Assaying Environmental Nickel Toxicity Using Model Nematodes

Although nickel exposure results in allergic reactions, respiratory conditions, and cancer in humans and rodents, the ramifications of excess nickel in the environment for animal and human health remain largely undescribed. Nickel and other cationic metals travel through waterways and bind to soils and sediments. To evaluate the potential toxic effects of nickel at environmental contaminant levels (8.9-7,600 µg Ni/g dry weight of sediment and 50-800 µg NiCl2/L of water), we conducted assays using two cosmopolitan nematodes, Caenorhabditis elegans and Pristionchus pacificus. We assayed the effects of both sediment-bound and aqueous nickel upon animal growth, developmental survival, lifespan, and fecundity. Uncontaminated sediments were collected from sites in the Midwestern United States and spiked with a range of nickel concentrations. We found that nickel-spiked sediment substantially impairs both survival from larval to adult stages and adult longevity in a concentration-dependent manner. Further, while aqueous nickel showed no adverse effects on either survivorship or longevity, we observed a significant decrease in fecundity, indicating that aqueous nickel could have a negative impact on nematode physiology. Intriguingly, C. elegans and P. pacificus exhibit similar, but not identical, responses to nickel exposure. Moreover, P. pacificus could be tested successfully in sediments inhospitable to C. elegans. Our results add to a growing body of literature documenting the impact of nickel on animal physiology, and suggest that environmental toxicological studies could gain an advantage by widening their repertoire of nematode species

Matrix metalloproteinases in a sea urchin ligament with adaptable mechanical properties

Mutable collagenous tissues (MCTs) of echinoderms show reversible changes in tensile properties (mutability) that are initiated and modulated by the nervous system via the activities of cells known as juxtaligamental cells. The molecular mechanism underpinning this mechanical adaptability has still to be elucidated. Adaptable connective tissues are also present in mammals, most notably in the uterine cervix, in which changes in stiffness result partly from changes in the balance between matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs). There have been no attempts to assess the potential involvement of MMPs in the echinoderm mutability phenomenon, apart from studies dealing with a process whose relationship to the latter is uncertain. In this investigation we used the compass depressor ligaments (CDLs) of the sea-urchin Paracentrotus lividus. The effect of a synthetic MMP inhibitor - galardin - on the biomechanical properties of CDLs in different mechanical states ("standard", "compliant" and "stiff") was evaluated by dynamic mechanical analysis, and the presence of MMPs in normal and galardin-treated CDLs was determined semi-quantitatively by gelatin zymography. Galardin reversibly increased the stiffness and storage modulus of CDLs in all three states, although its effect was significantly lower in stiff than in standard or compliant CDLs. Gelatin zymography revealed a progressive increase in total gelatinolytic activity between the compliant, standard and stiff states, which was possibly due primarily to higher molecular weight components resulting from the inhibition and degradation of MMPs. Galardin caused no change in the gelatinolytic activity of stiff CDLs, a pronounced and statistically significant reduction in that of standard CDLs, and a pronounced, but not statistically significant, reduction in that of compliant CDLs. Our results provide evidence that MMPs may contribute to the variable tensility of the CDLs, in the light of which we provide an updated hypothesis for the regulatory mechanism controlling MCT mutability

A note on portfolio selection and stochastic dominance

This note provides new and simpler conditions ensuring that, when one portfolio dominates another via stochastic dominance, a decision maker prefers the first one. The conditions are derived for the case of third-order stochastic dominance and for the general case of Nth-order stochastic dominance