Water Resource Exploitation of the Mekong River Basin and the Influences on the Inland Fisheries of Cambodia

Inland fisheries in the Tonlesap Lake of Cambodia play an essential role in providing with protein and cash income to the poor around the lake. However, the fisheries face a crisis of fish resource depletion due to excessive catch, water pollution and decline in the water level of the Lake. We analyzed the relation of fish catch amounts with the maximum water level in the rainy season and the fish catch in the past, and found that 1% decrease in the water level reduces the catch amounts by 1.25%.What water level can be predicted for the future? To answer this question, we made two models; the one is the water demand-supply model by industry and the other is the water cycle model for the Mekong basin. Depending on various scenarios on the economic development and hydropower dam construction, the reduction in the maximum water level of the Lake would be around 4%, which would lead to a decline in the catch amounts by 5%. In addition to these water quantity issues, we have to consider the inflow of nutrition for which dam constructions would prevent, as well as water pollution of the lake and the excessive catch. Therefore, our estimation on the amount of fish catch reduction in the future is regarded as the conservative minimum one, and the actual catch reduction would be more severe and harmful for livelihoods of the people around the Lake.Keywords: Dai fishery, Inland fisheries, Hydropower dam construction, Fisheries Economics, Cambodia, Water demand, Fish resource depletio

Noncommutative Yang-Mills in IIB Matrix Model

We show that twisted reduced models can be interpreted as noncommutative Yang-Mills theory. Based upon this correspondence, we obtain noncommutative Yang-Mills theory with D-brane backgrounds in IIB matrix model. We propose that IIB matrix model with D-brane backgrounds serve as a concrete definition of noncommutative Yang-Mills. We investigate D-instanton solutions as local excitations on D3-branes. When instantons overlap, their interaction can be well described in gauge theory and AdS/CFT correspondence. We show that IIB matrix model gives us the consistent potential with IIB supergravity when they are well separated.Comment: 21pages, LaTeX, no figures, typos correcte

Antipsychotic olanzapine-induced misfolding of proinsulin in the endoplasmic reticulum accounts for atypical development of diabetes

オランザピンの非典型的糖尿病誘発機構を解明 --体重増加以外にも注意が必要--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2020-12-02.Second-generation antipsychotics are widely used to medicate patients with schizophrenia, but may cause metabolic side effects such as diabetes, which has been considered to result from obesity-associated insulin resistance. Olanzapine is particularly well known for this effect. However, clinical studies have suggested that olanzapine-induced hyperglycemia in certain patients cannot be explained by such a generalized mechanism. Here, we focused on the effects of olanzapine on insulin biosynthesis and secretion by mouse insulinoma MIN6 cells. Olanzapine reduced maturation of proinsulin, and thereby inhibited secretion of insulin; and specifically shifted the primary localization of proinsulin from insulin granules to the endoplasmic reticulum. This was due to olanzapine’s impairment of proper disulfide bond formation in proinsulin, although direct targets of olanzapine remain undetermined. Olanzapine-induced proinsulin misfolding and subsequent decrease also occurred at the mouse level. This mechanism of olanzapine-induced β-cell dysfunction should be considered, together with weight gain, when patients are administered olanzapine

TIARES Project -Tomographic investigation by seafloor array experiment for the Society hotspot

http://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/darwin/cruise/mirai/mr08-06_leg1/

The whole blood transcriptional regulation landscape in 465 COVID-19 infected samples from Japan COVID-19 Task Force

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19患者由来の血液細胞における遺伝子発現の網羅的解析 --重症度に応じた遺伝子発現の変化には、ヒトゲノム配列の個人差が影響する--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-23.Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recently-emerged infectious disease that has caused millions of deaths, where comprehensive understanding of disease mechanisms is still unestablished. In particular, studies of gene expression dynamics and regulation landscape in COVID-19 infected individuals are limited. Here, we report on a thorough analysis of whole blood RNA-seq data from 465 genotyped samples from the Japan COVID-19 Task Force, including 359 severe and 106 non-severe COVID-19 cases. We discover 1169 putative causal expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) including 34 possible colocalizations with biobank fine-mapping results of hematopoietic traits in a Japanese population, 1549 putative causal splice QTLs (sQTLs; e.g. two independent sQTLs at TOR1AIP1), as well as biologically interpretable trans-eQTL examples (e.g., REST and STING1), all fine-mapped at single variant resolution. We perform differential gene expression analysis to elucidate 198 genes with increased expression in severe COVID-19 cases and enriched for innate immune-related functions. Finally, we evaluate the limited but non-zero effect of COVID-19 phenotype on eQTL discovery, and highlight the presence of COVID-19 severity-interaction eQTLs (ieQTLs; e.g., CLEC4C and MYBL2). Our study provides a comprehensive catalog of whole blood regulatory variants in Japanese, as well as a reference for transcriptional landscapes in response to COVID-19 infection

DOCK2 is involved in the host genetics and biology of severe COVID-19

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19疾患感受性遺伝子DOCK2の重症化機序を解明 --アジア最大のバイオレポジトリーでCOVID-19の治療標的を発見--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-10.Identifying the host genetic factors underlying severe COVID-19 is an emerging challenge. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 2, 393 cases of COVID-19 in a cohort of Japanese individuals collected during the initial waves of the pandemic, with 3, 289 unaffected controls. We identified a variant on chromosome 5 at 5q35 (rs60200309-A), close to the dedicator of cytokinesis 2 gene (DOCK2), which was associated with severe COVID-19 in patients less than 65 years of age. This risk allele was prevalent in East Asian individuals but rare in Europeans, highlighting the value of genome-wide association studies in non-European populations. RNA-sequencing analysis of 473 bulk peripheral blood samples identified decreased expression of DOCK2 associated with the risk allele in these younger patients. DOCK2 expression was suppressed in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 61 individuals) identified cell-type-specific downregulation of DOCK2 and a COVID-19-specific decreasing effect of the risk allele on DOCK2 expression in non-classical monocytes. Immunohistochemistry of lung specimens from patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia showed suppressed DOCK2 expression. Moreover, inhibition of DOCK2 function with CPYPP increased the severity of pneumonia in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by weight loss, lung oedema, enhanced viral loads, impaired macrophage recruitment and dysregulated type I interferon responses. We conclude that DOCK2 has an important role in the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, and could be further explored as a potential biomarker and/or therapeutic target