Trophy hunting certification

Adaptive certification is the best remaining option for the trophy hunting industry in Africa to demonstrate sustainable and ethical hunting practices that benefit local communities and wildlife conservation

Increased entropy of signal transduction in the cancer metastasis phenotype

Studies into the statistical properties of biological networks have led to important biological insights, such as the presence of hubs and hierarchical modularity. There is also a growing interest in studying the statistical properties of networks in the context of cancer genomics. However, relatively little is known as to what network features differ between the cancer and normal cell physiologies, or between different cancer cell phenotypes. Based on the observation that frequent genomic alterations underlie a more aggressive cancer phenotype, we asked if such an effect could be detectable as an increase in the randomness of local gene expression patterns. Using a breast cancer gene expression data set and a model network of protein interactions we derive constrained weighted networks defined by a stochastic information flux matrix reflecting expression correlations between interacting proteins. Based on this stochastic matrix we propose and compute an entropy measure that quantifies the degree of randomness in the local pattern of information flux around single genes. By comparing the local entropies in the non-metastatic versus metastatic breast cancer networks, we here show that breast cancers that metastasize are characterised by a small yet significant increase in the degree of randomness of local expression patterns. We validate this result in three additional breast cancer expression data sets and demonstrate that local entropy better characterises the metastatic phenotype than other non-entropy based measures. We show that increases in entropy can be used to identify genes and signalling pathways implicated in breast cancer metastasis. Further exploration of such integrated cancer expression and protein interaction networks will therefore be a fruitful endeavour.Comment: 5 figures, 2 Supplementary Figures and Table

Safeguarding pollinators and their values to human well-being

Wild and managed pollinators provide a wide range of benefits to society in terms of contributions to food security, farmer and beekeeper livelihoods, social and cultural values, as well as the maintenance of wider biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Pollinators face numerous threats, including changes in land-use and management intensity, climate change, pesticides and genetically modified crops, pollinator management and pathogens, and invasive alien species. There are well-documented declines in some wild and managed pollinators in several regions of the world. However, many effective policy and management responses can be implemented to safeguard pollinators and sustain pollination services

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

Meeting abstrac

Defects in tRNA Modification Associated with Neurological and Developmental Dysfunctions in Caenorhabditis elegans Elongator Mutants

Elongator is a six subunit protein complex, conserved from yeast to humans. Mutations in the human Elongator homologue, hELP1, are associated with the neurological disease familial dysautonomia. However, how Elongator functions in metazoans, and how the human mutations affect neural functions is incompletely understood. Here we show that in Caenorhabditis elegans, ELPC-1 and ELPC-3, components of the Elongator complex, are required for the formation of the 5-carbamoylmethyl and 5-methylcarboxymethyl side chains of wobble uridines in tRNA. The lack of these modifications leads to defects in translation in C. elegans. ELPC-1::GFP and ELPC-3::GFP reporters are strongly expressed in a subset of chemosensory neurons required for salt chemotaxis learning. elpc-1 or elpc-3 gene inactivation causes a defect in this process, associated with a posttranscriptional reduction of neuropeptide and a decreased accumulation of acetylcholine in the synaptic cleft. elpc-1 and elpc-3 mutations are synthetic lethal together with those in tuc-1, which is required for thiolation of tRNAs having the 5′methylcarboxymethyl side chain. elpc-1; tuc-1 and elpc-3; tuc-1 double mutants display developmental defects. Our results suggest that, by its effect on tRNA modification, Elongator promotes both neural function and development

Loss of the yeast SR protein Npl3 alters gene expression due to transcription readthrough

Yeast Npl3 is a highly abundant, nuclear-cytoplasmic shuttling, RNA-binding protein, related to metazoan SR proteins. Reported functions of Npl3 include transcription elongation, splicing and RNA 3' end processing. We used UV crosslinking and analysis of cDNA (CRAC) to map precise RNA binding sites, and strand-specific tiling arrays to look at the effects of loss of Npl3 on all transcripts across the genome. We found that Npl3 binds diverse RNA species, both coding and non-coding, at sites indicative of roles in both early pre-mRNA processing and 3' end formation. Tiling arrays and RNAPII mapping data revealed 3' extended RNAPII-transcribed RNAs in the absence of Npl3, suggesting that defects in pre-mRNA packaging events result in termination readthrough. Transcription readthrough was widespread and frequently resulted in down-regulation of neighboring genes. We conclude that the absence of Npl3 results in widespread 3' extension of transcripts with pervasive effects on gene expression

Large-scale profiling of noncoding RNA function in yeast

Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) are emerging as key regulators of cellular function. We have exploited the recently developed barcoded ncRNA gene deletion strain collections in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to investigate the numerous ncRNAs in yeast with no known function. The ncRNA deletion collection contains deletions of tRNAs, snoRNAs, snRNAs, stable unannotated transcripts (SUTs), cryptic unstable transcripts (CUTs) and other annotated ncRNAs encompassing 532 different individual ncRNA deletions. We have profiled the fitness of the diploid heterozygous ncRNA deletion strain collection in six conditions using batch and continuous liquid culture, as well as the haploid ncRNA deletion strain collections arrayed individually onto solid rich media. These analyses revealed many novel environmental-specific haplo-insufficient and haplo-proficient phenotypes providing key information on the importance of each specific ncRNA in every condition. Co-fitness analysis using fitness data from the heterozygous ncRNA deletion strain collection identified two ncRNA groups required for growth during heat stress and nutrient deprivation. The extensive fitness data for each ncRNA deletion strain has been compiled into an easy to navigate database called Yeast ncRNA Analysis (YNCA). By expanding the original ncRNA deletion strain collection we identified four novel essential ncRNAs; SUT527, SUT075, SUT367 and SUT259/691. We defined the effects of each new essential ncRNA on adjacent gene expression in the heterozygote background identifying both repression and induction of nearby genes. Additionally, we discovered a function for SUT527 in the expression, 3’ end formation and localization of SEC4, an essential protein coding mRNA. Finally, using plasmid complementation we rescued the SUT075 lethal phenotype revealing that this ncRNA acts in trans. Overall, our findings provide important new insights into the function of ncRNAs

Agricultural landscapes as habitat for birds in central Chile

Background: Understanding the role of agroecosystems as habitat for wildlife is crucial for long-term conservation planning, as different crop stratification and landscape elements can influence bird communities, which are also affected by seasonality. The goal of our study was to determine how agricultural landscapes varying in land cover characteristics affect bird richness and abundance. Bird surveys were conducted at 110 locations within agricultural landscapes in central Chile. The surveyed areas were characterized by land cover at two scales (50 and 500 m radii) through direct observation and photo-interpretation, during winter and spring seasons. Generalized Linear Mixed Models were used to evaluate the effects of different agricultural land covers on bird species and communities. Results: Our results show that birds were more abundant during winter, in particular for insectivorous and granivorous birds, and that bird species richness was significantly increased due to cover provided by hedgerows at the plot scale. Conclusions: We found that abundance of some bird species in agroecosystems in central Chile was higher in winter than in spring, and that overall bird richness was favored by structural diversity including non-crop structures such as hedgerows, which thus may be relevant for improving bird conservation management in temperate agroecosystems. Our results suggest that native vegetation proximity and area may affect seasonal changes in bird communities at larger scales, relationships which warrant further study.Chilean Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) 2209010