novel noise attenuation mechanism that relies on intracellular noise to induce switching and coordinate cellular decisions during developmental patterning

MEASUREMENT OF TOTAL AND PARTIAL PHOTON PROTON CROSS-SECTIONS AT 180 GEV CENTER-OF-MASS ENERGY RID C-1693-2008 RID B-9165-2008 RID C-5889-2009 RID A-4818-2008

Photon proton cross sections for elastic light vector meson production, sigma(el)gammap, inelastic diffractive production, sigma(d)gammap, non-diffractive production, sigma(nd)gammap, as well as the total cross section, sigma(tot)gammap, have been measured at an average gammap center of mass energy of 180 GeV with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The resulting values are sigma(el)gammap = 18 +/- 7 mub, sigma(d)gammap = 33 +/- 8 mub, sigma(nd)gammap = 91 +/- 11 mub, and sigma(tot)gammap = 143 +/- 17 mub, where the errors include statistical and systematic errors added in quadrature

EXTRACTION OF THE GLUON DENSITY OF THE PROTON AT X RID B-9165-2008 RID C-5889-2009 RID A-4818-2008 RID C-1693-2008

The gluon momentum density xg(x, Q(2)) of the proton was extracted at Q(2) = 20 GeV2 for small values of x between 4 x 10(-4) and 10(-2) from the scaling violations of the proton structure function F-2 measured recently by ZEUS in deep inelastic neutral current ep scattering at HERA. The extraction was performed in two ways. Firstly, using a global NLO fit to the ZEUS data on F-2 at low x constrained by measurements from NMC at larger x; and secondly using published approximate methods for the solution of the GLAP QCD evolution equations. Consistent results are obtained. A substantial increase of the gluon density is found at small x in comparison with the NMC result obtained at larger values of x

Study of photon dissociation in diffractive photoproduction at HERA

Diffractive dissociation of quasi-real photons at a photon-proton centre of mass energy of W ≈ 200 GeV is studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The process under consideration is γp → XN, where X is the diffractively dissociated photon system of mass MX and N is either a proton or a nucleonic system with mass MN < 2 GeV. The cross section for this process in the interval 3 < MX < 24 GeV relative to the total photoproduction cross section was measured to be σDpartial/σtot = 6.2 ± 0.2(stat) ± 1.4(syst)%. After extrapolating this result to the mass interval of mφ2 < MX2 < 0.05W2 and correcting it for proton dissociation, the fraction of the total cross section attributed to single diffractive photon dissociation, γp → Xp, is found to be σSD/σtot = 13.3 ± 0.5(stat) ± 3.6(syst)%. The mass spectrum of the dissociated photon system in the interval 8 < MX < 24 GeV can be described by the triple pomeron (IP IP IP) diagram with an effective pomeron intercept of αIP(0) = 1.12 ± 0.04(stat) ± 0.08(syst). The cross section for photon dissociation in the range 3 < MX < 8 GeV is significantly higher than that expected from the triple pomeron amplitude describing the region 8 < MX < 24 GeV. Assuming that this discrepancy is due to a pomeron-pomeron-reggeon (IP IP IR) term, its contribution to the diffractive cross section in the interval 3 < MX < 24 GeV is estimated to be fIP IP IR = 26 ± 3(stat) ± 12(syst)%. © Springer-Verlag 1997

Measurement of elastic phi photoproduction at HERA

The production of phi mesons in the reaction e(+)p --> e(+)phi p (phi --> K+K-) at a median Q(2) of 10(-4) GeV2 has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The differential phi photoproduction cross section d sigma/dt has an exponential shape and has been determined in the kinematic range 0.1 phi p) = 0.96+/-0.19(-0.18)(+0.21) mu b has been obtained by extrapolating to t = 0. When compared to lower energy data, the results show a weak energy dependence of both sigma(gamma-->phi p) and the slope of the t distribution. The phi decay angular distributions are consistent with s-channel helicity conservation. From lower energies to HERA energies, the features of phi photoproduction are compatible with those of a soft diffractive process