Abstract
Frozen winters define life at high latitudes and altitudes. However, recent, rapid changes in winter conditions have highlighted our relatively poor understanding of ecosystem function in ...winter relative to other seasons. Winter ecological processes can affect reproduction, growth, survival, and fitness, whereas processes that occur during other seasons, such as summer production, mediate how organisms fare in winter. As interest grows in winter ecology, there is a need to clearly provide a thought-provoking framework for defining winter and the pathways through which it affects organisms. In the present article, we present nine maxims (concise expressions of a fundamentally held principle or truth) for winter ecology, drawing from the perspectives of scientists with diverse expertise. We describe winter as being frozen, cold, dark, snowy, less productive, variable, and deadly. Therefore, the implications of winter impacts on wildlife are striking for resource managers and conservation practitioners. Our final, overarching maxim, “winter is changing,” is a call to action to address the need for immediate study of the ecological implications of rapidly changing winters.
In fibrotic diseases, myofibroblasts derive from a range of cell types including endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EndMT). Increasing evidence suggests that miRNAs are key regulators in ...biological processes but their profile is relatively understudied in EndMT. In human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), EndMT was induced by treatment with TGFβ2 and IL1β. A significant decrease in endothelial markers such as VE-cadherin, CD31 and an increase in mesenchymal markers such as fibronectin were observed. In parallel, miRNA profiling showed that miR-126-3p was down-regulated in HUVECs undergoing EndMT and over-expression of miR-126-3p prevented EndMT, maintaining CD31 and repressing fibronectin expression. EndMT was investigated using lineage tracing with transgenic Cdh5-Cre-ERT2; Rosa26R-stop-YFP mice in two established models of fibrosis: cardiac ischaemic injury and kidney ureteric occlusion. In both cardiac and kidney fibrosis, lineage tracing showed a significant subpopulation of endothelial-derived cells expressed mesenchymal markers, indicating they had undergone EndMT. In addition, miR-126-3p was restricted to endothelial cells and down-regulated in murine fibrotic kidney and heart tissue. These findings were confirmed in patient kidney biopsies. MiR-126-3p expression is restricted to endothelial cells and is down-regulated during EndMT. Over-expression of miR-126-3p reduces EndMT, therefore, it could be considered for miRNA-based therapeutics in fibrotic organs.
OBJECTIVE:We aimed to define preoperative clinical and molecular characteristics that would allow better patient selection for operative resection.
BACKGROUND:Although we use molecular selection ...methods for systemic targeted therapies, these principles are not applied to surgical oncology. Improving patient selection is of vital importance for the operative treatment of pancreatic cancer (pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma). Although surgery is the only chance of long-term survival, 80% still succumb to the disease and approximately 30% die within 1 year, often sooner than those that have unresected local disease.
METHOD:In 3 independent pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cohorts (total participants = 1184) the relationship between aberrant expression of prometastatic proteins S100A2 and S100A4 and survival was assessed. A preoperative nomogram based on clinical variables available before surgery and expression of these proteins was constructed and compared to traditional measures, and a postoperative nomogram.
RESULTS:High expression of either S100A2 or S100A4 was independent poor prognostic factors in a training cohort of 518 participants. These results were validated in 2 independent patient cohorts (Glasgow, n = 198; Germany, n = 468). Aberrant biomarker expression stratified the cohorts into 3 distinct prognostic groups. A preoperative nomogram incorporating S100A2 and S100A4 expression predicted survival and nomograms derived using postoperative clinicopathological variables.
CONCLUSIONS:Of those patients with a poor preoperative nomogram score, approximately 50% of patients died within a year of resection. Nomograms have the potential to improve selection for surgery and neoadjuvant therapy, avoiding surgery in aggressive disease, and justifying more extensive resections in biologically favorable disease.
We aimed to define preoperative clinical and molecular characteristics that would allow better patient selection for operative resection.
Although we use molecular selection methods for systemic ...targeted therapies, these principles are not applied to surgical oncology. Improving patient selection is of vital importance for the operative treatment of pancreatic cancer (pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma). Although surgery is the only chance of long-term survival, 80% still succumb to the disease and approximately 30% die within 1 year, often sooner than those that have unresected local disease.
In 3 independent pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cohorts (total participants = 1184) the relationship between aberrant expression of prometastatic proteins S100A2 and S100A4 and survival was assessed. A preoperative nomogram based on clinical variables available before surgery and expression of these proteins was constructed and compared to traditional measures, and a postoperative nomogram.
High expression of either S100A2 or S100A4 was independent poor prognostic factors in a training cohort of 518 participants. These results were validated in 2 independent patient cohorts (Glasgow, n = 198; Germany, n = 468). Aberrant biomarker expression stratified the cohorts into 3 distinct prognostic groups. A preoperative nomogram incorporating S100A2 and S100A4 expression predicted survival and nomograms derived using postoperative clinicopathological variables.
Of those patients with a poor preoperative nomogram score, approximately 50% of patients died within a year of resection. Nomograms have the potential to improve selection for surgery and neoadjuvant therapy, avoiding surgery in aggressive disease, and justifying more extensive resections in biologically favorable disease.
Winter conditions impose dramatic constraints on temperate, boreal, and polar ecosystems, and shape the abiotic and biotic interactions underpinning these systems. At high latitudes, winter can last ...longer than the growing season and may have a disproportionately large impact on organisms and ecosystems. Even so, our understanding of the ecological implications of winter is often lacking. Indeed, even what exactly defines winter is currently unclear, and boundaries that delineate this season are blurred across marine, freshwater, and terrestrial realms and fields of biology. Here, we discuss the complexity of defining winter, and highlight the importance of maintaining the capacity to test hypotheses across seasons, realms, and domains of life. We then outline questions drawn from diverse fields of research that address current gaps in our understanding of winter ecology and how winter influences multiple levels of biological organization, from individuals to ecosystems. Finally, we highlight the potential consequences of changes to both the length and severity of winter due to climate change, and discuss the role winter may play in mediating ecosystem function in the future.
We highlight current threats to biodiversity in cold climate regions that emerge during winter and discuss winter-focused conservation and management practices using well-established threat and ...action frameworks. Our synthesis demonstrates that threats are prevalent during the winter but can be partially mitigated with targeted conservation and management efforts.
Abstract
Winter at high latitudes is characterized by low temperatures, dampened light levels and short photoperiods which shape ecological and evolutionary outcomes from cells to populations to ecosystems. Advances in our understanding of winter biological processes (spanning physiology, behaviour and ecology) highlight that biodiversity threats (e.g. climate change driven shifts in reproductive windows) may interact with winter conditions, leading to greater ecological impacts. As such, conservation and management strategies that consider winter processes and their consequences on biological mechanisms may lead to greater resilience of high altitude and latitude ecosystems. Here, we use well-established threat and action taxonomies produced by the International Union of Conservation of Nature—Conservation Measures Partnership (IUCN-CMP) to synthesize current threats to biota that emerge during, or as the result of, winter processes then discuss targeted management approaches for winter-based conservation. We demonstrate the importance of considering winter when identifying threats to biodiversity and deciding on appropriate management strategies across species and ecosystems. We confirm our expectation that threats are prevalent during the winter and are especially important considering the physiologically challenging conditions that winter presents. Moreover, our findings emphasize that climate change and winter-related constraints on organisms will intersect with other stressors to potentially magnify threats and further complicate management. Though conservation and management practices are less commonly considered during the winter season, we identified several potential or already realized applications relevant to winter that could be beneficial. Many of the examples are quite recent, suggesting a potential turning point for applied winter biology. This growing body of literature is promising but we submit that more research is needed to identify and address threats to wintering biota for targeted and proactive conservation. We suggest that management decisions consider the importance of winter and incorporate winter specific strategies for holistic and mechanistic conservation and resource management.
The movement ecology of fishes Cooke, Steven J.; Bergman, Jordanna N.; Twardek, William M. ...
Journal of fish biology,
October 2022, 2022-10-00, 20221001, Letnik:
101, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Movement of fishes in the aquatic realm is fundamental to their ecology and survival. Movement can be driven by a variety of biological, physiological and environmental factors occurring across all ...spatial and temporal scales. The intrinsic capacity of movement to impact fish individually (e.g., foraging) with potential knock‐on effects throughout the ecosystem (e.g., food web dynamics) has garnered considerable interest in the field of movement ecology. The advancement of technology in recent decades, in combination with ever‐growing threats to freshwater and marine systems, has further spurred empirical research and theoretical considerations. Given the rapid expansion within the field of movement ecology and its significant role in informing management and conservation efforts, a contemporary and multidisciplinary review about the various components influencing movement is outstanding. Using an established conceptual framework for movement ecology as a guide (i.e., Nathan et al., 2008: 19052), we synthesized the environmental and individual factors that affect the movement of fishes. Specifically, internal (e.g., energy acquisition, endocrinology, and homeostasis) and external (biotic and abiotic) environmental elements are discussed, as well as the different processes that influence individual‐level (or population) decisions, such as navigation cues, motion capacity, propagation characteristics and group behaviours. In addition to environmental drivers and individual movement factors, we also explored how associated strategies help survival by optimizing physiological and other biological states. Next, we identified how movement ecology is increasingly being incorporated into management and conservation by highlighting the inherent benefits that spatio‐temporal fish behaviour imbues into policy, regulatory, and remediation planning. Finally, we considered the future of movement ecology by evaluating ongoing technological innovations and both the challenges and opportunities that these advancements create for scientists and managers. As aquatic ecosystems continue to face alarming climate (and other human‐driven) issues that impact animal movements, the comprehensive and multidisciplinary assessment of movement ecology will be instrumental in developing plans to guide research and promote sustainability measures for aquatic resources.
Difficulties in social communication are a defining clinical feature of autism. However, the underlying neurobiological heterogeneity has impeded targeted therapies and requires new approaches to ...identifying clinically relevant bio-behavioural subgroups. In the largest autism cohort to date, we comprehensively examined difficulties in facial expression recognition, a key process in social communication, as a bio-behavioural stratification biomarker, and validated them against clinical features and neurofunctional responses.
Between 255 and 488 participants aged 6-30 years with autism, typical development and/or mild intellectual disability completed the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces task, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task and/or the Films Expression Task. We first examined mean-group differences on each test. Then, we used a novel intersection approach that compares two centroid and connectivity-based clustering methods to derive subgroups based on the combined performance across the three tasks. Measures and subgroups were then related to clinical features and neurofunctional differences measured using fMRI during a fearful face-matching task.
We found significant mean-group differences on each expression recognition test. However, cluster analyses showed that these were driven by a low-performing autistic subgroup (~ 30% of autistic individuals who performed below 2SDs of the neurotypical mean on at least one test), while a larger subgroup (~ 70%) performed within 1SD on at least 2 tests. The low-performing subgroup also had on average significantly more social communication difficulties and lower activation in the amygdala and fusiform gyrus than the high-performing subgroup.
Findings of autism expression recognition subgroups and their characteristics require independent replication. This is currently not possible, as there is no other existing dataset that includes all relevant measures. However, we demonstrated high internal robustness (91.6%) of findings between two clustering methods with fundamentally different assumptions, which is a critical pre-condition for independent replication.
We identified a subgroup of autistic individuals with expression recognition difficulties and showed that this related to clinical and neurobiological characteristics. If replicated, expression recognition may serve as bio-behavioural stratification biomarker and aid in the development of targeted interventions for a subgroup of autistic individuals.
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