Diversity of Zoanthids (Anthozoa: Hexacorallia) on Hawaiian Seamounts: Description of the Hawaiian Gold Coral and Additional Zoanthids

The Hawaiian gold coral has a history of exploitation from the deep slopes and seamounts of the Hawaiian Islands as one of the precious corals commercialised in the jewellery industry. Due to its peculiar characteristic of building a scleroproteic skeleton, this zoanthid has been referred as Gerardia sp. (a junior synonym of Savalia Nardo, 1844) but never formally described or examined by taxonomists despite its commercial interest. While collection of Hawaiian gold coral is now regulated, globally seamounts habitats are increasingly threatened by a variety of anthropogenic impacts. However, impact assessment studies and conservation measures cannot be taken without consistent knowledge of the biodiversity of such environments. Recently, multiple samples of octocoral-associated zoanthids were collected from the deep slopes of the islands and seamounts of the Hawaiian Archipelago. The molecular and morphological examination of these zoanthids revealed the presence of at least five different species including the gold coral. Among these only the gold coral appeared to create its own skeleton, two other species are simply using the octocoral as substrate, and the situation is not clear for the final two species. Phylogenetically, all these species appear related to zoanthids of the genus Savalia as well as to the octocoral-associated zoanthid Corallizoanthus tsukaharai, suggesting a common ancestor to all octocoral-associated zoanthids. The diversity of zoanthids described or observed during this study is comparable to levels of diversity found in shallow water tropical coral reefs. Such unexpected species diversity is symptomatic of the lack of biological exploration and taxonomic studies of the diversity of seamount hexacorals

The hidden perils of read mapping as a quality assessment tool in genome sequencing

This article provides a comparative analysis of the various methods of genome sequencing focusing on verification of the assembly quality. The results of a comparative assessment of various de novo assembly tools, as well as sequencing technologies, are presented using a recently completed sequence of the genome of Lactobacillus fermentum 3872. In particular, quality of assemblies is assessed by using CLC Genomics Workbench read mapping and Optical mapping developed by OpGen. Over-extension of contigs without prior knowledge of contig location can lead to misassembled contigs, even when commonly used quality indicators such as read mapping suggest that a contig is well assembled. Precautions must also be undertaken when using long read sequencing technology, which may also lead to misassembled contigs

Author Correction: Measuring light scattering and absorption in corals with Inverse Spectroscopic Optical Coherence Tomography (ISOCT): a new tool for non-invasive monitoring.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper

Exoplanet Atmosphere Measurements from Transmission Spectroscopy and other Planet-Star Combined Light Observations

It is possible to learn a great deal about exoplanet atmospheres even when we cannot spatially resolve the planets from their host stars. In this chapter, we overview the basic techniques used to characterize transiting exoplanets - transmission spectroscopy, emission and reflection spectroscopy, and full-orbit phase curve observations. We discuss practical considerations, including current and future observing facilities and best practices for measuring precise spectra. We also highlight major observational results on the chemistry, climate, and cloud properties of exoplanets.Comment: Accepted review chapter; Handbook of Exoplanets, eds. Hans J. Deeg and Juan Antonio Belmonte (Springer-Verlag). 22 pages, 6 figure

Regional Brain Responses in Nulliparous Women to Emotional Infant Stimuli

Infant cries and facial expressions influence social interactions and elicit caretaking behaviors from adults. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that neural responses to infant stimuli involve brain regions that process rewards. However, these studies have yet to investigate individual differences in tendencies to engage or withdraw from motivationally relevant stimuli. To investigate this, we used event-related fMRI to scan 17 nulliparous women. Participants were presented with novel infant cries of two distress levels (low and high) and unknown infant faces of varying affect (happy, sad, and neutral) in a randomized, counter-balanced order. Brain activation was subsequently correlated with scores on the Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System scale. Infant cries activated bilateral superior and middle temporal gyri (STG and MTG) and precentral and postcentral gyri. Activation was greater in bilateral temporal cortices for low- relative to high-distress cries. Happy relative to neutral faces activated the ventral striatum, caudate, ventromedial prefrontal, and orbitofrontal cortices. Sad versus neutral faces activated the precuneus, cuneus, and posterior cingulate cortex, and behavioral activation drive correlated with occipital cortical activations in this contrast. Behavioral inhibition correlated with activation in the right STG for high- and low-distress cries relative to pink noise. Behavioral drive correlated inversely with putamen, caudate, and thalamic activations for the comparison of high-distress cries to pink noise. Reward-responsiveness correlated with activation in the left precentral gyrus during the perception of low-distress cries relative to pink noise. Our findings indicate that infant cry stimuli elicit activations in areas implicated in auditory processing and social cognition. Happy infant faces may be encoded as rewarding, whereas sad faces activate regions associated with empathic processing. Differences in motivational tendencies may modulate neural responses to infant cues

Cross-Talk between Signaling Pathways Can Generate Robust Oscillations in Calcium and cAMP

BACKGROUND:To control and manipulate cellular signaling, we need to understand cellular strategies for information transfer, integration, and decision-making. A key feature of signal transduction is the generation of only a few intracellular messengers by many extracellular stimuli. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:Here we model molecular cross-talk between two classic second messengers, cyclic AMP (cAMP) and calcium, and show that the dynamical complexity of the response of both messengers increases substantially through their interaction. In our model of a non-excitable cell, both cAMP and calcium concentrations can oscillate. If mutually inhibitory, cross-talk between the two second messengers can increase the range of agonist concentrations for which oscillations occur. If mutually activating, cross-talk decreases the oscillation range, but can generate 'bursting' oscillations of calcium and may enable better filtering of noise. CONCLUSION:We postulate that this increased dynamical complexity allows the cell to encode more information, particularly if both second messengers encode signals. In their native environments, it is unlikely that cells are exposed to one stimulus at a time, and cross-talk may help generate sufficiently complex responses to allow the cell to discriminate between different combinations and concentrations of extracellular agonists

Cross-Reactive T Cells Are Involved in Rapid Clearance of 2009 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza Virus in Nonhuman Primates

In mouse models of influenza, T cells can confer broad protection against multiple viral subtypes when antibodies raised against a single subtype fail to do so. However, the role of T cells in protecting humans against influenza remains unclear. Here we employ a translational nonhuman primate model to show that cross-reactive T cell responses play an important role in early clearance of infection with 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus (H1N1pdm). To “prime” cellular immunity, we first infected 5 rhesus macaques with a seasonal human H1N1 isolate. These animals made detectable cellular and antibody responses against the seasonal H1N1 isolate but had no neutralizing antibodies against H1N1pdm. Four months later, we challenged the 5 “primed” animals and 7 naive controls with H1N1pdm. In naive animals, CD8+ T cells with an activated phenotype (Ki-67+ CD38+) appeared in blood and lung 5–7 days post inoculation (p.i.) with H1N1pdm and reached peak magnitude 7–10 days p.i. In contrast, activated T cells were recruited to the lung as early as 2 days p.i. in “primed” animals, and reached peak frequencies in blood and lung 4–7 days p.i. Interferon (IFN)-γ Elispot and intracellular cytokine staining assays showed that the virus-specific response peaked earlier and reached a higher magnitude in “primed” animals than in naive animals. This response involved both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Strikingly, “primed” animals cleared H1N1pdm infection significantly earlier from the upper and lower respiratory tract than the naive animals did, and before the appearance of H1N1pdm-specific neutralizing antibodies. Together, our results suggest that cross-reactive T cell responses can mediate early clearance of an antigenically novel influenza virus in primates. Vaccines capable of inducing such cross-reactive T cells may help protect humans against severe disease caused by newly emerging pandemic influenza viruses

Resolving fluorescent species by their brightness and diffusion using correlated photon-counting histograms

Fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy (FFS) refers to techniques that analyze fluctuations in the fluorescence emitted by fluorophores diffusing in a small volume and can be used to distinguish between populations of molecules that exhibit differences in brightness or diffusion. For example, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) resolves species through their diffusion by analyzing correlations in the fluorescence over time; photon counting histograms (PCH) and related methods based on moment analysis resolve species through their brightness by analyzing fluctuations in the photon counts. Here we introduce correlated photon counting histograms (cPCH), which uses both types of information to simultaneously resolve fluorescent species by their brightness and diffusion. We define the cPCH distribution by the probability to detect both a particular number of photons at the current time and another number at a later time. FCS and moment analysis are special cases of the moments of the cPCH distribution, and PCH is obtained by summing over the photon counts in either channel. cPCH is inherently a dual channel technique, and the expressions we develop apply to the dual colour case. Using simulations, we demonstrate that two species differing in both their diffusion and brightness can be better resolved with cPCH than with either FCS or PCH. Further, we show that cPCH can be extended both to longer dwell times to improve the signal-to-noise and to the analysis of images. By better exploiting the information available in fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy, cPCH will be an enabling methodology for quantitative biology

Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals

During 2015–2016, record temperatures triggered a pan-tropical episode of coral bleaching, the third global-scale event since mass bleaching was first documented in the 1980s. Here we examine how and why the severity of recurrent major bleaching events has varied at multiple scales, using aerial and underwater surveys of Australian reefs combined with satellite-derived sea surface temperatures. The distinctive geographic footprints of recurrent bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016 were determined by the spatial pattern of sea temperatures in each year. Water quality and fishing pressure had minimal effect on the unprecedented bleaching in 2016, suggesting that local protection of reefs affords little or no resistance to extreme heat. Similarly, past exposure to bleaching in 1998 and 2002 did not lessen the severity of bleaching in 2016. Consequently, immediate global action to curb future warming is essential to secure a future for coral reefs