The promoter from SlREO, a highly-expressed, root-specific Solanum lycopersicum gene, directs expression to cortex of mature roots

Root-specific promoters are valuable tools for targeting transgene expression, but many of those already described have limitations to their general applicability. We present the expression characteristics of SlREO, a novel gene isolated from tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.). This gene was highly expressed in roots but had a very low level of expression in aerial plant organs. A 2.4-kb region representing the SlREO promoter sequence was cloned upstream of the uidA GUS reporter gene and shown to direct expression in the root cortex. In mature, glasshouse-grown plants this strict root specificity was maintained. Furthermore, promoter activity was unaffected by dehydration or wounding stress but was somewhat suppressed by exposure to NaCl, salicylic acid and jasmonic acid. The predicted protein sequence of SlREO contains a domain found in enzymes of the 2-oxoglutarate and Fe(II)-dependent dioxygenase superfamily. The novel SlREO promoter has properties ideal for applications requiring strong and specific gene expression in the bulk of tomato root tissue growing in soil, and is also likely to be useful in other Solanaceous crop

Mechanisms of NK Cell-Macrophage Bacillus anthracis Crosstalk: A Balance between Stimulation by Spores and Differential Disruption by Toxins

NK cells are important immune effectors for preventing microbial invasion and dissemination, through natural cytotoxicity and cytokine secretion. Bacillus anthracis spores can efficiently drive IFN-γ production by NK cells. The present study provides insights into the mechanisms of cytokine and cellular signaling that underlie the process of NK-cell activation by B. anthracis and the bacterial strategies to subvert and evade this response. Infection with non-toxigenic encapsulated B. anthracis induced recruitment of NK cells and macrophages into the mouse draining lymph node. Production of edema (ET) or lethal (LT) toxin during infection impaired this cellular recruitment. NK cell depletion led to accelerated systemic bacterial dissemination. IFN-γ production by NK cells in response to B. anthracis spores was: i) contact-dependent through RAE-1-NKG2D interaction with macrophages; ii) IL-12, IL-18, and IL-15-dependent, where IL-12 played a key role and regulated both NK cell and macrophage activation; and iii) required IL-18 for only an initial short time window. B. anthracis toxins subverted both NK cell essential functions. ET and LT disrupted IFN-γ production through different mechanisms. LT acted both on macrophages and NK cells, whereas ET mainly affected macrophages and did not alter NK cell capacity of IFN-γ secretion. In contrast, ET and LT inhibited the natural cytotoxicity function of NK cells, both in vitro and in vivo. The subverting action of ET thus led to dissociation in NK cell function and blocked natural cytotoxicity without affecting IFN-γ secretion. The high efficiency of this process stresses the impact that this toxin may exert in anthrax pathogenesis, and highlights a potential usefulness for controlling excessive cytotoxic responses in immunopathological diseases. Our findings therefore exemplify the delicate balance between bacterial stimulation and evasion strategies. This highlights the potential implication of the crosstalk between host innate defences and B. anthracis in initial anthrax control mechanisms

26th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS*2017): Part 3 - Meeting Abstracts - Antwerp, Belgium. 15–20 July 2017

This work was produced as part of the activities of FAPESP Research,\ud Disseminations and Innovation Center for Neuromathematics (grant\ud 2013/07699-0, S. Paulo Research Foundation). NLK is supported by a\ud FAPESP postdoctoral fellowship (grant 2016/03855-5). ACR is partially\ud supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)

The SentinelTM EADR program can detect more microorganisms than bedding sentinel animals

Bedding sentinel programs have been the standard method for monitoring the health status of rodents housed in individually ventilated cages. However, it has been reported that some infectious microorganisms cannot be detected by bedding sentinels. Thus, more sensitive microbiological monitoring methods are needed. In the present study, we assessed the sensitivity of the SentinelTM EADR program, developed by Allentown Inc. and Charles River Laboratories Inc., which involves a combination of exhaust air dust and environmental PCR testing. We compared the sensitivity of SentinelTM EADR to that of bedding sentinels and fecal samples collected from mice housed in rooms. In conclusion, SentinelTM EADR was more sensitive than the bedding sentinel method

High Performance Computing (HPC) Resources for Parallel Simulations and Data Analysis: NSG and HPAC

Need free, easy access to HPC resources to run widely used neural simulators or connectome analysis tools? Interested in new, free HPC tools developed by the HBP, including hardware, simulation and analytics software?The Neuroscience Gateway (NSG) project and the High Performance Analytics and Computing (HPAC) of the Human Brain Project will host a joint satellite workshop at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) 2018 annual meeting in San Diego California. Workshop presenters are neuroscientists who are involved in computational neuroscience research and education as well as developers of tools (such as NEST, NEURON) used in computational neuroscience

The Open EEGLAB portal

International audienceThe EEGLAB signal processing environment is a widely used open source software environment for processing electroencephalographic (EEG) data. The Neuroscience Gateway (nsgportal.org) is a software portal allowing users to readily run a variety of neuroimaging software on high performance computing (HPC) resources. We have expanded the current Neuroscience Gateway (NSG) services to enable researchers to freely run EEGLAB processing scripts and pipelines on their EEG or related data via the Neuroscience Gateway. This Open EEGLAB Portal is open to all for use in nonprofit projects and allows researchers to submit unimodal or multimodal EEG data for parallel processing using standard or custom EEGLAB processing pipelines. A detailed user tutorial is available (sccn.ucsd.edu/wiki/EEGLAB_on_NSG). As a proof of concept, we apply an EEGLAB pipeline to freely available 128-channel EEG data from 1,097 participants in the Child Mind Institute Healthy Brain Network project (childmind.org/center/healthy-brain-network)

The open EEGLAB portal Interface: High-Performance computing with EEGLAB

EEGLAB signal processing environment is currently the leading open-source software for processing electroencephalographic (EEG) data. The Neuroscience Gateway (NSG, nsgportal.org) is a web and API-based portal allowing users to easily run a variety of neuroscience-related software on high-performance computing (HPC) resources in the U.S. XSEDE network. We have reported recently (Delorme et al., 2019) on the Open EEGLAB Portal expansion of the free NSG services to allow the neuroscience community to build and run MATLAB pipelines using the EEGLAB tool environment. We are now releasing an EEGLAB plug-in, nsgportal, that interfaces EEGLAB with NSG directly from within EEGLAB running on MATLAB on any personal lab computer. The plug-in features a flexible MATLAB graphical user interface (GUI) that allows users to easily submit, interact with, and manage NSG jobs, and to retrieve and examine their results. Command line nsgportal tools supporting these GUI functionalities allow EEGLAB users and plug-in tool developers to build largely automated functions and workflows that include optional NSG job submission and processing. Here we present details on nsgportal implementation and documentation, provide user tutorials on example applications, and show sample test results comparing computation times using HPC versus laptop processing