Meiotic Stability, Chloroplast DNA Polymorphisms, and Morphological Traits of Upland X Lowland Switchgrass Reciprocal Hybrids

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) has two cytotypes or cytoplasm types, L and U, that are associated with the lowland and upland ecotypes, respectively. The L cytotypes are tetraploids while the U cytotypes can be either tetraploids or octaploids. The objective of this research was to characterize meiotic stability of reciprocal crosses of U and L plants as indicated by chromosome pairing at meiosis and to determine the mode of inheritance of chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) in the hybrids of these cytotypes. Morphological markers that characterize the parents and hybrids also were investigated to confirm that progeny were true hybrids. Reciprocal crosses were made between Kanlow (L tetraploid) and Summer (U tetraploid) plants. Pubescence on the upper surface of the leaf blade, foliage color, and seed size were evaluated as markers to verify hybridization. Meiotic pairing of some of the hybrids was analyzed at the diakinesis stage of meiosis by means of immature anthers. The clone pRR12 from a spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) cpDNA library was used as a chloroplast hybridization probe to determine chloroplast inheritance. For all the morphological traits evaluated, the hybrids were intermediate in comparison to the parents except for seed width. Chromosome pairing was primarily bivalent in all hybrids. The viability of the hybrid seed and the normal meiotic chromosome pairing of the hybrids indicate a high degree of similarity between upland and lowland genomes. In the cpDNA analysis, all verified hybrids examined carried a fragment identical in size to the fragment of the female parent, indicating predominance of maternal inheritance of the cpDNA in switchgrass

Induction and migration of cryptic/defective Salmonella enterica prophages as a consequence of infection with lytic phages is an additional factor in stability of a coevolutionary vector

The influence of infection of natural isolates of Salmonella enterica with lytic (nonlysogenic) phages on the expression of resident cryptic or defective prophages in host bacteria was studied. The induction of defective/cryptic phages after infection with nonlysogenic phages and packaging of bacterial chromosomal fragments in capsids of defective phages is demonstrated. This may lead to migration and wide distribution of both the genomes of defective phages per se and various fragments of the bacterial chromosome (including pathogenic islands) in new bacterial strains with concomitant change of their properties, the acquired new features of pathogenicity among them.This work was supported by EC PhageVet-P (contract no. FOOD-CT-2005-007224) and by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant no. 08-04-00162-a). We gratefully acknowledge the support of organizations presenting the grants.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Lysyl oxidase ( Lox ) maps between Grl-1 and Adrb-2 on mouse Chromosome 18

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47002/1/335_2004_Article_BF00352234.pd

In Vitro Structural and Functional Evaluation of Gold Nanoparticles Conjugated Antibiotics

Bactericidal efficacy of gold nanoparticles conjugated with ampicillin, streptomycin and kanamycin were evaluated. Gold nanoparticles (Gnps) were conjugated with the antibiotics during the synthesis of nanoparticles utilizing the combined reducing property of antibiotics and sodium borohydride. The conjugation of nanoparticles was confirmed by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and electron microscopic (EM) studies. Such Gnps conjugated antibiotics showed greater bactericidal activity in standard agar well diffusion assay. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of all the three antibiotics along with their Gnps conjugated forms were determined in three bacterial strains,Escherichia coli DH5α,Micrococcus luteusandStaphylococcus aureus. Among them, streptomycin and kanamycin showed significant reduction in MIC values in their Gnps conjugated form whereas; Gnps conjugated ampicillin showed slight decrement in the MIC value compared to its free form. On the other hand, all of them showed more heat stability in their Gnps conjugated forms. Thus, our findings indicated that Gnps conjugated antibiotics are more efficient and might have significant therapeutic implications

Transfer origins in the conjugative Enterococcus faecalis plasmids pAD1 and pAM373: identification of the pAD1 nic site, a specific relaxase and a possible TraG-like protein

The Enterococcus faecalis conjugative plasmids pAD1 and pAM373 encode a mating response to the peptide sex pheromones cAD1 and cAM373 respectively. Sequence determination of both plasmids has recently been completed with strong similarity evident over many of the structural genes related to conjugation. pAD1 has two origins of transfer, with oriT1 being located within the repA determinant, whereas the more efficiently utilized oriT2 is located between orf53 and orf57 , two genes found in the present study to be essential for conjugation. We have found a similarly located oriT to be present in pAM373. oriT2 corresponds to about 285 bp based on its ability to facilitate mobilization by pAD1 when ligated to the shuttle vector pAM401; however, it was not mobilized by pAM373. In contrast, a similarly ligated fragment containing the oriT of pAM373 did not facilitate mobilization by pAD1 but was efficiently mobilized by pAM373. The oriT sites of the two plasmids each contained a homologous large inverted repeat (spanning about 140 bp) adjacent to a series of non-homologous short (6 bp) direct repeats. A hybrid construction containing the inverted repeat of pAM373 and direct repeats of pAD1 was mobilized efficiently by pAD1 but not by pAM373, indicating a significantly greater degree of specificity is associated with the direct repeats. Mutational (deletion) analyses of the pAD1 oriT2 inverted repeat structure suggested its importance in facilitating transfer or perhaps ligation of the ends of the newly transferred DNA strand. Analyses showed that Orf57 (to be called TraX) is the relaxase, which was found to induce a specific nick in the large inverted repeat inside oriT ; the protein also facilitated site-specific recombination between two oriT2 sites. Orf53 (to be called TraW) exhibits certain structural similarities to TraG-like proteins, although there is little overall homology.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72536/1/j.1365-2958.2002.03007.x.pd

Neuroimaging-based classification of PTSD using data-driven computational approaches: a multisite big data study from the ENIGMA-PGC PTSD consortium

Background: Recent advances in data-driven computational approaches have been helpful in devising tools to objectively diagnose psychiatric disorders. However, current machine learning studies limited to small homogeneous samples, different methodologies, and different imaging collection protocols, limit the ability to directly compare and generalize their results. Here we aimed to classify individuals with PTSD versus controls and assess the generalizability using a large heterogeneous brain datasets from the ENIGMA-PGC PTSD Working group. Methods: We analyzed brain MRI data from 3,477 structural-MRI; 2,495 resting state-fMRI; and 1,952 diffusion-MRI. First, we identified the brain features that best distinguish individuals with PTSD from controls using traditional machine learning methods. Second, we assessed the utility of the denoising variational autoencoder (DVAE) and evaluated its classification performance. Third, we assessed the generalizability and reproducibility of both models using leave-one-site-out cross-validation procedure for each modality. Results: We found lower performance in classifying PTSD vs. controls with data from over 20 sites (60 % test AUC for s-MRI, 59 % for rs-fMRI and 56 % for D-MRI), as compared to other studies run on single-site data. The performance increased when classifying PTSD from HC without trauma history in each modality (75 % AUC). The classification performance remained intact when applying the DVAE framework, which reduced the number of features. Finally, we found that the DVAE framework achieved better generalization to unseen datasets compared with the traditional machine learning frameworks, albeit performance was slightly above chance. Conclusion: These results have the potential to provide a baseline classification performance for PTSD when using large scale neuroimaging datasets. Our findings show that the control group used can heavily affect classification performance. The DVAE framework provided better generalizability for the multi-site data. This may be more significant in clinical practice since the neuroimaging-based diagnostic DVAE classification models are much less site-specific, rendering them more generalizable.Stress-related psychiatric disorders across the life spa

Quantifying the dynamics of flow within a permeable bed using time-resolved endoscopic particle imaging velocimetry (EPIV)

This paper presents results of an experimental study investigating the mean and temporal evolution of flow within the pore space of a packed bed overlain by a free-surface flow. Data were collected by an endoscopic PIV (EPIV) technique. EPIV allows the instantaneous velocity field within the pore space to be quantified at a high spatio-temporal resolution, thus permitting investigation of the structure of turbulent subsurface flow produced by a high Reynolds number freestream flow (Re s in the range 9.8 × 103–9.7 × 104). Evolution of coherent flow structures within the pore space is shown to be driven by jet flow, with the interaction of this jet with the pore flow generating distinct coherent flow structures. The effects of freestream water depth, Reynolds and Froude numbers are investigated