Effect of irradiance, sucrose, and CO2 concentration on the growth of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) in vitro

Growth measurements were taken of potato plantlets (Solanum tuberosum L.) cvs. Norland (NL), Denali (DN), and Kennebec (KN), grown in vitro. Studies were conducted in a growth chamber, with nodal explants grown for 21 days on Murashige and Skoog salts with either 0, 1, 2, or 3% sucrose and capped with loose-fitted Magenta 2-way caps that allowed approximately 2.25 air exchanges/hour. Plantlets were exposed to either 100 or 300 micro mol/sq m/s photosynthetic photon flux (PPF), and the growth chamber was maintained at either 400 or 4000 micro mol/mol CO2. Regardless of PPF, all cvs. that were grown at 4000 micro mol/mol CO2 showed significant increases in total plantlet dry weight (TDW) and shoot length (SL) when sucrose was omitted from the media, indicating an autotrophic response. At 400 micro mol/mol CO2, all cvs. showed an increase in TDW and SL with increasing sucrose under both PPF levels. Within any sucrose treatment, the highest TDW for all cvs. resulted from 300 micro mol/sq m/s PPF and 4000 micro mol/mol CO2 At 4000 micro mol/mol CO2, TDW showed no further increase with sucrose levels above 1% for cvs. NL and DN at both PPF levels, suggesting that sucrose levels greater than 1% may hinder growth when CO2 enrichment is used

Activity-dependent Golgi satellite formation in dendrites reshapes the neuronal surface glycoproteome

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Govind, A. P., Jeyifous, O., Russell, T. A., Yi, Z., Weigel, A., Ramaprasad, A., Newell, L., Ramos, W., Valbuena, F. M., Casler, J. C., Yan, J.-Z., Glick, B. S., Swanson, G. T., Lippincott-Schwartz, J., & Green, W. N. Activity-dependent Golgi satellite formation in dendrites reshapes the neuronal surface glycoproteome. Elife, 10, (2021): e68910, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68910.Activity-driven changes in the neuronal surface glycoproteome are known to occur with synapse formation, plasticity, and related diseases, but their mechanistic basis and significance are unclear. Here, we observed that N-glycans on surface glycoproteins of dendrites shift from immature to mature forms containing sialic acid in response to increased neuronal activation. In exploring the basis of these N-glycosylation alterations, we discovered that they result from the growth and proliferation of Golgi satellites scattered throughout the dendrite. Golgi satellites that formed during neuronal excitation were in close association with endoplasmic reticulum (ER) exit sites and early endosomes and contained glycosylation machinery without the Golgi structural protein, GM130. They functioned as distal glycosylation stations in dendrites, terminally modifying sugars either on newly synthesized glycoproteins passing through the secretory pathway or on surface glycoproteins taken up from the endocytic pathway. These activities led to major changes in the dendritic surface of excited neurons, impacting binding and uptake of lectins, as well as causing functional changes in neurotransmitter receptors such as nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Neural activity thus boosts the activity of the dendrite’s satellite micro-secretory system by redistributing Golgi enzymes involved in glycan modifications into peripheral Golgi satellites. This remodeling of the neuronal surface has potential significance for synaptic plasticity, addiction, and disease.This work was financially supported by NIH RO1 DA035430, DA044760, and DA043361 (WNG) R01 GM104010 (BSG), T32 GM007183 (FV), and Peter F McManus Foundation (WNG)

Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) v2.0 - An extended set of large-scale diagnostics for quasi-operational and comprehensive evaluation of Earth system models in CMIP

The Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) is a community diagnostics and performance metrics tool designed to improve comprehensive and routine evaluation of Earth system models (ESMs) participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). It has undergone rapid development since the first release in 2016 and is now a well-tested tool that provides end-to-end provenance tracking to ensure reproducibility. It consists of (1) an easy-to-install, well-documented Python package providing the core functionalities (ESMValCore) that performs common preprocessing operations and (2) a diagnostic part that includes tailored diagnostics and performance metrics for specific scientific applications. Here we describe large-scale diagnostics of the second major release of the tool that supports the evaluation of ESMs participating in CMIP Phase 6 (CMIP6). ESMValTool v2.0 includes a large collection of diagnostics and performance metrics for atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial variables for the mean state, trends, and variability. ESMValTool v2.0 also successfully reproduces figures from the evaluation and projections chapters of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and incorporates updates from targeted analysis packages, such as the NCAR Climate Variability Diagnostics Package for the evaluation of modes of variability, the Thermodynamic Diagnostic Tool (TheDiaTo) to evaluate the energetics of the climate system, as well as parts of AutoAssess that contains a mix of top-down performance metrics. The tool has been fully integrated into the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) infrastructure at the Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) to provide evaluation results from CMIP6 model simulations shortly after the output is published to the CMIP archive. A result browser has been implemented that enables advanced monitoring of the evaluation results by a broad user community at much faster timescales than what was possible in CMIP5

CLE14/CLE20 peptides may interact with CLAVATA2/CORYNE receptor-like kinases to irreversibly inhibit cell division in the root meristem of Arabidopsis

Towards an understanding of the interacting nature of the CLAVATA (CLV) complex, we predicted the 3D structures of CLV3/ESR-related (CLE) peptides and the ectodomain of their potential receptor proteins/kinases, and docking models of these molecules. The results show that the ectodomain of CLV1 can form homodimers and that the 12-/13-amino-acid CLV3 peptide fits into the binding clefts of the CLV1 dimers. Our results also demonstrate that the receptor domain of CORYNE (CRN), a recently identified receptor-like kinase, binds tightly to the ectodomain of CLV2, and this likely leads to an increased possibility for docking with CLV1. Furthermore, our docking models reveal that two CRN-CLV2 ectodomain heterodimers are able to form a tetramer receptor complex. Peptides of CLV3, CLE14, CLE19, and CLE20 are also able to bind a potential CLV2-CRN heterodimer or heterotetramer complex. Using a cell-division reporter line, we found that synthetic 12-amino-acid CLE14 and CLE20 peptides inhibit, irreversibly, root growth by reducing cell division rates in the root apical meristem, resulting in a short-root phenotype. Intriguingly, we observed that exogenous application of cytokinin can partially rescue the short-root phenotype induced by over-expression of either CLE14 or CLE20 in planta. However, cytokinin treatment does not rescue the short-root phenotype caused by exogenous application of the synthetic CLE14/CLE20 peptides, suggesting a requirement for a condition provided only in living plants. These results therefore imply that the CLE14/CLE20 peptides may act through the CLV2-CRN receptor kinase, and that their availabilities and/or abundances may be affected by cytokinin activity in planta

Two Major Medicinal Honeys Have Different Mechanisms of Bactericidal Activity

Honey is increasingly valued for its antibacterial activity, but knowledge regarding the mechanism of action is still incomplete. We assessed the bactericidal activity and mechanism of action of Revamil® source (RS) honey and manuka honey, the sources of two major medical-grade honeys. RS honey killed Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa within 2 hours, whereas manuka honey had such rapid activity only against B. subtilis. After 24 hours of incubation, both honeys killed all tested bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, but manuka honey retained activity up to higher dilutions than RS honey. Bee defensin-1 and H2O2 were the major factors involved in rapid bactericidal activity of RS honey. These factors were absent in manuka honey, but this honey contained 44-fold higher concentrations of methylglyoxal than RS honey. Methylglyoxal was a major bactericidal factor in manuka honey, but after neutralization of this compound manuka honey retained bactericidal activity due to several unknown factors. RS and manuka honey have highly distinct compositions of bactericidal factors, resulting in large differences in bactericidal activity

Maize (Zea mays L.) Genome Diversity as Revealed by RNA-Sequencing

Maize is rich in genetic and phenotypic diversity. Understanding the sequence, structural, and expression variation that contributes to phenotypic diversity would facilitate more efficient varietal improvement. RNA based sequencing (RNA-seq) is a powerful approach for transcriptional analysis, assessing sequence variation, and identifying novel transcript sequences, particularly in large, complex, repetitive genomes such as maize. In this study, we sequenced RNA from whole seedlings of 21 maize inbred lines representing diverse North American and exotic germplasm. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection identified 351,710 polymorphic loci distributed throughout the genome covering 22,830 annotated genes. Tight clustering of two distinct heterotic groups and exotic lines was evident using these SNPs as genetic markers. Transcript abundance analysis revealed minimal variation in the total number of genes expressed across these 21 lines (57.1% to 66.0%). However, the transcribed gene set among the 21 lines varied, with 48.7% expressed in all of the lines, 27.9% expressed in one to 20 lines, and 23.4% expressed in none of the lines. De novo assembly of RNA-seq reads that did not map to the reference B73 genome sequence revealed 1,321 high confidence novel transcripts, of which, 564 loci were present in all 21 lines, including B73, and 757 loci were restricted to a subset of the lines. RT-PCR validation demonstrated 87.5% concordance with the computational prediction of these expressed novel transcripts. Intriguingly, 145 of the novel de novo assembled loci were present in lines from only one of the two heterotic groups consistent with the hypothesis that, in addition to sequence polymorphisms and transcript abundance, transcript presence/absence variation is present and, thereby, may be a mechanism contributing to the genetic basis of heterosis

Stratospheric aerosol - Observations, processes, and impact on climate

Interest in stratospheric aerosol and its role in climate have increased over the last decade due to the observed increase in stratospheric aerosol since 2000 and the potential for changes in the sulfur cycle induced by climate change. This review provides an overview about the advances in stratospheric aerosol research since the last comprehensive assessment of stratospheric aerosol was published in 2006. A crucial development since 2006 is the substantial improvement in the agreement between in situ and space-based inferences of stratospheric aerosol properties during volcanically quiescent periods. Furthermore, new measurement systems and techniques, both in situ and space based, have been developed for measuring physical aerosol properties with greater accuracy and for characterizing aerosol composition. However, these changes induce challenges to constructing a long-term stratospheric aerosol climatology. Currently, changes in stratospheric aerosol levels less than 20% cannot be confidently quantified. The volcanic signals tend to mask any nonvolcanically driven change, making them difficult to understand. While the role of carbonyl sulfide as a substantial and relatively constant source of stratospheric sulfur has been confirmed by new observations and model simulations, large uncertainties remain with respect to the contribution from anthropogenic sulfur dioxide emissions. New evidence has been provided that stratospheric aerosol can also contain small amounts of nonsulfate matter such as black carbon and organics. Chemistry-climate models have substantially increased in quantity and sophistication. In many models the implementation of stratospheric aerosol processes is coupled to radiation and/or stratospheric chemistry modules to account for relevant feedback processes

The SPARC water vapour assessment II: Profile-to-profile comparisons of stratospheric and lower mesospheric water vapour data sets obtained from satellites

This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Within the framework of the second SPARC (Stratosphere-troposphere Processes And their Role in Climate) water vapour assessment (WAVAS-II), profile-to-profile comparisons of stratospheric and lower mesospheric water vapour were performed by considering 33 data sets derived from satellite observations of 15 different instruments. These comparisons aimed to provide a picture of the typical biases and drifts in the observational database and to identify data-set-specific problems. The observational database typically exhibits the largest biases below 70 hPa, both in absolute and relative terms. The smallest biases are often found between 50 and 5 hPa. Typically, they range from 0.25 to 0.5 ppmv (5 % to 10 %) in this altitude region, based on the 50 % percentile over the different comparison results. Higher up, the biases increase with altitude overall but this general behaviour is accompanied by considerable variations. Characteristic values vary between 0.3 and 1 ppmv (4 % to 20 %). Obvious data-set-specific bias issues are found for a number of data sets. In our work we performed a drift analysis for data sets overlapping for a period of at least 36 months. This assessment shows a wide range of drifts among the different data sets that are statistically significant at the 2σ uncertainty level. In general, the smallest drifts are found in the altitude range between about 30 and 10 hPa. Histograms considering results from all altitudes indicate the largest occurrence for drifts between 0.05 and 0.3 ppmv decade-1. Comparisons of our drift estimates to those derived from comparisons of zonal mean time series only exhibit statistically significant differences in slightly more than 3 % of the comparisons. Hence, drift estimates from profile-to-profile and zonal mean time series comparisons are largely interchangeable. As for the biases, a number of data sets exhibit prominent drift issues. In our analyses we found that the large number of MIPAS data sets included in the assessment affects our general results as well as the bias summaries we provide for the individual data sets. This is because these data sets exhibit a relative similarity with respect to the remaining data sets, despite the fact that they are based on different measurement modes and different processors implementing different retrieval choices. Because of that, we have by default considered an aggregation of the comparison results obtained from MIPAS data sets. Results without this aggregation are provided on multiple occasions to characterise the effects due to the numerous MIPAS data sets. Among other effects, they cause a reduction of the typical biases in the observational database