Inducción floral mediante aplicación de GA4/7 y fertilización mineral en el huerto semillero de Pinus radiata D. Don de Sergude (Galicia)

Application of gibberellins GA4/7 was an efficient method of promoting female strobilus production in a three year old clonal radiata pine seed orchard in northern Spain. Four clones were selected including one poor flowering clone, one intermediate flowering clone and two good flowering clones, according to this annual flower account (2000). The gibberellins were applied in July and in August (2000) by stem injection of an ethanolic solution of GA4/7. There were no differences in the effectiveness of application on the different dates. Gibberellins produced an increase in the mean number of female cones, that was more effective in poor flowering clones, and a significant decrease in the percentage of empty seeds in poor and intermediate flowering clones in the next harvests. The seed orchard was divided into three zones according to the slope, and was fertilized with NPK 15-5-20 at one of three times (May, June or July 2000) for promoting male flowering in the seed orchard. Regardless of time of application, fertilization resulted in a 3-fold increase in the mean number of male cones produced, without female production effect.La aplicación de giberelinas GA4/7 resultó ser un método eficaz para regular la floración femenina en un huerto semillero clonal de tres años de edad de Pinus radiata en el norte de España. Se seleccionaron cuatro clones: uno de baja, uno de media y dos de alta floración, según el conteo floral realizado en el año en curso (2000). Las giberelinas se aplicaron en Julio y Agosto de 2000 mediante inyección en el tronco de una solución de GA4/7 disuelta en etanol. No se observaron diferencias en la efectividad de la aplicación en las dos fechas. Se obtuvo un incremento en el número medio de estróbilos femeninos, mayor en el clon de baja floración, y se produjo una significativa disminución en el porcentaje de semillas vanas de la siguiente cosecha en los clones de floración baja e intermedia. Se dividió la superficie del huerto en tres bloques de acuerdo con la pendiente del mismo y se fertilizó con NPK 15-5-20 en tres fechas (mayo, junio y julio de 2000) para incrementar la floración masculina del huerto semillero. La aplicación del fertilizante, independientemente de la fecha de aplicación, triplicó el número medio de estróbilos masculinos, sin tener efecto alguno sobre los femeninos

Stability in and Correlation between Factors Influencing Genetic Quality of Seed Lots in Seed Orchard of Pinus tabuliformis Carr. over a 12-Year Span

Coniferous seed orchards require a long period from initial seed harvest to stable seed production. Differential reproductive success and asynchrony are among the main factors for orchard crops year-to-year variation in terms of parental gametic contribution and ultimately the genetic gain. It is fundamental in both making predictions about the genetic composition of the seed crop and decisions about orchard roguing and improved seed orchard establishment. In this paper, a primary Chinese pine seed orchard with 49 clones is investigated for stability, variation and correlation analysis of factors which influence genetic quality of the seed lots from initial seed harvest to the stable seed production over a 12 years span. Results indicated that the reproductive synchrony index of pollen shedding has shown to be higher than that of the strobili receptivity, and both can be drastically influenced by the ambient climate factors. Reproductive synchrony index of the clones has certain relative stability and it could be used as an indication of the seed orchard status during maturity stage; clones in the studied orchard have shown extreme differences in terms of the gametic and genetic contribution to the seed crop at the orchard's early production phase specifically when they severe as either female or male parents. Those differences are closely related to clonal sex tendency at the time of orchard's initial reproduction. Clonal gamete contribution as male and female parent often has a negative correlation. Clone utilization as pollen, seed or both pollen and seed donors should consider the role it would play in the seed crop; due to numerous factors influencing on the mating system in seed orchards, clonal genetic contribution as male parent is uncertain, and it has major influence on the genetic composition in the seed orchard during the initial reproductive and seed production phase

Association of creatine kinase and skin toxicity in phase I trials of anticancer agents.

BACKGROUND: We investigated the association between skin rash and plasma creatine kinase (CK) levels in oncology phase I trials. METHODS: We analysed data from 295 patients treated at our institution within 25 phase I trials which included CK measurements in the protocol. Trials involved drugs targeting EGFR/HER2, m-TOR, VEGFR, SRC/ABL, aurora kinase, BRAF/MEK, PARP, CDK, A5B1 integrin, as well as oncolytic viruses and vascular disrupting agents. RESULTS: Creatine kinase measurements were available for 278 patients. The highest levels of plasma CK during the trial were seen among patients with Grade (G) 2/3 rash (median 249 U l(-1)) compared with G1 (median 81 U l(-1)) and no rash (median 55 U l(-1)) (P<0.001). There was a significant reduction in CK after the rash resolved (mean 264.2 vs 100.1; P=0.012) in 25 patients, where serial CK values were available. In vitro exposure of human keratinocytes to EGFR, MEK and a PI3Kinase/m-TOR inhibitor led to the increased expression of CK-brain and not CK-muscle or mitochondrial-CK. CONCLUSION: Plasma CK elevation is associated with development of skin rash caused by novel anticancer agents. This should be studied further to characterise different isoforms as this will change the way we report adverse events in oncology phase I clinical trials

DynaStI: A Dynamic Retention Time Database for Steroidomics.

: Steroidomics studies face the challenge of separating analytical compounds with very similar structures (i.e., isomers). Liquid chromatography (LC) is commonly used to this end, but the shared core structure of this family of compounds compromises effective separations among the numerous chemical analytes with comparable physico-chemical properties. Careful tuning of the mobile phase gradient and an appropriate choice of the stationary phase can be used to overcome this problem, in turn modifying the retention times in different ways for each compound. In the usual workflow, this approach is suboptimal for the annotation of features based on retention times since it requires characterizing a library of known compounds for every fine-tuned configuration. We introduce a software solution, DynaStI, that is capable of annotating liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) features by dynamically generating the retention times from a database containing intrinsic properties of a library of metabolites. DynaStI uses the well-established linear solvent strength (LSS) model for reversed-phase LC. Given a list of LC-MS features and some characteristics of the LC setup, this software computes the corresponding retention times for the internal database and then annotates the features using the exact masses with predicted retention times at the working conditions. DynaStI (https://dynasti.vital-it.ch) is able to automatically calibrate its predictions to compensate for deviations in the input parameters. The database also includes identification and structural information for each annotation, such as IUPAC name, CAS number, SMILES string, metabolic pathways, and links to external metabolomic or lipidomic databases

ABJ theory in the higher spin limit

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are creditedArticle funded by SCOAP3 .Article funded by SCOAP3 .The work of SH was supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa and DSTNRF Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (CoE-MaSS). Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF or the CoE-MaSS. The work of KO was supported in part by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) 23740178. MS is grateful to the Weizmann Institute for the stimulating environment at the “Black Holes and Quantum Information” workshop. The work of MS was supported in part by Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) 24740159 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)