Impact of maternal cigarette smoke exposure on brain inflammation and oxidative stress in male mice offspring

Maternal cigarette smoke exposure (SE) during gestation can cause lifelong adverse effects in the offspring's brain. Several factors may contribute including inflammation, oxidative stress and hypoxia, whose changes in the developing brain are unknown. Female Balb/c mice were exposed to cigarette smoke prior to mating, during gestation and lactation. Male offspring were studied at postnatal day (P) 1, P20 and 13 weeks (W13). SE dams had reduced inflammatory mediators (IL-1β, IL-6 and toll like receptor (TLR)4 mRNA), antioxidant (manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD)), and increased mitochondrial activities (OXPHOS-I, III and V) and protein damage marker nitrotyrosine. Brain hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)1α and its upstream signalling molecule early growth response factor (EGR)1 were not changed in the SE dams. In the SE offspring, brain IL-1R, IL-6 and TLR4 mRNA were increased at W13. The translocase of outer mitochondrial membrane, and MnSOD were reduced at W13 with higher nitrotyrosine staining. HIF-1α was also increased at W13, although EGR1 was only reduced at P1. In conclusion, maternal SE increased markers of hypoxia and oxidative stress with mitochondrial dysfunction and cell damage in both dams and offspring, and upregulated inflammatory markers in offspring, which may render SE dams and their offspring vulnerable to additional brain insults

Neue linguistische Methoden und arbeitstechnische Verfahren in der Erschliessung der ägyptischen Grammatik

15 páginas, 1 tabla, 6 figuras.Does diversity beget diversity? Diversity includes a diversity of concepts because it is linked to variability in and of life and can be applied to multiple levels. The connections between multiple levels of diversity are poorly understood. Here, we investigated the relationships between genetic, bacterial, and chemical diversity of the endangered Atlanto-Mediterranean sponge Spongia lamella. These levels of diversity are intrinsically related to sponge evolution and could have strong conservation implications. We used microsatellite markers, denaturing gel gradient electrophoresis and quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and high performance liquid chromatography to quantify genetic, bacterial, and chemical diversity of nine sponge populations. We then used correlations to test whether these diversity levels covaried. We found that sponge populations differed significantly in genetic, bacterial, and chemical diversity. We also found a strong geographic pattern of increasing genetic, bacterial, and chemical dissimilarity with increasing geographic distance between populations. However, we failed to detect significant correlations between the three levels of diversity investigated in our study. Our results suggest that diversity fails to beget diversity within a single species and indicates that a diversity of factors regulates a diversity of diversities, which highlights the complex nature of the mechanisms behind diversityResearch funded by grants from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ECIMAR), from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology SOLID (CTM2010-17755) and Benthomics (CTM2010-22218-C02-01) and the BIOCAPITAL project (MRTN-CT-2004-512301) of the European Union. This is a contribution of the Consolidated Research Group ‘‘Grupo de Ecologı´a Bento´nica,’’ SGR2009-655.Peer reviewe

Effects of plant diversity, plant productivity and habitat parameters on arthropod abundance in montane European grasslands

Arthropod abundance has been hypothesized to be correlated with plant diversity but the results of previous studies have been equivocal. In contrast, plant productivity, vegetation structure, abiotic site conditions, and the physical disturbance of habitats, are factors that interact with plant diversity, and that have been shown to influence arthropod abundance. We studied the combined effect of plant species diversity, productivity and site characteristics on arthropod abundance in 71 managed grasslands in central Germany using multivariate statistics. For each site we determined plant species cover, plant community biomass (productivity), macro- and micronutrients in the soil, and characterized the location of sites with respect to orographic parameters as well as the current and historic management regimes. Arthropods were sampled using a suction sampler and classified a priori into functional groups (FGs). We found that arthropod abundance was not correlated with plant species richness, effective diversity or Camargo's evenness, even when influences of environmental variables were taken into account. In contrast, plant community composition was highly correlated with arthropod abundances. Plant community productivity influenced arthropod abundance but explained only a small proportion of the variance. The abundances of the different arthropod FGs were influenced differentially by agricultural management, soil characteristics, vegetation structure and by interactions between different FGs of arthropods. Herbivores, carnivores and detritivores reacted differently to variation in environmental variables in a manner consistent with their feeding mode. Our results show that in natural grassland systems arthropod abundance is not a simple function of plant species richness, and they emphasize the important role of plant community composition for the abundance patterns of the arthropod assemblages

Adaptation of Poa alpina to altitude and land use in the Swiss Alps

Current land use and climate change are prompting questions about the ability of plants to adapt to such environmental change. Therefore, we experimentally addressed plant performance and quantitative-genetic diversity of the common Alpine Meadow Grass Poa alpina. We asked how land use and altitude affect the occurrence of P. alpina in the field and whether its common-garden performance suggests adaptation to conditions at plant origin and differences in quantitative genetic diversity among plant origins. Among 216 candidate grassland sites of different land use and altitude from 12 villages in the Swiss Alps, P. alpina occurred preferentially in fertilized and grazed sites and at higher elevations. In a common garden at 1,500 m asl, we grew two plants of >600 genotypes representing 78 grassland sites. After 2 years, nearly 90% of all plants had reproduced. In agreement with adaptive advantages of vegetative reproduction at higher altitudes, only 23% of reproductive plants from lower altitudes reproduced via vegetative bulbils, but 55% of plants from higher altitudes. In agreement with adaptive advantages of reproduction in grazed sites, allocation to reproductive biomass was higher in plants from grazed grasslands than from mown ones. For 53 grasslands, we also investigated broad-sense heritability H2, which was significant for all studied traits and twice as high for grazed as for mown grasslands. Moreover, possibly associated with their higher landscape diversity, H2 was higher for sites of villages of Romanic cultural tradition than for those of Germanic and Walser traditions. We suggest promoting diverse land use regimes to conserve not only landscape and plant species diversity, but also adaptive genetic differentiation and heritable genetic variation

Patients’ enrollment flow diagram.

Patients’ enrollment flow diagram.</p