Does Kin Recognition and Sib-Mating Avoidance Limit the Risk of Genetic Incompatibility in a Parasitic Wasp?

Background: When some combinations of maternal and paternal alleles have a detrimental effect on offspring fitness, females should be able to choose mates on the basis of their genetic compatibility. In numerous Hymenoptera, the sex of an individual depends of the allelic combination at a specific locus (single-locus Complementary Sex Determination), and in most of these species individuals that are homozygous at this sexual locus develop into diploid males with zero fitness. Methods and Findings: In this paper, we tested the hypothesis of genetic incompatibility avoidance by investigating sibmating avoidance in the solitary wasp parasitoid, Venturia canescens. In the context of mate choice we show, for the first time in a non-social hymenopteran species, that females can avoid mating with their brothers through kin recognition. In ‘‘no-choice’ ’ tests, the probability a female will mate with an unrelated male is twice as high as the chance of her mating with her brothers. In contrast, in choice tests in small test arenas, no kin discrimination effect was observed. Further experiments with male extracts demonstrate that chemical cues emanating from related males influence the acceptance rate of unrelated males. Conclusions: Our results are compatible with the genetic incompatibility hypothesis. They suggest that the female wasps recognize sibs on the basis of a chemical signature carried or emitted by males possibly using a ‘‘self-referent phenotyp

In reference to analysis of reflux as the aetiology of laryngeal dysplasia progression through a matched case‐control study

SCOPUS: le.jDecretOANoAutActifinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

NLRP1 promotes tumor growth by enhancing inflammasome activation and suppressing apoptosis in metastatic melanoma

Contains fulltext : 182576.pdf (postprint version ) (Open Access) Contains fulltext : 182576-1.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Inflammasomes are mediators of inflammation, and constitutively activated NLRP3 inflammasomes have been linked to interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta)-mediated tumorigenesis in human melanoma. Whereas NLRP3 regulation of caspase-1 activation requires the adaptor protein ASC (apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing a CARD (caspase recruitment domain)), caspase-1 activation by another danger-signaling sensor NLRP1 does not require ASC because NLRP1 contains a C-terminal CARD domain that facilitates direct caspase-1 activation via CARD-CARD interaction. We hypothesized that NLRP1 has additional biological activities besides IL-1beta maturation and investigated its role in melanoma tumorigenesis. NLRP1 expression in melanoma was confirmed by analysis of 216 melanoma tumors and 13 human melanoma cell lines. Unlike monocytic THP-1 cells with prominent nuclear localization of NLRP1, melanoma cells expressed NLRP1 mainly in the cytoplasm. Knocking down NLRP1 revealed a tumor-promoting property of NLRP1 both in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistic studies showed that caspase-1 activity, IL-1beta production, IL-1beta secretion and nuclear factor-kB activity were reduced by knocking down of NLRP1 in human metastatic melanoma cell lines 1205Lu and HS294T, indicating that NLRP1 inflammasomes are active in metastatic melanoma. However, unlike previous reports showing that NLRP1 enhances pyroptosis in macrophages, NLRP1 in melanoma behaved differently in the context of cell death. Knocking down NLRP1 increased caspase-2, -9 and -3/7 activities and promoted apoptosis in human melanoma cells. Immunoprecipitation revealed interaction of NLRP1 with CARD-containing caspase-2 and -9, whereas NLRP3 lacking a CARD motif did not interact with the caspases. Consistent with these findings, NLRP1 activation but not NLRP3 activation reduced caspase-2, -9 and -3/7 activities and provided protection against apoptosis in human melanoma cells, suggesting a suppressive role of NLRP1 in caspase-3/7 activation and apoptosis via interaction with caspase-2 and -9. In summary, we showed that NLRP1 promotes melanoma growth by enhancing inflammasome activation and suppressing apoptotic pathways. Our study demonstrates a tumor-promoting role of NLRP1 in cancer cells

On modeling and complete solutions to general fixpoint problems in multi-scale systems with applications

Abstract This paper revisits the well-studied fixed point problem from a unified viewpoint of mathematical modeling and canonical duality theory, i.e., the general fixed point problem is first reformulated as a nonconvex optimization problem, its well-posedness is discussed based on the objectivity principle in continuum physics; then the canonical duality theory is applied for solving this challenging problem to obtain not only all fixed points, but also their stability properties. Applications are illustrated by problems governed by nonconvex polynomial, exponential, and logarithmic operators. This paper shows that within the framework of the canonical duality theory, there is no difference between the fixed point problems and nonconvex analysis/optimization in multidisciplinary studies