REPRODUCTIVE CHARACTERIZATION OF WALLEYE (Sander vitreus) AND LAKE WHITEFISH (Coregonus clupeaformis) IN TATHLINA LAKE, NT

Tathlina Lake, NT is an ecologically and culturally important lake to the Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation and supports a small commercial fishery for walleye (Sander vitreus) and a subsistence fishery for lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis). The community is concerned about existing fluctuations in the fish populations. They are also concerned with environmental pressures, including potential future oil and gas development in the near-by Cameron Hills and climate change, and desires to institute long-range biomonitoring in the lake. Male and female adult walleye and lake whitefish, in pre- and post-spawning conditions, were collected biannually in March and August between 2012 and 2016. General health assessment measures included: liversomatic index (LSI), gonadosomatic index (GSI), condition factor and fecundity. Additionally, gonadal and plasma hormone levels were measured to assess reproductive status and determine if seasonal steroid variations can be detected in both plasma and gonadal tissue. In March, pre-spawning female and male walleye exhibited greater LSI, GSI, fecundity and reproductive hormone levels [17β-estradiol (E2) in females and 11-ketotestosterone (11-KT) in males], and unchanged condition factors relative to post-spawning in August. In August, pre-spawning male and female lake whitefish exhibited lower LSI, greater GSI, fecundity and E2 and 11-KT levels, and unchanged condition factors relative to post-spawning in March. Among years, morphometric endpoints were relatively stable within months and reproductive stage and exhibited less variability than hormone levels. Critical effects sizes (CES), which represent natural variability in endpoints, were calculated in order to indicate current ranges of measured variables; fluctuations below or above CES could indicate the presence of environmental pressures on the system and can now be used by the community as the foundation of their long-term biomonitoring protocols. It is recommended that the community focus its long-term biomonitoring on measuring fish condition factor, LSI and GSI biennially (every-other-year) during both pre- and post-spawning seasons using a CES-based approach and that it expand the number of lakes sampled in the region to better represent natural variability and, therefore, enhance the ability to detect change in the region

Draft Genome Sequences of Two Strains of Xanthomonas arboricola pv. celebensis Isolated from Banana Plants.

Published onlineWe report here the annotated draft genome sequences of strains Xanthomonas arboricola pv. celebensis NCPPB 1832 and NCPPB 1630 (NCPPB, National Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria), both isolated from Musa species in New Zealand. This will allow the comparison of genomes between phylogenetically distant xanthomonads that have independently converged with the ability to colonize banana plants.Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) provided funding to James Harrison. James Harrison was supported by a Ph.D. studentship from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication

Oral History Conversation With BH Kim and Kaison Tanabe (Impact Without Borders)

This is an oral history Interview that was conducted on March 28th, 2017 discussing entrepreneurship in the San Diego start-up community

Morphological Variation and Inter-Relationships of Quantitative Traits in Enset (Ensete ventricosum (welw.) Cheesman) Germplasm from South and South-Western Ethiopia

This is the final version. Available on open access from MDPI via the DOI in this recordEnset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman) is Ethiopia's most important root crop. A total of 387 accessions collected from nine different regions of Ethiopia were evaluated for 15 quantitative traits at Areka Agricultural Research Centre to determine the extent and pattern of distribution of morphological variation. The variations among the accessions and regions were significant (p ≤ 0.01) for all the 15 traits studied. Mean for plant height, central shoot weight before grating, and fermented squeezed kocho yield per hectare per year showed regional variation along an altitude gradient and across cultural differences related to the origin of the collection. Furthermore, there were significant correlations among most of the characters. This included the correlation among agronomic characteristics of primary interest in enset breeding such as plant height, pseudostem height, and fermented squeezed kocho yield per hectare per year. Altitude of the collection sites also significantly impacted the various characteristics studied. These results reveal the existence of significant phenotypic variations among the 387 accessions as a whole. Regional differentiations were also evident among the accessions. The implication of the current results for plant breeding, germplasm collection, and in situ and ex situ genetic resource conservation are discussed.This study was part of the PhD research work of the first author, and we acknowledge the McKnight Foundation for financial support

Mobile Virtual Environments

As mobile hardware becomes more advanced and readily available, there is a greater need to investigate mobile virtual environments. Previous attempts at mobile virtual environments have yielded unsatisfactory results. This research aims to create a believable mobile virtual environment, capable of running in real-time and making use of intuitive input mechanisms. The rendering of the virtual environment is accomplished with the use of OpenGL ES, while the interaction of the system is handled by a tilt sensor and GPS receiver. Optimisation techniques are necessary to achieve a minimum interactive frame rate of 5 frames per second including mipmaps, frustum culling, minimisation of OpenGL ES state changes and the use of fixed-point calculations rather than floating-point calculations. User tests clearly show that the use of intuitive input mechanisms is greatly preferred over conventional keypad input. This research shows that believable mobile virtual environments are feasible and are able to provide the user with intuitive input mechanisms and an interactive frame rate

Quantification of the effects of antibodies on the extra- and intracellular dynamics of Salmonella enterica.

Antibodies are known to be essential in controlling Salmonella infection, but their exact role remains elusive. We recently developed an in vitro model to investigate the relative efficiency of four different human immunoglobulin G (IgG) subclasses in modulating the interaction of the bacteria with human phagocytes. Our results indicated that different IgG subclasses affect the efficacy of Salmonella uptake by human phagocytes. In this study, we aim to quantify the effects of IgG on intracellular dynamics of infection by combining distributions of bacterial numbers per phagocyte observed by fluorescence microscopy with a mathematical model that simulates the in vitro dynamics. We then use maximum likelihood to estimate the model parameters and compare them across IgG subclasses. The analysis reveals heterogeneity in the division rates of the bacteria, strongly suggesting that a subpopulation of intracellular Salmonella, while visible under the microscope, is not dividing. Clear differences in the observed distributions among the four IgG subclasses are best explained by variations in phagocytosis and intracellular dynamics. We propose and compare potential factors affecting the replication and death of bacteria within phagocytes, and we discuss these results in the light of recent findings on dormancy of Salmonella.This work was funded by grants from the Wellcome Trust and from the Medical Research Council to PM. O.R. is supported by the Royal Society through a University Research Fellowship. M.P. is supported by a studentship from the Wellcome Trust

An update: improvements in imaging perfluorocarbon-mounted plant leaves with implications for studies of plant pathology, physiology, development and cell biology.

Plant leaves are optically complex, which makes them difficult to image by light microscopy. Careful sample preparation is therefore required to enable researchers to maximize the information gained from advances in fluorescent protein labeling, cell dyes and innovations in microscope technologies and techniques. We have previously shown that mounting leaves in the non-toxic, non-fluorescent perfluorocarbon (PFC), perfluorodecalin (PFD) enhances the optical properties of the leaf with minimal impact on physiology. Here, we assess the use of the PFCs, PFD, and perfluoroperhydrophenanthrene (PP11) for in vivo plant leaf imaging using four advanced modes of microscopy: laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM), two-photon fluorescence microscopy, second harmonic generation microscopy, and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy. For every mode of imaging tested, we observed an improved signal when leaves were mounted in PFD or in PP11, compared to mounting the samples in water. Using an image analysis technique based on autocorrelation to quantitatively assess LSCM image deterioration with depth, we show that PP11 outperformed PFD as a mounting medium by enabling the acquisition of clearer images deeper into the tissue. In addition, we show that SRS microscopy can be used to image PFCs directly in the mesophyll and thereby easily delimit the "negative space" within a leaf, which may have important implications for studies of leaf development. Direct comparison of on and off resonance SRS micrographs show that PFCs do not to form intracellular aggregates in live plants. We conclude that the application of PFCs as mounting media substantially increases advanced microscopy image quality of living mesophyll and leaf vascular bundle cells

Measuring vertebrate telomeres: applications and limitations

Telomeres are short tandem repeated sequences of DNA found at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes that function in stabilizing chromosomal end integrity. In vivo studies of somatic tissue of mammals and birds have shown a correlation between telomere length and organismal age within species, and correlations between telomere shortening rate and lifespan among species. This result presents the tantalizing possibility that telomere length could be used to provide much needed information on age, ageing and survival in natural populations where longitudinal studies are lacking. Here we review methods available for measuring telomere length and discuss the potential uses and limitations of telomeres as age and ageing estimators in the fields of vertebrate ecology, evolution and conservation

The Classic: Bone Morphogenetic Protein

This Classic Article is a reprint of the original work by Marshall R. Urist and Basil S. Strates, Bone Morphogenetic Protein. An accompanying biographical sketch of Marshall R. Urist, MD is available at DOI 10.1007/s11999-009-1067-4; a second Classic Article is available at DOI 10.1007/s11999-009-1069-2; and a third Classic Article is available at DOI 10.1007/s11999-009-1070-9. The Classic Article is © 1971 by Sage Publications Inc. Journals and is reprinted with permission from Urist MR, Strates BS. Bone morphogenetic protein. J Dent Res. 1971;50:1392–1406