Why Are Male Social Relationships Complex in the Doubtful Sound Bottlenose Dolphin Population?

Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Preparing the Perfect Cuttlefish Meal: Complex Prey Handling by Dolphins

Dolphins are well known for their complex social and foraging behaviours. Direct underwater observations of wild dolphin feeding behaviour however are rare. At mass spawning aggregations of giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama) in the Upper Spencer Gulf in South Australia, a wild female Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) was observed and recorded repeatedly catching, killing and preparing cuttlefish for consumption using a specific and ordered sequence of behaviours. Cuttlefish were herded to a sand substrate, pinned to the seafloor, killed by downward thrust, raised mid-water and beaten by the dolphin with its snout until the ink was released and drained. The deceased cuttlefish was then returned to the seafloor, inverted and forced along the sand substrate in order to strip the thin dorsal layer of skin off the mantle, thus releasing the buoyant calcareous cuttlebone. This stepped behavioural sequence significantly improves prey quality through 1) removal of the ink (with constituent melanin and tyrosine), and 2) the calcareous cuttlebone. Observations of foraging dolphin pods from above-water at this site (including the surfacing of intact clean cuttlebones) suggest that some or all of this prey handling sequence may be used widely by dolphins in the region. Aspects of the unique mass spawning aggregations of giant cuttlefish in this region of South Australia may have contributed to the evolution of this behaviour through both high abundances of spawning and weakened post-spawning cuttlefish in a small area (>10,000 animals on several kilometres of narrow rocky reef), as well as potential long-term and regular visitation by dolphin pods to this site

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in the PRDX3 and RPS19 and Risk of HPV Persistence and Cervical Precancer/Cancer

Host genetic factors might affect the risk of progression from infection with carcinogenic human papillomavirus (HPV), the etiologic agent for cervical cancer, to persistent HPV infection, and hence to cervical precancer and cancer.We assessed 18,310 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 1113 genes in 416 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 3 (CIN3)/cancer cases, 356 women with persistent carcinogenic HPV infection (median persistence of 25 months) and 425 randomly selected women (non-cases and non-HPV persistent) from the 10,049 women from the Guanacaste, Costa Rica HPV natural history cohort. For gene and SNP associations, we computed age-adjusted odds ratio and p-trend. Three comparisons were made: 1) association with CIN3/cancer (compared CIN3/cancer cases to random controls), 2) association with persistence (compared HPV persistence to random controls), and 3) progression (compared CIN3/cancers with HPV-persistent group). Regions statistically significantly associated with CIN3/cancer included genes for peroxiredoxin 3 PRDX3, and ribosomal protein S19 RPS19. The single most significant SNPs from each gene associated with CIN3/cancer were PRDX3 rs7082598 (P(trend)<0.0001), and RPS19 rs2305809 (P(trend)=0.0007), respectively. Both SNPs were also associated with progression.These data suggest involvement of two genes, RSP19 and PRDX3, or other SNPs in linkage disequilibrium, with cervical cancer risk. Further investigation showed that they may be involved in both the persistence and progression transition stages. Our results require replication but, if true, suggest a role for ribosomal dysfunction, mitochondrial processes, and/or oxidative stress, or other unknown function of these genes in cervical carcinogenesis

Diamond Blackfan anemia: a model for the translational approach to understanding human disease

Diamond Blackfan anemia (DBA) is an inherited bone marrow failure syndrome. As with the other rare inherited bone marrow failure syndromes, the study of these disorders provides important insights into basic biology and, in the case of DBA, ribosome biology; the disruption of which characterizes the disorder. Thus DBA serves as a paradigm for translational medicine in which the efforts of clinicians to manage DBA have informed laboratory scientists who, in turn, have stimulated clinical researchers to utilize scientific discovery to provide improved care. In this review we describe the clinical syndrome Diamond Blackfan anemia and, in particular, we demonstrate how the study of DBA has allowed scientific inquiry to create opportunities for progress in its understanding and treatment