Common Practice Solvent Extraction Does not Reflect Actual Emission of a Sex Pheromone During Butterfly Courtship

Olfactory communication can be of critical importance for mate choice decisions. Lepidoptera are key model systems for understanding olfactory communication, particularly considering sex pheromone signaling in the context of sexual selection. Solvent extraction or rinsing of pheromone-producing structures is a widespread method for quantifying sex pheromones, but such measures reflect what is stored and may not represent what is actually emitted by an individual during courtship. Here, we address this point for the first time by quantifying the components of the male sex pheromone (MSP) of interacting Bicyclus anynana butterflies, a species for which much information is available onthe role played by MSPs in affecting mating success. Using headspace sampling during courtship and solvent extraction after completion of experiments using the same males, we were able to track individual traits. Our results show that solvent extracts do not reflect quantities of MSP components emitted by live butterflies. We further show that MSP amounts obtained using headspace sampling correlated with male mating success, but solvent extracts did not. Our results further strongly suggest that males actively control MSP emission when faced with increased male-male competition. Common practice solvent extracts may thus not serve as an adequate proxy for male sex pheromone signaling as they are perceived by choosy females. Our study serves as a proof of principle that quantification of male sex pheromone components depends on the method of collection, which could apply to many other insects using short-range chemical signals. This affects our understanding of how sexual selection shapes the evolution of sexually-selected chemical traits

Homo cerevisiae-Leveraging Yeast for Investigating Protein-Protein Interactions and Their Role in Human Disease.

peer reviewedUnderstanding how genetic variation affects phenotypes represents a major challenge, particularly in the context of human disease. Although numerous disease-associated genes have been identified, the clinical significance of most human variants remains unknown. Despite unparalleled advances in genomics, functional assays often lack sufficient throughput, hindering efficient variant functionalization. There is a critical need for the development of more potent, high-throughput methods for characterizing human genetic variants. Here, we review how yeast helps tackle this challenge, both as a valuable model organism and as an experimental tool for investigating the molecular basis of phenotypic perturbation upon genetic variation. In systems biology, yeast has played a pivotal role as a highly scalable platform which has allowed us to gain extensive genetic and molecular knowledge, including the construction of comprehensive interactome maps at the proteome scale for various organisms. By leveraging interactome networks, one can view biology from a systems perspective, unravel the molecular mechanisms underlying genetic diseases, and identify therapeutic targets. The use of yeast to assess the molecular impacts of genetic variants, including those associated with viral interactions, cancer, and rare and complex diseases, has the potential to bridge the gap between genotype and phenotype, opening the door for precision medicine approaches and therapeutic development

BLV: Lessons on vaccine development

Vaccination against retroviruses is a challenge because of their ability to stably integrate into the host genome, undergo long-term latency in a proportion of infected cells and thereby escape immune response. Since clearance of the virus is almost impossible once infection is established, the primary goal is to achieve sterilizing immunity. Besides efficacy, safety is the major issue since vaccination has been associated with increased infection or reversion to pathogenicity. In this review, we discuss the different issues that we faced during the development of an efficient vaccine against bovine leukemia virus (BLV). We summarize the historical failures of inactivated vaccines, the efficacy and safety of a live-attenuated vaccine and the economical constraints of further industrial development.Fil: Abdala, Alejandro Ariel. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; ArgentinaFil: Alvarez, Irene. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación En Ciencias Veterinarias y Gastronómicas. Instituto de Virología E Innovaciones Tecnológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Virología e Innovaciones Tecnológicas; ArgentinaFil: Brossel, Hélène. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Calvinho, Luis Fernando. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; ArgentinaFil: Carignano, Hugo Adrián. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación En Ciencias Veterinarias y Gastronómicas. Instituto de Virología E Innovaciones Tecnológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Virología e Innovaciones Tecnológicas; ArgentinaFil: Franco, Lautaro Nahuel. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación En Ciencias Veterinarias y Gastronómicas. Instituto de Virología E Innovaciones Tecnológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Virología e Innovaciones Tecnológicas; ArgentinaFil: Gazon, Hélène. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Gillissen, Christelle. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Hamaidia, Malik. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Hoyos, Clotilde. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Jacques, Jean Rock. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Joris, Thomas. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Laval, Florent. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Petersen Cruceño, Marcos Iván. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación En Ciencias Veterinarias y Gastronómicas. Instituto de Virología E Innovaciones Tecnológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Virología e Innovaciones Tecnológicas; ArgentinaFil: Porquet, Florent. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Porta, Natalia Gabriela. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación En Ciencias Veterinarias y Gastronómicas. Instituto de Virología E Innovaciones Tecnológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Virología e Innovaciones Tecnológicas; ArgentinaFil: Ruiz, Vanesa. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación En Ciencias Veterinarias y Gastronómicas. Instituto de Virología E Innovaciones Tecnológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Virología e Innovaciones Tecnológicas; ArgentinaFil: Safari, Roghaiyeh. Université de Liège; BélgicaFil: Suárez Archilla, Guillermo. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; ArgentinaFil: Trono, Karina Gabriela. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación En Ciencias Veterinarias y Gastronómicas. Instituto de Virología E Innovaciones Tecnológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Virología e Innovaciones Tecnológicas; ArgentinaFil: Willems, Luc. Université de Liège; Bélgic

De la mer du Nord à la mer Baltique. Identités, contacts et communications au Moyen Âge

Au Moyen Âge, la mer du Nord a permis les contacts entre les populations de ses régions riveraines: les eaux séparant les îles Britanniques, le continent et la Scandinavie ne voyaient pas seulement se déplacer des missionnaires et des marchands, car c'est également de la mer que l'on vit arriver les vikings. La mer Baltique était en revanche beaucoup moins connue des auteurs occidentaux, qui étaient frappés par la multiplicité des peuples et des cultures qui en occupaient les rives : on mentionnait des ports de traite, des voyages de marchands, des populations aux coutumes étranges. Comparer les espaces de la mer du Nord et de la mer Baltique en tant que zones de contacts au Moyen Âge est une tâche difficile : non seulement les spécialistes ne prennent que trop rarement connaissance de leurs recherches respectives, mais l'horizon international nécessite la prise en compte de traditions historiographiques dans une multitude de langues nationales. Ce volume présente les résultats d'un atelier interdisciplinaire tenu à Boulogne-sur-Mer en octobre 2009, qui a réuni des chercheurs d'Europe du Nord-Ouest (Belgique, France, Luxembourg, Royaume-Uni) et du Centre-Est (Pologne et République tchèque) en soulignant les apports d'une nouvelle génération d'historiens et d'archéologues dans un domaine qui s'est radicalement transformé depuis une quinzaine d'années

L’Espagne en construction mémorielle

Le dossier de ce numéro se donne pour objectif de fournir des points de repère pour mieux comprendre les identités et les relations plurielles qu’entretiennent les mémoires et leur représentation dans l’Espagne contemporaine. En effet, il est nécessaire, aujourd’hui, de porter un nouveau regard non seulement sur les mémoires stratifiées de la guerre civile, de l’exil et de la répression franquiste, mais aussi sur la réception d’autres mémoires telles que celle de la Shoah, et d’en proposer de nouvelles lectures. Il s’agit notamment de mettre en évidence les tensions parfois antagoniques, parfois productrices, entre les actions officielles, celles des associations et les initiatives artistiques. In dit nummer trachten we inzicht te krijgen in de veelsoortige identiteiten en relaties tussen herinneringen en representatievormen in het hedendaagse Spanje. Het is vandaag van essentieel belang om een nieuw licht te werpen op de gelaagde herinnering aan de burgeroorlog, de ballingschap en de repressie onder Franco. Verder herbekijken we de manier waarop andere herinneringen, zoals die aan de Shoah, werden ontvangen en geïntegreerd. In het bijzonder richten we onze aandacht op de spanningen – soms antagonistisch, soms productief – die bestaan tussen officiële evenementen, acties van verenigingen en artistieke initiatieven. This dossier’s objective is to provide a benchmark for understanding the plural identities and relationships between memories and representation forms in contemporary Spain. Indeed, it is necessary today to take a fresh look not only on the stratified memories of the civil war, exile and the Franco repression, but also on the reception of other memories such as that of the Holocaust, and to propose new readings. We propose to highlight the conflicting or fruitful tensions between official actions, initiatives of associations and of artistic events

Assessment of community efforts to advance network-based prediction of protein-protein interactions

peer reviewedComprehensive understanding of the human protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, aka the human interactome, can provide important insights into the molecular mechanisms of complex biological processes and diseases. Despite the remarkable experimental efforts undertaken to date to determine the structure of the human interactome, many PPIs remain unmapped. Computational approaches, especially network-based methods, can facilitate the identification of previously uncharacterized PPIs. Many such methods have been proposed. Yet, a systematic evaluation of existing network-based methods in predicting PPIs is still lacking. Here, we report community efforts initiated by the International Network Medicine Consortium to benchmark the ability of 26 representative network-based methods to predict PPIs across six different interactomes of four different organisms: A. thaliana, C. elegans, S. cerevisiae, and H. sapiens. Through extensive computational and experimental validations, we found that advanced similarity-based methods, which leverage the underlying network characteristics of PPIs, show superior performance over other general link prediction methods in the interactomes we considered

A map of binary SARS-CoV-2 protein interactions implicates host immune regulation and ubiquitination

Key steps in viral propagation, immune suppression, and pathology are mediated by direct, binary, physical interactions between viral and host proteins. To understand the biology of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, we generated an unbiased systematic map of binary interactions between viral and host proteins, complementing previous co-complex association maps by conveying more direct mechanistic understanding and potentially enabling targeted disruption of direct interactions. To this end, we deployed two parallel strategies, identifying 205 virus-host and 27 intraviral binary interactions amongst 171 host and 19 viral proteins, and confirming high quality of these interactions via a calibrated orthogonal assay. Host proteins interacting with SARS-CoV-2 proteins are enriched in various cellular processes, including immune signaling and inflammation, protein ubiquitination, and membrane trafficking. Specific subnetworks provide new hypotheses related to viral modulation of host protein homeostasis and T-cell regulation. The binary virus-host protein interactions we identified can now be prioritized as targets for therapeutic intervention. More generally, we provide a resource of systematic maps describing which SARS-CoV-2 and human proteins interact directl

A proteome-scale map of the SARS-CoV-2–human contactome

International audienceAbstractUnderstanding the mechanisms of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disease severity to efficiently design therapies for emerging virus variants remains an urgent challenge of the ongoing pandemic. Infection and immune reactions are mediated by direct contacts between viral molecules and the host proteome, and the vast majority of these virus–host contacts (the ‘contactome’) have not been identified. Here, we present a systematic contactome map of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) with the human host encompassing more than 200 binary virus–host and intraviral protein–protein interactions. We find that host proteins genetically associated with comorbidities of severe illness and long COVID are enriched in SARS-CoV-2 targeted network communities. Evaluating contactome-derived hypotheses, we demonstrate that viral NSP14 activates nuclear factor κB (NF-κB)-dependent transcription, even in the presence of cytokine signaling. Moreover, for several tested host proteins, genetic knock-down substantially reduces viral replication. Additionally, we show for USP25 that this effect is phenocopied by the small-molecule inhibitor AZ1. Our results connect viral proteins to human genetic architecture for COVID-19 severity and offer potential therapeutic targets.</jats:p

Reprise de la discussion sur l’affaire d’Avignon, lors de la séance du 3 mai 1791

Béhin Pierre Florent, Maury Jean Siffrein, Lavie Marc David, Bouche Charles-François, Malouet Pierre Victor, Rewbell Jean François, Montlosier François Dominique de Reynaud, comte de, Estourmel Louis Marie, marquis d', Clermont-Lodève Charles de Guilhem, marquis de, Barrère de Vieuzac Bertrand, Barnave Antoine, Démeunier Jean Nicolas, Cigongne Jean Etienne de, Gouy d'Arsy Louis Marthe, marquis de, Brûlart de Genlis de Sillery Charles Alexis de, Camus Armand Gaston, Gaultier de Biauzat Jean-François, Blacons Henri d'Armand de Forest, marquis de, Millet Noël Charles, Montesquiou Fezensac Anne-Pierre, marquis de, Tracy Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, comte de, Roussillou Pierre Augustin, Dupont de Nemours Pierre Samuel, Bouteville-Dumetz Gislain-Louis, Montmorency-Laval Mathieu Jean Félicité, duc de, La Révellière-Lépeaux Louis Marie de, Boussay Jacques-François de Menou, baron de, Goupil de Préfeln Guillaume François, Lameth Charles Malo, comte de, Cazalès Jacques Antoine de, Prieur de la Marne Pierre Louis, Lucas Jean-Baptiste Joseph, Clermont-Tonnerre Stanislas Marie, comte de, Tronchet François Denis, Buzot François-Nicolas, Martineau Louis Simon, Crillon François Félix Berton des Balbes, comte de. Reprise de la discussion sur l’affaire d’Avignon, lors de la séance du 3 mai 1791. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome XXV - Du 13 avril 1791 au 11 mai 1791. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1886. pp. 531-550