9,876 research outputs found
Unraveling the senses of Phytophthora; leads to novel control strategies?
Oomycetes cause devastating diseases on plants and animals. They cause major yield losses in many crop plants and their control heavily depends on agrochemicals. This is certainly true for the potato late blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans. Strong concerns about adverse effects of agrochemicals on food safety and environment are incentives for the development of novel, environmental friendly control strategies preferably based on natural products. Cyclic lipopeptides (CLPs) were recently discovered as a new class of natural compounds with strong activities against oomycetes including Phytophthora. CLPs lyse zoospores, inhibit mycelial growth and effectively reduce late blight disease. In order to unravel how Phytophthora senses CLPs and other environmental signals we follow two approaches. On the one hand, we monitor genome wide changes in gene expression induced by CLPs with the aim to identify the cellular pathways targeted by CLPs. On the other hand, we analyse components of ubiquitous signal transduction pathways with the aim to identify features that are unique for Phytophthora or oomycetes and, hence, could be suitable targets for novel anti-oomycete agents. Mining and comparing whole genome sequences have revealed that Phytophthora harbours many novel phospholipid modifying enzymes, unique for oomycetes. They have aberrant combinations of catalytic and regulatory domains occasionally combined with transmembrane domains. The latter resemble receptors that might be activated by extracellular ligands. Phospholipids, the substrates of these enzymes, are structural membrane components that also function in signalling. Together these findings open new avenues of research aimed at target-discovery in oomycetes
Augmenting mental models
The complexity of conceptualizing mental models has made Virtual Reality an interesting way to enhance communication and understanding between individuals working together on a project or idea. Here, the authors discuss practical applications of using VR for this purpose
Analytical Expression for the RKKY Interaction in Doped Graphene
We obtain an analytical expression for the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida
(RKKY) interaction in electron or hole doped graphene for linear Dirac
bands. The results agree very well with the numerical calculations for the full
tight-binding band structure in the regime where the linear band structure is
valid. The analytical result, expressed in terms of the Meijer G-function,
consists of a product of two oscillatory terms, one coming from the
interference between the two Dirac cones and the second coming from the finite
size of the Fermi surface. For large distances, the Meijer G-function behaves
as a sinusoidal term, leading to the result for moments located on the same sublattice. The
dependence, which is the same for the standard two-dimensional electron gas, is
universal irrespective of the sublattice location and the distance direction of
the two moments except when (undoped case), where it reverts to the
dependence. These results correct several inconsistencies found in the
literature.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
LIVESTOCK TO 2020: THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES
This paper was presented at the INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTS SYMPOSIUM in Auckland, New Zealand, January 18-19, 2001. The Symposium was sponsored by: the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium, the Venture Trust, Massey University, New Zealand, and the Centre for Applied Economics and Policy Studies, Massey University. Dietary changes, especially in developing countries, are driving a massive increase in demand for livestock products. The objective of this symposium was to examine the consequences of this phenomenon, which some have even called a "revolution." How are dietary patterns changing, and can increased demands for livestock products be satisfied from domestic resources? If so, at what cost? What will be the flow-on impacts, for example, in terms of increased demands for feedgrains and the pressures for change within marketing systems? A supply-side response has been the continued development of large-scale, urban-based industrial livestock production systems that in many cases give rise to environmental concerns. If additional imports seem required, where will they originate and what about food security in the importing regions? How might market access conditions be re-negotiated to make increased imports achievable? Other important issues discussed involved food safety, animal health and welfare and the adoption of biotechnology, and their interactions with the negotiation of reforms to domestic and trade policies. Individual papers from this conference are available on AgEcon Search. If you would like to see the complete agenda and set of papers from this conference, please visit the IATRC symposium web page at: http://www1.umn.edu/iatrc.intro.htmDemand and Price Analysis, Production Economics,
Helicity Amplitudes for Charmonium Production in Hadron-Hadron and Photon-Hadron Collisions
We present the gluon-gluon and photon-gluon helicity amplitudes for color
singlet and octet charmonium production in polarized and unpolarized
hadron-hadron and photon-hadron collisions.Comment: 11 pages amstex no figure
Exploiting the full power of temporal gene expression profiling through a new statistical test: Application to the analysis of muscular dystrophy data
Background: The identification of biologically interesting genes in a temporal expression profiling
dataset is challenging and complicated by high levels of experimental noise. Most statistical methods
used in the literature do not fully exploit the temporal ordering in the dataset and are not suited
to the case where temporal profiles are measured for a number of different biological conditions.
We present a statistical test that makes explicit use of the temporal order in the data by fitting
polynomial functions to the temporal profile of each gene and for each biological condition. A
Hotelling T2-statistic is derived to detect the genes for which the parameters of these polynomials
are significantly different from each other.
Results: We validate the temporal Hotelling T2-test on muscular gene expression data from four
mouse strains which were profiled at different ages: dystrophin-, beta-sarcoglycan and gammasarcoglycan
deficient mice, and wild-type mice. The first three are animal models for different
muscular dystrophies. Extensive biological validation shows that the method is capable of finding
genes with temporal profiles significantly different across the four strains, as well as identifying
potential biomarkers for each form of the disease. The added value of the temporal test compared
to an identical test which does not make use of temporal ordering is demonstrated via a simulation
study, and through confirmation of the expression profiles from selected genes by quantitative PCR
experiments. The proposed method maximises the detection of the biologically interesting genes,
whilst minimising false detections.
Conclusion: The temporal Hotelling T2-test is capable of finding relatively small and robust sets
of genes that display different temporal profiles between the conditions of interest. The test is
simple, it can be used on gene expression data generated from any experimental design and for any
number of conditions, and it allows fast interpretation of the temporal behaviour of genes. The R
code is available from V.V. The microarray data have been submitted to GEO under series
GSE1574 and GSE3523
A versatile electrostatic trap
A four electrode electrostatic trap geometry is demonstrated that can be used
to combine a dipole, quadrupole and hexapole field. A cold packet of 15ND3
molecules is confined in both a purely quadrupolar and hexapolar trapping field
and additionally, a dipole field is added to a hexapole field to create either
a double-well or a donut-shaped trapping field. The profile of the 15ND3 packet
in each of these four trapping potentials is measured, and the dependence of
the well-separation and barrier height of the double-well and donut potential
on the hexapole and dipole term are discussed.Comment: submitted to pra; 7 pages, 9 figure
outlook for fish to 2020
Fish trade ,Fisheries Economic aspects Developing countries ,Fisheries Environmental aspects ,
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