Hordein accumulation in developing barley grains

The temporal pattern of accumulation of hordein storage proteins in developing barley grains was studied by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), western blot and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Hordein accumulation was compared to the pattern seen for two abundant control proteins, serpin Z4 (an early accumulator) and lipid transferase protein (LTP1, a late accumulator). Hordeins were detected from 6 days post-anthesis (DPA) and peaked at 30 DPA. Changes in fresh weight indicate that desiccation begins at 20 DPA and by 37 DPA fresh weight had decreased by 35%. ELISA analysis of hordein content, expressed on a protein basis, increased to a maximum at 30 DPA followed by a 17% decrease by 37 DPA. The accumulation of 39 tryptic and 29 chymotryptic hordein peptides representing all classes of hordein was studied by LC-MS/MS. Most peptides increased to a maximum at 30 DPA, and either remained at the maximum or did not decrease significantly. Only five tryptic peptides, members of the related B1- and γ1-hordeins decreased significantly by 21–51% at 37 DPA. Thus, the concentration of some specific peptides was reduced while remaining members of the same family were not affected. The N-terminal signal region was removed by proteolysis during co-translation. In addition to a suite of previously characterized hordeins, two novel barley B-hordein isoforms mapping to wheat low molecular weight glutenins (LMW-GS-like B-hordeins), and two avenin-like proteins (ALPs) sharing homology with wheat ALPs, were identified. These identified isoforms have not previously been mapped in the barley genome. Cereal storage proteins provide significant nutritional content for human consumption and seed germination. In barley, the bulk of the storage proteins comprise the hordein family and the final hordein concentration affects the quality of baked and brewed products. It is therefore important to study the accumulation of hordeins as this knowledge may assist plant breeding for improved health outcomes (by minimizing triggering of detrimental immune responses), nutrition and food processing properties

Hordein Accumulation in Developing Barley Grains

The temporal pattern of accumulation of hordein storage proteins in developing barley grains was studied by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), western blot and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Hordein accumulation was compared to the pattern seen for two abundant control proteins, serpin Z4 (an early accumulator) and lipid transferase protein (LTP1, a late accumulator). Hordeins were detected from 6 days post-anthesis (DPA) and peaked at 30 DPA. Changes in fresh weight indicate that desiccation begins at 20 DPA and by 37 DPA fresh weight had decreased by 35%. ELISA analysis of hordein content, expressed on a protein basis, increased to a maximum at 30 DPA followed by a 17% decrease by 37 DPA. The accumulation of 39 tryptic and 29 chymotryptic hordein peptides representing all classes of hordein was studied by LC-MS/MS. Most peptides increased to a maximum at 30 DPA, and either remained at the maximum or did not decrease significantly. Only five tryptic peptides, members of the related B1- and γ1-hordeins decreased significantly by 21–51% at 37 DPA. Thus, the concentration of some specific peptides was reduced while remaining members of the same family were not affected. The N-terminal signal region was removed by proteolysis during co-translation. In addition to a suite of previously characterized hordeins, two novel barley B-hordein isoforms mapping to wheat low molecular weight glutenins (LMW-GS-like B-hordeins), and two avenin-like proteins (ALPs) sharing homology with wheat ALPs, were identified. These identified isoforms have not previously been mapped in the barley genome. Cereal storage proteins provide significant nutritional content for human consumption and seed germination. In barley, the bulk of the storage proteins comprise the hordein family and the final hordein concentration affects the quality of baked and brewed products. It is therefore important to study the accumulation of hordeins as this knowledge may assist plant breeding for improved health outcomes (by minimizing triggering of detrimental immune responses), nutrition and food processing properties

Cosmology with negative absolute temperatures

Negative absolute temperatures (NAT) are an exotic thermodynamical consequence of quantum physics which has been known since the 1950’s (having been achieved in the lab on a number of occasions). Recently, the work of Braun et al [1] has rekindled interest in negative temperatures and hinted at a possibility of using NAT systems in the lab as dark energy analogues. This paper goes one step further, looking into the cosmological consequences of the existence of a NAT component in the Universe. NAT-dominated expanding Universes experience a borderline phantom expansion (w < −1) with no Big Rip, and their contracting counterparts are forced to bounce after the energy density becomes sufficiently large. Both scenarios might be used to solve horizon and flatness problems analogously to standard inflation and bouncing cosmologies. We discuss the difficulties in obtaining and ending a NAT-dominated epoch, and possible ways of obtaining density perturbations with an acceptable spectrum

Virtual Machine Support for Many-Core Architectures: Decoupling Abstract from Concrete Concurrency Models

The upcoming many-core architectures require software developers to exploit concurrency to utilize available computational power. Today's high-level language virtual machines (VMs), which are a cornerstone of software development, do not provide sufficient abstraction for concurrency concepts. We analyze concrete and abstract concurrency models and identify the challenges they impose for VMs. To provide sufficient concurrency support in VMs, we propose to integrate concurrency operations into VM instruction sets. Since there will always be VMs optimized for special purposes, our goal is to develop a methodology to design instruction sets with concurrency support. Therefore, we also propose a list of trade-offs that have to be investigated to advise the design of such instruction sets. As a first experiment, we implemented one instruction set extension for shared memory and one for non-shared memory concurrency. From our experimental results, we derived a list of requirements for a full-grown experimental environment for further research

Testing peatland testate amoeba transfer functions: Appropriate methods for clustered training-sets

Transfer functions are widely used in palaeoecology to infer past environmental conditions from fossil remains of many groups of organisms. In contrast to traditional training-set design with one observation per site, some training-sets, including those for peatland testate amoeba-hydrology transfer functions, have a clustered structure with many observations from each site. Here we show that this clustered design causes standard performance statistics to be overly optimistic. Model performance when applied to independent data sets is considerably weaker than suggested by statistical cross-validation. We discuss the reasons for these problems and describe leave-one-site-out cross-validation and the cluster bootstrap as appropriate methods for clustered training-sets. Using these methods we show that the performance of most testate amoeba-hydrology transfer functions is worse than previously assumed and reconstructions are more uncertain

Testing peatland water-table depth transfer functions using high-resolution hydrological monitoring data

Transfer functions are now commonly used to reconstruct past environmental variability from palaeoecological data. However, such approaches need to be critically appraised. Testate amoeba-based transfer functions are an established method for the quantitative reconstruction of past water-table variations in peatlands, and have been applied to research questions in palaeoclimatology, peatland ecohydrology and archaeology. We analysed automatically-logged peatland water-table data from dipwells located in England, Wales and Finland and a suite of three year, one year and summer water-table statistics were calculated from each location. Surface moss samples were extracted from beside each dipwell and the testate amoebae community composition was determined. Two published transfer functions were applied to the testate-amoeba data for prediction of water-table depth (England and Europe). Our results show that estimated water-table depths based on the testate amoeba community reflect directional changes, but that they are poor representations of the real mean or median water-table magnitudes for the study sites. We suggest that although testate amoeba-based reconstructions can be used to identify past shifts in peat hydrology, they cannot currently be used to establish precise hydrological baselines such as those needed to inform management and restoration of peatlands. One approach to avoid confusion with contemporary water-table determinations is to use residuals or standardised values for peatland water-table reconstructions. We contend that our test of transfer functions against independent instrumental data sets may be more powerful than relying on statistical testing alone

Widespread drying of European peatlands in recent centuries

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Research via the DOI in this record Climate warming and human impacts are thought to be causing peatlands to dry,potentially converting them from sinks to sources of carbon. However, it is unclear whether the hydrological status of peatlands has moved beyond their natural envelope. Here we show that European peatlands have undergone substantial, widespread drying during the last ~300 years. We analyse testate amoeba-derived hydrological reconstructions from 31 peatlands across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and continental Europe to examine changes in peatland surface wetness during the last 2000 years. 60% of our study sites were drier during the period CE 1800-2000 than they have been for the last 600 years; 40% of sites were drier than they have been for 1000 years; and 24% of sites were drier than they have been for 2000 years. This marked recent transition in the hydrology of European peatlands is concurrent with compound pressures including climatic drying, warming and direct human impacts on peatlands, although these factors vary between regions and individual sites. Our results suggest that the wetness of many European peatlands may now be moving away from natural baselines. Our findings highlight the need for effective management and restoration of European peatlands.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC