Proinflammatory Phenotype and Increased Caveolin-1 in Alveolar Macrophages with Silenced CFTR mRNA

The inflammatory milieu in the respiratory tract in cystic fibrosis (CF) has been linked to the defective expression of the cystic transmembrane regulator (CFTR) in epithelial cells. Alveolar macrophages (AM), important contibutors to inflammatory responses in the lung, also express CFTR. The present study analyzes the phenotype of human AM with silenced CFTR. Expression of CFTR mRNA and the immature form of the CFTR protein decreased 100-fold and 5.2-fold, respectively, in AM transfected with a CFTR specific siRNA (CFTR-siRNA) compared to controls. Reduction of CFTR expression in AM resulted in increased secretion of IL-8, increased phosphorylation of NF-κB, a positive regulator of IL-8 expression, and decreased expression of IκB-α, the inhibitory protein of NF-κB activation. AM with silenced CFTR expression also showed increased apoptosis. We hypothesized that caveolin-1 (Cav1), a membrane protein that is co-localized with CFTR in lipid rafts and that is related to inflammation and apoptosis in macrophages, may be affected by decreased CFTR expression. Messenger RNA and protein levels of Cav1 were increased in AM with silenced CFTR. Expression and transcriptional activity of sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP), a negative transcriptional regulator of Cav1, was decreased in AM with silenced CFTR, but total and free cholesterol mass did not change. These findings indicate that silencing of CFTR in human AM results in an inflammatory phenotype and apoptosis, which is associated to SREBP-mediated regulation of Cav1

Genetic integrity of European wildcats: Variation across biomes mandates geographically tailored conservation strategies

Hybridisation between domestic and wild taxa can pose severe threats to wildlife conservation, and human-induced hybridisation, often linked to species' introductions and habitat degradation, may promote reproductive opportunities between species for which natural interbreeding would be highly unlikely. Using a biome-specific approach, we examine the effects of a suite of ecological drivers on the European wildcat's genetic integrity, while assessing the role played by protected areas in this process. We used genotype data from 1217 putative European wildcat samples from 13 European countries to assess the effects of landcover, disturbance and legal landscape protection on the European wildcat's genetic integrity across European biomes, through generalised linear models within a Bayesian framework. Overall, we found European wildcats to have genetic integrity levels above the wildcat-hybrid threshold (ca. 83%; threshold = 80%). However, Mediterranean and Temperate Insular biomes (i.e., Scotland) revealed lower levels, with 74% and 46% expected genetic integrity, respectively. We found that different drivers shape the level of genetic introgression across biomes, although forest integrity seems to be a common factor promoting European wildcat genetic integrity. Wildcat genetic integrity remains high, regardless of landscape legal protection, in biomes where populations appear to be healthy and show recent local range expansions. However, in biomes more susceptible to hybridisation, even protected areas show limited effectiveness in mitigating this threat. In the face of the detected patterns, we recommend that species conservation and management plans should be biome- and landscape-context-specific to ensure effective wildcat conservation, especially in the Mediterranean and Temperate Insular biomes.Thanks are due to FCT/MCTES for the financial support to cE3c (UIDB/00329/2020), through national funds, and the co-funding by the FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement and Compete 2020. PM was supported by UID/BIA/50027/2021 with funding from FCT/MCTES through national funds. FDR was supported by a postdoctoral contract from the University of Málaga (I Plan Propio de Investigación y Transferencia, call 2020). This study was partly funded by research projects CGL2009-10741, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and EU-FEDER, and OAPN 352/2011, funded by the Organismo Autónomo Parques Nacionales (Spain). Luxembourg sample collection has been co-funded by the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development of Luxembourg. We would like to thank the Bavarian Forest National Park Administration for the approval and support in collecting samples.Peer reviewe

Multi-decadal improvements in the ecological quality of European rivers are not consistently reflected in biodiversity metrics

Humans impact terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems, yet many broad-scale studies have found no systematic, negative biodiversity changes (for example, decreasing abundance or taxon richness). Here we show that mixed biodiversity responses may arise because community metrics show variable responses to anthropogenic impacts across broad spatial scales. We first quantified temporal trends in anthropogenic impacts for 1,365 riverine invertebrate communities from 23 European countries, based on similarity to least-impacted reference communities. Reference comparisons provide necessary, but often missing, baselines for evaluating whether communities are negatively impacted or have improved (less or more similar, respectively). We then determined whether changing impacts were consistently reflected in metrics of community abundance, taxon richness, evenness and composition. Invertebrate communities improved, that is, became more similar to reference conditions, from 1992 until the 2010s, after which improvements plateaued. Improvements were generally reflected by higher taxon richness, providing evidence that certain community metrics can broadly indicate anthropogenic impacts. However, richness responses were highly variable among sites, and we found no consistent responses in community abundance, evenness or composition. These findings suggest that, without sufficient data and careful metric selection, many common community metrics cannot reliably reflect anthropogenic impacts, helping explain the prevalence of mixed biodiversity trends.We thank J. England for assistance with calculating ecological quality and the biomonitoring indices in the UK. Funding for authors, data collection and processing was provided by the European Union Horizon 2020 project eLTER PLUS (grant number 871128). F.A. was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant numbers 310030_197410 and 31003A_173074) and the University of Zurich Research Priority Program Global Change and Biodiversity. J.B. and M.A.-C. were funded by the European Commission, under the L‘Instrument Financier pour l’Environnement (LIFE) Nature and Biodiversity program, as part of the project LIFE-DIVAQUA (LIFE18 NAT/ES/000121) and also by the project ‘WATERLANDS’ (PID2019-107085RB-I00) funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIN) and Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI; MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) ‘A way of making Europe’. N.J.B. and V.P. were supported by the Lithuanian Environmental Protection Agency (https://aaa.lrv.lt/) who collected the data and were funded by the Lithuanian Research Council (project number S-PD-22-72). J.H. was supported by the Academy of Finland (grant number 331957). S.C.J. acknowledges funding by the Leibniz Competition project Freshwater Megafauna Futures and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung or BMBF; 033W034A). A.L. acknowledges funding by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-115830GB-100). P.P., M.P. and M.S. were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GA23-05268S and P505-20-17305S) and thank the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and the state enterprises Povodí for the data used to calculate ecological quality metrics from the Czech surface water monitoring program. H.T. was supported by the Estonian Research Council (number PRG1266) and by the Estonian national program ‘Humanitarian and natural science collections’. M.J.F. acknowledges the support of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, through the projects UIDB/04292/2020 and UIDP/04292/2020 granted to the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, LA/P/0069/2020 granted to the Associate Laboratory Aquatic Research Network (ARNET), and a Call Estímulo ao Emprego Científico (CEEC) contract.Peer reviewe

Time series of freshwater macroinvertebrate abundances and site characteristics of European streams and rivers

Freshwater macroinvertebrates are a diverse group and play key ecological roles, including accelerating nutrient cycling, filtering water, controlling primary producers, and providing food for predators. Their differences in tolerances and short generation times manifest in rapid community responses to change. Macroinvertebrate community composition is an indicator of water quality. In Europe, efforts to improve water quality following environmental legislation, primarily starting in the 1980s, may have driven a recovery of macroinvertebrate communities. Towards understanding temporal and spatial variation of these organisms, we compiled the TREAM dataset (Time seRies of European freshwAter Macroinvertebrates), consisting of macroinvertebrate community time series from 1,816 river and stream sites (mean length of 19.2 years and 14.9 sampling years) of 22 European countries sampled between 1968 and 2020. In total, the data include >93 million sampled individuals of 2,648 taxa from 959 genera and 212 families. These data can be used to test questions ranging from identifying drivers of the population dynamics of specific taxa to assessing the success of legislative and management restoration efforts.Nathalie Kaffenberger aided in initial data compilation. Funding for authors, data collection and processing was provided by the EU Horizon 2020 project eLTER PLUS (grant agreement no. 871128), German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; 033W034A), German Research Foundation (DFG FZT 118, 202548816), the Collaborative Research Centre 1439 RESIST (DFG—SFB 1439/1 2021 –426547801), Czech Republic project no. GA23-05268S, the Leibniz Competition (J45/2018, P74/2018), the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad - Agencia Estatal de Investigación and the European Regional Development Fund (MECODISPER project CTM 2017-89295-P), Ramón y Cajal contracts and the project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC2019-027446-I, RYC2020-029829-I, PID2020-115830GB-100), the Danish Environment Agency, the Norwegian Environment Agency, SOMINCOR – Lundin mining & FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant PP00P3_179089), the EU LIFE programme (DIVAQUA project - LIFE18 NAT/ES/000121), and the UK Natural Environment Research Council (GLiTRS project -NE/V006886/1 and NE/R016429/1 as part of the UK-SCAPE programme), the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (Italy), Estonian Research Council (grant No PRG1266), Estonian national program ‘Humanitarian and natural science collections’. The Environment Agency of England, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and Natural Resources Wales provided publicly available data. The collection of data from the Rhône River in France was greatly aided by Marie-Claude Roger (INRAE Lyon), Jean-Claude Berger (INRAE AIX), and Pâquerette Dessaix (ARALEP). We are also grateful to the French Regional Environment Directorates (DREALs) for their collaboration in harmonising the long-term data series from the other French rivers. We thank the AWEL from the Canton of Zurich for providing access to macroinvertebrate data from the AWEL monitoring scheme. We acknowledge the Flanders Environment Agency, the Rhineland-Palatinate State Office for the Environment and the Bulgarian Executive Environment Agency for providing data. This manuscript is a contribution of the Alliance for Freshwater Life (www.allianceforfreshwaterlife.org). Any views expressed within this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of their respective employer organisations.Peer reviewe

The recovery of European freshwater biodiversity has come to a halt

Owing to a long history of anthropogenic pressures, freshwater ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss1. Mitigation measures, including wastewater treatment and hydromorphological restoration, have aimed to improve environmental quality and foster the recovery of freshwater biodiversity2. Here, using 1,816 time series of freshwater invertebrate communities collected across 22 European countries between 1968 and 2020, we quantified temporal trends in taxonomic and functional diversity and their responses to environmental pressures and gradients. We observed overall increases in taxon richness (0.73% per year), functional richness (2.4% per year) and abundance (1.17% per year). However, these increases primarily occurred before the 2010s, and have since plateaued. Freshwater communities downstream of dams, urban areas and cropland were less likely to experience recovery. Communities at sites with faster rates of warming had fewer gains in taxon richness, functional richness and abundance. Although biodiversity gains in the 1990s and 2000s probably reflect the effectiveness of water-quality improvements and restoration projects, the decelerating trajectory in the 2010s suggests that the current measures offer diminishing returns. Given new and persistent pressures on freshwater ecosystems, including emerging pollutants, climate change and the spread of invasive species, we call for additional mitigation to revive the recovery of freshwater biodiversity.N. Kaffenberger helped with initial data compilation. Funding for authors and data collection and processing was provided by the EU Horizon 2020 project eLTER PLUS (grant agreement no. 871128); the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; 033W034A); the German Research Foundation (DFG FZT 118, 202548816); Czech Republic project no. P505-20-17305S; the Leibniz Competition (J45/2018, P74/2018); the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad—Agencia Estatal de Investigación and the European Regional Development Fund (MECODISPER project CTM 2017-89295-P); Ramón y Cajal contracts and the project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC2019-027446-I, RYC2020-029829-I, PID2020-115830GB-100); the Danish Environment Agency; the Norwegian Environment Agency; SOMINCOR—Lundin mining & FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal; the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant PP00P3_179089); the EU LIFE programme (DIVAQUA project, LIFE18 NAT/ES/000121); the UK Natural Environment Research Council (GLiTRS project NE/V006886/1 and NE/R016429/1 as part of the UK-SCAPE programme); the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (Italy); and the Estonian Research Council (grant no. PRG1266), Estonian National Program ‘Humanitarian and natural science collections’. The Environment Agency of England, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and Natural Resources Wales provided publicly available data. We acknowledge the members of the Flanders Environment Agency for providing data. This article is a contribution of the Alliance for Freshwater Life (www.allianceforfreshwaterlife.org).Peer reviewe

Etude des effets de la taille hivernale sur la croissance des parties aériennes sur le pêcher

* INRA, Unité d'Ecophysiologie et Horticulture, Domaine St Paul, Site Agroparc, 84914 Avignon cedex 9 Diffusion du document : INRA, Unité d'Ecophysiologie et Horticulture, Domaine St Paul, Site Agroparc, 84914 Avignon cedex

Does the working environment influence health care professionals' values, meaning in life and religiousness? Palliative care units compared with maternity wards.

CONTEXT: Increased altruism, self-transcendence, and quests for meaning in life (MiL) have been found in palliative care (PC) patients and their families who experience the finiteness of life. Similar changes were observed in healthy subjects who were experimentally confronted with their mortality. OBJECTIVES: The study investigated how daily experiences of the transitoriness of life influence PC health care professionals' (HCPs) values, MiL, and religiousness. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study, the Schwartz Value Survey, the Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation, and the Idler Index of Religiosity were used to investigate personal values, MiL, and private religiousness. HCPs working in PC (confronted with death) were compared with a control group of HCPs working at maternity wards (MWs) using multivariate models. Differences were considered to be statistically significant at P < 0.05. RESULTS: Seventy PC- and 70 MW-HCPs took part in the study (response rate 74.0%). No differences between the groups were found in overall MiL satisfaction scores. PC-HCPs were significantly more religious than MW-HCPs; they listed spirituality and nature experience more often as areas in which they experience MiL. Furthermore, hedonism was more important for PC-HCPs, and they had higher scores in openness-to-change values (stimulation and self-direction). MW-HCPs were more likely to list family as a MiL area. They assigned more importance to health and scored higher in conservation values (conformity and security). Duration of professional experience did not influence these results. CONCLUSION: Basic differences in values, MiL, and religiousness between PC-HCPs and MW-HCPs might have influenced the choice of working environment because no effect of job duration was observed. Longitudinal research is needed to confirm this hypothesis