Bleomycin-induced lung phenotype of <i>Blmpf2</i> subcongenic mice.

<p>The mice were treated with bleomycin by mini-osmotic pump and euthanized 42 days later. The percentage of the lung with fibrosis was determined from image analysis of histological sections and the mean ± SEM of 10–19 bleomycin-treated mice for each subcongenic line, and for the parental strains, is given. * indicates a significant difference in fibrosis from B6 mice, p<0.05. Genotypes [C3H alleles (white box); B6 alleles (black box)] were determined with microsatellite and SNP markers; genotypes of line 6 are expanded at the bottom of the figure.</p

Pulmonary expression of reduced region <i>Blmpf2</i> genes.

<p>Real-time quantitative PCR of genes mapping to the reduced <i>Blmpf2</i> region prior to (day 0: non-treated) and following bleomycin treatment (day 42) in the lungs of B6 and C3H mice. Gene expression was normalized to the Ataxin10 reference gene and is presented relative to the level in untreated C3H mice. Mean ±SEM of 5 per group. * indicates a significant difference in expression in lungs of bleomycin-treated mice relative to untreated controls, p<0.05; ^# indicates a significant difference in expression by strain, p<0.05.</p

Positional Cloning Reveals Strain-Dependent Expression of <em>Trim16</em> to Alter Susceptibility to Bleomycin-Induced Pulmonary Fibrosis in Mice

<div><p>Pulmonary fibrosis is a disease of significant morbidity, with no effective therapeutics and an as yet incompletely defined genetic basis. The chemotherapeutic agent bleomycin induces pulmonary fibrosis in susceptible C57BL/6J mice but not in mice of the C3H/HeJ strain, and this differential strain response has been used in prior studies to map bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis susceptibility loci named <em>Blmpf1</em> and <em>Blmpf2</em>. In this study we isolated the quantitative trait gene underlying <em>Blmpf2</em> initially by histologically phenotyping the bleomycin-induced lung disease of sublines of congenic mice to reduce the linkage region to 13 genes. Of these genes, <em>Trim16</em> was identified to have strain-dependent expression in the lung, which we determined was due to sequence variation in the promoter. Over-expression of <em>Trim16</em> by plasmid injection increased pulmonary fibrosis, and bronchoalveolar lavage levels of both interleukin 12/23-p40 and neutrophils, in bleomycin treated B6.C3H-<em>Blmpf2</em> subcongenic mice compared to subcongenic mice treated with bleomycin only, which follows the C57BL/6J versus C3H/HeJ strain difference in these traits. In summary we demonstrate that genetic variation in <em>Trim16</em> leads to its strain-dependent expression, which alters susceptibility to bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis in mice.</p> </div

B6 and C3H <i>Trim16</i> promoter sequence variation alters transcription.

<p>B6/C3H sequence differences in the putative promoter region of <i>Trim16</i> (* indicates novel to Sanger, MGI). Allele specific promoter sequence alters the expression of a luciferase reporter vector transfected into the RAW 264.7 macrophage cell line.</p

Walking flies filmed with two cameras

These are two-dimensional coordinates of both halteres of walking flies as filmed with two cameras. The tip and base of each haltere is digitized, as well as the thorax (as a metric of body position) and one of the legs

Digitized traces of wing and haltere tip in flying flies

These files contain two-dimensional coordinates for the tip and base of both the haltere and the wing in tethered flying flies

Perturbation videos

Perturbation video

DataSheet_1_Challenges creating monarch butterfly management strategies for electric power companies in the United States.pdf

Returning monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) to sustainable levels of abundance will require an array of contributors to protect and restore habitat over broad areas. Due to the diversity and scale of land managed by electric power companies across the monarch range, plus an additional 32 million hectares needed for new solar arrays by 2050 to meet renewable energy goals, the industry may have potential to contribute to monarch conservation. However, it is challenging to clearly understand an individual company’s potential for monarch conservation because of the scale and distribution of their specific land assets (ranging from 4,800 to 240,000 hectares in this study alone), the complexity of monarch science, and the lack of a science-based approach for evaluating large land assets for monarch habitat. With monarchs potentially being protected under the United States Endangered Species Act in the future and thereby limiting land management approaches, there is interest from electric power companies to understand how their lands relate to monarchs. In collaboration with companies, we developed a GIS-based model to identify company landholdings that contain high-quality monarch habitat and applied the model to specific landholdings of eight power companies in the United States. We then facilitated discussions with company teams to balance conservation goals, corporate risk, and social opinion. This paper describes non-confidential results for developing a national GIS-based monarch habitat model and applying it to electric power companies who are considering monarch conservation while simultaneously transitioning to a new clean energy future. The model and applied experience may be useful for other organizations working across large landscapes to manage monarchs.</p

Attenuation Coefficients for Water Quality Trading

Water quality trading has been proposed as a cost-effective approach for reducing nutrient loads through credit generation from agricultural or point source reductions sold to buyers facing costly options. We present a systematic approach to determine attenuation coefficients and their uncertainty. Using a process-based model, we determine attenuation with safety margins at many watersheds for total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) loads as they transport from point of load reduction to the credit buyer. TN and TP in-stream attenuation generally increases with decreasing mean river flow; smaller rivers in the modeled region of the Ohio River Basin had TN attenuation factors per km, including safety margins, of 0.19–1.6%, medium rivers of 0.14–1.2%, large rivers of 0.13–1.1%, and very large rivers of 0.04–0.42%. Attenuation in ditches transporting nutrients from farms to receiving rivers is 0.4%/km for TN, while for TP attenuation in ditches can be up to 2%/km. A 95 percentile safety margin of 30–40% for TN and 6–10% for TP, applied to the attenuation per km factors, was determined from the in-stream sensitivity of load reductions to watershed model parameters. For perspective, over 50 km a 1% per km factor would result in 50% attenuation = 2:1 trading ratio