An ammonia spectral map of the L1495-B218 filaments in the Taurus molecular cloud. I. Physical properties of filaments and dense cores

We present deep NH3 observations of the L1495-B218 filaments in the Taurus molecular cloud covering over a 3° angular range using the K-band focal plane array on the 100 m Green Bank Telescope. The L1495-B218 filaments form an interconnected, nearby, large complex extending over 8 pc. We observed NH3 (1, 1) and (2, 2) with a spectral resolution of 0.038 km s−1 and a spatial resolution of 31''. Most of the ammonia peaks coincide with intensity peaks in dust continuum maps at 350 and 500 μm. We deduced physical properties by fitting a model to the observed spectra. We find gas kinetic temperatures of 8–15 K, velocity dispersions of 0.05–0.25 km s−1, and NH3 column densities of 5 × 1012 to 1 × 1014 cm−2. The CSAR algorithm, which is a hybrid of seeded-watershed and binary dendrogram algorithms, identifies a total of 55 NH3 structures, including 39 leaves and 16 branches. The masses of the NH3 sources range from 0.05 to 9.5 ${{M}_{\odot }}$. The masses of NH3 leaves are mostly smaller than their corresponding virial mass estimated from their internal and gravitational energies, which suggests that these leaves are gravitationally unbound structures. Nine out of 39 NH3 leaves are gravitationally bound, and seven out of nine gravitationally bound NH3 leaves are associated with star formation. We also found that 12 out of 30 gravitationally unbound leaves are pressure confined. Our data suggest that a dense core may form as a pressure-confined structure, evolve to a gravitationally bound core, and undergo collapse to form a protostar

Dietary lysine and slaughter weight affect growth performance and carcass characteristics in boars and barrows

During the growing and finishing period, the boars ate less, had better F/G, and were less fat than barrows. A high plane of nutrition (high vs moderate lysine concentrations for the growing-finishing phases) and decreasing slaughter weight from 260 to 220 lb also improved efficiency of gain and carcass leanness. However, many notable interactions occurred among the gender x lysine x slaughter weight treatments. Also, year (rotational-cross of average health status and lean growth potential vs a terminal-cross of high lean growth potential after repopulation of the farm) had pronounced effects on growth performance and carcass merits such that the combination of lean genotype-boars-high lysine-220 lb had advantages of 15, 20, 39,49, and 15% for ADG, ADFI, and F/G, avg backfat thickness, and fat-free lean index, respectively, compared to the control (i.e., the avg lean growth-barrows-moderate lysine-260 lb treatment)

Effects of daily porcine somatotropin administration on the lysine requirement of growing pigs

One-hundred twenty crossbred barrows initially weighing 68.7 lb were used to determine the lysine requirement of growing pigs injected with 5 mg/d porcine somatotropin (PST) during a 5-wk growth trial. Pigs received one of six levels of dietary lysine (.7, 1.1, 1.5, 1.9,2.3, or 2.7%) and were injected daily with either 5 mg pST or placebo. During the 5 wk trial, pST-injected pigs had increased average daily gain (ADG), decreased average daily feed intake (ADFI), and improved feed conversion (F/G) compared with placebo-injected pigs. With increasing dietary lysine, ADFI of pigs injected with both pST and placebo was reduced. Pigs injected with pST had improved ADG as dietary lysine increased to 1.5% and improved F/G as dietary lysine increased to 1.9 %. Dietary lysine had no effect on ADG or F/G of placebo-injected pigs. Pigs injected with pST had improved average backfat, tenth rib fat depth, and longissimus area compared to placebo-injected pigs. Tenth rib fat depth of both placebo- and pST-injected pigs was reduced as dietary lysine increased. Longissimus area of pST-injected pigs improved as dietary lysine increased to 1.5%. The improvements in ADG, ADFI, F/G, and longissimus area of pST-injected pigs indicate that the dietary lysine requirement of growing pigs injected with 5 mg/d pST is 1.5 to 1.9%

Heightened apoptotic priming of vascular cells across tissues and life span predisposes them to cancer therapy–induced toxicities

International audienceAlthough major organ toxicities frequently arise in patients treated with cytotoxic or targeted cancer therapies, the mechanisms that drive them are poorly understood. Here, we report that vascular endothelial cells (ECs) are more highly primed for apoptosis than parenchymal cells across many adult tissues. Consequently, ECs readily undergo apoptosis in response to many commonly used anticancer agents including cytotoxic and targeted drugs and are more sensitive to ionizing radiation and BH3 mimetics than parenchymal cells in vivo. Further, using differentiated isogenic human induced pluripotent stem cell models of ECs and vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), we find that these vascular cells exhibit distinct drug toxicity patterns, which are linked to divergent therapy–induced vascular toxicities in patients. Collectively, our results demonstrate that vascular cells are highly sensitive to apoptosis-inducing stress across life span and may represent a “weakest link” vulnerability in multiple tissues for development of toxicities

Comprehensive curation and analysis of global interaction networks in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract Background The study of complex biological networks and prediction of gene function has been enabled by high-throughput (HTP) methods for detection of genetic and protein interactions. Sparse coverage in HTP datasets may, however, distort network properties and confound predictions. Although a vast number of well substantiated interactions are recorded in the scientific literature, these data have not yet been distilled into networks that enable system-level inference. Results We describe here a comprehensive database of genetic and protein interactions, and associated experimental evidence, for the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as manually curated from over 31,793 abstracts and online publications. This literature-curated (LC) dataset contains 33,311 interactions, on the order of all extant HTP datasets combined. Surprisingly, HTP protein-interaction datasets currently achieve only around 14% coverage of the interactions in the literature. The LC network nevertheless shares attributes with HTP networks, including scale-free connectivity and correlations between interactions, abundance, localization, and expression. We find that essential genes or proteins are enriched for interactions with other essential genes or proteins, suggesting that the global network may be functionally unified. This interconnectivity is supported by a substantial overlap of protein and genetic interactions in the LC dataset. We show that the LC dataset considerably improves the predictive power of network-analysis approaches. The full LC dataset is available at the BioGRID ( http://www.thebiogrid.org ) and SGD ( http://www.yeastgenome.org/ ) databases. Conclusion Comprehensive datasets of biological interactions derived from the primary literature provide critical benchmarks for HTP methods, augment functional prediction, and reveal system-level attributes of biological networks