New records of rare species in the Mediterranean Sea (October 2021)

This Collective Article presents information about 27 taxa belonging to five Phyla (one Ochrophyta, one Cnidaria, three Arthropoda, two Mollusca and twenty Chordata) and extending from the Western Mediterranean Sea to the Levantine Sea and theBlack Sea (Sea of Marmara). The new records were reported from 11 countries as follows: Algeria: occurrence of the Africanstriped grunt Parapristipoma octolineatum; Spain: new records of eight uncommon fish species (Gadella maraldi, Hypleurochilusbananensis, Lobotes surinamensis, Parapristipoma octolineatum, Selene dorsalis, Sphoeroides marmoratus, Tetragonuruscuvieri, and Trachyrincus scabrus) from the Spanish Mediterranean; Italy: new record of the football octopus Ocythoe tuberculatafrom the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea; a rare sighting of a juvenile phase of a moray eel of the genus Gymnothorax, tentativelyidentified as Gymnothorax cf. unicolor in the Ligurian Sea; first record of adult Facciola’s sorcerer Facciolella oxyrhynchus inthe Adriatic Sea; occurrence of the tope shark Galeorhinus galeus in the Northern Adriatic Sea; Libya: first confirmed recordof the pen shell Pinna rudis; first documented record of the palaemonid shrimp Brachycarpus biunguiculatus; first record of thefish Sudis hyalina; Malta: new records of Grant’s rockling, Gaidropsarus granti; multiple concomitant reports of the rare hydromedusanspecies Aequorea forskalea; Croatia: a record of the skipjack tuna Katsuwonus pelamis in the Southern Adriatic Sea;Albania: new record of the bigeye thresher shark Alopias superciliosus; Greece: confirmation of the rare brown alga Sargassumflavifolium occurrence in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea; first record of the scaleless dragonfish Bathophilus nigerrimus; Turkey:first occurrence of the calanoid copepod Pteriacartia josephinae in the Aegean Sea; first documented record of the Cremona’s seaslug Placida cremoniana for the easternmost Mediterranean Sea; new record of the yellow-headed goby Gobius xanthocephalusin the Sea of Marmara; Cyprus: first record of the Liechtenstein’s goby Corcyrogobius liechtensteini; an individual of the Yellowfintuna Thunnus albacares captured with handline by an artisanal fisher; Lebanon: an individual of the Black marlin Istiompaxindica captured in a gill ne

Characterization of differentially expressed genes to Cu stress in Brassica nigra by Arabidopsis genome arrays

PubMed ID: 30397750Phytoremediation is an efficient and promising cleanup technology to extract or inactivate heavy metals and several organic and inorganic pollutants from soil and water. In this study, different Brassica nigra L. ecotypes, including Diyarbakır, collected from mining areas were exposed to different concentrations of copper and harvested after 72 h of Cu stress for the assessment of phytoremediation capacity. The Diyarbakır ecotype was called as “metallophyte” because of surviving at 500 ?M Cu. To better understand Cu stress mechanism, ArabidopsisATH1 genome array was used to compare the gene expression in root and shoot tissues of B. nigra under 25 ?M Cu. The response to Cu was much stronger in roots (88 genes showing increased or decreased mRNA levels) than in leaf tissues (24 responding genes). These genes were classified into the metal transport and accumulation-related genes, signal transduction and metabolism-related genes, and transport facilitation genes. Glutathione pathway-related genes (?-ECS, PC, etc.) mRNAs were identified as differentially expressed in root and shoot tissues. QRT-PCR validation experiments showed that ?-ECS and PC expression was upregulated in the shoot and leaf tissues of the 100 ?M Cu-subjected B. nigra-tolerant ecotype. This is the first study showing global expression profiles in response to Cu stress in B. nigra by Arabidopsis genome array. This work presented herein provides a well-illustrated insight into the global gene expression to Cu stress response in plants, and identified genes from microarray data will serve as molecular tools for the phytoremediation applications in the future. © 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.TUBITAK-1040211 European Cooperation in Science and TechnologyAcknowledgements This project was supported by The Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey (TUBITAK-1040211) and the COST Action 859 BPhytotechnologies to promote sustainable land use and improve food safety^

Biofilm formation and resistance to fungicides in clinically relevant members of the fungal genus fusarium

Clinically relevant members of the fungal genus, Fusarium, exhibit an extraordinary genetic diversity and cause a wide spectrum of infections in both healthy individuals and immunocompromised patients. Generally, Fusarium species are intrinsically resistant to all systemic antifungals. We investigated whether the presence or absence of the ability to produce biofilms across and within Fusarium species complexes is linked to higher resistance against antifungals. A collection of 41 Fusarium strains, obtained from 38 patients with superficial and systemic infections, and three infected crops, were tested, including 25 species within the Fusarium fujikuroi species complex, 14 from the Fusarium solani species complex (FSSC), one Fusarium dimerum species complex, and one Fusarium oxysporum species complex isolate. Of all isolates tested, only seven strains from two species of FSSC, five F. petroliphilum and two F. keratoplasticum strains, recovered from blood, nail scrapings, and nasal biopsy samples, could produce biofilms under the tested conditions. In the liquid culture tested, sessile biofilm-forming Fusarium strains exhibited elevated minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) for amphotericin B, voriconazole, and posaconazole, compared to their planktonic counterparts, indicating that the ability to form biofilm may significantly increase resistance. Collectively, this suggests that once a surface adherent biofilm has been established, therapies designed to kill planktonic cells of Fusarium are ineffective. © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

The identification of genes associated with Pb and Cd response mechanism in Brassica juncea L. by using Arabidopsis expression array

Heavy metals are significant inorganic environmental pollutants. Brassica juncea, frequently used as model for phytoremediation studies, can (hyper)accumulate some heavy metals with well-developed root system. Even though the elucidation of the differentially expressed genes in response to heavy metals is important for the improvement of phytoremediation capacity of plants, there has been limited number of reports about detailed functional characterization of these genes. In this study, 50 ?M Pb(NO3)2 and 25 ?M CdSO4 were applied separately to 31 days-old Brassica juncea (var. P78) plants for 24 h to identify the putative genes associated with lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) stress. The metal content analyses indicated that B. juncea (var. P78) is lead and cadmium hyperaccumulator. To reveal molecular mechanisms responsible for metal metabolism, the differentially expressed genes in the roots of Pb-treated plants were investigated by using the microarray chips of Arabidopsis thaliana probes (Affymetrix-The GeneChip® Arabidopsis ATH1 Genome Array). Out of 183 differentially expressed genes in response to Pb stress, only 20 of the up-regulated and 18 of the down-regulated genes were statistically significant at p < 0.05. Since most of 38 genes differentially expressed under Pb stress were interspecifically very well conserved, we concluded that the use of interspecific hybridization approaches for global gene expression profiling would be limited. The interspecific usability of the probes was further tested by determining the level of conservation between Arabidopsis microarray oligo and Brassica spp. sequences. The microarray results were validated by quantifying the level of expression of six important genes, which are likely to play a role in Pb metabolism, through quantitative RT-PCR. To further pinpoint the possible role of Pb stress-response genes, the expression of these genes at different tissues of the plants after Pb and Cd treatments were measured. In conclusion, the described genes are likely to be associated with Pb and Cd stress metabolism and provide potential targets for the improvement of phytoremediation capacity in plants. © 2017 Elsevier B.V

Prevalence and factors associated with disturbed sleep in patients with ankylosing spondylitis and non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis: a systematic review

This review explores the prevalence and factors associated with disturbed sleep for patients with ankylosing spondylitis and non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis in order to clarify consistent findings in this otherwise disparate research field. The association of physical, demographic and psychological factors correlating with poor sleep was explored, and the effectiveness of interventions assessed. Ten electronic databases were searched: AMED, CINAHL, Embase, Medline, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, OpenGrey and BASE. Following application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, 29 articles were critically assessed on the basis of methodology, experimental design, ethics and quality of sleep data, leading to the selection of 15 studies for final review. Poor sleep was reported in 35–90% of patients with axial spondyloarthritis and is more prevalent within this clinical population compared to healthy control subjects. Disturbed sleep is an important aspect of disease for patients and reflects the severity of disease activity, pain, fatigue and functional disability. However, the direction of this relationship is undetermined. Associations with age, gender, years spent in education, quality of life and depression have also been demonstrated. Anti-TNF medication is effective in reducing poor sleep, and exercise has also produced beneficial results. Future research into poor sleep should take account of its multifactorial nature. There is also a current lack of research investigating non-pharmacological interventions or combination therapies. A standardised, validated measurement of poor sleep, appropriate for regular patient screening, would be a useful first step for future research

New records of rare species in the Mediterranean Sea (May 2022)

This Collective Article presents new information about the occurrence of 21 taxa that belong to six Phyla: one Cnidaria, one Ctenophora, two Annelida, four Mollusca, two Arthropoda, and eleven Chordata. These records were reported from ten countries from the western to the eastern Mediterranean Sea as follows: Spain: early colonization signs of the Mar Menor lagoon by the cigar jellyfish Olindias muelleri; France: second record of the sea chub of the genus Kyphosus in French Mediterranean waters; Italy: first record of the marbled crab Pachygrapsus maurus in Sardinian waters; first records of the polychaetes Malmgrenia polypapillata and Levinsenia tribranchiata in the Tyrrhenian Sea; new record of the deep-sea squid Ancistrocheirus lesueurii in the Tyrrhenian Sea; first record of the pignosed arrowtooth eel Dysomma brevirostre in the Adriatic Sea; Tunisia: first documented record of the blue butterfish Stromateus fiatola and new record of the iconic great white shark Carcharodon carcharias in the Gulf of Gabes; Slovenia: first records of the sea slug Diaphorodoris alba and the sharpnose sevengill shark Heptranchias perlo; Montenegro: new record of the rare tope shark Galeorhinus galeus; Greece: new records of the rabbitfish Chimaera monstrosa and the electric ray Tetronarce nobiliana; first published record of the nuribranch Discodoris rosi; first record of the goblin shark Mitsukurina owstoni, unreported so far from the entire Mediterranean; Turkey: first record of the ctenophore Hormiphora plumosa at country level; first records of the anomuran decapod Munida speciosa and the Mediterranean tripodfish, Bathypterois mediterraneus from the Levantine Sea; Cyprus: first documented record of the nuribranch Scyllaea pelagica; Lebanon: first record of the killer whale Orcinus orca from the Levantine Sea