DYNAMICS OF THE FISHERY FOR GALJOEN DICHISTIUS CAPENSIS, WITH AN ASSESSMENT OF MONITORING METHODS

The dynamics of the fishery for galjoen Dichistius capensis were investigated at four sites in South Africa from 1987 to 2000. At three sites, which were protected from fishing, Koppie Alleen, Lekkerwater (both in the De Hoop Marine Protected Area) and Tsitsikamma National Park, fishery-independent surveys were conducted. Data for the Cape Peninsula (the fourth site) were obtained from records kept by a recreational angler. Catch per unit effort (cpue) was highest at De Hoop and lowest at Tsitsikamma. At De Hoop, cpue varied significantly among anglers, months, years and gear type. The mortality rate was greater at the exploited site than at protected sites, where mortality rates were taken as estimates of natural mortality. Tag and recovery data were used to estimate density and catchability. Fishing mortality rates were very high, whether inferred from size distributions or from the product of effort counts and the catchability coefficient. Such high rates can be sustained only through refuges. Variation in fishery parameters among habitats and the high variance in cpue data suggest that an effective monitoring programme will need to be intensive. To provide adequate stock assessments, fisherydependent surveys should be augmented by studies in marine protected areas. Afr. J. mar. Sci. 25: 311–33

Irish County Incomes in 1960. ESRI General Research Series Paper No. 16, September 1963

This paper owes its inception to a problem which the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Mr. Se~n F. Lemass, T.D., at the Opening Ceremony on 6 June, 196I, asked the Institute to examine, in the following terms:-- "The Minister for Finance has already raised the questions whether the present system is adequate or appropriate to deal with the increasing activities of local bodies or whether a more rational or more effective system could be devised. There is a situation developing in local authority operations, and their financing, which requires consideration. Investigations, under the auspices of the Institute, of certain aspects, including the economic aspects, of the incidence of local taxation covering such matters as the effect of the local rate charge on enterprise and development, and the possibilities of providing Local Authorities with new sources of income, will provide some basic material which will be invaluable in the review of local finance which the Minister for Local Government intends to undertake"

Irish County Incomes in 1960. ESRI General Research Series Paper No. 16, September 1963

This paper owes its inception to a problem which the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Mr. Se~n F. Lemass, T.D., at the Opening Ceremony on 6 June, 196I, asked the Institute to examine, in the following terms:-- "The Minister for Finance has already raised the questions whether the present system is adequate or appropriate to deal with the increasing activities of local bodies or whether a more rational or more effective system could be devised. There is a situation developing in local authority operations, and their financing, which requires consideration. Investigations, under the auspices of the Institute, of certain aspects, including the economic aspects, of the incidence of local taxation covering such matters as the effect of the local rate charge on enterprise and development, and the possibilities of providing Local Authorities with new sources of income, will provide some basic material which will be invaluable in the review of local finance which the Minister for Local Government intends to undertake"

Insight into the Carboxyl Transferase Domain Mechanism of Pyruvate Carboxylase from \u3cem\u3eRhizobium etli\u3c/em\u3e

The effects of mutations in the active site of the carboxyl transferase domain of Rhizobium etli pyruvate carboxylase have been determined for the forward reaction to form oxaloacetate, the reverse reaction to form MgATP, the oxamate-induced decarboxylation of oxaloacetate, the phosphorylation of MgADP by carbamoyl phosphate, and the bicarbonate-dependent ATPase reaction. Additional studies with these mutants examined the effect of pyruvate and oxamate on the reactions of the biotin carboxylase domain. From these mutagenic studies, putative roles for catalytically relevant active site residues were assigned and a more accurate description of the mechanism of the carboxyl transferase domain is presented. The T882A mutant showed no catalytic activity for reactions involving the carboxyl transferase domain but surprisingly showed 7- and 3.5-fold increases in activity, as compared to that of the wild-type enzyme, for the ADP phosphorylation and bicarbonate-dependent ATPase reactions, respectively. Furthermore, the partial inhibition of the T882A-catalyzed BC domain reactions by oxamate and pyruvate further supports the critical role of Thr882 in the proton transfer between biotin and pyruvate in the carboxyl transferase domain. The catalytic mechanism appears to involve the decarboxylation of carboxybiotin and removal of a proton from Thr882 by the resulting biotin enolate with either a concerted or subsequent transfer of a proton from pyruvate to Thr882. The resulting enolpyruvate then reacts with CO2 to form oxaloacetate and complete the reaction

Avidin as a probe of the conformational changes induced in pyruvate carboxylase by acetyl-CoA and pyruvate

AbstractSheep liver pyruvate carboxylase was mixed with avidin at a molar ratio of 1:1 in the presence of various combinations of the components of the assay systems required for either the acetyl-CoA-dependent or the acetyl-CoA-independent activity and negatively stained samples were examined by electron microscopy. Significant numbers of chain-like polymers of enzyme-avidin complexes were evident only when acetyl-CoA or high levels of pyruvate were present in the media. Similar results were also obtained for chicken liver pyruvate carboxylase despite this enzyme's almost complete lack of acetyl-CoA-independent activity. Thus, although acetyl-CoA and high concentrations of pyruvate may induce pyruvate carboxylase to adopt a ‘tight’ tetrahedron-like conformation which can interact with avidin to form chains, this structural change alone does not result in an enzymic form that is maximally active. This suggests that the allosteric activation of pyruvate carboxylase by acetyl-CoA is attributable, at least in part to more subtle conformational changes, especially in the case of the chicken enzyme

The environmental stewardship program: lessons on creating long-term agri-environment schemes

The conservation of biodiversity on private land is both a high priority and a considerable challenge. An effective response to this challenge requires a combination of legislative and incentive mechanisms, coupled with preparedness by government to review and revise administrative arrangements. Preliminary results from the Environmental Stewardship Program, established by the Australian Government, highlight that there is a role for market-based approaches. However, implementation of this program through a Commonwealth bureaucracy was not without its challenges. Here we provide an overview of the program’s implementation from 2007 to 2012, followed by discussion of some key lessons learned

The PRINTS database: a fine-grained protein sequence annotation and analysis resource—its status in 2012

The PRINTS database, now in its 21st year, houses a collection of diagnostic protein family ‘fingerprints’. Fingerprints are groups of conserved motifs, evident in multiple sequence alignments, whose unique inter-relationships provide distinctive signatures for particular protein families and structural/functional domains. As such, they may be used to assign uncharacterized sequences to known families, and hence to infer tentative functional, structural and/or evolutionary relationships. The February 2012 release (version 42.0) includes 2156 fingerprints, encoding 12 444 individual motifs, covering a range of globular and membrane proteins, modular polypeptides and so on. Here, we report the current status of the database, and introduce a number of recent developments that help both to render a variety of our annotation and analysis tools easier to use and to make them more widely available

Probing the Catalytic Roles of Arg548 and Gln552 in the Carboxyl Transferase Domain of the \u3cem\u3eRhizobium etli\u3c/em\u3e Pyruvate Carboxylase by Site-directed Mutagenesis

The roles of Arg548 and Gln552 residues in the active site of the carboxyl transferase domain of Rhizobium etli pyruvate carboxylase were investigated using site-directed mutagenesis. Mutation of Arg548 to alanine or glutamine resulted in the destabilization of the quaternary structure of the enzyme, suggesting that this residue has a structural role. Mutations R548K, Q552N, and Q552A resulted in a loss of the ability to catalyze pyruvate carboxylation, biotin-dependent decarboxylation of oxaloacetate, and the exchange of protons between pyruvate and water. These mutants retained the ability to catalyze reactions that occur at the active site of the biotin carboxylase domain, i.e., bicarbonate-dependent ATP cleavage and ADP phosphorylation by carbamoyl phosphate. The effects of oxamate on the catalysis in the biotin carboxylase domain by the R548K and Q552N mutants were similar to those on the catalysis of reactions by the wild-type enzyme. However, the presence of oxamate had no effect on the reactions catalyzed by the Q552A mutant. We propose that Arg548 and Gln552 facilitate the binding of pyruvate and the subsequent transfer of protons between pyruvate and biotin in the partial reaction catalyzed in the active site of the carboxyl transferase domain of Rhizobium etli pyruvate carboxylase

BioCIDER: a Contextualisation InDEx for biological Resources discovery

Summary The vast, uncoordinated proliferation of bioinformatics resources (databases, software tools, training materials etc.) makes it difficult for users to find them. To facilitate their discovery, various services are being developed to collect such resources into registries. We have developed BioCIDER, which, rather like online shopping ‘recommendations’, provides a contextualization index to help identify biological resources relevant to the content of the sites in which it is embedded