B-Function Expression in the Flower Center Underlies the Homeotic Phenotype of Lacandonia schismatica (Triuridaceae)

Spontaneous homeotic transformations have been described in natural populations of both plants and animals, but little is known about the molecular-genetic mechanisms underlying these processes in plants. In the ABC model of floral organ identity in Arabidopsis thaliana, the B- and C-functions are necessary for stamen morphogenesis, and C alone is required for carpel identity. We provide ABC model-based molecular-genetic evidence that explains the unique inside-out homeotic floral organ arrangement of the monocotyledonous mycoheterotroph species Lacandonia schismatica (Triuridaceae) from Mexico. Whereas a quarter million flowering plant species bear central carpels surrounded by stamens, L. schismatica stamens occur in the center of the flower and are surrounded by carpels. The simplest explanation for this is that the B-function is displaced toward the flower center. Our analyses of the spatio-temporal pattern of B- and C-function gene expression are consistent with this hypothesis. The hypothesis is further supported by conservation between the B-function genes of L. schismatica and Arabidopsis, as the former are able to rescue stamens in Arabidopsis transgenic complementation lines, and Ls-AP3 and Ls-PI are able to interact with each other and with the corresponding Arabidopsis B-function proteins in yeast. Thus, relatively simple molecular modifications may underlie important morphological shifts in natural populations of extant plant taxa

Evolution of Class IITCPgenes in perianth bearing Piperales and their contribution to the bilateral calyx in Aristolochia

[EN] Controlled spatiotemporal cell division and expansion are responsible for floral bilateral symmetry. Genetic studies have pointed to class II TCP genes as major regulators of cell division and floral patterning in model core eudicots. Here we study their evolution in perianth-bearing Piperales and their expression in Aristolochia, a rare occurrence of bilateral perianth outside eudicots and monocots. The evolution of class II TCP genes reveals single-copy CYCLOIDEA-like genes and three paralogs of CINCINNATA (CIN) in early diverging angiosperms. All class II TCP genes have independently duplicated in Aristolochia subgenus Siphisia. Also CIN2 genes duplicated before the diversification of Saruma and Asarum. Sequence analysis shows that CIN1 and CIN3 share motifs with Cyclin proteins and CIN2 genes have lost the miRNA319a binding site. Expression analyses of all paralogs of class II TCP genes in Aristolochia fimbriata point to a role of CYC and CIN genes in maintaining differential perianth expansion during mid- and late flower developmental stages by promoting cell division in the distal and ventral portion of the limb. It is likely that class II TCP genes also contribute to cell division in the leaf, the gynoecium and the ovules in A. fimbriata.We thank Anny Garces Palacio, Sarita Munoz, Pablo Perez-Mesa (Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia), Cecilia Zumajo-Cardona (The New York Botanical Garden), Ana Berbel and Clara Ines Ortiz-Ramirez (Instituto de Biologia Molecular y Celular de Plantas, CSIC-UVP, Valencia, Spain) for photographs and assistance during laboratory work. We also thank Sebastian Gonzalez (Massachusetts College of Art and Design) for taking some of the photographs in Figs 1 and 2. Thanks are also due to the Dresden Junior Fellowship for allowing the visiting professor fellowship of NPM to the Technishe Universitat Dresden during 2019. This research was funded by Estrategia de Sostenibilidad 2018-2019 the Convocatoria Programaticas 2017-2018 (code 2017-16302), and the 2018-2019 Fondo de Internacionalizacion (code 201926230) from the Universidad de Antioquia, the iCOOP + 2016 grant COOPB20250 from Centro Superior de Investigacion Cientifica, CSIC and the ExpoSEED (H2020.MSCA-RISE2015-691109) EU grant.Pabon-Mora, N.; Madrigal, Y.; Alzate, JF.; Ambrose, BA.; Ferrandiz Maestre, C.; Wanke, S.; Neinhuis, C.... (2020). Evolution of Class IITCPgenes in perianth bearing Piperales and their contribution to the bilateral calyx in Aristolochia. New Phytologist. 228(2):752-769. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.16719S7527692282Aguilar-Martínez, J. A., Poza-Carrión, C., & Cubas, P. (2007). Arabidopsis BRANCHED1Acts as an Integrator of Branching Signals within Axillary Buds. 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Duplication and Diversification of REPLUMLESS – A Case Study in the Papaveraceae

There is a vast amount of fruit morphological diversity in terms of their texture, the number of carpels, if those carpels are fused or not and how fruits open to disperse the seeds. Arabidopsis thaliana, a model eudicot, has a dry bicarpellate silique, when the fruit matures, the two valves fall apart through the dehiscence zone leaving the seeds attached to the remaining medial tissue, called the replum. Proper replum development in A. thaliana is mediated by REPLUMLESS (RPL), a TALE Homeodomain protein. RPL represses the valve margin genetic program and the downstream dehiscence zone formation in the medial tissue of the siliques and RPL orthologs have conserved roles across the Brassicaceae eudicots. A RPL homolog, qSH1, has been studied in rice, a monocot, and plays a role in fruit shedding making it difficult to predict functional evolution of this gene lineage across angiosperms. Although RPL orthologs have been identified across all angiosperms, expression and functional analyses are scarce. In order to fill the phylogenetic gap between the Brassicaceae and monocots we have characterized the expression patterns of RPL homologs in two poppies with different fruit types, Bocconia frutescens with operculate valvate dehiscence and a persistent medial tissue, similar to a replum, and Papaver somniferum, a poppy with persistent medial tissue in between the multicarpellate gynoecia. We found that RPL homologs in Papaveraceae have broad expression patterns during plant development; in the shoot apical meristem, during flowering transition and in many floral organs, especially the carpels. These patterns are similar to those of RPL in A. thaliana. However, our results suggest that RPL does not have conserved roles in the maintenance of medial persistent tissues of fruits but may be involved with establishing the putative dehiscence zone in dry poppy fruits

Evolution of Class IITCPgenes in perianth bearing Piperales and their contribution to the bilateral calyx in Aristolochia

[EN] Controlled spatiotemporal cell division and expansion are responsible for floral bilateral symmetry. Genetic studies have pointed to class II TCP genes as major regulators of cell division and floral patterning in model core eudicots. Here we study their evolution in perianth-bearing Piperales and their expression in Aristolochia, a rare occurrence of bilateral perianth outside eudicots and monocots. The evolution of class II TCP genes reveals single-copy CYCLOIDEA-like genes and three paralogs of CINCINNATA (CIN) in early diverging angiosperms. All class II TCP genes have independently duplicated in Aristolochia subgenus Siphisia. Also CIN2 genes duplicated before the diversification of Saruma and Asarum. Sequence analysis shows that CIN1 and CIN3 share motifs with Cyclin proteins and CIN2 genes have lost the miRNA319a binding site. Expression analyses of all paralogs of class II TCP genes in Aristolochia fimbriata point to a role of CYC and CIN genes in maintaining differential perianth expansion during mid- and late flower developmental stages by promoting cell division in the distal and ventral portion of the limb. It is likely that class II TCP genes also contribute to cell division in the leaf, the gynoecium and the ovules in A. fimbriata.We thank Anny Garces Palacio, Sarita Munoz, Pablo Perez-Mesa (Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia), Cecilia Zumajo-Cardona (The New York Botanical Garden), Ana Berbel and Clara Ines Ortiz-Ramirez (Instituto de Biologia Molecular y Celular de Plantas, CSIC-UVP, Valencia, Spain) for photographs and assistance during laboratory work. We also thank Sebastian Gonzalez (Massachusetts College of Art and Design) for taking some of the photographs in Figs 1 and 2. Thanks are also due to the Dresden Junior Fellowship for allowing the visiting professor fellowship of NPM to the Technishe Universitat Dresden during 2019. This research was funded by Estrategia de Sostenibilidad 2018-2019 the Convocatoria Programaticas 2017-2018 (code 2017-16302), and the 2018-2019 Fondo de Internacionalizacion (code 201926230) from the Universidad de Antioquia, the iCOOP + 2016 grant COOPB20250 from Centro Superior de Investigacion Cientifica, CSIC and the ExpoSEED (H2020.MSCA-RISE2015-691109) EU grant.Pabon-Mora, N.; Madrigal, Y.; Alzate, JF.; Ambrose, BA.; Ferrandiz Maestre, C.; Wanke, S.; Neinhuis, C.... (2020). Evolution of Class IITCPgenes in perianth bearing Piperales and their contribution to the bilateral calyx in Aristolochia. New Phytologist. 228(2):752-769. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.167197527692282Aguilar-Martínez, J. A., Poza-Carrión, C., & Cubas, P. (2007). Arabidopsis BRANCHED1Acts as an Integrator of Branching Signals within Axillary Buds. 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The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

Precision measurement of the top quark mass from dilepton events at CDF II

We report a measurement of the top quark mass, M{sub t}, in the dilepton decay channel of t{bar t} {yields} b{ell}{prime}{sup +} {nu}{sub {ell}}, {bar b}{ell}{sup -}{bar {nu}}{sub {ell}} using an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb{sup -1} of p{bar p} collisions collected with the CDF II detector. We apply a method that convolutes a leading-order matrix element with detector resolution functions to form event-by-event likelihoods; we have enhanced the leading-order description to describe the effects of initial-state radiation. The joint likelihood is the product of the likelihoods from 78 candidate events in this sample, which yields a measurement of M{sub t} = 164.5 {+-} 3.9(stat.) {+-} 3.9(syst.) GeV/c{sup 2}, the most precise measurement of M{sub t} in the dilepton channel

Cross Section Measurements of High-p(T) Dilepton Final-State Processes Using a Global Fitting Method

The authors present a new method for studying high-p{sub T} dilepton events (e{sup {+-}}e{sup {-+}}, {mu}{sup {+-}}{mu}{sup {-+}}, e{sup {+-}}{mu}{sup {-+}}) and simultaneously extracting the production cross sections of p{bar p} {yields} t{bar t}, p{bar p} {yields} W{sup +}W{sup -}, and p{bar p} {yields} Z{sup 0} {yields} {tau}{sup +}{tau}{sup -} at a center-of-mass energy of {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. They perform a likelihood fit to the dilepton data in a parameter space defined by the missing transverse energy and the number of jets in the event. The results, which use 360 pb{sup -1} of data recorded with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, are {sigma}(t{bar t}) = 8.5{sub -2.2}{sup +2.7} pb, {sigma}(W{sup +}W{sup -}) = 16.3{sub -4.4}{sup +5.2} pb, and {sigma}(Z{sup 0} {yields} {tau}{sup +}{tau}{sup -}) = 291{sub -46}{sup +50} pb

Analysis of the quantum numbers J**PC of the X(3872)

The authors present an analysis of angular distributions and correlations of the X(3872) in the exclusive decay mode X(3872) {yields} J/{psi}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} with J/{psi} {yields} {mu}{sup +}{mu}{sup -}. They use 780 pb{sup -1} of data from p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV collected with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. They derive constraints on spin, parity, and charge conjugation parity of the X(3872) by comparing measured angular distributions of the decay products with predictions for different J{sup PC} hypotheses. The assignments J{sup PC} = 1{sup ++} and 2{sup -+} are the only ones consistent with the data

Staphylococcus aureus Panton-Valentine Leukocidin Is a Very Potent Cytotoxic Factor for Human Neutrophils

The role of the pore-forming Staphylococcus aureus toxin Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) in severe necrotizing diseases is debated due to conflicting data from epidemiological studies of community-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus (CA-MRSA) infections and various murine disease-models. In this study, we used neutrophils isolated from different species to evaluate the cytotoxic effect of PVL in comparison to other staphylococcal cytolytic components. Furthermore, to study the impact of PVL we expressed it heterologously in a non-virulent staphylococcal species and examined pvl-positive and pvl-negative clinical isolates as well as the strain USA300 and its pvl-negative mutant. We demonstrate that PVL induces rapid activation and cell death in human and rabbit neutrophils, but not in murine or simian cells. By contrast, the phenol-soluble modulins (PSMs), a newly identified group of cytolytic staphylococcal components, lack species-specificity. In general, after phagocytosis of bacteria different pvl-positive and pvl-negative staphylococcal strains, expressing a variety of other virulence factors (such as surface proteins), induced cell death in neutrophils, which is most likely associated with the physiological clearing function of these cells. However, the release of PVL by staphylococcal strains caused rapid and premature cell death, which is different from the physiological (and programmed) cell death of neutrophils following phagocytosis and degradation of virulent bacteria. Taken together, our results question the value of infection-models in mice and non-human primates to elucidate the impact of PVL. Our data clearly demonstrate that PVL acts differentially on neutrophils of various species and suggests that PVL has an important cytotoxic role in human neutrophils, which has major implications for the pathogenesis of CA-MRSA infections