Identifying Priority Areas for Ecosystem Services Management in South Africa

Studies have highlighted the importance of managing ecosystem services to stop further degradation and transformation, yet very few studies have endeavored to identify priorities. The identification of priority areas for ecosystem services remains the least of objective for all studies that have mapped ecosystem services. Steps for identifying priority areas for management of ecosystem services include identifying features that supply ecosystem services, threats to service provision, potential actions to ensure future supply of service and cost of these actions as well as the availability of alternative means of providing benefits supplied by the service, the capacity to meet human demands and scale and site dependency of service. We present examples of the inclusion of ecosystem services in spatial planning in South Africa including quantifying conservation features and threats, as well as implementation issues. The prioritization of areas for ecosystem services management is still in its infancy. At present, spatial planning for ecosystem services is mostly coupled with biodiversity, but ecosystem services deserve to be conserved on their own right through conservation actions specifically designed for ecosystem services. The identification of priorities for such conservation action faces many challenges

A Novel Gaussian Extrapolation Approach for 2D Gel Electrophoresis Saturated Protein Spots

Analysis of images obtained from two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2D-GE) is a topic of utmost importance in bioinformatics research, since commercial and academic software available currently has proven to be neither completely effective nor fully automatic, often requiring manual revision and refinement of computer generated matches. In this work, we present an effective technique for the detection and the reconstruction of over-saturated protein spots. Firstly, the algorithm reveals overexposed areas, where spots may be truncated, and plateau regions caused by smeared and overlapping spots. Next, it reconstructs the correct distribution of pixel values in these overexposed areas and plateau regions, using a two-dimensional least-squares fitting based on a generalized Gaussian distribution. Pixel correction in saturated and smeared spots allows more accurate quantification, providing more reliable image analysis results. The method is validated for processing highly exposed 2D-GE images, comparing reconstructed spots with the corresponding non-saturated image, demonstrating that the algorithm enables correct spot quantificatio

Molecular and phenotypic profiling from base to the crown in maritime pine wood-forming tissue

Research• Environmental, developmental and genetic factors affect variation in wood properties at the chemical, anatomical and physical levels. Here, the phenotypic variation observed along the tree stem was explored and the hypothesis tested that this variation could be the result of the differential expression of genes/proteins during wood formation. • Differentiating xylem samples of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) were collected from the top (crown wood, CW) to the bottom (base wood, BW) of adult trees. These samples were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and analytical pyrolysis. Two main groups of samples, corresponding to CW and BW, could be distinguished from cell wall chemical composition. • A genomic approach, combining large-scale production of expressed sequence tags (ESTs), gene expression profiling and quantitative proteomics analysis, allowed identification of 262 unigenes (out of 3512) and 231 proteins (out of 1372 spots) that were differentially expressed along the stem. • A good relationship was found between functional categories from transcriptomic and proteomic data. A good fit between the molecular mechanisms involved in CW–BW formation and these two types of wood phenotypic differences was also observed. This work provides a list of candidate genes for wood properties that will be tested in forward genetic