Anarchy in the UK: Detailed genetic analysis of worker reproduction in a naturally occurring British anarchistic honeybee, Apis mellifera, colony using DNA microsatellites

Anarchistic behaviour is a very rare phenotype of honeybee colonies. In an anarchistic colony, many workers’ sons are reared in the presence of the queen. Anarchy has previously been described in only two Australian colonies. Here we report on a first detailed genetic analysis of a British anarchistic colony. Male pupae were present in great abundance above the queen excluder, which was clearly indicative of extensive worker reproduction and is the hallmark of anarchy. Seventeen microsatellite loci were used to analyse these male pupae, allowing us to address whether all the males were indeed workers’ sons, and how many worker patrilines and individual workers produced them. In the sample, 95 of 96 of the males were definitely workers’ sons. Given that ≈ 1% of workers’ sons were genetically indistinguishable from queen’s sons, this suggests that workers do not move any queen-laid eggs between the part of the colony where the queen is present to the area above the queen excluder which the queen cannot enter. The colony had 16 patrilines, with an effective number of patrilines of 9.85. The 75 males that could be assigned with certainty to a patriline came from 7 patrilines, with an effective number of 4.21. They were the offspring of at least 19 workers. This is in contrast to the two previously studied Australian naturally occurring anarchist colonies, in which most of the workers’ sons were offspring of one patriline. The high number of patrilines producing males leads to a low mean relatedness between laying workers and males of the colony. We discuss the importance of studying such colonies in the understanding of worker policing and its evolution

Superluminal motion of a relativistic jet in the neutron star merger GW170817

The binary neutron star merger GW170817 was accompanied by radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum and localized to the galaxy NGC 4993 at a distance of 41+/-3 Mpc. The radio and X-ray afterglows of GW170817 exhibited delayed onset, a gradual rise in the emission with time as t^0.8, a peak at about 150 days post-merger, followed by a relatively rapid decline. To date, various models have been proposed to explain the afterglow emission, including a choked-jet cocoon and a successful-jet cocoon (a.k.a. structured jet). However, the observational data have remained inconclusive as to whether GW170817 launched a successful relativistic jet. Here we show, through Very Long Baseline Interferometry, that the compact radio source associated with GW170817 exhibits superluminal motion between two epochs at 75 and 230 days post-merger. This measurement breaks the degeneracy between the models and indicates that, while the early-time radio emission was powered by a wider-angle outflow (cocoon), the late-time emission was most likely dominated by an energetic and narrowly-collimated jet, with an opening angle of <5 degrees, and observed from a viewing angle of about 20 degrees. The imaging of a collimated relativistic outflow emerging from GW170817 adds substantial weight to the growing evidence linking binary neutron star mergers and short gamma-ray bursts.Comment: 42 pages, 4 figures (main text), 2 figures (supplementary text), 2 tables. Referee and editor comments incorporate

DNA barcoding reveals both known and novel taxa in the Albitarsis Group (Anopheles: Nyssorhynchus) of Neotropical malaria vectors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mosquitoes belonging to the Albitarsis Group (<it>Anopheles</it>: <it>Nyssorhynchus</it>) are of importance as malaria vectors across the Neotropics. The Group currently comprises six known species, and recent studies have indicated further hidden biodiversity within the Group. DNA barcoding has been proposed as a highly useful tool for species recognition, although its discriminatory utility has not been verified in closely related taxa across a wide geographic distribution.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>DNA barcodes (658 bp of the mtDNA <it>Cytochrome c Oxidase </it>- <it>COI</it>) were generated for 565 <it>An. albitarsis </it>s.l. collected in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Trinidad and Venezuela over the past twenty years, including specimens from type series and type localities. Here we test the utility of currently advocated barcoding methodologies, including the Kimura-two-parameter distance model (K2P) and Neighbor-joining analysis (NJ), for determining species delineation within mosquitoes of the Neotropical Albitarsis Group of malaria vectors (<it>Anopheles</it>: <it>Nyssorhynchus</it>), and compare results with Bayesian analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Species delineation through barcoding analysis and Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, fully concur. Analysis of 565 sequences (302 unique haplotypes) resolved nine NJ tree clusters, with less than 2% intra-node variation. Mean intra-specific variation (K2P) was 0.009 (range 0.002 - 0.014), whereas mean inter-specific divergence were several-fold higher at 0.041 (0.020 - 0.056), supporting the reported "barcoding gap". These results show full support for separate species status of the six known species in the Albitarsis Group (<it>An. albitarsis </it>s.s., <it>An. albitarsis </it>F, <it>An. deaneorum</it>, <it>An. janconnae</it>, <it>An. marajoara </it>and <it>An. oryzalimnetes</it>), and also support species level status for two previously detected lineages - <it>An. albitarsis </it>G &<it>An. albitarsis </it>I (designated herein). In addition, we highlight the presence of a unique mitochondrial lineage close to <it>An. deaneorum </it>and <it>An. marajoara </it>(<it>An. albitarsis </it>H) from Rondônia and Mato Grosso in southwestern Brazil. Further integrated studies are required to confirm the status of this lineage.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>DNA barcoding provides a reliable means of identifying both known and undiscovered biodiversity within the closely related taxa of the Albitarsis Group. We advocate its usage in future studies to elucidate the vector competence and respective distributions of all eight species in the Albitarsis Group and the novel mitochondrial lineage (<it>An. albitarsis </it>H) recovered in this study.</p

Chitinase 3-Like 1 Protein Levels Are Elevated in Schistosoma haematobium Infected Children

Currently there are few studies characterising the nature and aetiology of human schistosome-related inflammatory processes. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between Chitinase 3-like 1 (CHI3L1), also known as YKL-40, a molecule associated with inflammatory processes, and schistosome infection, morbidity and systemic cytokine levels. Methods Serological levels of CHI3L1 and a panel of cytokines (IFN-y, IL-4/5/6/9/10/13 and 17) were measured in two Zimbabwean populations resident in a high and low schistosome infection area. CHI3L1 levels were related to schistosome infection, haematuria status and cytokine levels after allowing for confounding variables. The effect of antihelminthic treatment with praziquantel on CHI3L1 levels was determined in 246 participants 6 weeks post-treatment. Results CHI3L1 levels increased with age in both areas but were significantly higher in the high infection areas compared to the low infection area. CHI3L1 levels were also higher in infected compared to uninfected individuals with this difference being significant in the youngest age group. Curative antihelminthic treatment resulted in a significant decrease in CHI3L1 levels. Of the cytokines, only IL-10 and IL-17 had a significant association with CHI3L1 levels, and this association was negative. Conclusions Serum CHI3L1 levels differ between infected and uninfected people before and after antihelminthic treatment. The greatest difference occurs in the youngest age group, in keeping with the period when schistosome-related pathological processes are initiated. Following from previous studies in non-infectious diseases showing that CHI3L1 is a biomarker for the inflammatory process, this study suggests that the potential for CHI3L1 as a biomarker for schistosome-related pathology should be explored further.World Health Organisation (www.who.org); the Wellcome Trust (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/) [grant number WT082028MA]; the Thrasher Foundation (http://www.thrasherresearch.org/) to [FM]; and by the Medical Research Council (http://www.mrc.ac.uk) [grant number G0600818 to JEA, PhD studentship LJA-544 to LJA]

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Contrasting and congruent patterns of genetic structuring in two Microtus vole species using museum specimens

The common vole (Microtus arvalis) and the field vole (Microtus agrestis) are morphologically similar species but are ecological distinctive and differ in the details of their evolutionary history as revealed by mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The aim of this study is to describe patterns of genetic variability using microsatellite markers in populations of the common and field vole in Poland using museum specimens, to assess the degree of congruence with mtDNA variation and thereby determine the factors that influence current patterns of gene flow. We genotyped 190 individuals of the common vole at 11 loci and 190 individuals of the field vole at 13 loci. Overall differentiation based on F ST was higher for the common vole than in the field vole. We detected a significant isolation by distance pattern for both species. Bayesian analysis in STRUCTURE identified Eastern and Western geographic groups in Poland based on microsatellites for both species. The location of river barriers is likely to be the main factor in these partitions. The eastern-western subdivision with microsatellites does not coincide with the distribution of mtDNA lineages for either species. Unlike previous studies in the common and field vole elsewhere in Europe, we found no evidence of reproductive isolation between the mtDNA lineages of these species at their contact zones in Poland. This study highlights the different roles of evolutionary history and landscape in shaping contemporary genetic structure in voles in Poland

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field