The Wehl family of South Australia and their botanical connections with “Dear Uncle” Baron Ferdinand von Mueller

Dr Eduard Wehl and Clara Wehl (née Mueller) and their children hold a unique position in the history of South Australian botany because of their association with Clara’s brother and the children’s uncle, Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, Australia’s most significant botanist of the nineteenth century. Both Wehl parents and six of their twelve surviving children collected botanical specimens for Mueller and about 1200 herbarium specimens have been located with most being held in the National Herbarium of Victoria. The majority of specimens were collected in the vicinity of Mount Gambier and Lake Bonney, South Australia. As well as collecting botanical specimens, two daughters, Marie Magdalene Wehl and Henrietta Jane Wehl, illustrated plants and fungi. About 300 illustrations have survived. Of these, about 240 are of flowering plants and contained in three sketchbooks, two of which are at the National Herbarium of Victoria and one at the State Herbarium of South Australia. Marie made a speciality of illustrating fungi, and 36 illustrations are included in an album in the Natural History Museum, London, and 25 others are held as either loose illustrations or associated with herbarium specimens in the National Herbarium of Victoria. Specimens collected by the Wehls have been used in the typification of at least 23 species names. The family is commemorated in three taxa: Clara Wehl in the marine alga Gigartina wehliae Sond.; Eduard and Clara Wehl jointly in the plant genus Wehlia F.Muell. [= Homalocalyx F.Muell.]; and Marie Wehl in the fungus Agaricus wehlianus F.Muell. ex Cooke [=Pluteus wehlianus (F.Muell. ex Cooke) Sacc.]. In this paper we provide a brief history of the Wehl family in South Australia. We assess the herbarium specimens collected by them, examine their illustrations and determine the connections between them and their current importance for typification. Underlying this, we consider the contribution made by the Wehl family toward the botanical work of Baron Ferdinand von Mueller

Deconstruction of a Metastatic Tumor Microenvironment Reveals a Common Matrix Response in Human Cancers.

We have profiled, for the first time, an evolving human metastatic microenvironment by measuring gene expression, matrisome proteomics, cytokine and chemokine levels, cellularity, extracellular matrix organization, and biomechanical properties, all on the same sample. Using biopsies of high-grade serous ovarian cancer metastases that ranged from minimal to extensive disease, we show how nonmalignant cell densities and cytokine networks evolve with disease progression. Multivariate integration of the different components allowed us to define, for the first time, gene and protein profiles that predict extent of disease and tissue stiffness, while also revealing the complexity and dynamic nature of matrisome remodeling during development of metastases. Although we studied a single metastatic site from one human malignancy, a pattern of expression of 22 matrisome genes distinguished patients with a shorter overall survival in ovarian and 12 other primary solid cancers, suggesting that there may be a common matrix response to human cancer.Significance: Conducting multilevel analysis with data integration on biopsies with a range of disease involvement identifies important features of the evolving tumor microenvironment. The data suggest that despite the large spectrum of genomic alterations, some human malignancies may have a common and potentially targetable matrix response that influences the course of disease. Cancer Discov; 8(3); 304-19. ©2017 AACR.This article is highlighted in the In This Issue feature, p. 253

Flowers and fungi: illustrations by Ferdinand von Mueller’s nieces.

[Extract:] Although Baron Ferdinand von Mueller (1825–1896) is best remembered as the Victorian government botanist (1853–96) and director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens (1857–73), little has been published about his immediate family and their contribution to his productivity and success. The 22-year-old Mueller arrived in the Colony of South Australia on 15 December 1847 accompanied by his two surviving younger sisters, Bertha Fredericka aged about 20, and Clara Christiana Marie aged 14 years. Of the sisters, Clara took an active interest in botanical collecting. She accompanied Mueller in the field and assisted with specimen preparation. Clara married Dr Eduard Wehl in 1853. They lived first in Mt Gambier where Dr Wehl established a medical practice. In 1873 the Wehl family moved to Ehrenbreitstein, an agricultural property near Lake Bonney. Twelve of their 15 children survived into adulthood. Dr Wehl died in 1876, leaving Clara to raise eight children under the age of 14, with the youngest not quite three months old