Pyrosequencing of Mytilus galloprovincialis cDNAs: tissue-specific expression patterns.

BACKGROUND: Mytilus species are important in marine ecology and in environmental quality assessment, yet their molecular biology is poorly understood. Molecular aspects of their reproduction, hybridisation between species, mitochondrial inheritance, skewed sex ratios of offspring and adaptation to climatic and pollution factors are priority areas. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: To start to address this situation, expressed genetic transcripts from M. galloprovincialis were pyrosequenced. Transcripts were isolated from the digestive gland, foot, gill and mantle of both male and female mussels. In total, 175,547 sequences were obtained and for foot and mantle, 90% of the sequences could be assembled into contiguous fragments but this reduced to 75% for the digestive gland and gill. Transcripts relating to protein metabolism and respiration dominated including ribosomal proteins, cytochrome oxidases and NADH dehydrogenase subunits. Tissue specific variation was identified in transcripts associated with mitochondrial energy metabolism, with the digestive gland and gill having the greatest transcript abundance. Using fragment recruitment it was also possible to identify sites of potential small RNAs involved in mitochondrial transcriptional regulation. Sex ratios based on Vitelline Envelop Receptor for Lysin and Vitelline Coat Lysin transcript abundances, indicated that an equal sex distribution was maintained. Taxonomic profiling of the M. galloprovincialis tissues highlighted an abundant microbial flora associated with the digestive gland. Profiling of the tissues for genes involved in intermediary metabolism demonstrated that the gill and digestive gland were more similar to each other than to the other two tissues, and specifically the foot transcriptome was most dissimilar. CONCLUSIONS: Pyrosequencing has provided extensive genomic information for M. galloprovincialis and generated novel observations on expression of different tissues, mitochondria and associated microorganisms. It will also facilitate the much needed production of an oligonucleotide microarray for the organism

Glucose enhancement of memory is modulated by trait anxiety in healthy adolescent males

Glucose administration is associated with memory enhancement in healthy young individuals under conditions of divided attention at encoding. While the specific neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this ‘glucose memory facilitation effect’ are currently uncertain, it is thought that individual differences in glucoregulatory efficiency may alter an individual’s sensitivity to the glucose memory facilitation effect. In the present study, we sought to investigate whether basal hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis function (itself a modulator of glucoregulatory efficiency), baseline self-reported stress and trait anxiety influence the glucose memory facilitation effect. Adolescent males (age range = 14–17 years) were administered glucose and placebo prior to completing a verbal episodic memory task on two separate testing days in a counter-balanced, within-subjects design. Glucose ingestion improved verbal episodic memory performance when memory recall was tested (i) within an hour of glucose ingestion and encoding, and (ii) one week subsequent to glucose ingestion and encoding. Basal hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis function did not appear to influence the glucose memory facilitation effect; however, glucose ingestion only improved memory in participants reporting relatively higher trait anxiety. These findings suggest that the glucose memory facilitation effect may be mediated by biological mechanisms associated with trait anxiety

Characterisation of gut microbiota of obesity and type 2 diabetes in a rodent model

Various studies have suggested that the gut microbiome interacts with the host and may have a significant role in the aetiology of obesity and Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). It was hypothesised that bacterial communities in obesity and T2D differ from control and compromise normal interactions between host and microbiota. Obesity and T2D were developed in rats by feeding a high-fat diet or a high-fat diet plus a single low-dose streptozotocin administration, respectively. The microbiome profiles and their metabolic potentials were established by metagenomic 16S rRNA sequencing and bioinformatics. Taxonomy and predicted metabolism-related genes in obesity and T2D were markedly different from controls and indeed from each other. Diversity was reduced in T2D but not in Obese rats. Factors likely to compromise host intestinal, barrier integrity were found in Obese and T2D rats including predicted, decreased bacterial butyrate production. Capacity to increase energy extraction via ABC-transporters and carbohydrate metabolism were enhanced in Obese and T2D rats. T2D was characterized by increased proinflammatory molecules. While obesity and T2D show distinct differences, results suggest that in both conditions Bacteroides and Blautia species were increased indicating a possible mechanistic link

Screening of antioxidant properties of the apple juice using the front-face synchronous fluorescence and chemometrics

Fluorescence spectroscopy is gaining increasing attention in food analysis due to its higher sensitivity and selectivity as compared to other spectroscopic techniques. Synchronous scanning fluorescence technique is particularly useful in studies of multi-fluorophoric food samples, providing a further improvement of selectivity by reduction in the spectral overlapping and suppressing light-scattering interferences. Presently, we study the feasibility of the prediction of the total phenolics, flavonoids, and antioxidant capacity using front-face synchronous fluorescence spectra of apple juices. Commercial apple juices from different product ranges were studied. Principal component analysis (PCA) applied to the unfolded synchronous fluorescence spectra was used to compare the fluorescence of the entire sample set. The regression analysis was performed using partial least squares (PLS1 and PLS2) methods on the unfolded total synchronous and on the single-offset synchronous fluorescence spectra. The best calibration models for all of the studied parameters were obtained using the PLS1 method for the single-offset synchronous spectra. The models for the prediction of the total flavonoid content had the best performance; the optimal model was obtained for the analysis of the synchronous fluorescence spectra at Delta lambda = 110 nm (R (2) = 0.870, residual predictive deviation (RPD) = 2.7). The optimal calibration models for the prediction of the total phenolic content (Delta lambda = 80 nm, R (2) = 0.766, RPD = 2.0) and the total antioxidant capacity (Delta lambda = 70 nm, R (2) = 0.787, RPD = 2.1) had only an approximate predictive ability. These results demonstrate that synchronous fluorescence could be a useful tool in fast semi-quantitative screening for the antioxidant properties of the apple juices.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dynamics of direct inter-pack encounters in endangered African wild dogs

Aggressive encounters may have important life history consequences due to the potential for injury and death, disease transmission, dispersal opportunities or exclusion from key areas of the home range. Despite this, little is known of their detailed dynamics, mainly due to the difficulties of directly observing encounters in detail. Here, we describe detailed spatial dynamics of inter-pack encounters in African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), using data from custom-built high-resolution GPS collars in 11 free-ranging packs. On average, each pack encountered another pack approximately every 7 weeks and met each neighbour twice each year. Surprisingly, intruders were more likely to win encounters (winning 78.6% of encounters by remaining closer to the site in the short term). However, intruders did tend to move farther than residents toward their own range core in the short-term (1 h) post-encounter, and if this were used to indicate losing an encounter, then the majority (73.3%) of encounters were won by residents. Surprisingly, relative pack size had little effect on encounter outcome, and injuries were rare (<15% of encounters). These results highlight the difficulty of remotely scoring encounters involving mobile participants away from static defendable food resources. Although inter-pack range overlap was reduced following an encounter, encounter outcome did not seem to drive this, as both packs shifted their ranges post-encounter. Our results indicate that inter-pack encounters may be lower risk than previously suggested and do not appear to influence long-term movement and ranging

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

γ-Tocotrienol suppresses prostate cancer cell proliferation and invasion through multiple-signalling pathways

Tocotrienol-rich fraction (TRF) has demonstrated antiproliferative effect on prostate cancer (PCa) cells. To elucidate this anticancer property in PCa cells, this study aimed, first, to identify the most potent isomer for eliminating PCa cells; and second, to decipher the molecular pathway responsible for its activity. Results showed that the inhibitory effect of γ-tocotrienol was most potent, which resulted in induction of apoptosis as evidenced by activation of pro-caspases and the presence of sub-G1 cell population. Examination of the pro-survival genes revealed that the γ-tocotrienol-induced cell death was associated with suppression of NF-κB, EGF-R and Id family proteins (Id1 and Id3). Meanwhile, γ-tocotrienol treatment also resulted in the induction of JNK-signalling pathway and inhibition of JNK activity by a specific inhibitor (SP600125) was able to partially block the effect of γ-tocotrienol. Interestingly, γ-tocotrienol treatment led to suppression of mesenchymal markers and the restoration of E-cadherin and γ-catenin expression, which was associated with suppression of cell invasion capability. Furthermore, a synergistic effect was observed when cells were co-treated with γ-tocotrienol and Docetaxel. Our results suggested that the antiproliferative effect of γ-tocotrienol act through multiple-signalling pathways, and demonstrated for the first time the anti-invasion and chemosensitisation effect of γ-tocotrienol against PCa cells