Despite their importance as evolutionary and ecological model systems, the phylogenetic relationships among gasterosteiforms remain poorly understood, complicating efforts to understand the ...evolutionary origins of the exceptional morphological and behavioural diversity of this group. The present review summarizes current knowledge on the origin and evolution of syngnathids, a gasterosteiform family with a highly developed form of male parental care, combining inferences based on morphological and molecular data with paleontological evidence documenting the evolutionary history of the group. Molecular methods have provided new tools for the study of syngnathid relationships and have played an important role in recent conservation efforts. Despite recent insights into syngnathid evolution, however, a survey of the literature reveals a strong taxonomic bias towards studies on the species‐rich genera Hippocampus and Syngnathus, with a lack of data for many morphologically unique members of the family. The study of the evolutionary pressures responsible for generating the high diversity of syngnathids would benefit from a wider perspective, providing a comparative framework in which to investigate the evolution of the genetic, morphological and behavioural traits of the group as a whole.
A pooled analysis of PORTEC-1 & 2 identified substantial lymphovascular space invasion (LVSI) in 4.8% of patients, which predicted for pelvic recurrence, distant metastasis, and overall survival. Our ...institution implemented the PORTEC three-tier system of LVSI reporting (absent, focal, or substantial). We aimed to quantify the incidence of substantial LVSI in a North American population and to correlate extent of LVSI with lymph node (LN) involvement.
A retrospective review was conducted on patients with clinically uterine-confined, endometrioid type endometrial cancer who underwent surgical staging and were found to have pT1a-b disease. Binary logistic regression was used to assess predictors of LN involvement (defined as ITC, micrometastases, or macrometastases).
In total, 438 patients with pT1a-b disease were identified. In the overall cohort and in the subset meeting PORTEC-1 inclusion criteria (n = 195), no LVSI was present in 67.4% and 50.8%; focal LVSI was present in 16.7% and 24.1%; and substantial LVSI was present in 16.0% and 25.1%, respectively. Among patients who underwent surgical LN assessment (79.2%, n = 347), LNs were involved in 3.3% without LVSI, 7.5% with focal LVSI (OR 2.4), and 15.2% with substantial LVSI (OR 5.3) (p = .005), with a similar trend in the PORTEC-1 cohort. Extent of LVSI correlated with disease burden in LN metastases.
Our incidence of substantial LVSI was three to five times higher than reported by PORTEC and correlated with LN involvement. This questions the reproducibility of the three-tier LVSI reporting system and emphasizes the need for multi-institutional data outside PORTEC for confirmation of our findings.
•Substantial LVSI was present in 16.0% of all pT1a-b patients and 25.1% of those meeting PORTEC 1 inclusion criteria.•Among all pT1a-b patients, LNs were involved in 3.3% without LVSI, 7.5% with focal LVSI, and 15.2% with substantial LVSI.•Substantial LVSI was a strong predictor for LN metastases.
The alarm cytokine interleukin‐1β (IL‐1β) is a potent activator of the inflammatory cascade following pathogen recognition. IL‐1β production typically requires two signals: first, priming by ...recognition of pathogen‐associated molecular patterns leads to the production of immature pro‐IL‐1β; subsequently, inflammasome activation by a secondary signal allows cleavage and maturation of IL‐1β from its pro‐form. However, despite the important role of IL‐1β in controlling local and systemic inflammation, its overall regulation is still not fully understood. Here we demonstrate that peritoneal tissue‐resident macrophages use an active inhibitory pathway, to suppress IL‐1β processing, which can otherwise occur in the absence of a second signal. Programming by the transcription factor Gata6 controls the expression of prostacyclin synthase, which is required for prostacyclin production after lipopolysaccharide stimulation and optimal induction of IL‐10. In the absence of secondary signal, IL‐10 potently inhibits IL‐1β processing, providing a previously unrecognized control of IL‐1β in tissue‐resident macrophages.
Synopsis
The interleukin‐1β (IL‐1β) is a potent cytokine, present in the early stages of inflammation and playing a role in autoinflammatory syndromes. Its production requires two independent signals, the first leading to the production of its pro‐form (pro‐IL‐1β) and the second to its maturation and release. Here we identified an additional mechanism, actively suppressing IL‐1β production, thereby contributing to the control of inflammation.
In response to inflammatory signals (lipopolysaccharide), resident peritoneal macrophages engage ata6‐dependant prostacyclin (PGI2) production.
PGI2 signals back to the macrophages to induce IL‐10 production.
IL‐10 actively blocks IL‐1β processing.
In the absence of a secondary signal, the lack of either PGI2 or IL‐10 is sufficient to trigger IL‐1β maturation and release.
Resident peritoneal macrophages limit IL‐1β release following TLR activation, via a novel GATA6‐induced pathway involving prostacyclin and IL‐10.
Bees are the most significant pollinators of flowering plants. This partnership began ca. 120 million years ago, but the uncertainty of how and when bees spread across the planet has greatly obscured ...investigations of this key mutualism. We present a novel analysis of bee biogeography using extensive new genomic and fossil data to demonstrate that bees originated in Western Gondwana (Africa and South America). Bees likely originated in the Early Cretaceous, shortly before the breakup of Western Gondwana, and the early evolution of any major bee lineage is associated with either the South American or African land masses. Subsequently, bees colonized northern continents via a complex history of vicariance and dispersal. The notable early absences from large landmasses, particularly in Australia and India, have important implications for understanding the assembly of local floras and diverse modes of pollination. How bees spread around the world from their hypothesized Southern Hemisphere origin parallels the histories of numerous flowering plant clades, providing an essential step to studying the evolution of angiosperm pollination syndromes in space and time.
•Bees likely originated in Gondwana before the breakup of Africa and South America•The geological history of southern continents impacted early bee diversification•Northward range expansions in the Tertiary impacted modern bee distribution•Southern Hemisphere origin of bees parallels the histories of many plant groups
Almeida, Bossert, et al. combine phylogenomics and the fossil record to propose a comprehensive hypothesis of bee biogeography. Bees originated in Gondwana and later colonized all continents through a series of events that parallel the histories of numerous flowering plants, offering opportunities to interpret the evolution of pollination in space.
Molecular studies from the past decade have revealed striking conservation in the mechanisms of eukaryotic cell cycle control. Yet before the advent of molecular genetics, it was clear that ...eukaryotes possessed many different cell cycle variations, and thus that there must be diversity in mechanisms of control. One common cell cycle variant is the endoreplication cycle, in which cells increase their genomic DNA content without dividing. Although endocycles are sometimes dismissed as an evolutionary peculiarity, they are widespread in protists, plants, and many animals including arthropods, mollusks, and mammals. Endocycling cells can become incredibly polyploid, with chromatin values (C values denote DNA content as a multiple of the normal haploid genome) as high as 24,000 reported in some plant endosperms (Traas et al., 1998). Because cell size for a given cell type is generally proportional to the amount of nuclear DNA, endoreplication constitutes an effective strategy of cell growth, and it is often found in differentiated cells that are large or highly metabolically active (see Figure 1 for a classic example). Recent studies show that endocycles utilize much of the same G1/S regulatory machinery as mitotic cycles, with some informative, and some perplexing, alterations. Here we review what is known about the different endocycle types found in nature and how they are regulated. We also offer some ideas about why endocycles are so commonly used.
•Sown legumes and forbs can be used to enhance resources for grassland pollinators.•Pollinator abundance was correlated with legume and forb flower density.•Sowing forbs increases the lifetime of ...flowering resources for pollinators.•Legumes lasted longer under grazing than cutting management.•Over four years pollinators lasted better where both forbs and legumes were sown.
Across N.W. Europe intensive agricultural management has increased productivity to the detriment of floral resources vital for insect pollinators like bees, butterflies and hoverflies. While the creation of wildflower habitats has been widely used to re-establish such resources into arable ecosystems (e.g. sown into field margins), comparable low cost methods for enhancing floristic diversity in production grasslands are lacking. We investigated how simple and cheep seed mixtures based around three plant functional groups (grasses, legumes and non-leguminous forbs) could be used to enhance flowering resources to benefit insect pollinator communities over a four year period. We demonstrate that the abundance and species richness of pollinators was correlated with the increased availability of legume and non-legume forb flowers. While the flowering resources provided by agricultural cultivars of legumes declined rapidly once sown, the inclusion of a forb component within seed mixtures was effective in increasing the long-term persistence of these resources. As a result the abundance and species richness of insect pollinators over the four years showed greater stability where forbs were also sown. Sward management also played a role in the persistence of floral resources, with grazing more likely to maintain legume cover than cutting. In conclusion, we demonstrate that low cost seed mixtures can be used to enhance floristic diversity to benefit pollinators, although the continued value of these grasslands over time is dependent on complementarity between sown legumes and forbs. As permanent grassland covers c. 40% of the UK the enhancement of their floristic diversity has a huge potential to benefit insect pollinators. The type of land sharing approaches suggested here maintain modest agricultural productivity and so may be the most likely to achieve benefit to pollinators through wide-scale farmer uptake.
We report on the first proton-induced single proton- and neutron-removal reactions from the neutron-deficient ^{14}O nucleus with large Fermi-surface asymmetry S_{n}-S_{p}=18.6 MeV at ∼100 ...MeV/nucleon, a widely used energy regime for rare-isotope studies. The measured inclusive cross sections and parallel momentum distributions of the ^{13}N and ^{13}O residues are compared to the state-of-the-art reaction models, with nuclear structure inputs from many-body shell-model calculations. Our results provide the first quantitative contributions of multiple reaction mechanisms including the quasifree knockout, inelastic scattering, and nucleon transfer processes. It is shown that the inelastic scattering and nucleon transfer, usually neglected at such energy regime, contribute about 50% and 30% to the loosely bound proton and deeply bound neutron removal, respectively. These multiple reaction mechanisms should be considered in analyses of inclusive one-nucleon removal cross sections measured at intermediate energies for quantitative investigation of single-particle strengths and correlations in atomic nuclei.
Summary
The North Wyke Farm Platform was established as a United Kingdom national capability for collaborative research, training and knowledge exchange in agro‐environmental sciences. Its remit is ...to research agricultural productivity and ecosystem responses to different management practices for beef and sheep production in lowland grasslands. A system based on permanent pasture was implemented on three 21‐ha farmlets to obtain baseline data on hydrology, nutrient cycling and productivity for 2 years. Since then two farmlets have been modified by either (i) planned reseeding with grasses that have been bred for enhanced sugar content or deep‐rooting traits or (ii) sowing grass and legume mixtures to reduce nitrogen fertilizer inputs. The quantities of nutrients that enter, cycle within and leave the farmlets were evaluated with data recorded from sensor technologies coupled with more traditional field study methods. We demonstrate the potential of the farm platform approach with a case study in which we investigate the effects of the weather, field topography and farm management activity on surface runoff and associated pollutant or nutrient loss from soil. We have the opportunity to do a full nutrient cycling analysis, taking account of nutrient transformations in soil, and flows to water and losses to air. The NWFP monitoring system is unique in both scale and scope for a managed land‐based capability that brings together several technologies that allow the effect of temperate grassland farming systems on soil moisture levels, runoff and associated water quality dynamics to be studied in detail.
Highlights
Can meat production systems be developed that are productive yet minimize losses to the environment?
The data are from an intensively instrumented capability, which is globally unique and topical.
We use sensing technologies and surveys to show the effect of pasture renewal on nutrient losses.
Platforms provide evidence of the effect of meteorology, topography and farm activity on nutrient loss.
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