Interaction between Cauliflower Mosaic Virus Inclusion Body Protein and Capsid Protein: Implications for Viral Assembly

AbstractThe cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) inclusion body protein (pVI) is able to specifically interact with the viral capsid precursor protein (pIV). By using the yeast two-hybrid system and a blot assay, the pIV region required for the recognition of pVI was mapped to the lysine-rich domain. This region of only 48 amino acids when fused to dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) mediated pVI and DNA bindingin vitro.Competition experiments confirmed that pVI and DNA bind to the same region of pIV. Since pVI is absent from the mature virus, models are discussed in which pVI plays an accessory role in CaMV assembly, in addition to its function in transactivating translation

Kindheit, Jugend und sozialer Wandel: Gegenwärtige und zukünftige Herausforderungen für die internationale Kindheits- und Jugendforschung

Die Verfasserin bietet einen Überblick über die Diskussion im Rahmen des 5. Weltkongresses zu den Rechten von Kindern und Jugendlichen. Zum einen ist die Kindheit als Möglichkeit des Wandels diskutiert und zum anderen die Frage thematisiert worden, wie sich Formen des sozialen Wandels auf Kindheit und Jugend auswirken. Unter dem Titel "Kindheit, Jugend und sozialer Wandel" zielt der Kongress auf einen Austausch über die Realitäten von Kindheit und Jugend vor dem Hintergrund zunehmender gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen, sowie über die Beeinflussung von Kindheit durch Politik, Erziehungs- und Bildungsinstitutionen, Medien und Kultur ab. Da die Debatte um Kinderrechte in Süd- und Mittelamerika eng mit dem Begriff des protagonismo infantil, den Ansätzen der Befreiungspädagogik und den Kinderarbeiterbewegungen verbunden ist, zeigt sich eine intensivere Auseinandersetzung mit dem Konzept des Kindes als sozialer Akteur. Das Denken über Kinder als Subjekt ist in Lateinamerika verknüpft mit dem Konzept von Kindern als Rechtsträger und Akteure sozialen Wandels. Die grundlegende Frage im Hinblick auf das Thema "Kindheit, Jugend und sozialer Wandel" bezieht sich insbesondere auf die Akteurschaft und damit die Handlungsfähigkeit von Kindern: ob und in welcher Form spielen sie eine aktive Rolle im sozialen Wandel? Wenngleich dieses Konzept im lateinamerikanischen Raum besonders deutlich hervorgehoben wird, zeigt sich auch in der internationalen sozialwissenschaftlichen Diskussion eine immer stärker werdende Debatte um "Agency" im Rahmen der Kindheitsforschung. (ICB2

Impaired delayed but preserved immediate grasping in a neglect patient with parieto-occipital lesions

Patients with optic ataxia, a deficit in visually guided action, paradoxically improve when pantomiming an action towards memorized stimuli. Visual form agnosic patient D.F. shows the exact opposite pattern of results: although being able to grasp objects in real-time she loses grip scaling when grasping an object from memory. Here we explored the dissociation between immediate and delayed grasping in a patient (F.S.) who after a parietal-occipital stroke presented with severe left visual neglect, a loss of awareness of the contralesional side of space. Although F.S. had preserved grip scaling even in his neglected field, he was markedly impaired when asked to pretend to grasp a leftward object from memory. Critically, his deficit cannot be simply explained by the absence of continuous on-line visual feedback, as F.S. was also able to grasp leftward objects in real-time when vision was removed. We suggest that regions surrounding the parietal-occipital sulcus, typically damaged in patients with optic ataxia but spared in F.S., seem to be essential for real-time actions. On the other hand, our data indicates that regions in the ventral visual stream, damaged in D.F but intact in F.S., would appear to be necessary but not sufficient for memory-guided action

BARLEX – the Barley Draft Genome Explorer

Colmsee C, Beier S, Himmelbach A, et al. BARLEX – the Barley Draft Genome Explorer. Molecular Plant. 2015;8(6):964-966

Allele Mining in Barley Genetic Resources Reveals Genes of Race-Non-Specific Powdery Mildew Resistance

Race-non-specific, or quantitative, pathogen resistance is of high importance to plant breeders due to its expected durability. However, it is usually controlled by multiple quantitative trait loci (QTL) and therefore difficult to handle in practice. Knowing the genes that underlie race-non-specific resistance (NR) would allow its exploitation in a more targeted manner. Here, we performed an association-genetic study in a customized worldwide collection of spring barley accessions for candidate genes of race-NR to the powdery mildew fungus Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei (Bgh) and combined data with results from QTL mapping as well as functional-genomics approaches. This led to the identification of 11 associated genes with converging evidence for an important role in race-NR in the presence of the Mlo gene for basal susceptibility. Outstanding in this respect was the gene encoding the transcription factor WRKY2. The results suggest that unlocking plant genetic resources and integrating functional-genomic with genetic approaches can accelerate the discovery of genes underlying race-NR in barley and other crop plants

Automatic correction of hand pointing in stereoscopic depth

In order to examine whether stereoscopic depth information could drive fast automatic correction of hand pointing, an experiment was designed in a 3D visual environment in which participants were asked to point to a target at different stereoscopic depths as quickly and accurately as possible within a limited time window (≤300 ms). The experiment consisted of two tasks: "depthGO" in which participants were asked to point to the new target position if the target jumped, and "depthSTOP" in which participants were instructed to abort their ongoing movements after the target jumped. The depth jump was designed to occur in 20% of the trials in both tasks. Results showed that fast automatic correction of hand movements could be driven by stereoscopic depth to occur in as early as 190 ms.This work was supported by the Grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60970062 and 61173116) and the Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China (20110072110014)

A Genome Assembly of the Barley 'Transformation Reference' Cultivar Golden Promise

Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is one of the most important crops worldwide and is also considered a research model for the large-genome small grain temperate cereals. Despite genomic resources improving all the time, they are limited for the cv. Golden Promise, the most efficient genotype for genetic transformation. We have developed a barley cv. Golden Promise reference assembly integrating Illumina paired-end reads, long mate-pair reads, Dovetail Chicago in vitro proximity ligation libraries and chromosome conformation capture sequencing (Hi-C) libraries into a contiguous reference assembly. The assembled genome of 7 chromosomes and 4.13Gb in size, has a super-scaffold N50 after Chicago libraries of 4.14Mb and contains only 2.2% gaps. Using BUSCO (benchmarking universal single copy orthologous genes) as evaluation the genome assembly contains 95.2% of complete and single copy genes from the plant database. A high-quality Golden Promise reference assembly will be useful and utilized by the whole barley research community but will prove particularly useful for CRISPR-Cas9 experiments

Genomic resources for a historical collection of cultivated two-row European spring barley genotypes

Barley genomic resources are increasing rapidly, with the publication of a barley pangenome as one of the latest developments. Two-row spring barley cultivars are intensely studied as they are the source of high-quality grain for malting and distilling. Here we provide data from a European two-row spring barley population containing 209 different genotypes registered for the UK market between 1830 to 2014. The dataset encompasses RNA-sequencing data from six different tissues across a range of barley developmental stages, phenotypic datasets from two consecutive years of field-grown trials in the United Kingdom, Germany and the USA; and whole genome shotgun sequencing from all cultivars, which was used to complement the RNA-sequencing data for variant calling. The outcomes are a filtered SNP marker file, a phenotypic database and a large gene expression dataset providing a comprehensive resource which allows for downstream analyses like genome wide association studies or expression associations.</p

Hormonal Regulation of Plant Growth and Development

Besides environmental factors, plant growth depends upon endogenous signals. Bill Gray examines what these hormonal signals are and how they act to regulate many aspects of growth and development