Brain GABA and Glutamate Concentrations Following Chronic Gabapentin Administration: A Convenience Sample Studied During Early Abstinence From Alcohol.

Gabapentin (GBP), a GABA analog that may also affect glutamate (Glu) production, can normalize GABA and Glu tone during early abstinence from alcohol, effectively treating withdrawal symptoms and facilitating recovery. Using in vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopy, we tested the degree to which daily GBP alters regional brain GABA and Glu levels in short-term abstinent alcohol-dependent individuals. Regional metabolite levels were compared between 13 recently abstinent alcohol-dependent individuals who had received daily GBP for at least 1 week (GBP+) and 25 matched alcohol-dependent individuals who had not received GBP (GBP-). Magnetic resonance spectra from up to five different brain regions were analyzed to yield absolute GABA and Glu concentrations. GABA and Glu concentrations in the parieto-occipital cortex were not different between GBP- and GBP+. Glu levels in anterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and basal ganglia did not differ between GBP- and GBP+. However, in a subgroup of individuals matched on age, sex, and abstinence duration, GBP+ had markedly lower Glu in the frontal white matter (WM) than GBP-, comparable to concentrations found in light/non-drinking controls. Furthermore, lower frontal WM Glu in GBP+ correlated with a higher daily GBP dose. Daily GBP treatment at an average of 1,600 mg/day for at least 1 week was not associated with altered cortical GABA and Glu concentrations during short-term abstinence from alcohol, but with lower Glu in frontal WM. GBP for the treatment of alcohol dependence may work through reducing Glu in WM rather than increasing cortical GABA

Packmule

People face demands of hauling equipment and belongings with them every day, whether it be for work or leisure. This design report discusses and details a product that would allow people to overcome the struggles of this. The Packmule is an autonomous following robot that has the capability of carrying a load up to 30 pounds. The design involves two independently controlled motors operating two drive wheels so that the Packmule will be flexible in the directions it can move. There are also two more steering wheels for support of the base and the load inside. The way in which the Packmule follows the user consists of a wireless transmitter that will be worn on the user’s belt. This transmitter will emit an ultrasound signal that will be received by five ultrasonic position sensor receivers mounted on the Packmule. The signals will be filtered and amplified in order to communicate with microcontroller. The strength or amplitude from each received signal will be compared in order to determine the location of the user. Since the Packmule is autonomous, it will need to be able to detect objects in its path. Several infrared sensors will be mounted to the front of the Packmule for this reason. It will track the distance an object is away from the Packmule by measuring the amount of light . Algorithms programmed into the Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller will take the data from the IR sensors and the ultrasonic position sensor receivers and calculate a path to safely and efficiently follow the user

Temporal variability of downward fluxes of organic carbon off Monterey Bay

17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under review.Sediment traps were deployed at two depths (300 m and 1200 m) off Monterey Bay (36°40′N and 122°25′W, Central California) for 7.3 years (1998–2005). The sediment trap data provided information about the quantity and quality of settling material, and allowed exploration of the relationship of the sinking material with the environmental conditions in this coastal upwelling region. The magnitude and composition of the settling material were highly variable over time. Organic carbon (Corg) fluxes ranged between 4–296 mg C m−2 day−1 and 0.1–142 mg C m−2 day−1 for shallow and deep sediment traps, respectively. The time series of Corg vertical flux was characterized by pulses of intense fluxes that were associated with peaks of primary production, generally during upwelling periods. Despite considerable variability, fluxes varied seasonally with highest values during the upwelling season and the lowest in winter. Attenuation of Corg vertical fluxes with depth (300 m vs. 1200 m) varied between 31% and 24% except for the late upwelling period, when there was an increase with depth likely due to resuspension of material from Monterey Canyon. Calculation of a seasonal vertical budget of organic carbon off Monterey Bay resulted in a transfer between 4.0% and 4.9% of the primary production to the deep ocean, suggesting that coastal upwelling efficiently sequestered CO2.The principal source of support for these measurements was the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. CGC was partially supported by a National Research Council Fellowship at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Introgression across evolutionary scales suggests reticulation contributes to Amazonian tree diversity

This is the final version. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.The data that support the findings of this study are openly available from online repositories. All raw reads generated with the targeted bait capture and ddRADseq methods are available on the NCBI Sequence Read Archive with the Accession nos SAMN13439069‐SAMN13439140 and SAMN13441804‐SAMN13441974, respectively, under the BioProject number PRJNA592723. All full phylogenomic sequence alignments, single‐accession‐per‐species alignments and tree files, bgc input files, Stacks output files and the Detarioideae bait kit sequence file are found on Dryad (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k3j9kd53w). Data are under embargo until publication, and any further data required are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Hybridization has the potential to generate or homogenize biodiversity and is a particularly common phenomenon in plants, with an estimated 25% of plant species undergoing interspecific gene flow. However, hybridization in Amazonia's megadiverse tree flora was assumed to be extremely rare despite extensive sympatry between closely related species, and its role in diversification remains enigmatic because it has not yet been examined empirically. Using members of a dominant Amazonian tree family (Brownea, Fabaceae) as a model to address this knowledge gap, our study recovered extensive evidence of hybridization among multiple lineages across phylogenetic scales. More specifically, using targeted sequence capture our results uncovered several historical introgression events between Brownea lineages and indicated that gene tree incongruence in Brownea is best explained by reticulation, rather than solely by incomplete lineage sorting. Furthermore, investigation of recent hybridization using ~19,000 ddRAD loci recovered a high degree of shared variation between two Brownea species that co-occur in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Our analyses also showed that these sympatric lineages exhibit homogeneous rates of introgression among loci relative to the genome-wide average, implying a lack of selection against hybrid genotypes and persistent hybridization. Our results demonstrate that gene flow between multiple Amazonian tree species has occurred across temporal scales, and contrasts with the prevailing view of hybridization's rarity in Amazonia. Overall, our results provide novel evidence that reticulate evolution influenced diversification in part of the Amazonian tree flora, which is the most diverse on Earth.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Genetics Societ

Abundance and biogeography of picoprasinophyte ecotypes and other phytoplankton in the eastern North Pacific Ocean

Eukaryotic algae within the picoplankton size class (< 2 μmin diameter) are important marine primary producers, but their spatial and ecological distributions are not well characterized. Here, we studied three picoeukaryotic prasinophyte genera and their cyanobacterial counterparts, Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, during two cruises along a North Pacific transect characterized by different ecological regimes. Picoeukaryotes and Synechococcus reached maximum abundances of 1.44 × 105 and 3.37 × 105 cells · ml-1, respectively, in mesotrophic waters, while Prochlorococcus reached 1.95 × 105 cells · ml-1 in the oligotrophic ocean. Of the picoeukaryotes, Bathycoccus was present at all stations in both cruises, reaching 21,368±327 18S rRNA gene copies · ml-1. Micromonas and Ostreococcus clade OI were detected only in mesotrophic and coastal waters and Ostreococcus clade OII only in the oligotrophic ocean. To resolve proposed Bathycoccus ecotypes, we established genetic distances for 1,104 marker genes using targeted metagenomes and the Bathycoccus prasinos genome. The analysis was anchored in comparative genome analysis of three Ostreococcus species for which physiological and environmental data are available to facilitate data interpretation. We established that two Bathycoccus ecotypes exist, named here BI (represented by coastal isolate Bathycoccus prasinos) and BII. These share 82±6 nucleotide identity across homologs, while the Ostreococcus spp. share 75±8. We developed and applied an analysis of ecomarkers to metatranscriptomes sequenced here and published -omics data from the same region. The results indicated that the Bathycoccus ecotypes cooccur more often than Ostreococcus clades OI and OII do. Exploratory analyses of relative transcript abundances suggest that Bathycoccus NRT2.1 and AMT2.2 are high-affinity NO3 - and low-affinity NH4 + transporters, respectively, with close homologs in multiple picoprasinophytes. Additionally, in the open ocean, where dissolved iron concentrations were low (0.08 nM), there appeared to be a shift to the use of nickel superoxide dismutases (SODs) from Mn/Fe/Cu SODs closer inshore. Our study documents the distribution of picophytoplankton along a North Pacific ecological gradient and offers new concepts and techniques for investigating their biogeography. © 2016, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved

Maximising Synergy among Tropical Plant Systematists, Ecologists, and Evolutionary Biologists

Closer collaboration among ecologists, systematists, and evolutionary biologists working in tropical forests, centred on studies within long-term permanent plots, would be highly beneficial for their respective fields. With a key unifying theme of the importance of vouchered collection and precise identification of species, especially rare ones, we identify four priority areas where improving links between these communities could achieve significant progress in biodiversity and conservation science: (i) increasing the pace of species discovery; (ii) documenting species turnover across space and time; (iii) improving models of ecosystem change; and (iv) understanding the evolutionary assembly of communities and biomes

Sequence-specific antimicrobials using efficiently delivered RNA-guided nucleases

Current antibiotics tend to be broad spectrum, leading to indiscriminate killing of commensal bacteria and accelerated evolution of drug resistance. Here, we use CRISPR-Cas technology to create antimicrobials whose spectrum of activity is chosen by design. RNA-guided nucleases (RGNs) targeting specific DNA sequences are delivered efficiently to microbial populations using bacteriophage or bacteria carrying plasmids transmissible by conjugation. The DNA targets of RGNs can be undesirable genes or polymorphisms, including antibiotic resistance and virulence determinants in carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae and enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli. Delivery of RGNs significantly improves survival in a Galleria mellonella infection model. We also show that RGNs enable modulation of complex bacterial populations by selective knockdown of targeted strains based on genetic signatures. RGNs constitute a class of highly discriminatory, customizable antimicrobials that enact selective pressure at the DNA level to reduce the prevalence of undesired genes, minimize off-target effects and enable programmable remodeling of microbiota.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (New Innovator Award 1DP2OD008435)National Centers for Systems Biology (U.S.) (Grant 1P50GM098792)United States. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (HDTRA1-14-1-0007)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (W911NF13D0001)National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.) (Interdepartmental Biotechnology Training Program 5T32 GM008334)Fonds de la recherche en sante du Quebec (Master's Training Award

Discovery of 42 genome-wide significant loci associated with dyslexia

Funding: EE, GA, BM, BSP, CF and SEF are supported by the Max Planck Society (Germany). The Chinese Reading Study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Project (Grant No. 61807023), the Youth Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences Research of the Ministry of Education (Grant No. 19YJC190023 and 17XJC190010), and the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (Grant No. 2021JQ-309). SP is funded by the Royal Society.Reading and writing are crucial life skills but roughly one in ten children are affected by dyslexia, which can persist into adulthood. Family studies of dyslexia suggest heritability up to 70%, yet few convincing genetic markers have been found. Here we performed a genome-wide association study of 51,800 adults self-reporting a dyslexia diagnosis and 1,087,070 controls and identified 42 independent genome-wide significant loci: 15 in genes linked to cognitive ability/educational attainment, and 27 new and potentially more specific to dyslexia. We validated 23 loci (13 new) in independent cohorts of Chinese and European ancestry. Genetic etiology of dyslexia was similar between sexes, and genetic covariance with many traits was found, including ambidexterity, but not neuroanatomical measures of language-related circuitry. Dyslexia polygenic scores explained up to 6% of variance in reading traits, and might in future contribute to earlier identification and remediation of dyslexia.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe