Partial Reconstruction of the Ergot Alkaloid Pathway by Heterologous Gene Expression in Aspergillus nidulans

Ergot alkaloids are pharmaceutically and agriculturally important secondary metabolites produced by several species of fungi. Ergot alkaloid pathways vary among different fungal lineages, but the pathway intermediate chanoclavine-I is evolutionarily conserved among ergot alkaloid producers. At least four genes, dmaW, easF, easE, and easC, are necessary for pathway steps prior to chanoclavine-I; however, the sufficiency of these genes for chanoclavine-I synthesis has not been established. A fragment of genomic DNA containing dmaW, easF, easE, and easC was amplified from the human-pathogenic, ergot alkaloid-producing fungus Aspergillus fumigatus and transformed into Aspergillus nidulans, a model fungus that does not contain any of the ergot alkaloid synthesis genes. HPLC and LC-MS analyses demonstrated that transformed A. nidulans strains produced chanoclavine-I and an earlier pathway intermediate. Aspergillus nidulans transformants containing dmaW, easF, and either easE or easC did not produce chanoclavine-I but did produce an early pathway intermediate and, in the case of the easC transformant, an additional ergot alkaloid-like compound. We conclude that dmaW, easF, easE, and easC are sufficient for the synthesis of chanoclavine-I in A. nidulans and expressing ergot alkaloid pathway genes in A. nidulans provides a novel approach to understanding the early steps in ergot alkaloid synthesis

Wall Crossing from Dirac Zeromodes

We explore the physics of two-body decay of BPS states using semiclassical analysis to construct explicit solutions that illustrate the main features of wall crossing, for both ordinary and framed BPS states. In particular we recover the primitive wall-crossing formula from an asymptotic analysis of certain Dirac-type operators on monopole moduli spaces. Along the way we give an asymptotic metric for the moduli space of singular monopoles, analogous to the Gibbons-Manton and Lee-Weinberg-Yi metrics for the moduli space of smooth monopoles, and we find evidence for the existence of stable non-BPS boundstates. Our discussion applies to four-dimensional N = 2 super-Yang-Mills theories with general gauge group and general 't Hooft defects.Comment: 32 pages plus appendices; 1 figure. v2: references added, typos fixed. v3: references added, published versio

Optical thickness measurement with multi-wavelength THz interferometry

AbstractWe report unambiguous thickness measurement with an all-optical THz source. The optical thickness variation of a test target was measured in a Mach–Zehnder interferometer to approximately 0.5% of the illumination wavelength using an optical parametric THz laser. The frequency of the laser was continuously tuneable, enabling a synthetic wavelength to be produced by sequential illumination at discrete frequencies, thus extending the unambiguous measurement range to half the synthetic wavelength. The all-optical source provides some advantages with respect to opto-electronic and electronic sources, particularly measurement speed and resolution

Macrophage transactivation for chemokine production identified as a negative regulator of granulomatous inflammation using agent-based modeling

Cellular activation in trans by interferons, cytokines and chemokines is a commonly recognized mechanism to amplify immune effector function and limit pathogen spread. However, an optimal host response also requires that collateral damage associated with inflammation is limited. This may be particularly so in the case of granulomatous inflammation, where an excessive number and / or excessively florid granulomas can have significant pathological consequences. Here, we have combined transcriptomics, agent-based modeling and in vivo experimental approaches to study constraints on hepatic granuloma formation in a murine model of experimental leishmaniasis. We demonstrate that chemokine production by non-infected Kupffer cells in the Leishmania donovani-infected liver promotes competition with infected KCs for available iNKT cells, ultimately inhibiting the extent of granulomatous inflammation. We propose trans-activation for chemokine production as a novel broadly applicable mechanism that may operate early in infection to limit excessive focal inflammation

Survival Rates Indicate that Correlations Between Community-Weighted Mean Traits and Environments can be Unreliable Estimates of the Adaptive Value of Traits

Correlations between community-weighted mean (CWM) traits and environmental gradients are often assumed to quantify the adaptive value of traits. We tested this assumption by comparing these correlations with models of survival probability using 46 perennial species from long-term permanent plots in pine forests of Arizona. Survival was modeled as a function of trait-by-environment interactions, plant size, climatic variation, and neighborhood competition. The effect of traits on survival depended on the environmental conditions, but the two statistical approaches were inconsistent. For example, CWM specific leaf area (SLA) and soil fertility were uncorrelated. However, survival was highest for species with low SLA in infertile soil, a result which agreed with expectations derived from the physiological tradeoff underpinning leaf economic theory. CWM trait-environment relationships were unreliable estimates of how traits affected survival, and should only be used in predictive models when there is empirical support for an evolutionary tradeoff that affects vital rates

Using “Photovoice” to Identify Rural Community Food Issues

Rural communities experience unique barriers to food security. Developing food policy councils (FPCs) is a systematic approach to address food security. FPCs bring together a diverse network of community stakeholders to address local food system strengths and concerns. A six-state team developed new or provided support to existing FPCs in rural communities. Photovoice is a project component used to engage youths, helped identify community food issues, such as food access and affordability in studied communities. Furthermore, it was meant to engage FPCs in meaningful dialogue to identify solutions, such as community gardens and work with local food pantries. Because of the multistate nature of the project, unique measures were employed to provide consistent, successful training and implementation of Photovoice. This article reveals the best practices learned

Investigating the thermal physiology of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis via aerial infrared thermography

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Lonati, G., Zitterbart, D. P., Miller, C. A., Corkeron, P. J., Murphy, C. T., & Moore, M. J. Investigating the thermal physiology of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis via aerial infrared thermography. Endangered Species Research, 48, (2022): 139–154, https://doi.org/10.3354/esr01193.The Critically Endangered status of North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis (NARWs) warrants the development of new, less invasive technology to monitor the health of individuals. Combined with advancements in remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS, commonly ‘drones’), infrared thermography (IRT) is being increasingly used to detect and count marine mammals and study their physiology. We conducted RPAS-based IRT over NARWs in Cape Cod Bay, MA, USA, in 2017 and 2018. Observations demonstrated 3 particularly useful applications of RPAS-based IRT to study large whales: (1) exploring patterns of cranial heat loss and providing insight into the physiological mechanisms that produce these patterns; (2) tracking subsurface individuals in real-time (depending on the thermal stratification of the water column) using cold surface water anomalies resulting from fluke upstrokes; and (3) detecting natural changes in superficial blood circulation or diagnosing pathology based on heat anomalies on post-cranial body surfaces. These qualitative applications present a new, important opportunity to study, monitor, and conserve large whales, particularly rare and at-risk species such as NARWs. Despite the challenges of using this technology in aquatic environments, the applications of RPAS-based IRT for monitoring the health and behavior of endangered marine mammals, including the collection of quantitative data on thermal physiology, will continue to diversify.All activities were conducted under NOAA permit 18355-01 and were approved by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The RPAS pilot-in-command was certified through the United States Federal Aviation Admin-istration. We thank Amy Knowlton (Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium) for photo-identifying individual North Atlantic right whales and Rocky Geyer (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) for providing and interpreting water temperature data relatedto the observations of thermal flukeprints (courtesy of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority). We also appreciate constructive conversations with Iain Kerr (Ocean Alliance), Chris Zadra (Ocean Alliance), and Joy Reidenberg (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai). Funding was provided by a Woods Hole Oceanographic Research Opportunity grant, the North Pond Foundation, and NMFS NA14OAR4320158