Impact of sublethal levels of environmental pollutants found in sewage sludge on a novel Caenorhabditis elegans model biosensor

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Fish Monitoring in Kornati National Park: Baited, Remote, Underwater Video (BRUV) Versus Trammel Net Sampling

We evaluated (1) the suitability of two alternative methods for fish monitoring: trammel net sampling and BRUV (Baited Remote Underwater Video), and (2) the potential to cross-calibrate the methods based on a set of shared species with high catch probabilities. A statistical power analysis concluded that BRUV can be conducted with sufficient sample size to perceive small changes in fish populations with high power, and therefore can be used as a sentinel monitoring method. We found that fish species detected by both methods amounted to almost a third of the number of species in each method’s catch, and that 90% of these species are candidates for cross-calibration. 74% of the species at BRUV and 50% at trammel had occurrence probabilities above 10%, a reasonable threshold allowing stock assessment of these species. The sampled and predicted total species richness, extrapolated from the species accumulation curves, were almost identical across methods. We conclude that cross-calibrating the two methods and eventual replacement of the trammel method with non-destructive BRUV is feasible. The most effective areas of improvement are increased BRUV night-sampling effort and increased total sampling size to increase the statistical power of BRUV as a monitoring tool. This work has been supported under the Croatian Science Foundation under the project COREBIO (3107)

Hand gesture performance is impaired in major depressive disorder: A matter of working memory performance?

OBJECTIVE Individuals with depression exhibit numerous interpersonal deficits. As effective use of gestures is critical for social communication, it is possible that depressed individuals' interpersonal deficits may be due to deficits in gesture performance. The present study thus compared gesture performance of depressed patients and controls and examined whether these deficits relate to cognitive and other domains of dysfunction. METHODS Gesture performance was evaluated in 30 depressed patients and 30 controls using the Test of Upper Limb Apraxia (TULIA). Clinical rating scales were assessed to determine if gesture deficits were associated with motor, cognitive or functional outcomes. RESULTS Compared to controls, depressed patients exhibited impaired gesture performance with 2/3 of the patients demonstrating gesture deficits. Within depressed patients, gesture performance was highly correlated with working memory abilities. In contrast, no association between gesture performance and gestural knowledge, psychomotor retardation, depression severity, or frontal dysfunction was observed in patients. LIMITATIONS This is a cross-sectional study and a larger size would have allowed for confident detection of more subtle, but potentially relevant effects. CONCLUSION Gesture performance is impaired in depressed patients, and appears to be related to poor working memory abilities, suggesting a disruption in the retrieval of gestural cues indicative of a distinct clinical phenomenon that might be related to social functioning

BRCA2 and RAD51 promote double-strand break formation and cell death in response to Gemcitabine

Replication inhibitors cause replication fork stalling and double-strand breaks (DSBs) that result from processing of stalled forks. During recovery from replication blocks, the homologous recombination (HR) factor RAD51 mediates fork restart and DSB repair. HR defects therefore sensitise cells to replication inhibitors, with clear implications for cancer therapy. Gemcitabine is a potent replication inhibitor used to treat cancers with mutations in HR genes such as BRCA2. Here we investigate why, paradoxically, mutations in HR genes protect cells from killing by Gemcitabine. Using DNA replication and -damage assays in mammalian cells, we show that even short Gemcitabine treatments cause persistent replication inhibition. BRCA2 and RAD51 are recruited to chromatin early after removal of the drug, actively inhibit replication fork progression and promote the formation of MUS81- and XPF-dependent DSBs that remain unrepaired. Our data suggest that HR intermediates formed at Gemcitabine-stalled forks are converted into DSBs and thus contribute to Gemcitabine-induced cell death, which could have implications for the treatment response of HR-deficient tumours

Plastid DNA sequences and oospore characters of some European taxa of Tolypella section Tolypella (Characeae) identify five clusters, including one new cryptic Tolypella taxon from Sardinia, but they do not coincide with current morphological descriptions

In Europe, the genus Tolypella (Characeae) comprises four to eight Tolypella taxa in sections Rothia and Tolypella that have been distinguished by vegetative morphology and gametangial characters such as antheridial size and oospore wall ornamentation. However, morphological differentiation is difficult in some cases due to overlapping and variable vegetative features, which in many cases are difficult to observe clearly. To clarify the taxonomic status of the five European taxa of Tolypella in section Tolypella, sequence data of the plastid genes atpB, rbcL and psbC for Tolypella glomerata (Desv.) Leonh., Tolypella hispanica Allen, Tolypella nidifica (O.F. Müll.) A. Braun, Tolypella normaniana (Nordst.) Nordst. and Tolypella salina Cor. were combined with data on oospore morphology, including oospore wall ornamentation. Gene sequence data identified five distinct clusters, but they were not consistent with the morphologically identified five taxa. T. glomerata consisted of some of the samples morphologically identified as T. glomerata and seven samples of T. normaniana, while the remaining T. glomerata samples clustered with specimens of unclear affiliation (Tolypella sp.). We identified two clusters of T. hispanica within the European material: cluster T. hispanica I consisted of samples from various locations, whereas the second cluster (T. hispanica II) consisted of samples of T. hispanica from Sardinia Island. The remaining cluster consisted of all the specimens that had been determined as T. salina or T. nidifica in addition to two specimens of T. normaniana. Oospore morphology was most clearly distinguishable for T. glomerata. Oospore characteristics for all other taxa were not as informative but showed some geographical and/or environmentally influenced differences, especially for T. nidifica and T. salina. Our results suggest the need to further check the different taxonomy of Tolypella sect. Tolypella in which specimens normally identified as T. glomerata might be two different taxa, T. glomerata and an unidentified taxon; T. nidifica and T. salina are not separate taxa; T. normaniana is a diminutive variant of two different Tolypella taxa; and T. hispanica comprises two different taxa, one from the Mediterranean island Sardinia.publishedVersio