In marine ecosystems microbial communities are critical to ocean function, global primary productivity, and biogeochemical cycles. Both prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes are essential symbionts and ...mutualists, nonpathogenic invaders, primary pathogens, have been linked to disease emergence, and can underpin broader ecosystem changes. However, in the effort to determine coral–microbial interactions, the structure and function of the eukaryotic microbes of the microbiome have been studied less. Eukaryotic microbes are important members of the microbiome, constitute entire kingdoms of life, and make important contributions to ecosystem function. Here, we outline the roles of eukaryotic microbes in marine systems and their contribution to ecosystem change, and discuss the microeukaryotic microbiome of corals and coral reefs.
Current knowledge of the taxonomic diversity and functional contribution of the microeukaryotes within the coral and coral reef microbiome is limited.
Microeukaryotes can function within ecosystems as pathogens, engineers, and symbionts; however, their functional role has been the primary focus of research to date.
The microeukaryotes’ sources, sinks, and persistence – within and between habitats – have not yet been addressed.
Coral reef molecular diversity studies predominantly remove microeukaryotes' data from datasets, and, in doing so, exclude these potentially key taxa from assessments of microbiome function. This is particularly relevant when considering that many studies are comparing diversity and function between disturbed and nondisturbed states, or diseased and healthy states.
Coral reefs are one of the most biodiverse and economically important ecosystems in the world, but they are rapidly degrading due to the effects of global climate change and local anthropogenic ...stressors. Reef scientists are increasingly studying coral reefs that occur in marginal and extreme environments to understand how organisms respond to, and cope with, environmental stress, and to gain insight into how reef organisms may acclimate or adapt to future environmental change. To date, there have been more than 860 publications describing the biology and/or abiotic conditions of marginal and extreme reef environments, most of which were published within the past decade. These include systems characterized by unusually high, low, and/or variable temperatures (intertidal, lagoonal, high-latitude areas, and shallow seas), turbid or urban environments, acidified habitats, and mesophotic depth, and focus on reefs geographically spread throughout most of the tropics. The papers in this special issue of Coral Reefs, entitled
Coral Reefs in a Changing World: Insights from Extremes
, build on the growing body of literature on these unique and important ecosystems, providing a deeper understanding of the patterns and processes governing life in marginal reef systems, and the implications that these insights may have for the future of tropical coral reefs in our rapidly changing world.
Cognitive insight: A systematic review Van Camp, L.S.C.; Sabbe, B.G.C.; Oldenburg, J.F.E.
Clinical psychology review,
July 2017, 2017-Jul, 2017-07-00, 20170701, Letnik:
55
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Cognitive insight is the ability to re-evaluate thoughts and beliefs in order to make thoughtful conclusions. It differs from clinical insight, as it focuses on more general metacognitive processes. ...Therefore, it could be relevant to diverse disorders and non-clinical subjects. There is a growing body of research on cognitive insight in individuals with and without psychosis. This review has summarised the current state of the art regarding this topic. We conclude that while cognitive insight in its current form seems valid for use in individuals with psychosis, it is less so for individuals without psychosis. Additionally, higher cognitive insight not always leads to better psychological functioning. For instance, higher levels of self-reflection are often associated with depressive mood. We therefore recommend the sub-components of cognitive insight to be studied separately. Also, it is unclear what position cognitive insight takes within the spectrum of metacognitive processes and how it relates to other self-related concepts that have been defined previously in literature. Combining future and past research on cognitive insight and its analogue concepts will help in the formation of a uniform definition that fits all subjects discussed here.
•There is a growth in research on cognitive insight in a variety of subjects.•In individuals without psychosis, studies on cognitive insight show mixed results.•Higher cognitive insight is not always psychologically more healthy.•Sub-components of cognitive insight should be studied separately.•Analogue concepts should be included when re-considering this concept.
Metacognition is an important factor in the development and persistence of bipolar disorder. One of the most striking examples of impairment in metacognitive functioning in bipolar disorder is the ...lack of insight these patients have in their disorder. Despite its importance, research regarding metacognition in bipolar disorder is scarce. Furthermore, the neurocognitive basis of metacognitive functioning is unknown.
The current study included 29 patients with bipolar disorder and 29 age, educational level and gender matched healthy controls. All the participants filled in a metacognition questionnaire that examined their metacognitive beliefs. In addition, it was tested how well they estimated their performance on a neurocognitive test-battery beforehand (metacognitive knowledge) and afterwards (metacognitive experience).
Bipolar disorder patients showed maladaptive metacognitive beliefs in comparison with the healthy controls. They also showed impaired metacognitive knowledge and experience. That is, they overestimated their own cognitive performance. However, the latter result was also true for the healthy controls. In addition, metacognition had neurocognitive correlates. However, for the bipolar patients, depressive symptomatology had an important effect on this relationship and on metacognition in general.
Maladaptive metacognitive skills are related to depression in bipolar disorder. A more healthy metacognitive thinking should be promoted. An effective training for this could be a therapy that includes various elements, from basic cognitive- to higher order metacognitive training.
•Bipolar disorder patients have maladaptive metacognitive skills.•Bipolar disorder patients and controls overestimate their cognitive performance.•Metacognition has neurocognitive correlates in bipolar disorder.•Depressive symptomatology has an impact on metacognition.
Introduction. The pattern of associations between clinical insight, cognitive insight, and neurocognitive functioning was assessed in bipolar disorder patients.
Methods. Data from 42 bipolar disorder ...patients were examined. Cognitive insight was measured using the Beck Cognitive Insight Scale (BCIS). The BCIS is a 15-item self-report instrument consisting of two subscales, self-reflectiveness and self-certainty. Clinical insight was measured by the use of the item G12 of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Neurocognitive functioning was assessed using the International Society for Bipolar Disorders-Battery for Assessment of Neurocognition.
Results. Correlation analyses revealed significant positive associations between self-reflectiveness and speed of processing, attention, working memory, visual learning, and reasoning and problem solving. The subscale self-certainty was negatively correlated to working memory, however, this correlation disappeared when we controlled for confounding variables. No correlations between clinical insight and neurocognition were found. In addition, there was no association between cognitive insight and clinical insight.
Conclusion. Better neurocognitive functioning was more related to higher levels of self-reflectiveness than to diminished self-certainty.
•Cognitive insight is a stable characteristic over time in bipolar disorder.•Changes in depression or mania did not affect cognitive insight over time.•At baseline, depression was positively ...correlated with self-reflectiveness.•Self-reflectiveness was higher in patients than controls.•It could be that higher self-reflectiveness is a trait in bipolar disorder.
Cognitive insight or the ability to be self-reflective and to retain from being over-confident in own beliefs is an upcoming topic in research regarding psychiatric disorders. In bipolar disorder investigations are scarce and an important lacuna is the unexamined longitudinal relationship between cognitive insight and mood. Therefore, in this study the level of cognitive insight, mania and depression were assessed in a total of 56 patients with bipolar disorder at baseline, four months and eight months follow-up. In addition, the cognitive insight of 35 healthy controls was assessed at baseline and at four months follow-up. The current research shows that self-reflectiveness and self-certainty remained stable over time in bipolar disorder. The improvement of mood did not affect the course of cognitive insight. However, at baseline higher levels of depression were correlated with more self-reflectiveness. In addition, self-reflectiveness was higher for bipolar disorder patients in comparison with the healthy controls. Our results could imply that higher levels of self-reflectiveness are a specific characteristic in bipolar disorder that is independent from an improvement in mood.
The first documented sightings of Gramma dejongi at Little Cayman Island are reported. The discovery of a single G. dejongi individual in the Cayman Islands does not imply that large-scale ...recruitment of the species has occurred in the area. However, sighting G. dejongi outside of Cuba does suggest that the species is capable of dispersing pelagically to nearby islands.
Global degradation of coral reefs has increased the urgency of identifying stress-tolerant coral populations, to enhance understanding of the bio logy driving stress tolerance, as well as identifying ...stocks of stress-hardened populations to aid reef rehabilitation. Surprisingly, scientists are continually discovering that naturally extreme environments house established coral populations adapted to grow within extreme abiotic conditions comparable to seawater conditions predicted over the coming century. Such environments include inshore mangrove lagoons that carry previously unrecognised ecosystem service value for corals, spanning from refuge to stress preconditioning. However, the existence of such hot-spots of resilience on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) remains entirely unknown. Here we describe, for the first time, 2 extreme GBR mangrove lagoons (Woody Isles and Howick Island), exposing taxonomically diverse coral communities (34 species, 7 growth morphologies) to regular extreme low pH (<7.6), low oxygen (<1 mg l−1) and highly variable temperature range (>7°C) conditions. Coral cover was typically low (<5%), but highly patchy and included established colonies (>0.5 m diameter), with net photosynthesis and calcification rates of 2 dominant coral species (Acropora millepora, Porites lutea) reduced (20−30%), and respiration enhanced (11−35%), in the mangrove lagoon relative to adjacent reefs. Further analysis revealed that physiological plasticity (photosynthetic ‘strategy’) and flexibility of Symbiodiniaceae taxa associations appear crucial in supporting coral capacity to thrive from reef to lagoon. Prevalence of corals within these extreme conditions on the GBR (and elsewhere) increasingly challenge our understanding of coral resilience to stressors, and highlight the need to study unfavourable coral environments to better resolve mechanisms of stress tolerance.
The tectorial membrane is an extracellular matrix of the inner ear that contacts the stereocilia bundles of specialized sensory hair cells. Sound induces movement of these hair cells relative to the ...tectorial membrane, deflects the stereocilia, and leads to fluctuations in hair-cell membrane potential, transducing sound into electrical signals. Alpha-tectorin is one of the major non-collagenous components of the tectorial membrane. Recently, the gene encoding mouse alpha-tectorin (Tecta) was mapped to a region of mouse chromosome 9, which shows evolutionary conservation with human chromosome 11q (ref. 3), where linkage was found in two families, one Belgian (DFNA12; ref. 4) and the other, Austrian (DFNA8; unpublished data), with autosomal dominant non-syndromic hearing impairment. We determined the complete sequence and the intron-exon structure of the human TECTA gene. In both families, mutation analysis revealed missense mutations which replace conserved amino-acid residues within the zona pellucida domain of TECTA. These findings indicate that mutations in TECTA are responsible for hearing impairment in these families, and implicate a new type of protein in the pathogenesis of hearing impairment.
Prediction of contralateral breast cancer (CBC) risk is challenging due to moderate performances of the known risk factors. We aimed to improve our previous risk prediction model (PredictCBC) by ...updated follow-up and including additional risk factors.
We included data from 207,510 invasive breast cancer patients participating in 23 studies. In total, 8225 CBC events occurred over a median follow-up of 10.2 years. In addition to the previously included risk factors, PredictCBC-2.0 included CHEK2 c.1100delC, a 313 variant polygenic risk score (PRS-313), body mass index (BMI), and parity. Fine and Gray regression was used to fit the model. Calibration and a time-dependent area under the curve (AUC) at 5 and 10 years were assessed to determine the performance of the models. Decision curve analysis was performed to evaluate the net benefit of PredictCBC-2.0 and previous PredictCBC models.
The discrimination of PredictCBC-2.0 at 10 years was higher than PredictCBC with an AUC of 0.65 (95% prediction intervals (PI) 0.56-0.74) versus 0.63 (95%PI 0.54-0.71). PredictCBC-2.0 was well calibrated with an observed/expected ratio at 10 years of 0.92 (95%PI 0.34-2.54). Decision curve analysis for contralateral preventive mastectomy (CPM) showed the potential clinical utility of PredictCBC-2.0 between thresholds of 4 and 12% 10-year CBC risk for BRCA1/2 mutation carriers and non-carriers.
Additional genetic information beyond BRCA1/2 germline mutations improved CBC risk prediction and might help tailor clinical decision-making toward CPM or alternative preventive strategies. Identifying patients who benefit from CPM, especially in the general breast cancer population, remains challenging.
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