Inheritance of Resistance to Six Races of Bunt, to Awns and Kernel Color in a Wheat Cross

Wheat is the most important cereal crop of the world, and one of the most serious diseases affecting it over much of its range is covered smut or bunt (57). The word bunt , according to Heald (48), is a contraction of an old English term, burnt ear , which fittingly describes the ravages of covered smut

Metabolic regulation of pluripotency and germ cell fate through α-ketoglutarate.

An intricate link is becoming apparent between metabolism and cellular identities. Here, we explore the basis for such a link in an in vitro model for early mouse embryonic development: from naïve pluripotency to the specification of primordial germ cells (PGCs). Using single-cell RNA-seq with statistical modelling and modulation of energy metabolism, we demonstrate a functional role for oxidative mitochondrial metabolism in naïve pluripotency. We link mitochondrial tricarboxylic acid cycle activity to IDH2-mediated production of alpha-ketoglutarate and through it, the activity of key epigenetic regulators. Accordingly, this metabolite has a role in the maintenance of naïve pluripotency as well as in PGC differentiation, likely through preserving a particular histone methylation status underlying the transient state of developmental competence for the PGC fate. We reveal a link between energy metabolism and epigenetic control of cell state transitions during a developmental trajectory towards germ cell specification, and establish a paradigm for stabilizing fleeting cellular states through metabolic modulation.J.T. was supported by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Wellcome Trust, and the Swiss National Fund for Science, W.H.G. by EMBO and the Wellcome Trust, J.R. and L.W. by the UK Medical Research Council, and E.A. by the Wellcome Trust. M.A.S. is a Wellcome Senior Investigator. Work at the Gurdon Institute is supported by a core grant from the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK

Reducing Amyloid Plaque Burden via Ex Vivo Gene Delivery of an Aβ-Degrading Protease: A Novel Therapeutic Approach to Alzheimer Disease

Matthew Hemming and colleagues describe the ex vivo gene delivery of an Aβ-degrading protease that reduces amyloid plaque burden in transgenic mice expressing human amyloid precursor protein

Does a Plane Imitate a Bird? Does Computer Vision Have to Follow Biological Paradigms?

We posit a new paradigm for image information processing. For the last 25 years, this task was usually approached in the frame of Triesman's twostage paradigm [1]. The latter supposes an unsupervised, bottom-up directed process of preliminary information pieces gathering at the lower processing stages and a supervised, top-down directed process of information pieces binding and grouping at the higher stages. It is acknowledged that these subprocesses interact and intervene between them in a tricky and a complicated manner. Notwithstanding the prevalence of this paradigm in biological and computer vision, we nevertheless propose to replace it with a new one, which we would like to designate as a two-part paradigm. In it, information contained in an image is initially extracted in an independent top-down manner by one part of the system, and then it is examined and interpreted by another, separate system part. We argue that the new paradigm seems to be more plausible than its forerunner. We provide evidence from human attention vision studies and insights of Kolmogorov's complexity theory to support these arguments. We also provide some reasons in favor of separate image interpretation issues

Using Realistic Virtual Environments in the Study of Spatial Encoding

Computer generated virtual environments have reached a level of sophistication and ease of production that they are readily available for use in the average psychology laboratory. The potential benefits include cue control, incorporation of interactivity and novelty of environments used. The draw-backs include limitations in realism and lack of fidelity. In this chapter we describe our use of virtual environments to study how 3D space is encoded in humans with special emphasis on realism and interactivity. We describe the computational methods used to implement this realism and give examples from studies concerning spatial memory for object form, spatial layout and scene recognition