Exploitation promotes earlier sex change in a protandrous patellid limpet, Patella aspera Röding, 1798

Exploitation of organisms can prompt the reduction in the number and size of target populations consequently affecting reproductive output and replenishment. Here, we investigated the effects of exploitation on the population structure of a protandrous patellid limpet, Patella aspera, an overexploited Macaronesian endemic. Timed dives were used to collect animals across eleven islands of Macaronesia. Individuals were inspected for sex, size, and gonad stage. Using catch effort (time per person) per island coastal perimeter as a surrogate for exploitation intensity, we found that limpet abundance (CPUE) and mean size tended to decrease with exploitation intensity. When considering the sex of animals separately, the size of the largest male, but not females, decreased with exploitation. In contrast, the size of the smallest male remained relatively consistent, whereas the size of the smallest female decreased significantly with exploitation. As exploitation is mostly targeting larger individuals, results suggest that males are compensating the removal of larger females, by undergoing sex change at smaller and presumably earlier sizes. These results have wider implications for the conservation of P. aspera, as a reduction in female size will likely affect the numbers of oocytes produced, hence fecundity. Regulations promoting the protection of the larger-sized animals should be enforced to safeguard the replenishment of the population

Imaging of Repaired Rotator Cuff

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Cross-Sectional Study on the Association between 24-h Urine Osmolality and Weight Status in Older Adults

Data on the association between hydration and body weight in the elderly are scarce. The objective of this work was to quantify the association between 24-h urine osmolality and weight status in the elderly. A cross-sectional study was conducted within the Nutrition UP 65 study. A quota sampling was implemented to achieve a nationally representative sample of Portuguese older adults (≥65 years) according to age, sex, education and region. From a sample size of 1500 participants, 1315 were eligible for the present analysis, 57.3% were women and 23.5% were aged ≥80 years. Participants were grouped using tertiles of 24-h urine osmolality by sex. World Health Organization cutoffs were used to classify participants according to weight status. Multinomial multivariable logistic regression models were conducted to evaluate the association of tertiles of osmolality with weight status, adjusting for confounders. Odds Ratios (OR) and respective 95% Confidence Intervals (95% CI) were calculated. Being in the 3rd urine osmolality tertile (highest) was associated with a higher risk of being obese in men, OR = 1.97, 95% CI = 1.06, 3.66. No such association was found in women. These results highlight the need for implementing studies in order to clarify the association between hydration and weight status in the elderly.The Nutrition UP 65 project was granted by the Public Health Initiatives Programme (PT06), financed by European Economic Area (EEA) Grants Financial Mechanism 2009–2014. The country donors were Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway

Blocking IP3 signal transduction pathways inhibits melatonin-induced Ca2+ signals and impairs P. falciparum development and proliferation in erythrocytes.

Inositol 1,4,5 trisphosphate (IP3) signaling plays a crucial role in a wide range of eukaryotic processes. In Plasmodium falciparum, IP3 elicits Ca2+ release from intracellular Ca2+ stores, even though no IP3 receptor homolog has been identified to date. The human host hormone melatonin plays a key role in entraining the P. falciparum life cycle in the intraerythrocytic stages, apparently through an IP3-dependent Ca2+ signal. The melatonin-induced cytosolic Ca2+ ([Ca2+]cyt) increase and malaria cell cycle can be blocked by the IP3 receptor blocker 2-aminoethyl diphenylborinate (2-APB). However, 2-APB also inhibits store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE). Therefore, we have used two novel 2-APB derivatives, DPB162-AE and DPB163-AE, which are 100-fold more potent than 2-APB in blocking SOCE in mammalian cells, and appear to act by interfering with clustering of STIM proteins. In the present work we report that DPB162-AE and DPB163-AE block the [Ca2+]cyt rise in response to melatonin in P. falciparum, but only at high concentrations. These compounds also block SOCE in the parasite at similarly high concentrations suggesting that P. falciparum SOCE is not activated in the same way as in mammalian cells. We further find that DPB162-AE and DPB163-AE affect the development of the intraerythrocytic parasites and invasion of new red blood cells. Our efforts to episomally express proteins that compete with native IP3 receptor like IP3-sponge and an IP3 sensor such as IRIS proved to be lethal to P. falciparum during intraerythrocytic cycle. The present findings point to an important role of IP3-induced Ca2+ release in intraerythrocytic stage of P. falciparum

Enzymatic Shaving of the Tegument Surface of Live Schistosomes for Proteomic Analysis: A Rational Approach to Select Vaccine Candidates

Adult schistosome parasites can reside in the host bloodstream for decades surrounded by components of the immune system. It was originally proposed that their survival depended on the secretion of an inert bilayer, the membranocalyx, to protect the underlying plasma membrane from attack. We have investigated whether any proteins were exposed on the surface of live worms using incubation with selected hydrolases, in combination with mass spectrometry to identify released proteins. We show that a small number of parasite proteins are accessible to the enzymes and so could represent constituents of the membranocalyx. We also identified several proteins acquired by the parasite on contact with host cells. In addition, components of the cytolytic complement pathway were detected, but these appeared not to harm the worm, indicating that some of its own surface proteins could inhibit the lytic pathway. We suggest that, collectively, the ‘superficial’ parasite proteins may provide good candidates for a schistosome vaccine

Working Group Report: Heavy-Ion Physics and Quark-Gluon Plasma

This is the report of Heavy Ion Physics and Quark-Gluon Plasma at WHEPP-09 which was part of Working Group-4. Discussion and work on some aspects of Quark-Gluon Plasma believed to have created in heavy-ion collisions and in early universe are reported.Comment: 20 pages, 6 eps figures, Heavy-ion physics and QGP activity report in "IX Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology (WHEPP-09)" held in Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India, during January 3-14, 2006. To be published in PRAMANA - Journal of Physics (Indian Academy of Science

Proteomic Analysis of Human Skin Treated with Larval Schistosome Peptidases Reveals Distinct Invasion Strategies among Species of Blood Flukes

Schistosome parasites are a major cause of disease in the developing world, but the mechanism by which these parasites first infect their host has been studied at the molecular level only for S. mansoni. In this paper, we have mined recent genome annotations of S. mansoni and S. japonicum, a zoonotic schistosome species, to identify differential expansion of peptidase gene families that may be involved in parasite invasion and subsequent migration through skin. Having identified a serine peptidase gene family in S. mansoni and a cysteine peptidase gene family in S. japonicum, we then used a comparative proteomic approach to identify potential substrates of representative members of both classes of enzymes from S. mansoni in human skin. The results of this study suggest that while these species evolved to use different classes of peptidases in host invasion, both are capable of cleaving components of the epidermis and dermal extracellular matrix, as well as proteins involved in the host immune response against the migrating parasite