Grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) promoter analysis by biolistic-mediated transient transformation of cell suspensions

Expression of alcohol dehydrogenase promoters from Vitis vinifera L. and Arabidopsis thaliana was investigated in homologous and heterologous cell systems after bombardment of chimeric genes. The effect of several parameters including wounding, DNA delivery and construct type on luciferase/beta-glucuronidase activities was evaluated. In parallel, alcohol dehydrogenase activity was assayed in normal and gaseous nitrogen-treated cells. Compared to A. thaliana, results showed large differences in reporter gene activity according to the Adh promoter leader sequence and the cell suspension system. The V. vinifera cell system was found to be appropriate to investigate Adh promoter functioning. A novel protocol, based on transient genetic transformation of grape-One cells by biolistic is proposed to study grapevine promoter expression, either in air or in response to anaerobiosis.

Ontology in Coq for a Guided Message Composition

International audienceNatural language generation is based on messages that represent meanings , and goals that are the usual starting points for communicate. How to help people to provide this conceptual input or, in other words, how to communicate thoughts to the computer? In order to express something, one needs to have something to express as an idea, a thought or a concept. The question is how to represent this. In 2009, Michael Zock, Paul Sabatier and Line Jakubiec-Jamet suggested the building of a resource composed of a linguistically motivated ontology, a dictionary and a graph generator. The ontology guides the user to choose among a set of concepts (or words) to build the message from; the dictionary provides knowledge of how to link the chosen elements to yield a message (compositional rules); the graph generator displays the output in visual form (message graph representing the user's input). While the goal of the ontology is to generate (or analyse) sentences and to guide message composition (what to say), the graph's function is to show at an intermediate level the result of the encoding process. The Illico system already proposes a way to help a user for generating (or analyzing) sentences and guiding their composition. Another system, the Drill Tutor, is an exercise generator whose goal is to help people to become fluent in a foreign language. It helps people (users have to make choices from the interface in order to build their messages) to produce a sentence expressing a message from an idea (or a concept) to its linguistic realization (or a correct sentence given in a foreign language). These two systems led us to consider the representation of the conceptual information into a symbolic language; this representation is encoded in a logic system in order to automatically check conceptual well-formedness of messages. This logic system is the Coq system used here only for its high level language. Coq is based on a typed λ-calculus. It is used for analysing conceptual input interpreted as types and also for specifying general definitions representing messages. These definitions are typed and they will be instanciated for type-checking the conceptual well-formedness of messages. 2 Line Jakubiec-Jame

On Heads and Coordination in Valence Acquisition

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to present the design of a partial syntactic annotation of the IPI PAN Corpus of Polish [22] and the cor-responding extension of the corpus search engine Poliqarp [25,12] devel-oped at the Institue of Computer Science PAS and currently employed in Polish and Portuguese corpora projects. In particular, we will argue for the need to distinguish between, and represent both, syntactic and se-mantic heads, and we will sketch the representation of coordination, the area traditionally controversial both in theoretical and in computational linguistics. The annotation is designed in a way intended to maximise the usefulness of the resulting corpus for the task of automatic valence acquisition

Insetos em presépios e as "formigas vestidas" de Jules Martin (1832-1906): uma curiosa manufatura paulistana do final do século XIX

Encontrados no Brasil desde os primórdios da colonização portuguesa, os presépios logo tiveram de adaptar-se à realidade local, circunstância muito propícia ao aparecimento de concepções heterodoxas e ao emprego de elementos exóticos da fauna e flora de cada região. Como registros envolvendo insetos são muito pouco comuns, chama a atenção que fêmeas de saúva, Atta sp. (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), tenham sido aproveitadas na composição de presépios no estado de São Paulo. Tendo subsistido pelo menos até a década 1960, os "presépios de formigas" existentes em cidades como Embu das Artes poderiam estar relacionados às "formigas vestidas" criadas por Jules Martin, curiosa manufatura paulistana do último quartel do século XIX.Present in Brazil since the beginning of Portuguese colonization, crèche nativity scenes were soon adapted to local reality, a propitious circumstance for the appearance of heterodox conceptions and the use of exotic elements of the fauna and flora peculiar to each region. As records about insects are very uncommon, it is noteworthy that females of leaf-cutting ants, Atta sp. (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), were used to compose crèche nativity scenes in São Paulo State. Having subsisted at least up to the decade of 1960, the "ant crèches" of cities such as Embu das Artes could be related to the then famous "dressed ants" created by Jules Martin, a curious manufacture of the city of São Paulo in the last quarter of the 19th century

Representation of the verb's argument-structure in the human brain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A verb's argument structure defines the number and relationships of participants needed for a complete event. One-argument (intransitive) verbs require only a subject to make a complete sentence, while two- and three-argument verbs (transitives and ditransitives) normally take direct and indirect objects. Cortical responses to verbs embedded into sentences (correct or with syntactic violations) indicate the processing of the verb's argument structure in the human brain. The two experiments of the present study examined whether and how this processing is reflected in distinct spatio-temporal cortical response patterns to isolated verbs and/or verbs presented in minimal context.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The magnetoencephalogram was recorded while 22 native German-speaking adults saw 130 German verbs, presented one at a time for 150 ms each in experiment 1. Verb-evoked electromagnetic responses at 250 – 300 ms after stimulus onset, analyzed in source space, were higher in the left middle temporal gyrus for verbs that take only one argument, relative to two- and three-argument verbs. In experiment 2, the same verbs (presented in different order) were preceded by a proper name specifying the subject of the verb. This produced additional activation between 350 and 450 ms in or near the left inferior frontal gyrus, activity being larger and peaking earlier for one-argument verbs that required no further arguments to form a complete sentence.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Localization of sources of activity suggests that the activation in temporal and frontal regions varies with the degree by which representations of an event as a part of the verbs' semantics are completed during parsing.</p

Comparative transcriptomic analysis reveals similarities and dissimilarities in saccharomyces cerevisiae wine strains response to nitrogen availability

Nitrogen levels in grape-juices are of major importance in winemaking ensuring adequate yeast growth and fermentation performance. Here we used a comparative transcriptome analysis to uncover wine yeasts responses to nitrogen availability during fermentation. Gene expression was assessed in three genetically and phenotypically divergent commercial wine strains (CEG, VL1 and QA23), under low (67 mg/L) and high nitrogen (670 mg/L) regimes, at three time points during fermentation (12h, 24h and 96h). Two-way ANOVA analysis of each fermentation condition led to the identification of genes whose expression was dependent on strain, fermentation stage and on the interaction of both factors. The high fermenter yeast strain QA23 was more clearly distinct from the other two strains, by differential expression of genes involved in flocculation, mitochondrial functions, energy generation and protein folding and stabilization. For all strains, higher transcriptional variability due to fermentation stage was seen in the high nitrogen fermentations. A positive correlation between maximum fermentation rate and the expression of genes involved in stress response was observed. The finding of common genes correlated with both fermentation activity and nitrogen up-take underlies the role of nitrogen on yeast fermentative fitness. The comparative analysis of genes differentially expressed between both fermentation conditions at 12h, where the main difference was the level of nitrogen available, showed the highest variability amongst strains revealing strain-specific responses. Nevertheless, we were able to identify a small set of genes whose expression profiles can quantitatively assess the common response of the yeast strains to varying nitrogen conditions. The use of three contrasting yeast strains in gene expression analysis prompts the identification of more reliable, accurate and reproducible biomarkers that will facilitate the diagnosis of deficiency of this nutrient in the grape-musts and the development of strategies to optimize yeast performance in industrial fermentations

Horizon 2019 : bibliothèques en prospective

Colloque organisé du 19 au 21 novembre 2009 à l\u27enssib avec pour but d\u27imaginer l\u27avenir proche des bibliothèques dans le monde occidental. Le colloque s\u27organise en trois temps : "Enjeux et défis", "Quelles missions pour les bibliothèques" et "Hypothèses et scénarios"