Some arachnidan peptides with potential medical application

The search for new active drugs that can alleviate or cure different diseases is a constant challenge to researchers in the biological area and to the pharmaceutical industry. Historically, research has focused on the study of substances from plants. More recently, however, animal venoms have been attracting attention and studies have been successful in addressing treatment of accidents. Furthermore, venoms and their toxins have been considered good tools for prospecting for new active drugs or models for new therapeutic drugs. In this review, we discuss some possibilities of using different toxins, especially those from arachnid venoms, which have shown some potential application in diseases involving pain, hypertension, epilepsy and erectile dysfunction. A new generation of drugs is likely to emerge from peptides, including those found in animal venoms

The association of cold weather and all-cause and cause-specific mortality in the island of Ireland between 1984 and 2007

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background This study aimed to assess the relationship between cold temperature and daily mortality in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) and Northern Ireland (NI), and to explore any differences in the population responses between the two jurisdictions. Methods A time-stratified case-crossover approach was used to examine this relationship in two adult national populations, between 1984 and 2007. Daily mortality risk was examined in association with exposure to daily maximum temperatures on the same day and up to 6 weeks preceding death, during the winter (December-February) and cold period (October-March), using distributed lag models. Model stratification by age and gender assessed for modification of the cold weather-mortality relationship. Results In the ROI, the impact of cold weather in winter persisted up to 35 days, with a cumulative mortality increase for all-causes of 6.4% (95%CI=4.8%-7.9%) in relation to every 1oC drop in daily maximum temperature, similar increases for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke, and twice as much for respiratory causes. In NI, these associations were less pronounced for CVD causes, and overall extended up to 28 days. Effects of cold weather on mortality increased with age in both jurisdictions, and some suggestive gender differences were observed. Conclusions The study findings indicated strong cold weather-mortality associations in the island of Ireland; these effects were less persistent, and for CVD mortality, smaller in NI than in the ROI. Together with suggestive differences in associations by age and gender between the two Irish jurisdictions, the findings suggest potential contribution of underlying societal differences, and require further exploration. The evidence provided here will hope to contribute to the current efforts to modify fuel policy and reduce winter mortality in Ireland

Aromatase gene and its effects on growth, reproductive and maternal ability traits in a multibreed sheep population from Brazil

We determined the polymorphism C242T of the aromatase gene (Cyp19) and its allelic frequency, as well as the effect of the variants on productive and reproductive traits in 71 purebred Santa Inês sheep, 13 purebred Brazilian Somali sheep, nine purebred Poll Dorset sheep, and 18 crossbred 1/2 Dorper sheep. The animals were genotyped using the PCR-RFLP technique. The influence of the animal's genotype on its performance or on the performance of its lambs was analyzed by the least square method. Another factor assessed was the importance of the animal's genotype in analysis models for quantitative breeding value estimates, and whether there were differences among the averages of breeding values of animals with different genotypes for this gene. In the sample studied, no AA individuals were observed; the AB and BB frequencies were 0.64 and 0.36, respectively. All Brazilian Somali sheep were of genotype BB. All 1/2 Dorper BB animals presented a lower age at first lambing, and the Santa Inês BB ewes presented a lower lambing interval. In these same genetic groups, AB ewes presented higher litter weight at weaning. This is evidence that BB ewes have a better reproductive performance phenotype, whereas AB ewes present a better maternal ability phenotype. However, in general, animals with genotype AB presented better average breeding values than those with genotype BB

Rapid Mass Movement of Chloroplasts during Segment Formation of the Calcifying Siphonalean Green Alga, Halimeda macroloba

is abundant on coral reefs and is important in the production of calcium carbonate sediments. The process by which new green segments are formed over-night is revealed here for the first time. indicated that the movement process is dependent on both microtubules and microfilaments.This unusual process involves the mass movement of chloroplasts at a high rate into new segments during the night and rapid calcification on the following day and may be an adaptation to minimise the impact of herbivorous activity

The antimicrobial effects of the alginate oligomer OligoG CF-5/20 are independent of direct bacterial cell membrane disruption

Concerns about acquisition of antibiotic resistance have led to increasing demand for new antimicrobial therapies. OligoG CF-5/20 is an alginate oligosaccharide previously shown to have antimicrobial and antibiotic potentiating activity. We investigated the structural modification of the bacterial cell wall by OligoG CF-5/20 and its effect on membrane permeability. Binding of OligoG CF-5/20 to the bacterial cell surface was demonstrated in Gram-negative bacteria. Permeability assays revealed that OligoG CF-5/20 had virtually no membrane-perturbing effects. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) surface charge and aggregation were unaltered in the presence of OligoG CF-5/20. Small angle neutron scattering and circular dichroism spectroscopy showed no substantial change to the structure of LPS in the presence of OligoG CF-5/20, however, isothermal titration calorimetry demonstrated a weak calcium-mediated interaction. Metabolomic analysis confirmed no change in cellular metabolic response to a range of osmolytes when treated with OligoG CF-5/20. This data shows that, although weak interactions occur between LPS and OligoG CF-5/20 in the presence of calcium, the antimicrobial effects of OligoG CF-5/20 are not related to the induction of structural alterations in the LPS or cell permeability. These results suggest a novel mechanism of action that may avoid the common route in acquisition of resistance via LPS structural modification

Inhibition of Myostatin Signaling through Notch Activation following Acute Resistance Exercise

Myostatin is a TGFb family member and negative regulator of muscle size. Due to the complexity of the molecular pathway between myostatin mRNA/protein and changes in transcription, it has been difficult to understand whether myostatin plays a role in resistance exercise-induced skeletal muscle hypertrophy. To circumvent this problem, we determined the expression of a unique myostatin target gene, Mighty, following resistance exercise. Mighty mRNA increased by 6 h (82.9624.21%) and remained high out to 48 h (56.5619.67%) after resistance exercise. Further examination of the soleus, plantaris and tibialis anterior muscles showed that the change in Mighty mRNA at 6 h correlated with the increase in muscle size associated with this protocol (R2 = 0.9996). The increase in Mighty mRNA occurred both independent of Smad2 phosphorylation and in spite of an increase in myostatin mRNA (341.86147.14% at 3 h). The myostatin inhibitor SKI remained unchanged. However, activated Notch, another potential inhibitor of TGFb signaling, increased immediately following resistance exercise (83611.2%) and stayed elevated out to 6 h (78616.6%). Electroportion of the Notch intracellular domain into the tibialis anterior resulted in an increase in Mighty mRNA (63613.4%) that was equivalent to the canonical Notch target HES-1 (94.467.32%). These data suggest that acute resistance exercise decreases myostatin signaling through the activation of the TGFb inhibitor Notch resulting in a decrease in myostatin transcriptional activity that correlates well with muscle hypertrophy

A network linking scene perception and spatial memory systems in posterior cerebral cortex

The neural systems supporting scene-perception and spatial-memory systems of the human brain are well-described. But how do these neural systems interact? Here, using fine-grained individual-subject fMRI, we report three cortical areas of the human brain, each lying immediately anterior to a region of the scene perception network in posterior cerebral cortex, that selectively activate when recalling familiar real-world locations. Despite their close proximity to the scene-perception areas, network analyses show that these regions constitute a distinct functional network that interfaces with spatial memory systems during naturalistic scene understanding. These “place-memory areas” offer a new framework for understanding how the brain implements memory-guided visual behaviors, including navigation