Aggression and Alcoholism

Alcoholism is today the greatest medical and social problem. Due to the fact that it is frequently connected with aggressiveness, it can also be defined as a great and frequent forensic problem. The authors investigate the issue to what extent aggressiveness is medically justified. They offer guidelines regarding this problem in accordance with their everyday experience and medical criteria

Parasites dominate hyperdiverse soil protist communities in Neotropical rainforests

High animal and plant richness in tropical rainforest communities has long intrigued naturalists. It is unknown if similar hyperdiversity patterns are reflected at the microbial scale with unicellular eukaryotes (protists). Here we show, using environmental metabarcoding of soil samples and a phylogeny-aware cleaning step, that protist communities in Neotropical rainforests are hyperdiverse and dominated by the parasitic Apicomplexa, which infect arthropods and other animals. These host-specific parasites potentially contribute to the high animal diversity in the forests by reducing population growth in a density-dependent manner. By contrast, too few operational taxonomic units (OTUs) of Oomycota were found to broadly drive high tropical tree diversity in a host-specific manner under the Janzen-Connell model. Extremely high OTU diversity and high heterogeneity between samples within the same forests suggest that protists, not arthropods, are the most diverse eukaryotes in tropical rainforests. Our data show that protists play a large role in tropical terrestrial ecosystems long viewed as being dominated by macroorganisms

A global ocean atlas of eukaryotic genes

While our knowledge about the roles of microbes and viruses in the ocean has increased tremendously due to recent advances in genomics and metagenomics, research on marine microbial eukaryotes and zooplankton has benefited much less from these new technologies because of their larger genomes, their enormous diversity, and largely unexplored physiologies. Here, we use a metatranscriptomics approach to capture expressed genes in open ocean Tara Oceans stations across four organismal size fractions. The individual sequence reads cluster into 116 million unigenes representing the largest reference collection of eukaryotic transcripts from any single biome. The catalog is used to unveil functions expressed by eukaryotic marine plankton, and to assess their functional biogeography. Almost half of the sequences have no similarity with known proteins, and a great number belong to new gene families with a restricted distribution in the ocean. Overall, the resource provides the foundations for exploring the roles of marine eukaryotes in ocean ecology and biogeochemistry

Role of Cajal Bodies and Nucleolus in the Maturation of the U1 snRNP in Arabidopsis

Background: The biogenesis of spliceosomal snRNPs takes place in both the cytoplasm where Sm core proteins are added and snRNAs are modified at the 59 and 39 termini and in the nucleus where snRNP-specific proteins associate. U1 snRNP consists of U1 snRNA, seven Sm proteins and three snRNP-specific proteins, U1-70K, U1A, and U1C. It has been shown previously that after import to the nucleus U2 and U4/U6 snRNP-specific proteins first appear in Cajal bodies (CB) and then in splicing speckles. In addition, in cells grown under normal conditions U2, U4, U5, and U6 snRNAs/snRNPs are abundant in CBs. Therefore, it has been proposed that the final assembly of these spliceosomal snRNPs takes place in this nuclear compartment. In contrast, U1 snRNA in both animal and plant cells has rarely been found in this nuclear compartment. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we analysed the subnuclear distribution of Arabidopsis U1 snRNP-specific proteins fused to GFP or mRFP in transiently transformed Arabidopsis protoplasts. Irrespective of the tag used, U1-70K was exclusively found in the nucleus, whereas U1A and U1C were equally distributed between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. In the nucleus all three proteins localised to CBs and nucleoli although to different extent. Interestingly, we also found that the appearance of the three proteins in nuclear speckles differ significantly. U1-70K was mostly found in speckles whereas U1A and U1C in,90 % of cells showed diffuse nucleoplasmic in combination with CBs and nucleolar localisation. Conclusions/Significance: Our data indicate that CBs and nucleolus are involved in the maturation of U1 snRNP. Difference

Role of Cajal Bodies and Nucleolus in the Maturation of the U1 snRNP in Arabidopsis

Background: The biogenesis of spliceosomal snRNPs takes place in both the cytoplasm where Sm core proteins are added and snRNAs are modified at the 59 and 39 termini and in the nucleus where snRNP-specific proteins associate. U1 snRNP consists of U1 snRNA, seven Sm proteins and three snRNP-specific proteins, U1-70K, U1A, and U1C. It has been shown previously that after import to the nucleus U2 and U4/U6 snRNP-specific proteins first appear in Cajal bodies (CB) and then in splicing speckles. In addition, in cells grown under normal conditions U2, U4, U5, and U6 snRNAs/snRNPs are abundant in CBs. Therefore, it has been proposed that the final assembly of these spliceosomal snRNPs takes place in this nuclear compartment. In contrast, U1 snRNA in both animal and plant cells has rarely been found in this nuclear compartment. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we analysed the subnuclear distribution of Arabidopsis U1 snRNP-specific proteins fused to GFP or mRFP in transiently transformed Arabidopsis protoplasts. Irrespective of the tag used, U1-70K was exclusively found in the nucleus, whereas U1A and U1C were equally distributed between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. In the nucleus all three proteins localised to CBs and nucleoli although to different extent. Interestingly, we also found that the appearance of the three proteins in nuclear speckles differ significantly. U1-70K was mostly found in speckles whereas U1A and U1C in,90 % of cells showed diffuse nucleoplasmic in combination with CBs and nucleolar localisation. Conclusions/Significance: Our data indicate that CBs and nucleolus are involved in the maturation of U1 snRNP. Difference