Echinoderms have bilateral tendencies

Echinoderms take many forms of symmetry. Pentameral symmetry is the major form and the other forms are derived from it. However, the ancestors of echinoderms, which originated from Cambrian period, were believed to be bilaterians. Echinoderm larvae are bilateral during their early development. During embryonic development of starfish and sea urchins, the position and the developmental sequence of each arm are fixed, implying an auxological anterior/posterior axis. Starfish also possess the Hox gene cluster, which controls symmetrical development. Overall, echinoderms are thought to have a bilateral developmental mechanism and process. In this article, we focused on adult starfish behaviors to corroborate its bilateral tendency. We weighed their central disk and each arm to measure the position of the center of gravity. We then studied their turning-over behavior, crawling behavior and fleeing behavior statistically to obtain the center of frequency of each behavior. By joining the center of gravity and each center of frequency, we obtained three behavioral symmetric planes. These behavioral bilateral tendencies might be related to the A/P axis during the embryonic development of the starfish. It is very likely that the adult starfish is, to some extent, bilaterian because it displays some bilateral propensity and has a definite behavioral symmetric plane. The remainder of bilateral symmetry may have benefited echinoderms during their evolution from the Cambrian period to the present

Transgenic Potatoes for Potato Cyst Nematode Control Can Replace Pesticide Use without Impact on Soil Quality

Current and future global crop yields depend upon soil quality to which soil organisms make an important contribution. The European Union seeks to protect European soils and their biodiversity for instance by amending its Directive on pesticide usage. This poses a challenge for control of Globodera pallida (a potato cyst nematode) for which both natural resistance and rotational control are inadequate. One approach of high potential is transgenically based resistance. This work demonstrates the potential in the field of a new transgenic trait for control of G. pallida that suppresses root invasion. It also investigates its impact and that of a second transgenic trait on the non-target soil nematode community. We establish that a peptide that disrupts chemoreception of nematodes without a lethal effect provides resistance to G. pallida in both a containment and a field trial when precisely targeted under control of a root tip-specific promoter. In addition we combine DNA barcoding and quantitative PCR to recognise nematode genera from soil samples without microscope-based observation and use the method for nematode faunal analysis. This approach establishes that the peptide and a cysteine proteinase inhibitor that offer distinct bases for transgenic plant resistance to G. pallida do so without impact on the non-target nematode soil community

Phosphatidylinositol 3,5‐bisphosphate: Low abundance, high significance

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102155/1/bies201300012.pd

Dissociable Effects of Valence and Arousal in Adaptive Executive Control

Background: Based on introspectionist, semantic, and psychophysiological experimental frameworks, it has long been assumed that all affective states derive from two independent basic dimensions, valence and arousal. However, until now, no study has investigated whether valence and arousal are also dissociable at the level of affect-related changes in cognitive processing.Methodology/Principal Findings: We examined how changes in both valence (negative vs. positive) and arousal (low vs. high) influence performance in tasks requiring executive control because recent research indicates that two dissociable cognitive components are involved in the regulation of task performance: amount of current control (i.e., strength of filtering goal-irrelevant signals) and control adaptation (i.e., strength of maintaining current goals over time). Using a visual pop-out distractor task, we found that control is exclusively modulated by arousal because interference by goal-irrelevant signals was largest in high arousal states, independently of valence. By contrast, control adaptation is exclusively modulated by valence because the increase in control after trials in which goal-irrelevant signals were present was largest in negative states, independent of arousal. A Monte Carlo simulation revealed that differential effects of two experimental factors on control and control adaptation can be dissociated if there is no correlation between empirical interference and conflict-driven modulation of interference, which was the case in the present data. Consequently, the observed effects of valence and arousal on adaptive executive control are indeed dissociable. Conclusions/Significance: These findings indicate that affective influences on cognitive processes can be driven by independent effects of variations in valence and arousal, which may resolve several heterogeneous findings observed in previous studies on affect-cognition interactions

The origins of the trypanosome genome strains Trypanosoma brucei brucei TREU 927, T. b. gambiense DAL 972, T. vivax Y486 and T. congolense IL3000

The genomes of several tsetse-transmitted African trypanosomes (Trypanosoma brucei brucei, T. b. gambiense, T. vivax, T. congolense) have been sequenced and are available to search online. The trypanosome strains chosen for the genome sequencing projects were selected because they had been well characterised in the laboratory, but all were isolated several decades ago. The purpose of this short review is to provide some background information on the origins and biological characterisation of these strains as a source of reference for future users of the genome data. With high throughput sequencing of many more trypanosome genomes in prospect, it is important to understand the phylogenetic relationships of the genome strains

Postoperative outcomes in oesophagectomy with trainee involvement

BACKGROUND: The complexity of oesophageal surgery and the significant risk of morbidity necessitates that oesophagectomy is predominantly performed by a consultant surgeon, or a senior trainee under their supervision. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of trainee involvement in oesophagectomy on postoperative outcomes in an international multicentre setting. METHODS: Data from the multicentre Oesophago-Gastric Anastomosis Study Group (OGAA) cohort study were analysed, which comprised prospectively collected data from patients undergoing oesophagectomy for oesophageal cancer between April 2018 and December 2018. Procedures were grouped by the level of trainee involvement, and univariable and multivariable analyses were performed to compare patient outcomes across groups. RESULTS: Of 2232 oesophagectomies from 137 centres in 41 countries, trainees were involved in 29.1 per cent of them (n = 650), performing only the abdominal phase in 230, only the chest and/or neck phases in 130, and all phases in 315 procedures. For procedures with a chest anastomosis, those with trainee involvement had similar 90-day mortality, complication and reoperation rates to consultant-performed oesophagectomies (P = 0.451, P = 0.318, and P = 0.382, respectively), while anastomotic leak rates were significantly lower in the trainee groups (P = 0.030). Procedures with a neck anastomosis had equivalent complication, anastomotic leak, and reoperation rates (P = 0.150, P = 0.430, and P = 0.632, respectively) in trainee-involved versus consultant-performed oesophagectomies, with significantly lower 90-day mortality in the trainee groups (P = 0.005). CONCLUSION: Trainee involvement was not found to be associated with significantly inferior postoperative outcomes for selected patients undergoing oesophagectomy. The results support continued supervised trainee involvement in oesophageal cancer surgery

Antiviral TRIMs: friend or foe in autoimmune and autoinflammatory disease?

The concept that viral sensing systems, via their ability to drive pro-inflammatory cytokine and interferon production, contribute to the development of autoimmune and autoinflammatory disease is supported by a wide range of clinical and experimental observations. Recently, the tripartite motif-containing proteins (TRIMs) have emerged as having key roles in antiviral immunity — either as viral restriction factors or as regulators of pathways downstream of viral RNA and DNA sensors, and the inflammasome. Given their involvement in these pathways, we propose that TRIM proteins contribute to the development and pathology of autoimmune and autoinflammatory conditions, thus making them potential novel targets for therapeutic manipulation