Where are we now with European forest multi-taxon biodiversity and where can we head to?

The European biodiversity and forest strategies rely on forest sustainable management (SFM) to conserve forest biodiversity. However, current sustainability assessments hardly account for direct biodiversity indicators. We focused on forest multi-taxon biodiversity to: i) gather and map the existing information; ii) identify knowledge and research gaps; iii) discuss its research potential. We established a research network to fit data on species, standing trees, lying deadwood and sampling unit description from 34 local datasets across 3591 sampling units. A total of 8724 species were represented, with the share of common and rare species varying across taxonomic classes: some included many species with several rare ones (e.g., Insecta); others (e.g., Bryopsida) were represented by few common species. Tree-related structural attributes were sampled in a subset of sampling units (2889; 2356; 2309 and 1388 respectively for diameter, height, deadwood and microhabitats). Overall, multi-taxon studies are biased towards mature forests and may underrepresent the species related to other developmental phases. European forest compositional categories were all represented, but beech forests were over-represented as compared to thermophilous and boreal forests. Most sampling units (94%) were referred to a habitat type of conservation concern. Existing information may support European conservation and SFM strategies in: (i) methodological harmonization and coordinated monitoring; (ii) definition and testing of SFM indicators and thresholds; (iii) data-driven assessment of the effects of environmental and management drivers on multi-taxon forest biological and functional diversity, (iv) multi-scale forest monitoring integrating in-situ and remotely sensed information

Transitions at CpG Dinucleotides, Geographic Clustering of TP53 Mutations and Food Availability Patterns in Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer is mainly attributed to diet, but the role exerted by foods remains unclear because involved factors are extremely complex. Geography substantially impacts on foods. Correlations between international variation in colorectal cancer-associated mutation patterns and food availabilities could highlight the influence of foods on colorectal mutagenesis. mutations from 12 countries/geographic areas. For food availabilities, we relied on data extracted from the Food Balance Sheets of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Dendrograms for mutation sites, mutation types and food patterns were constructed through Ward's hierarchical clustering algorithm and their stability was assessed evaluating silhouette values. Feature selection used entropy-based measures for similarity between clusterings, combined with principal component analysis by exhaustive and heuristic approaches. hotspots. Pearson's correlation scores, computed between the principal components of the datamatrices for mutation types, food availability and mutation sites, demonstrated statistically significant correlations between transitions at CpGs and both mutation sites and availabilities of meat, milk, sweeteners and animal fats, the energy-dense foods at the basis of “Western” diets. This is best explainable by differential exposure to nitrosative DNA damage due to foods that promote metabolic stress and chronic inflammation

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference