201 research outputs found
Farmer knowledge identifies a competitive bean ideotype for maize–bean intercrop systems in Rwanda
Background:
Plant genotypes are rarely developed for mixed cropping systems despite the potential of these systems to provide multiple ecosystem services. One of the most ubiquitously grown mixed cropping systems is a common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and maize (Zea mays L.) intercrop, but there is little consensus among researchers, and few known studies document farmer knowledge, about superior bean genotypes specifically for this intercrop system. Participatory plant breeding (PPB) is a well-accepted method of selecting varieties with farmers and could be a useful tool for identifying genotypes for intercrops. We used sole crop and intercrop PPB on-farm trials (n = 13) and interviews (n = 59) to document farmer knowledge about climbing bean genotypes and adaptation for intercrops in Rwanda, where smallholder farmers have traditionally grown beans and maize for generations.
Results:
Qualitative analysis demonstrated that farmers considered distinct attributes for different cropping systems. In intercrops, farmer evaluation prioritized five factors: universal traits and trait-based competitive ability, intrinsic competitive ability, environmental adaptation, and management. Farmers consider intrinsic competitive ability crucial, whereas most other studies have neglected this attribute in intercrop breeding strategies. Furthermore, farmers identified specific attributes that constitute an intercrop bean ideotype: adaptation, restricted height, columnar plant structure, even distribution of pods, fewer leaves, and earlier maturity. Farmers also had specific techniques for testing cropping system and environment interactions.
Conclusions:
PPB on-farm trial evaluations and interviews with farmers allowed us to combine traditional agroecological knowledge with plant breeding research to generate new knowledge that contributes to our understanding of intercrop breeding and bean traits for intercrops. Farmers demonstrated sophisticated understanding of methods to identify genotype adaptation, competitive ability, and specific traits that together create a bean ideotype for maize–bean cropping systems. Empowering farmers through on-farm testing of diverse genotypes, and even populations, could be a practical solution to expensive genotype by environment trials and improve the identification of highly adaptive and productive genotypes for diverse and resilient cropping systems
Perennial grain crops in the West Soudanian Savanna of Mali: perspectives from agroecology and gendered spaces
Perennial grain crops may play an important role in environmentally sound and socially just food systems for Africa. We study the future possibility of integrating perennial grains into Malian farming systems from the perspective of agroecology, and more specifically using a gendered space approach. We interviewed 72 farmers across the sorghum-growing region of Mali. We found that perennial grains offer a vision for transforming human relations with nature that mirrors the resource sharing of customary land tenure, including patterns of extensive and intensive land use in time and space. Women interviewees identified a broad set of potential advantages and challenges to perennial grain production. Advantages include reduced labour, saving seed, and improving food security. Women farmers were concerned about livestock, water access, and resource limitations. We argue that perennial grains may increase access to land and natural resources for women farmers. Perennial grains may improve soil quality, reduce labour early in the rainy season, and provision more resources from fallow lands. Pastoralists stand to benefit from improved pastures in the dry season. We conclude that investments are needed to develop viable crop types in consideration of the complexity of West African farming systems and the local needs of women farmers and pastoralists
A critical review of the impacts of cover crops on nitrogen leaching, net greenhouse gas balance and crop productivity
This work contributes to the UK-China Virtual Joint Centre N-Circle (grant number BB/N013484/1), SuperG (funded under EU Horizon 2020 programme) and ADVENT (grant number NE/M019691/1). DRC was supported by the UK-China Virtual joint Centre for Agricultural Nitrogen (CINAg, BB/N013468/1) and the UK-Brazil Virtual Joint Centre to deliver enhanced N-use efficiency via an integrated soil-plant systems approach (NUCLEUS), which are jointly supported by Newton fund via UK BBSRC and NERC. Jaak Truu received financing from Estonian Research Council (grant PRG548).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Robot Guided ‘Pen Skill’ Training in Children with Motor Difficulties
Motor deficits are linked to a range of negative physical, social and academic consequences. Haptic robotic interventions, based on the principles of sensorimotor learning, have been shown previously to help children with motor problems learn new movements. We therefore examined whether the training benefits of a robotic system would generalise to a standardised test of ‘pen-skills’, assessed using objective kinematic measures [via the Clinical Kinematic Assessment Tool, CKAT]. A counterbalanced, cross-over design was used in a group of 51 children (37 male, aged 5-11 years) with manual control difficulties. Improved performance on a novel task using the robotic device could be attributed to the intervention but there was no evidence of generalisation to any of the CKAT tasks. The robotic system appears to have the potential to support motor learning, with the technology affording numerous advantages. However, the training regime may need to target particular manual skills (e.g. letter formation) in order to obtain clinically significant improvements in specific skills such as handwriting
CellCognition : time-resolved phenotype annotation in high-throughput live cell imaging
Author Posting. © The Authors, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature Methods 7 (2010): 747-754, doi:10.1038/nmeth.1486.Fluorescence time-lapse imaging has become a powerful tool to investigate complex
dynamic processes such as cell division or intracellular trafficking. Automated
microscopes generate time-resolved imaging data at high throughput, yet tools for
quantification of large-scale movie data are largely missing. Here, we present
CellCognition, a computational framework to annotate complex cellular dynamics.
We developed a machine learning method that combines state-of-the-art classification
with hidden Markov modeling for annotation of the progression through
morphologically distinct biological states. The incorporation of time information into
the annotation scheme was essential to suppress classification noise at state
transitions, and confusion between different functional states with similar
morphology. We demonstrate generic applicability in a set of different assays and
perturbation conditions, including a candidate-based RNAi screen for mitotic exit
regulators in human cells. CellCognition is published as open source software,
enabling live imaging-based screening with assays that directly score cellular
dynamics.Work in the Gerlich
laboratory is supported by Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) research grant
3100A0-114120, SNF ProDoc grant PDFMP3_124904, a European Young
Investigator (EURYI) award of the European Science Foundation, an EMBO YIP
fellowship, and a MBL Summer Research Fellowship to D.W.G., an ETH TH grant, a
grant by the UBS foundation, a Roche Ph.D. fellowship to M.H.A.S, and a Mueller
fellowship of the Molecular Life Sciences Ph.D. program Zurich to M.H. M.H. and
M.H.A.S are fellows of the Zurich Ph.D. Program in Molecular Life Sciences. B.F.
was supported by European Commission’s seventh framework program project
Cancer Pathways. Work in the Ellenberg laboratory is supported by a European
Commission grant within the Mitocheck consortium (LSHG-CT-2004-503464). Work
in the Peter laboratory is supported by the ETHZ, Oncosuisse, SystemsX.ch (LiverX)
and the SNF
Near-field Electrical Detection of Optical Plasmons and Single Plasmon Sources
Photonic circuits can be much faster than their electronic counterparts, but
they are difficult to miniaturize below the optical wavelength scale. Nanoscale
photonic circuits based on surface plasmon polaritons (SPs) are a promising
solution to this problem because they can localize light below the diffraction
limit. However, there is a general tradeoff between the localization of an SP
and the efficiency with which it can be detected with conventional far-field
optics. Here we describe a new all-electrical SP detection technique based on
the near-field coupling between guided plasmons and a nanowire field-effect
transistor. We use the technique to electrically detect the plasmon emission
from an individual colloidal quantum dot coupled to an SP waveguide. Our
detectors are both nanoscale and highly efficient (0.1 electrons/plasmon), and
a plasmonic gating effect can be used to amplify the signal even higher (up to
50 electrons/plasmon). These results enable new on-chip optical sensing
applications and are a key step towards "dark" optoplasmonic nanocircuits in
which SPs can be generated, manipulated, and detected without involving
far-field radiation.Comment: manuscript followed by supplementary informatio
CD47 plays a critical role in T-cell recruitment by regulation of LFA-1 and VLA-4 integrin adhesive functions
CD47 plays an important but incompletely understood role in the innate and adaptive immune responses. CD47, also called integrin-associated protein, has been demonstrated to associate in cis with β1 and β3 integrins. Here we test the hypothesis that CD47 regulates adhesive functions of T-cell α4β1 (VLA-4) and αLβ2 (LFA-1) in in vivo and in vitro models of inflammation. Intravital microscopy studies reveal that CD47(−/−) Th1 cells exhibit reduced interactions with wild-type (WT) inflamed cremaster muscle microvessels. Similarly, murine CD47(−/−) Th1 cells, as compared with WT, showed defects in adhesion and transmigration across tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α)–activated murine endothelium and in adhesion to immobilized intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) and vascular cell adhesion protein 1 (VCAM-1) under flow conditions. Human Jurkat T-cells lacking CD47 also showed reduced adhesion to TNF-α–activated endothelium and ICAM-1 and VCAM-1. In cis interactions between Jurkat T-cell β2 integrins and CD47 were detected by fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy. Unexpectedly, Jurkat CD47 null cells exhibited a striking defect in β1 and β2 integrin activation in response to Mn(2+) or Mg(2+)/ethylene glycol tetraacetic acid treatment. Our results demonstrate that CD47 associates with β2 integrins and is necessary to induce high-affinity conformations of LFA-1 and VLA-4 that recognize their endothelial cell ligands and support leukocyte adhesion and transendothelial migration
Development of Cysteine-Free Fluorescent Proteins for the Oxidative Environment
Molecular imaging employing fluorescent proteins has been widely used to highlight specific reactions or processes in various fields of the life sciences. Despite extensive improvements of the fluorescent tag, this technology is still limited in the study of molecular events in the extracellular milieu. This is partly due to the presence of cysteine in the fluorescent proteins. These proteins almost cotranslationally form disulfide bonded oligomers when expressed in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Although single molecule photobleaching analysis showed that these oligomers were not fluorescent, the fluorescent monomer form often showed aberrant behavior in folding and motion, particularly when fused to cysteine-containing cargo. Therefore we investigated whether it was possible to eliminate the cysteine without losing the brightness. By site-saturated mutagenesis, we found that the cysteine residues in fluorescent proteins could be replaced with specific alternatives while still retaining their brightness. cf(cysteine-free)SGFP2 showed significantly reduced restriction of free diffusion in the ER and marked improvement of maturation when fused to the prion protein. We further applied this approach to TagRFP family proteins and found a set of mutations that obtains the same level of brightness as the cysteine-containing proteins. The approach used in this study to generate new cysteine-free fluorescent tags should expand the application of molecular imaging to the extracellular milieu and facilitate its usage in medicine and biotechnology
Functional KV10.1 Channels Localize to the Inner Nuclear Membrane
Ectopically expressed human KV10.1 channels are relevant players in tumor biology. However, their function as ion channels at the plasma membrane does not totally explain their crucial role in tumors. Both in native and heterologous systems, it has been observed that a majority of KV10.1 channels remain at intracellular locations. In this study we investigated the localization and possible roles of perinuclear KV10.1. We show that KV10.1 is expressed at the inner nuclear membrane in both human and rat models; it co-purifies with established inner nuclear membrane markers, shows resistance to detergent extraction and restricted mobility, all of them typical features of proteins at the inner nuclear membrane. KV10.1 channels at the inner nuclear membrane are not all transported directly from the ER but rather have been exposed to the extracellular milieu. Patch clamp experiments on nuclei devoid of external nuclear membrane reveal the existence of channel activity compatible with KV10.1. We hypothesize that KV10.1 channels at the nuclear envelope might participate in the homeostasis of nuclear K+, or indirectly interact with heterochromatin, both factors known to affect gene expression
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