Plant Metabolomics Applications in the Brassicaceae: Added Value for Science and Industry

Crops from the family Brassicaceae represent a diverse and very interesting group of plants. In addition, their close relationship with the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, makes combined research on these species both scientifically valuable and of considerable commercial importance. In the post-genomics era, much effort is being placed on expanding our capacity to use advanced technologies such as proteomics and metabolomics, to broaden our knowledge of the molecular organization of plants and how genetic differences are translated into phenotypic ones. Metabolomics in particular is gaining much attention mainly due both to the comprehensiveness of the technology and also the potentially close relationship between biochemical composition (including human health-related phytochemicals) and phenotype. In this short review, a brief introduction to the main metabolomics technologies is given taking examples from research on the Brassicaceae for illustratio

Through a Dark Lens: Jackson\u27s \u3ci\u3eLord of the Rings\u3c/i\u3e as Abject Horror

Shows how Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy makes more sense “read” as horror than fantasy, drawing on definitions of horror from film theory and on Jackson’s own previous work

Infectivity of asexual propagules of Phytophtora infestans in sterile peat exposed to various temperature regimes

La survie de propagules asexuelles (sporanges et mycélium) du Phytophthora infestans, dans de la mousse de tourbe stérilisée à l'autoclave et exposée à diverses températures, a été évaluée par leur capacité à infecter des disques flottants de feuilles de pomme de terre. Le pouvoir infectieux des propagules dans la mousse de tourbe a été mesuré après 0, 21, 35, 63 et 79 jours d'exposition à des températures allant de -33 C à 20 C. Les propagules exposées à des températures sous le point de congélation n'étaient plus infectieuses après 21 jours. L'exposition des propagules à des températures de 15 ou de 20 C a entraîné un déclin rapide du pouvoir infectieux; aucune propagule n'était infectieuse lors du dernier échantillonnage. À l'opposé, les propagules exposées à une température de 5 C durant 79 jours sont demeurées infectieuses.Survival of asexual (sporangia and mycelium) propagules of Phytophthora infestans in autoclaved peat moss exposed to various temperatures was assessed by ability to infect floating potato leaf discs. Infectivity of propagules in peat was measured after 0, 21, 35, 63, and 79 days of exposure to temperatures ranging from -33 C to 20 C. Propagules exposed to temperatures below freezing were no longer infective after 21 days. Exposure of propagules to temperatures of 15 or 20 C resulted in a rapid decline in infectivity over time; by the final sampling date, none were infective. In contrast, propagules exposed to a temperature of 5 C for 79 days remained infective

Limitations of the heavy-baryon expansion as revealed by a pion-mass dispersion relation

The chiral expansion of nucleon properties such as mass, magnetic moment, and magnetic polarizability are investigated in the framework of chiral perturbation theory, with and without the heavy-baryon expansion. The analysis makes use of a pion-mass dispersion relation, which is shown to hold in both frameworks. The dispersion relation allows an ultraviolet cutoff to be implemented without compromising the symmetries. After renormalization, the leading-order heavy-baryon loops demonstrate a stronger dependence on the cutoff scale, which results in weakened convergence of the expansion. This conclusion is tested against the recent results of lattice quantum chromodynamics simulations for nucleon mass and isovector magnetic moment. In the case of the polarizability, the situation is even more dramatic as the heavy-baryon expansion is unable to reproduce large soft contributions to this quantity. Clearly, the heavy-baryon expansion is not suitable for every quantity.Comment: Accepted for publication in EPJ C. Made changes based on referee comments: clarifying sentences to conclusion 1. of Section IV, beginning of Section V, and new footnote in Section VI, page 8. Added more detailed explanation in paragraph 4 of Section III. Added citations of Phys.Rev. D60, 034014, and Phys.Lett. B716, 33

Metabolic engineering of flavonoids in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum): the potential for metabolomics

Flavonoids comprise a large and diverse group of polyphenolic plant secondary metabolites. In plants, flavonoids play important roles in many biological processes such as pigmentation of flowers, fruits and vegetables, plant-pathogen interactions, fertility and protection against UV light. Being natural plant compounds, flavonoids are an integral part of the human diet and there is increasing evidence that dietary polyphenols are likely candidates for the observed beneficial effects of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables on the prevention of several chronic diseases. Within the plant kingdom, and even within a single plant species, there is a large variation in the levels and composition of flavonoids. This variation is often due to specific mutations in flavonoid-related genes leading to quantitative and qualitative differences in metabolic profiles. The use of such specific flavonoid mutants with easily scorable, visible phenotypes has led to the isolation and characterisation of many structural and regulatory genes involved in the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway from different plant species. These genes have been used to engineer the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway in both model and crop plant species, not only from a fundamental perspective, but also in order to alter important agronomic traits, such as flower and fruit colour, resistance, nutritional value. This review describes the advances made in engineering the flavonoid pathway in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). Three different approaches will be described; (I) Increasing endogenous tomato flavonoids using structural or regulatory genes; (II) Blocking specific steps in the flavonoid pathway by RNA interference strategies; and (III) Production of novel tomato flavonoids by introducing novel branches of the flavonoid pathway. Metabolite profiling is an essential tool to analyse the effects of pathway engineering approaches, not only to analyse the effect on the flavonoid composition itself, but also on other related or unrelated metabolic pathways. Metabolomics will therefore play an increasingly important role in revealing a more complete picture of metabolic perturbation and will provide additional novel insights into the effect of the introduced genes and the role of flavonoids in plant physiology and development

A Complete Theory of Grand Unification in Five Dimensions

A fully realistic unified theory is constructed, with SU(5) gauge symmetry and supersymmetry both broken by boundary conditions in a fifth dimension. Despite the local explicit breaking of SU(5) at a boundary of the dimension, the large size of the extra dimension allows precise predictions for gauge coupling unification, alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.118 \pm 0.003, and for Yukawa coupling unification, m_b(M_Z) = 3.3 \pm 0.2 GeV. A complete understanding of the MSSM Higgs sector is given; with explanations for why the Higgs triplets are heavy, why the Higgs doublets are protected from a large tree-level mass, and why the mu and B parameters are naturally generated to be of order the SUSY breaking scale. All sources of d=4,5 proton decay are forbidden, while a new origin for d=6 proton decay is found to be important. Several aspects of flavor follow from an essentially unique choice of matter location in the fifth dimension: only the third generation has an SU(5) mass relation, and the lighter two generations have small mixings with the heaviest generation. The entire superpartner spectrum is predicted in terms of only two free parameters. The squark and slepton masses are determined by their location in the fifth dimension, allowing a significant experimental test of the detailed structure of the extra dimension. Lepton flavor violation is found to be generically large in higher dimensional unified theories with high mediation scales of SUSY breaking. In our theory this forces a common location for all three neutrinos, predicting large neutrino mixing angles. Rates for mu -> e gamma, mu -> e e e, mu -> e conversion and tau -> mu gamma are larger in our theory than in conventional 4D supersymmetric GUTs. Proposed experiments probing mu -> e transitions will probe the entire interesting parameter space of our theory.Comment: 51 pages, late

Search for Solar Axions Produced in the p+d→3He+Ap + d \rightarrow\rm{^3He}+ A Reaction

A search for the axioelectric absorption of 5.5-MeV solar axions produced in the $p+d\rightarrow \rm{^3He}+\gamma(5.5 \rm{MeV})$ reaction was performed with two BGO detectors placed inside a low-background setup. A model independent limit on axion-photon and axion-nucleon couplings was obtained: $|g_{Ae}\times g_{AN}| \leq 3.2\times 10^{-9} (m_A=0)$. Constraints on the axion-electron coupling constant were obtained for axions with masses in the $(0.1-1.0)$ MeV range: $g_{Ae}\leq (1.8-9.0)\times 10^{-7}$. The solar positron flux from $A\rightarrow e^-+e^+$ decay was determined for axions with masses $m_A > 2m_e$. Using the existing experimental data on the interplanetary positron flux, a new constraint on the axion-electron coupling constant for axions with masses in the $(1.2-5.4)$ MeV range was obtained: $g_{Ae} \leq (1-5)\times 10^{-17}$.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure