A novel immunofluorescence flow cytometry technique detects the expansion of brown tides caused by Aureoumbra lagunensis to the Caribbean Sea

Author Posting. © American Society for Microbiology, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Society for Microbiology for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology 80 (2014): 4947-4957, doi:10.1128/AEM.00888-14.During the past 3 decades, brown tides caused by the pelagophytes Aureococcus anophagefferens and Aureoumbra lagunensis have caused ecological and economic damage to coastal ecosystems across the globe. While blooms of A. lagunensis had previously been confined to Texas, in 2012, an expansive brown tide occurred on Florida's East Coast, causing widespread disruption within the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoons and generating renewed interest in this organism. A major impediment to detailed investigations of A. lagunensis in an ecosystem setting has been the absence of a rapid and reliable method for cell quantification. The combination of their small size (3 to 5 μm) and nondescript extracellular features makes identification and enumeration of these cells with conventional methods a challenge. Here we report the development of an immunological-based flow cytometry method that uses a fluorescently labeled antibody developed against A. lagunensis. This method is species specific, sensitive (detection limit of 1.5 × 103 cells ml−1), precise (1% relative standard deviation of replicated samples), and accurate (108% ± 8% recovery of spiked samples) over a wide range of cell concentrations. Furthermore, this method effectively quantifies A. lagunensis in both glutaraldehyde- and formalin-preserved samples, yields a high throughput of samples (∼35 samples h−1), and is cost-effective, making it an ideal tool for managers and scientists. This method successfully documented the recurrence of a brown tide bloom in Florida in 2013. Bloom densities were highest in June (>2.0 × 106 cells ml−1) and spanned >60 km from the Ponce de Leon inlet in the northern Mosquito Lagoon south to Titusville in the Indian River Lagoon. Low levels of A. lagunensis cells were found >250 km south of this region. This method also quickly and accurately identified A. lagunensis as the causative agent of a 2013 brown tide bloom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and thus should prove useful for both quantifying the dynamics of ongoing blooms of A. lagunensis as well as documenting new outbreaks of this harmful alga.This research was funded as part of an NOAA ECOHAB Event Response grant to C.J.G. Support for D.M.A. was provided by the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health, a National Science Foundation grant (OCE-1314642), and a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant (1-P01-ES021923-01)

Efficacy of miniaturized imacor trans-esophageal echocardiografm (TEE) prove in mechanical circulatory support.

Application of the miniaturized ImaCor Trans-Esophageal Echocardiogram (TEE) probe in Heart Transplant/Mechanical Cardiac Support Patients In the surgical cardiac care unit (SCCU), therapeutic interventions often need to be done at the bedside, necessitating the need for a rapidly employable diagnostic tool for the cardiac intensivist. We report the clinical utility of the miniature ImaCor TEE-probe in guiding management of post heart transplant (H-Txp) and mechanical cardiac support patients (MCS) and describe the economic benefit of such a device. This is an IRB approved retrospective review of MCS/H-Txp patients who had ImaCor TEE monitoring in the SCCU of our institution in 2011. The effect on management was stratified into 3 categories; Major (tamponade/device selection/RV failure), Moderate (weaning support device guidance/ inotrope management/fluid management/hemodynamic instability) and Minor (line placement/useful data). The ImaCor TEE-Probe was utilized in a total of 34 patients, of which 21 were either supported by MCS or were post H-Txp. Of these, 13 were on ECMO, 9 were post-VAD, 3 supported by the Impella device and 4 were post-H-Txp. 6 patients were placed on more than 1 method of MCS and 1 patient was supported by ECMO after a H-Txp. The device had a Major effect on management in 4 patients (19%), Moderate effect in 13 (62%) and a Minor effect in 4 (19%). The cost difference between this new device and the traditional TEE is also significant (900 USD vs 4000 USD). Our institution saved in excess of 150,000 USD with the use of this device instead of traditional TEE. This figure did not include the ability of this probe to be used repeatedly within a 72-hour time frame, and the potential cost of going to the operating theatre for further management. This device has proven to be an invaluable new adjunct in the SCCU by allowing previously unobtainable continuous real time monitoring of the MCS/H-Txp patient. Use of the ImaCor TEE-probe provides the cardiac intensivist with timely important clinical data that improves patient care and is economically advantageous

U(2)-like Flavor Symmetries and Approximate Bimaximal Neutrino Mixing

Models involving a U(2) flavor symmetry, or any of a number of its non-Abelian discrete subgroups, can explain the observed hierarchy of charged fermion masses and CKM angles. It is known that a large neutrino mixing angle connecting second and third generation fields may arise via the seesaw mechanism in these models, without a fine tuning of parameters. Here we show that it is possible to obtain approximate bimaximal mixing in a class of models with U(2)-like Yukawa textures. We find a minimal form for Dirac and Majorana neutrino mass matrices that leads to two large mixing angles, and show that our result can quantitatively explain atmospheric neutrino oscillations while accommodating the favored, large angle MSW solution to the solar neutrino problem. We demonstrate that these textures can arise in models by presenting a number of explicit examples.Comment: 20 pages RevTex4, 2 figure

Neuronal carbonic anhydrase VII provides GABAergic excitatory drive to exacerbate febrile seizures

Peer reviewe

SUSY, the Third Generation and the LHC

We develop a bottom-up approach to studying SUSY with light stops and sbottoms, but with other squarks and sleptons heavy and beyond reach of the LHC. We discuss the range of squark, gaugino and Higgsino masses for which the electroweak scale is radiatively stable over the "little hierarchy" below ~ 10 TeV. We review and expand on indirect constraints on this scenario, in particular from flavor and CP tests. We emphasize that in this context, R-parity violation is very well motivated. The phenomenological differences between Majorana and Dirac gauginos are also discussed. Finally, we focus on the light subsystem of stops, sbottom and neutralino with R-parity, in order to probe the current collider bounds. We find that 1/fb LHC bounds are mild and large parts of the motivated parameter space remain open, while the 10/fb data can be much more decisive.Comment: 42 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. V2: minor corrections, references adde

Hypothyroidism in Pancreatic Cancer: Role of Exogenous Thyroid Hormone in Tumor Invasion—Preliminary Observations

According to the epidemiological studies, about 4.4% of American general elderly population has a pronounced hypothyroidism and relies on thyroid hormone supplements daily. The prevalence of hypothyroidism in our patients with pancreatic cancer was much higher, 14.1%. A retrospective analysis was performed on patients who underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy (Whipple procedure) or distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy (DPS) at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, from 2005 to 2012. The diagnosis of hypothyroidism was correlated with clinicopathologic parameters including tumor stage, grade, and survival. To further understand how thyroid hormone affects pancreatic cancer behavior, functional studies including wound-induced cell migration, proliferation, and invasion were performed on pancreatic cancer cell lines, MiaPaCa-2 and AsPC-1. We found that hypothyroid patients taking exogenous thyroid hormone were more than three times likely to have perineural invasion, and about twice as likely to have higher T stage, nodal spread, and overall poorer prognostic stage (P<0.05). Pancreatic cancer cell line studies demonstrated that exogenous thyroid hormone treatment increased cell proliferation, migration, and invasion (P<0.05). We conclude that exogenous thyroid hormone may contribute to the progression of pancreatic cancer

Adaptive traits to improve durum wheat yield in drought and crown rot environments

Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. ssp. durum) production can experience significant yield losses due to crown rot (CR) disease. Losses are usually exacerbated when disease infection coincides with terminal drought. Durum wheat is very susceptible to CR, and resistant germplasm is not currently available in elite breeding pools. We hypothesize that deploying physiological traits for drought adaptation, such as optimal root system architecture to reduce water stress, might minimize losses due to CR infection. This study evaluated a subset of lines from a nested association mapping population for stay-green traits, CR incidence and yield in field experiments as well as root traits under controlled conditions. Weekly measurements of normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI) in the field were used to model canopy senescence and to determine stay-green traits for each genotype. Genome-wide association studies using DArTseq molecular markers identified quantitative trait loci (QTLs) on chromosome 6B (qCR-6B) associated with CR tolerance and stay-green. We explored the value of qCR-6B and a major QTL for root angle QTL qSRA-6A using yield datasets from six rainfed environments, including two environments with high CR disease pressure. In the absence of CR, the favorable allele for qSRA-6A provided an average yield advantage of 0.57 t·ha−1, whereas in the presence of CR, the combination of favorable alleles for both qSRA-6A and qCR-6B resulted in a yield advantage of 0.90 t·ha−1. Results of this study highlight the value of combining above- and belowground physiological traits to enhance yield potential. We anticipate that these insights will assist breeders to design improved durum varieties that mitigate production losses due to water deficit and CR.Samir Alahmad, Yichen Kang, Eric Dinglasan, Elisabetta Mazzucotelli, Kai P. Voss-Fels, Jason A. Able, Jack Christopher, Filippo M. Bassi and Lee T. Hicke