You can't take it with you: asset run-down at the end of the life cycle

This article presents evidence on the extent to which households run down their assets after retirement. The authors show that, once corrections are made for several econometric problems, households engage in very little asset decumulation after retirement.Retirement ; Income ; Wealth

Bax Inhibitor-1, a Conserved Cell Death Suppressor, Is a Key Molecular Switch Downstream from a Variety of Biotic and Abiotic Stress Signals in Plants

In Nature plants are constantly challenged by a variety of environmental stresses that could lead to disruptions in cellular homeostasis. Programmed cell death (PCD) is a fundamental cellular process that is often associated with defense responses to pathogens, during development and in response to abiotic stresses in fungi, animals and plants. Although there are many characteristics shared between different types of PCD events, it remains unknown whether a common mechanism drives various types of PCD in eukaryotes. One candidate regulator for such a mechanism is Bax Inhibitor-1 (BI-1), an evolutionary conserved, endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-resident protein that represents an ancient cell death regulator that potentially regulates PCD in all eukaryotes. Recent findings strongly suggested that BI-1 plays an important role in the conserved ER stress response pathway to modulate cell death induction in response to multiple types of cell death signals. As ER stress signaling pathways has been suggested to play important roles not only in the control of ER homeostasis but also in other biological processes such as the response to pathogens and abiotic stress in plants, BI-1 might function to control the convergence point that modulates the level of the “pro-survival and pro-death” signals under multiple stress conditions

Detection of chromosomes tagged with green fluorescent protein in live Arabidopsis thaliana plants

BACKGROUND: Structural and dynamic studies of chromosomes tagged with green fluorescent protein (GFP) in yeast and cultured animal cells have revealed some surprises. Although this technology can be very powerful, only a few studies using this approach with developed multicellular systems have been reported for the study of chromatin behavior in situ. RESULTS: We established vectors and conditions to visualize tagged loci stably inserted in the Arabidopsis genome via GFP fused to a bacterial DNA-binding protein. Using this system, three-dimensional coordinates for tagged loci within nuclei from cells of a live plant can be directly determined with concomitant visualization of the position of the nucleolus. Chromosome polyploidization in epidermal cells at the elongation zone of the root in transgenic plants can be visualized in situ using this technique. CONCLUSION: We have established that GFP fusion with DNA-binding proteins can be used in conjunction with concatameric binding-site arrays to track genomic loci in living Arabidopsis plants. It should now be feasible to study the mechanisms of organization and dynamics of chromatin in specific cell types during various times of plant development, taking advantage of the well developed genetic systems and resources available for Arabidopsis

lem7,a Novel Temperature-SensitiveArabidopsisMutation That Reversibly Inhibits Vegetative Development

AbstractAn important question in developmental biology concerns the mechanisms by which a few cells coordinate division and differentiation to yield the complex structures and organs found in multicellular organisms. During vegetative growth in plants, cells in the apical meristem must coordinate division and differentiation to yield the fully mature leaf organ. Alterations in these processes may result in an abnormal leaf. In this paper we present the isolation and characterization of an EMS-generated, cold-temperature-sensitive mutation inArabidopsis thaliana,designatedlem7(leafmorphogenesis).lem7is a semidominant mutation that maps to a novel locus on chromosome 2. When grown at 16°C,lem7reversibly arrests leaf development at the shoot apex. In contrast,lem7grown at 30°C appears phenotypically normal. Our data also suggest that theLem7locus may not be involved solely in leaf organogenesis, but may also play a role in floral development and the maintenance of patterns and structures after cellular differentiation. At an intermediate temperature of 23°C, leaves on thelem7plant emerged phenotypically normal but began to show drastic changes at about 13 days postgermination. These changes include a reduced bilateral symmetry, a rough leaf lamina, a reduced number of trichomes, and an altered vascular network. Leaves that developed at the permissive temperature (30°C) and shifted to the nonpermissive temperature (16°C) form tumor-like outgrowths. Histological analysis of these tumor-like outgrowths and leaves grown at the intermediate temperature reveal abnormally large mesophyll cells, a disorganized mesophyll layer, and collapsed epidermal cells. We propose that the reversible inhibition of leaf development inlem7under nonpermissive temperatures may serve as a useful tool for identifying genes involved inArabidopsisleaf organogenesis