Regulation of Drosophila Vasa In Vivo through Paralogous Cullin-RING E3 Ligase Specificity Receptors

In Drosophila species, molecular asymmetries guiding embryonic development are established maternally. Vasa, a DEAD-box RNA helicase, accumulates in the posterior pole plasm, where it is required for embryonic germ cell specification. Maintenance of Vasa at the posterior pole requires the deubiquitinating enzyme Fat facets, which protects Vasa from degradation. Here, we found that Gustavus (Gus) and Fsn, two ubiquitin Cullin-RING E3 ligase specificity receptors, bind to the same motif on Vasa through their paralogous B30.2/SPRY domains. Both Gus and Fsn accumulate in the pole plasm in a Vasa-dependent manner. Posterior Vasa accumulation is precocious in Fsn mutant oocytes; Fsn overexpression reduces ovarian Vasa levels, and embryos from Fsn-overexpressing females form fewer primordial germ cells (PGCs); thus, Fsn destabilizes Vasa. In contrast, endogenous Gus may promote Vasa activity in the pole plasm, as gus females produce embryos with fewer PGCs, and posterior accumulation of Vas is delayed in gus mutant oocytes that also lack one copy of cullin-5. We propose that Fsn- and Gus-containing E3 ligase complexes contribute to establishing a fine-tuned steady state of Vasa ubiquitination that influences the kinetics of posterior Vasa deployment.open112626sciescopu

vasa is required for GURKEN accumulation in the oocyte, and is involved in oocyte differentiation and germline cyst development

Skip to Next Section The Drosophila gene vasa is required for pole plasm assembly and function, and also for completion of oogenesis. To investigate the role of vasa in oocyte development, we generated a new null mutation of vasa, which deletes the entire coding region. Analysis of vasa-null ovaries revealed that the gene is involved in the growth of germline cysts. In vasa-null ovaries, germaria are atrophied, and contain far fewer developing cysts than do wild-type germaria; a phenotype similar to, but less severe than, that of a null nanos allele. The null mutant also revealed roles for vasa in oocyte differentiation, anterior-posterior egg chamber patterning, and dorsal-ventral follicle patterning, in addition to its better-characterized functions in posterior embryonic patterning and pole cell specification. The anterior-posterior and dorsal-ventral patterning phenotypes resemble those observed in gurken mutants. vasa-null oocytes fail to efficiently accumulate many localized RNAs, such as Bicaudal-D, orb, oskar, and nanos, but still accumulate gurken RNA. However, GRK accumulation in the oocyte is severely reduced in the absence of vasa function, suggesting a function for VASA in activating gurken translation in wild-type ovaries

KATANA : a charge-sensitive trigger/veto array for the SπS\pi RIT TPC

KATANA — the Krak´ow Array for Triggering with Amplitude discrimiNAtion, has been built and used as a trigger and veto detector for the SπRIT TPC at RIKEN. Its construction allows operating in magnetic field, providing fast response for ionizing particles and giving the approximate multiplicity and charge information on forward emitted reaction products. Depending on this information, trigger and veto signals are generated. Multi-Pixel Photon Counters were used as light sensors for plastic scintillators. Custom designed front-end and peripheral electronics will be presented as well

KATANA : a charge-sensitive triggering/veto system for the Sπ\piRIT experiment

KATANA — the Kraków Array for Triggering with Amplitude discrimiNAtion, has been built and used as a trigger and Veto detector for the S$\pi$RIT TPC at RIKEN. Its construction allows for operation in magnetic field and provides a fast response for ionizing particles giving the approximate forward multiplicity and charge information. Depending on this information, trigger and veto signals are generated. The Multi-Pixel Photon Counters were used as light sensors for plastic scintillators. Performance of the detector is presented

Predicting post-trauma stress symptoms from pre-trauma psychophysiologic reactivity, personality traits and measures of psychopathology

Background: Most individuals exposed to a traumatic event do not develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although many individuals may experience sub-clinical levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). There are notable individual differences in the presence and severity of PTSS among individuals who report seemingly comparable traumatic events. Individual differences in PTSS following exposure to traumatic events could be influenced by pre-trauma vulnerabilities for developing PTSS/PTSD. Methods Pre-trauma psychological, psychophysiological and personality variables were prospectively assessed for their predictive relationships with post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Police and firefighter trainees were tested at the start of their professional training (i.e., pre-trauma; n = 211) and again several months after exposure to a potentially traumatic event (i.e., post-trauma, n = 99). Pre-trauma assessments included diagnostic interviews, psychological and personality measures and two psychophysiological assessment procedures. The psychophysiological assessments measured psychophysiologic reactivity to loud tones and the acquisition and extinction of a conditioned fear response. Post-trauma assessment included a measure of psychophysiologic reactivity during recollection of the traumatic event using a script-driven imagery task. Results: Logistic stepwise regression identified the combination of lower IQ, higher depression score and poorer extinction of forehead (corrugator) electromyogram responses as pre-trauma predictors of higher PTSS. The combination of lower IQ and increased skin conductance (SC) reactivity to loud tones were identified as pre-trauma predictors of higher post-trauma psychophysiologic reactivity during recollection of the traumatic event. A univariate relationship was also observed between pre-trauma heart rate (HR) reactivity to fear cues during conditioning and post-trauma psychophysiologic reactivity. Conclusion: The current study contributes to a very limited literature reporting results from truly prospective examinations of pre-trauma physiologic, psychologic, and demographic predictors of PTSS. Findings that combinations of lower estimated IQ, greater depression symptoms, a larger differential corrugator EMG response during extinction and larger SC responses to loud tones significantly predicted higher PTSS suggests that the process(es) underlying these traits contribute to the pathogenesis of subjective and physiological PTSS. Due to the low levels of PTSS severity and relatively restricted ranges of outcome scores due to the healthy nature of the participants, results may underestimate actual predictive relationships

KATANA - a charge-sensitive triggering system for the Sπ\piRIT experiment

KATANA - the Krakow Array for Triggering with Amplitude discrimiNAtion - has been built and used as a trigger and veto detector for the S$\pi$RIT TPC at RIKEN. Its construction allows operating in magnetic field and providing fast response for ionizing particles, giving the approximate forward multiplicity and charge information. Depending on this information, trigger and veto signals are generated. The article presents performance of the detector and details of its construction. A simple phenomenological parametrization of the number of emitted scintillation photons in plastic scintillator is proposed. The effect of the light output deterioration in the plastic scintillator due to the in-beam irradiation is discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

Satellites May Underestimate Rice Residue and Associated Burning Emissions in Vietnam

In this study, we estimate rice residue, associated burning emissions, and compare results with existing emissions inventories employing a bottom-up approach. We first estimated field-level post-harvest rice residues, including separate fuel-loading factors for rice straw and rice stubble. Results suggested fuel-loading factors of 0.27 kg/sq m (+/-0.033), 0.61 kg/sq m (+/-0.076), and 0.88 kg/sq m (+/-0.083) for rice straw, stubble, and total post-harvest biomass, respectively. Using these factors, we quantified potential emissions from rice residue burning and compared our estimates with other studies. Our results suggest total rice residue burning emissions as 2.24 Gg PM2.5, 36.54 Gg CO and 567.79 Gg CO2 for Hanoi Province, which are significantly higher than earlier studies. We attribute our higher emission estimates to improved fuel-loading factors; moreover, we infer that some earlier studies relying on residue-to-product ratios could be underestimating rice residue emissions by more than a factor of 2.3 for Hanoi, Vietnam. Using the rice planted area data from the Vietnamese government, and combining our fuel-loading factors, we also estimated rice residue PM2.5 emissions for the entirety of Vietnam and compared these estimates with an existing all-sources emissions inventory, and the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED). Results suggest 75.98 Gg of PM2.5 released from rice residue burning accounting for 12.8% of total emissions for Vietnam. The GFED database suggests 42.56 Gg PM2.5 from biomass burning with 5.62 Gg attributed to agricultural waste burning indicating satellite-based methods may be significantly underestimating emissions. Our results not only provide improved residue and emission estimates, but also highlight the need for emissions mitigation from rice residue burning

Makorin 1 controls embryonic patterning by alleviating Bruno1-mediated repression of oskar translation.

Makorins are evolutionary conserved proteins that contain C3H-type zinc finger modules and a RING E3 ubiquitin ligase domain. In Drosophila, maternal Makorin 1 (Mkrn1) has been linked to embryonic patterning but the mechanism remained unsolved. Here, we show that Mkrn1 is essential for axis specification and pole plasm assembly by translational activation of oskar (osk). We demonstrate that Mkrn1 interacts with poly(A) binding protein (pAbp) and binds specifically to osk 3' UTR in a region adjacent to A-rich sequences. Using Drosophila S2R+ cultured cells we show that this binding site overlaps with a Bruno1 (Bru1) responsive element (BREs) that regulates osk translation. We observe increased association of the translational repressor Bru1 with osk mRNA upon depletion of Mkrn1, indicating that both proteins compete for osk binding. Consistently, reducing Bru1 dosage partially rescues viability and Osk protein level in ovaries from Mkrn1 females. We conclude that Mkrn1 controls embryonic patterning and germ cell formation by specifically activating osk translation, most likely by competing with Bru1 to bind to osk 3' UTR

KRATTA, a triple telescope array for charged reaction products

KRATTA, a new, low threshold, broad energy range triple telescope array has been built to measure the energy, emission angles and isotopic composition of light charged reaction products. It has been equipped with fully digital chains of electronics. The array performed very well during the ASY-EOS experiment, conducted in May 2011 at GSI. The structure and performance of the array are presented using the first experimental results

Solar Jet Hunter: a citizen science initiative to identify coronal jets in EUV data sets

Context. Solar coronal jets seen in EUV are ubiquitous on the Sun, have been found in and at the edges of active regions, at the boundaries of coronal holes, and in the quiet Sun. Jets have various shapes, sizes, brightness, velocities and duration in time, which complicates their detection by automated algorithms. So far, solar jets reported in the Heliophysics Event Knowledgebase (HEK) have been mostly reported by humans looking for them in the data, with different levels of precision regarding their timing and positions. Aims. We create a catalogue of solar jets observed in EUV at 304 {\AA} containing precise and consistent information on the jet timing, position and extent. Methods. We designed a citizen science project, "Solar Jet Hunter", on the Zooniverse platform, to analyze EUV observations at 304 {\AA} from the Solar Dynamic Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA). We created movie strips for regions of the Sun in which jets have been reported in HEK and ask the volunteers to 1) confirm the presence of at least one jet in the data and 2) report the timing, position and extent of the jet. Results. We report here the design of the project and the results obtained after the analysis of data from 2011 to 2016. 365 "coronal jet" events from HEK served as input for the citizen science project, equivalent to more than 120,000 images distributed into 9,689 "movie strips". Classification by the citizen scientists resulted with only 21% of the data containing a jet, and 883 individual jets being identified. Conclusions. We demonstrate how citizen science can enhance the analysis of solar data with the example of Solar Jet Hunter. The catalogue of jets thus created is publicly available and will enable statistical studies of jets and related phenomena. This catalogue will also be used as a training set for machines to learn to recognize jets in further data sets