377 research outputs found
Purification of Eutrophic Hydro-Environments and the Utilization for New Biomass Forage Resources by Aquatic Plants in Asia
Water pollution, especially eutrophication, has become a serious world-wide problem in recent years. On the other hand, forage is in short supply during the dry season in Asia (especially in Southeast Asia). The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of new forage resources from among aquatic plants. In conclusion, it is suggested that three emergent plants (Zizania latifolia Turcz., Pontederia cordata L., Paspalum distichum L.) are useful as new forage species because of their absorptive ability for nitrogen and phosphorus from eutrophic water and their superior feeding value following ensiling
Impaired In Vivo Gamma Oscillations in the Medial Entorhinal Cortex of Knock-in Alzheimer Model
The entorhinal cortex (EC) has bidirectional connections with the hippocampus and plays a critical role in memory formation and retrieval. EC is one of the most vulnerable regions in the brain in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a neurodegenerative disease with progressive memory impairments. Accumulating evidence from healthy behaving animals indicates gamma oscillations (30–100 Hz) as critical for mediating interactions in the circuit between EC and hippocampus. However, it is still unclear whether gamma oscillations have causal relationship with memory impairment in AD. Here we provide the first evidence that in vivo gamma oscillations in the EC are impaired in an AD mouse model. Cross-frequency coupling of gamma (30–100 Hz) oscillations to theta oscillations was reduced in the medial EC of anesthetized amyloid precursor protein knock-in (APP-KI) mice. Phase locking of spiking activity of layer II/III pyramidal cells to the gamma oscillations was significantly impaired. These data indicate that the neural circuit activities organized by gamma oscillations were disrupted in the medial EC of AD mouse model, and point to gamma oscillations as one of possible mechanisms for cognitive dysfunction in AD patients
Interplay of superexchange and orbital degeneracy in Cr-doped LaMnO3
We report on structural, magnetic and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR)
investigations in the manganite system LaMn_{1-x}Cr_{x}O_{3} (x<=0.5). Upon
Cr-doping we observe a reduction of the Jahn-Teller distortion yielding less
distorted orthorhombic structures. A transition from the Jahn-Teller distorted
O' to the pseudocubic O phase occurs between 0.3<x<0.4. A clear connection
between this transition and the doping dependence of the magnetic and ESR
properties has been observed. The effective moments determined by ESR seem
reduced with respect to the spin-only value of both Mn^{3+} and Cr^{3+} ions
Supranormal orientation selectivity of visual neurons in orientation-restricted animals
Altered sensory experience in early life often leads to remarkable adaptations so that humans and animals can make the best use of the available information in a particular environment. By restricting visual input to a limited range of orientations in young animals, this investigation shows that stimulus selectivity, e.g., the sharpness of tuning of single neurons in the primary visual cortex, is modified to match a particular environment. Specifically, neurons tuned to an experienced orientation in orientation-restricted animals show sharper orientation tuning than neurons in normal animals, whereas the opposite was true for neurons tuned to non-experienced orientations. This sharpened tuning appears to be due to elongated receptive fields. Our results demonstrate that restricted sensory experiences can sculpt the supranormal functions of single neurons tailored for a particular environment. The above findings, in addition to the minimal population response to orientations close to the experienced one, agree with the predictions of a sparse coding hypothesis in which information is represented efficiently by a small number of activated neurons. This suggests that early brain areas adopt an efficient strategy for coding information even when animals are raised in a severely limited visual environment where sensory inputs have an unnatural statistical structure
Strigolactones Negatively Regulate Mesocotyl Elongation in Rice during Germination and Growth in Darkness
Strigolactones (SLs) are newly discovered plant hormones that regulate plant growth and development including shoot branching. They also stimulate symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Rice has at least three genes that are involved in SL synthesis (D10, D17/HTD1 and D27) and at least two genes that are involved in SL signaling (D3) and SL signaling or downstream metabolism (D14/D88/HTD2). We observed that mesocotyl elongation in darkness was greater in rice mutants defective in these genes than in the wild type. Exogenous application of a synthetic SL analog, GR24, rescued the phenotype of mesocotyl elongation in the SL-deficient mutants, d10-1, d17-1 and d27-1, in a dose-dependent manner, but did not affect mesocotyl lengths of the SL-insensitive mutants, d3-1 and d14-1. No significant differences in cell length were found between the d mutants and the wild type, except for some cells on the lower half of the d3-1 mesocotyl that were shortened. On the other hand, the number of cells in the mesocotyls was 3- to 6-fold greater in the d mutants than in the wild type. Treatment with GR24 reduced the number of cells in the d10-1 mesocotyl to the wild-type level, but did not affect the number of cells in the d3-1 and d14-1 mesocotyls. These findings indicate that SLs negatively regulate cell division, but not cell elongation, in the mesocotyl during germination and growth of rice in darkness
S-PLUS DR1 galaxy clusters and groups catalogue using PzWav
We present a catalogue of 4499 groups and clusters of galaxies from the first
data release of the multi-filter (5 broad, 7 narrow) Southern Photometric Local
Universe Survey (S-PLUS). These groups and clusters are distributed over 273
deg in the Stripe 82 region. They are found using the PzWav algorithm,
which identifies peaks in galaxy density maps that have been smoothed by a
cluster scale difference-of-Gaussians kernel to isolate clusters and groups.
Using a simulation-based mock catalogue, we estimate the purity and
completeness of cluster detections: at S/N>3.3 we define a catalogue that is
80% pure and complete in the redshift range 0.1<z<0.4, for clusters with
M. We also assessed the accuracy of the catalogue
in terms of central positions and redshifts, finding scatter of
kpc and , respectively. Moreover, less than 1% of
the sample suffers from fragmentation or overmerging. The S-PLUS cluster
catalogue recovers ~80% of all known X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich selected
clusters in this field. This fraction is very close to the estimated
completeness, thus validating the mock data analysis and paving an efficient
way to find new groups and clusters of galaxies using data from the ongoing
S-PLUS project. When complete, S-PLUS will have surveyed 9300 deg of the
sky, representing the widest uninterrupted areas with narrow-through-broad
multi-band photometry for cluster follow-up studies.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures, paper accepted for publication by MNRA
Protein kinase A enhances lipopolysaccharide-induced IL-6, IL-8, and PGE2 production by human gingival fibroblasts
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objective</p> <p>Periodontal disease is accompanied by inflammation of the gingiva and destruction of periodontal tissues, leading to alveolar bone loss in severe clinical cases. Interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, and the chemical mediator prostaglandin E<sub>2 </sub>(PGE<sub>2</sub>) are known to play important roles in inflammatory responses and tissue degradation.</p> <p>Recently, we reported that the protein kinase A (PKA) inhibitor H-89 suppresses lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced IL-8 production by human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs). In the present study, the relevance of the PKA activity and two PKA-activating drugs, aminophylline and adrenaline, to LPS-induced inflammatory cytokines (IL-6 and IL-8) and PGE<sub>2 </sub>by HGFs were examined.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>HGFs were treated with LPS from <it>Porphyromonas gingivalis </it>and H-89, the cAMP analog dibutyryl cyclic AMP (dbcAMP), aminophylline, or adrenaline. After 24 h, IL-6, IL-8, and PGE<sub>2 </sub>levels were evaluated by ELISA.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>H-89 did not affect LPS-induced IL-6 production, but suppressed IL-8 and PGE<sub>2 </sub>production. In contrast, dbcAMP significantly increased LPS-induced IL-6, IL-8, and PGE<sub>2 </sub>production. Up to 10 μg/ml of aminophylline did not affect LPS-induced IL-6, IL-8, or PGE<sub>2 </sub>production, but they were significantly increased at 100 μg/ml. Similarly, 0.01 μg/ml of adrenaline did not affect LPS-induced IL-6, IL-8, or PGE<sub>2 </sub>production, but they were significantly increased at concentrations of 0.1 and 1 μg/ml. In the absence of LPS, H-89, dbcAMP, aminophylline, and adrenaline had no relevance to IL-6, IL-8, or PGE<sub>2 </sub>production.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that the PKA pathway, and also PKA-activating drugs, enhance LPS-induced IL-6, IL-8, and PGE<sub>2 </sub>production by HGFs. However, aminophylline may not have an effect on the production of these molecules at concentrations used in clinical settings (8 to 20 μg/ml in serum). These results suggest that aminophylline does not affect inflammatory responses in periodontal disease.</p
High quality RNA isolation from Aedes aegypti midguts using laser microdissection microscopy
Background: Laser microdissection microscopy (LMM) has potential as a research tool because it allows precise excision of target tissues or cells from a complex biological specimen, and facilitates tissue-specific sample preparation. However, this method has not been used in mosquito vectors to date. To this end, we have developed an LMM method to isolate midgut RNA using Aedes aegypti
Various Spatiotemporal Expression Profiles of Anther-Expressed Genes in Rice
The male gametophyte and tapetum play different roles during anther development although they are differentiated from the same cell lineage, the L2 layer. Until now, it has not been possible to delineate their transcriptomes due to technical difficulties in separating the two cell types. In the present study, we characterized the separated transcriptomes of the rice microspore/pollen and tapetum using laser microdissection (LM)-mediated microarray. Spatiotemporal expression patterns of 28,141 anther-expressed genes were classified into 20 clusters, which contained 3,468 (12.3%) anther-enriched genes. In some clusters, synchronous gene expression in the microspore and tapetum at the same developmental stage was observed as a novel characteristic of the anther transcriptome. Noteworthy expression patterns are discussed in connection with gene ontology (GO) categories and gene annotations, which are related to important biological events in anther development, such as pollen maturation, pollen germination, pollen tube elongation and pollen wall formation
High-Throughput SuperSAGE for Digital Gene Expression Analysis of Multiple Samples Using Next Generation Sequencing
We established a protocol of the SuperSAGE technology combined with next-generation sequencing, coined “High-Throughput (HT-) SuperSAGE”. SuperSAGE is a method of digital gene expression profiling that allows isolation of 26-bp tag fragments from expressed transcripts. In the present protocol, index (barcode) sequences are employed to discriminate tags from different samples. Such barcodes allow researchers to analyze digital tags from transcriptomes of many samples in a single sequencing run by simply pooling the libraries. Here, we demonstrated that HT-SuperSAGE provided highly sensitive, reproducible and accurate digital gene expression data. By increasing throughput for analysis in HT-SuperSAGE, various applications are foreseen and several examples are provided in the present study, including analyses of laser-microdissected cells, biological replicates and tag extraction using different anchoring enzymes
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