2,399 research outputs found
Diel transcriptional response of a California Current plankton microbiome to light, low iron, and enduring viral infection.
Phytoplankton and associated microbial communities provide organic carbon to oceanic food webs and drive ecosystem dynamics. However, capturing those dynamics is challenging. Here, an in situ, semi-Lagrangian, robotic sampler profiled pelagic microbes at 4 h intervals over ~2.6 days in North Pacific high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll waters. We report on the community structure and transcriptional dynamics of microbes in an operationally large size class (>5 μm) predominantly populated by dinoflagellates, ciliates, haptophytes, pelagophytes, diatoms, cyanobacteria (chiefly Synechococcus), prasinophytes (chiefly Ostreococcus), fungi, archaea, and proteobacteria. Apart from fungi and archaea, all groups exhibited 24-h periodicity in some transcripts, but larger portions of the transcriptome oscillated in phototrophs. Periodic photosynthesis-related transcripts exhibited a temporal cascade across the morning hours, conserved across diverse phototrophic lineages. Pronounced silica:nitrate drawdown, a high flavodoxin to ferredoxin transcript ratio, and elevated expression of other Fe-stress markers indicated Fe-limitation. Fe-stress markers peaked during a photoperiodically adaptive time window that could modulate phytoplankton response to seasonal Fe-limitation. Remarkably, we observed viruses that infect the majority of abundant taxa, often with total transcriptional activity synchronized with putative hosts. Taken together, these data reveal a microbial plankton community that is shaped by recycled production and tightly controlled by Fe-limitation and viral activity
The latitudinal diversity gradient of tetrapods across the Permo-Triassic mass extinction and recovery interval
The decline in species richness from the equator to the poles is referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG). Higher equatorial diversity has been recognized for over 200 years, but the consistency of this pattern in deep time remains uncertain. Examination of spatial biodiversity patterns in the past across different global climate regimes and continental configurations can reveal how LDGs have varied over Earth history and potentially differentiate between suggested causal mechanisms. The Late Permian–Middle Triassic represents an ideal time interval for study, because it is characterized by large-scale volcanic episodes, extreme greenhouse temperatures and the most severe mass extinction event in Earth history. We examined terrestrial and marine tetrapod spatial biodiversity patterns using a database of global tetrapod occurrences. Terrestrial tetrapods exhibit a bimodal richness distribution throughout the Late Permian–Middle Triassic, with peaks in the northern low latitudes and southern mid-latitudes around 20–40° N and 60° S, respectively. Marine reptile fossils are known almost exclusively from the Northern Hemisphere in the Early and Middle Triassic, with highest diversity around 20° N. Reconstructed terrestrial LDGs contrast strongly with the generally unimodal gradients of today, potentially reflecting high global temperatures and prevailing Pangaean super-monsoonal climate system during the Permo-Triassic
SSR markers reveal diversity in Guinea yam (Dioscorea cayenensis/D. rotundata) core set
The genetic diversity of 219 accessions of Guinea yam germplasm from Benin, Congo, Côte d’ Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo was accessed using 15 microsatelliteloci. High diversity of 0.677 was found among the accessions. An allelic average of 8.06 and polymorphic information content (PIC) value of 0.65 was observed for the markers. The observed heterozygosity value of 0.563 suggests that spontaneous hybridization must have contributed to the ancestry of some of the accessions and improvement by farmers must have been far more often by selection of somatic mutants. The twenty distinct cluster groups generated by the radial phylogram shows that Dioscorea cayenensis and D. rotundata are distinct species with intermediate hybrid forms. There was no relationship between relatedness of the accessions and their geographical area of origin. This study contributes to an increased understanding of the genetic organisation of the coregermplasm
rac-[3-Hydroxy-6,9-dimethyl-6-(4-methylpent-3-en-1-yl)-6a,7,8,9,10,10a-hexahydro-6H-1,9-epoxybenzo[c]chromen-4-yl](phenyl)methanone
The title compound congestiflorone, C28H32O4, which was isolated from the stem bark of Mesua congestiflora, consists of a benzophenone skeleton with two attached pyran rings to which a cyclohexane ring and a C6 side chain are bonded. The benzene ring is significantly distorted from planarity (r.m.s. deviation = 0.0007 Å) due to the constraints imposed by junctions with the two pyran rings. The cyclohexane ring is in a chair conformation, one pyran ring is in a boat conformation, while the other is a distorted chair. The phenyl and benzene rings make a dihedral angle of 55.85 (9)°. An intramolecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bond is observed. In the crystal, molecules are linked via C—H⋯O interactions
Physical realization of coupled Hilbert-space mirrors for quantum-state engineering
Manipulation of superpositions of discrete quantum states has a mathematical
counterpart in the motion of a unit-length statevector in an N-dimensional
Hilbert space. Any such statevector motion can be regarded as a succession of
two-dimensional rotations. But the desired statevector change can also be
treated as a succession of reflections, the generalization of Householder
transformations. In multidimensional Hilbert space such reflection sequences
offer more efficient procedures for statevector manipulation than do sequences
of rotations. We here show how such reflections can be designed for a system
with two degenerate levels - a generalization of the traditional two-state atom
- that allows the construction of propagators for angular momentum states. We
use the Morris-Shore transformation to express the propagator in terms of
Morris-Shore basis states and Cayley-Klein parameters, which allows us to
connect properties of laser pulses to Hilbert-space motion. Under suitable
conditions on the couplings and the common detuning, the propagators within
each set of degenerate states represent products of generalized Householder
reflections, with orthogonal vectors. We propose physical realizations of this
novel geometrical object with resonant, near-resonant and far-off-resonant
laser pulses. We give several examples of implementations in real atoms or
molecules.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure
Caloxanthone C: a pyranoxanthone from the stem bark of Calophyllum soulattri
The title compound [systematic name: 5,10-dihydroxy-2,2-dimethyl-12-(2-methylbut-3-en-2-yl)pyrano[3,2-b]xanthen-6(2H)-one], C23H22O5, isolated from the stem bark of Calophyllum soulattri, consists of four six-membered rings and a 2-methylbut-3-en-2-yl side chain. The tricyclic xanthone ring system is almost planar [maximum deviation = 0.093 (2) Å], whereas the pyranoid ring is in a distorted boat conformation. The 2-methylbut-3-en-2-yl side chain is in a synperiplanar conformation. There are two intramolecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. In the crystal, molecules are linked by C—H⋯O interactions, forming a zigzag chain propagating in [010]
The antimicrobial polymer PHMB enters cells and selectively condenses bacterial chromosomes
To combat infection and antimicrobial resistance, it is helpful to elucidate drug mechanism(s) of action. Here we examined how the widely used antimicrobial polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) kills bacteria selectively over host cells. Contrary to the accepted model of microbial membrane disruption by PHMB, we observed cell entry into a range of bacterial species, and treated bacteria displayed cell division arrest and chromosome condensation, suggesting DNA binding as an alternative antimicrobial mechanism. A DNA-level mechanism was confirmed by observations that PHMB formed nanoparticles when mixed with isolated bacterial chromosomal DNA and its effects on growth were suppressed by pairwise combination with the DNA binding ligand Hoechst 33258. PHMB also entered mammalian cells, but was trapped within endosomes and excluded from nuclei. Therefore, PHMB displays differential access to bacterial and mammalian cellular DNA and selectively binds and condenses bacterial chromosomes. Because acquired resistance to PHMB has not been reported, selective chromosome condensation provides an unanticipated paradigm for antimicrobial action that may not succumb to resistance
TADPOLE Challenge: Accurate Alzheimer's disease prediction through crowdsourced forecasting of future data
The TADPOLE Challenge compares the performance of algorithms at predicting
the future evolution of individuals at risk of Alzheimer's disease. TADPOLE
Challenge participants train their models and algorithms on historical data
from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study. Participants
are then required to make forecasts of three key outcomes for ADNI-3 rollover
participants: clinical diagnosis, ADAS-Cog 13, and total volume of the
ventricles -- which are then compared with future measurements. Strong points
of the challenge are that the test data did not exist at the time of
forecasting (it was acquired afterwards), and that it focuses on the
challenging problem of cohort selection for clinical trials by identifying fast
progressors. The submission phase of TADPOLE was open until 15 November 2017;
since then data has been acquired until April 2019 from 219 subjects with 223
clinical visits and 150 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans, which was used
for the evaluation of the participants' predictions. Thirty-three teams
participated with a total of 92 submissions. No single submission was best at
predicting all three outcomes. For diagnosis prediction, the best forecast
(team Frog), which was based on gradient boosting, obtained a multiclass area
under the receiver-operating curve (MAUC) of 0.931, while for ventricle
prediction the best forecast (team EMC1), which was based on disease
progression modelling and spline regression, obtained mean absolute error of
0.41% of total intracranial volume (ICV). For ADAS-Cog 13, no forecast was
considerably better than the benchmark mixed effects model (BenchmarkME),
provided to participants before the submission deadline. Further analysis can
help understand which input features and algorithms are most suitable for
Alzheimer's disease prediction and for aiding patient stratification in
clinical trials.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, 4 tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text
overlap with arXiv:1805.0390
de Sitter Supersymmetry Revisited
We present the basic superconformal field theories in
four-dimensional de Sitter space-time, namely the non-abelian super Yang-Mills
theory and the chiral multiplet theory with gauge interactions or cubic
superpotential. These theories have eight supercharges and are invariant under
the full group of conformal symmetries, which includes the de Sitter
isometry group as a subgroup. The theories are ghost-free and the
anti-commutator is positive. SUSY
Ward identities uniquely select the Bunch-Davies vacuum state. This vacuum
state is invariant under superconformal transformations, despite the fact that
de Sitter space has non-zero Hawking temperature. The theories
are classically invariant under the superconformal group, but this
symmetry is broken by radiative corrections. However, no such difficulty is
expected in the theory, which is presented in appendix B.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figure
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