Satellite tracking of leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles on the Southeast African coastline

The waters of southeast Africa contain important habitats for several sea turtle species, including the leatherback Dermochelys coriacea, loggerhead Caretta caretta, hawksbill Eretmochelys imbricata, green Chelonia mydas, and olive ridley turtle Lepidochelys olivacea. Many of these species are of conservation concern (Rakotoniria & Cooke, 1994; Thorson et al., 2012; Nel et al., 2013) and vulnerable to regional threats such as fisheries by-catch or boat-strikes (Bourjea et al., 2008; Grantham et al., 2008; Pusineri & Quillard, 2008). To help in the development of effective conservation plans for these species, many conservation or research organisations have used satellite transmitters to help identify critical habitats for sea turtles (Harris et al., 2015; Robinson et al., 2016). Here, we review the movement patterns of sea turtles that have been tracked through satellite telemetry from their nesting beaches on the east coast of South Africa

Monitoring Insulin Aggregation via Capillary Electrophoresis

Early stages of insulin aggregation, which involve the transient formation of oligomeric aggregates, are an important aspect in the progression of Type II diabetes and in the quality control of pharmaceutical insulin production. This study is the first to utilize capillary electrophoresis (CE) with ultraviolet (UV) detection to monitor insulin oligomer formation at pH 8.0 and physiological ionic strength. The lag time to formation of the first detected species in the aggregation process was evaluated by UV-CE and thioflavin T (ThT) binding for salt concentrations from 100 mM to 250 mM. UV-CE had a significantly shorter (5–8 h) lag time than ThT binding (15–19 h). In addition, the lag time to detection of the first aggregated species via UV-CE was unaffected by salt concentration, while a trend toward an increased lag time with increased salt concentration was observed with ThT binding. This result indicates that solution ionic strength impacts early stages of aggregation and β-sheet aggregate formation differently. To observe whether CE may be applied for the analysis of biological samples containing low insulin concentrations, the limit of detection using UV and laser induced fluorescence (LIF) detection modes was determined. The limit of detection using LIF-CE, 48.4 pM, was lower than the physiological insulin concentration, verifying the utility of this technique for monitoring biological samples. LIF-CE was subsequently used to analyze the time course for fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled insulin oligomer formation. This study is the first to report that the FITC label prevented incorporation of insulin into oligomers, cautioning against the use of this fluorescent label as a tag for following early stages of insulin aggregation

Studentisches Wohnen: Ungewoehnliche Beispiele

SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: FR 6092 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman