Social bees harbor a simple and specialized microbiota that is spatially organized into different gut compartments. Recent results on the potential involvement of bee gut communities in pathogen ...protection and nutritional function have drawn attention to the impact of the microbiota on bee health. However, the contributions of gut microbiota to host physiology have yet to be investigated. Here we show that the gut microbiota promotes weight gain of both whole body and the gut in individual honey bees. This effect is likely mediated by changes in host vitellogenin, insulin signaling, and gustatory response. We found that microbial metabolism markedly reduces gut pH and redox potential through the production of shortchain fatty acids and that the bacteria adjacent to the gut wall form an oxygen gradient within the intestine. The short-chain fatty acid profile contributed by dominant gut species was confirmed in vitro. Furthermore, metabolomic analyses revealed that the gut community has striking impacts on the metabolic profiles of the gut compartments and the hemolymph, suggesting that gut bacteria degrade plant polymers from pollen and that the resulting metabolites contribute to host nutrition. Our results demonstrate how microbial metabolism affects bee growth, hormonal signaling, behavior, and gut physicochemical conditions. These findings indicate that the bee gut microbiota has basic roles similar to those found in some other animals and thus provides a model in studies of host–microbe interactions.
Aims. We investigate the evolution of X-ray selected tidal disruption events. Methods. New events are found in near real-time data from XMM-Newton slews, and are monitored by multi-wavelength ...facilities. Results. In August 2016, X-ray emission was detected from the galaxy XMMSL2 J144605.0+685735 (also known as 2MASX 14460522+6857311), that was 20 times higher than an upper limit from 25 years earlier. The X-ray flux was flat for ∼100 days and then fell by a factor of 100 over the following 500 days. The UV flux was stable for the first 400 days before fading by a magnitude, while the optical (U,B,V) bands were roughly constant for 850 days. Optically, the galaxy appears to be quiescent, at a distance of 127 ± 4 Mpc (z = 0.029 ± 0.001) with a spectrum consisting of a young stellar population of 1–5 Gyr in age, an older population, and a total stellar mass of ∼6 × 109 M⊙. The bolometric luminosity peaked at Lbol ∼ 1043 ergs s−1 with an X-ray spectrum that may be modelled by a power law of Γ ∼ 2.6 or Comptonisation of a low-temperature thermal component by thermal electrons. We consider a tidal disruption event to be the most likely cause of the flare. Radio emission was absent in this event down to < 10 μJy, which limits the total energy of a hypothetical off-axis jet to E < 5 × 1050 ergs. The independent behaviour of the optical, UV, and X-ray light curves challenges models where the UV emission is produced by reprocessing of thermal nuclear emission or by stream-stream collisions. We suggest that the observed UV emission may have been produced from a truncated accretion disc and the X-rays from Compton upscattering of these disc photons.
We present an accurate non-linear matter power spectrum prediction scheme for a variety of extensions to the standard cosmological paradigm, which uses the tuned halo model previously developed in ...Mead et al. We consider dark energy models that are both minimally and non-minimally coupled, massive neutrinos and modified gravitational forces with chameleon and Vainshtein screening mechanisms. In all cases, we compare halo-model power spectra to measurements from high-resolution simulations. We show that the tuned halo-model method can predict the non-linear matter power spectrum measured from simulations of parametrized w(a) dark energy models at the few per cent level for k < 10 h Mpc−1, and we present theoretically motivated extensions to cover non-minimally coupled scalar fields, massive neutrinos and Vainshtein screened modified gravity models that result in few per cent accurate power spectra for k < 10 h Mpc−1. For chameleon screened models, we achieve only 10 per cent accuracy for the same range of scales. Finally, we use our halo model to investigate degeneracies between different extensions to the standard cosmological model, finding that the impact of baryonic feedback on the non-linear matter power spectrum can be considered independently of modified gravity or massive neutrino extensions. In contrast, considering the impact of modified gravity and massive neutrinos independently results in biased estimates of power at the level of 5 per cent at scales k > 0.5 h Mpc−1. An updated version of our publicly available hmcode can be found at https://github.com/alexander-mead/hmcode.
Social bees collect carbohydrate-rich food to support their colonies, and yet, certain carbohydrates present in their diet or produced through the breakdown of pollen are toxic to bees. The gut ...microbiota of social bees is dominated by a few core bacterial species, including the Gram-negative species Gilliamella apicola We isolated 42 strains of G. apicola from guts of honey bees and bumble bees and sequenced their genomes. All of the G. apicola strains share high 16S rRNA gene similarity, but they vary extensively in gene repertoires related to carbohydrate metabolism. Predicted abilities to utilize different sugars were verified experimentally. Some strains can utilize mannose, arabinose, xylose, or rhamnose (monosaccharides that can cause toxicity in bees) as their sole carbon and energy source. All of the G. apicola strains possess a manO-associated mannose family phosphotransferase system; phylogenetic analyses suggest that this was acquired from Firmicutes through horizontal gene transfer. The metabolism of mannose is specifically dependent on the presence of mannose-6-phosphate isomerase (MPI). Neither growth rates nor the utilization of glucose and fructose are affected in the presence of mannose when the gene encoding MPI is absent from the genome, suggesting that mannose is not taken up by G. apicola strains which harbor the phosphotransferase system but do not encode the MPI. Given their ability to simultaneously utilize glucose, fructose, and mannose, as well as the ability of many strains to break down other potentially toxic carbohydrates, G. apicola bacteria may have key roles in improving dietary tolerances and maintaining the health of their bee hosts.
Bees are important pollinators of agricultural plants. Our study documents the ability of Gilliamella apicola, a dominant gut bacterium in honey bees and bumble bees, to utilize several sugars that are harmful to bee hosts. Using genome sequencing and growth assays, we found that the ability to metabolize certain toxic carbohydrates is directly correlated with the presence of their respective degradation pathways, indicating that metabolic potential can be accurately predicted from genomic data in these gut symbionts. Strains vary considerably in their range of utilizable carbohydrates, which likely reflects historical horizontal gene transfer and gene deletion events. Unlike their bee hosts, G. apicola bacteria are not detrimentally affected by growth on mannose-containing medium, even in strains that cannot metabolize this sugar. These results suggest that G. apicola may be an important player in modulating nutrition in the bee gut, with ultimate effects on host health.
The nature of the jets and the role of magnetic fields in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) remains unclear. In a baryon-dominated jet only weak, tangled fields generated in situ through shocks would be ...present. In an alternative model, jets are threaded with large-scale magnetic fields that originate at the central engine and that accelerate and collimate the material. To distinguish between the models the degree of polarization in early-time emission must be measured; however, previous claims of gamma-ray polarization have been controversial. Here we report that the early optical emission from GRB 090102 was polarized at 10 ± 1 per cent, indicating the presence of large-scale fields originating in the expanding fireball. If the degree of polarization and its position angle were variable on timescales shorter than our 60-second exposure, then the peak polarization may have been larger than ten per cent.
We present ∼2000 polarimetric and ∼3000 photometric observations of 15 γ-ray bright blazars over a period of 936 days (2008-10-11 to 2012-10-26) using data from the Tuorla blazar monitoring program ...(KVA DIPOL) and Liverpool Telescope (LT) RINGO2 polarimeters (supplemented with data from SkyCamZ (LT) and Fermi-LAT γ-ray data). In 11 out of 15 sources we identify a total of 19 electric vector position angle (EVPA) rotations and 95 flaring episodes. We group the sources into subclasses based on their broad-band spectral characteristics and compare their observed optical and γ-ray properties. We find that (1) the optical magnitude and γ-ray flux are positively correlated, (2) EVPA rotations can occur in any blazar subclass, four sources show rotations that go in one direction and immediately rotate back, (3) we see no difference in the γ-ray flaring rates in the sample; flares can occur during and outside of rotations with no preference for this behaviour, (4) the average degree of polarization (DoP), optical magnitude and γ-ray flux are lower during an EVPA rotation compared with during non-rotation and the distribution of the DoP during EVPA rotations is not drawn from the same parent sample as the distribution outside rotations, (5) the number of observed flaring events and optical polarization rotations are correlated, however we find no strong evidence for a temporal association between individual flares and rotations and (6) the maximum observed DoP increases from ∼10 per cent to ∼30 per cent to ∼40 per cent for subclasses with synchrotron peaks at high, intermediate and low frequencies, respectively.
Microbial communities are shaped by interactions among their constituent members. Some Gram-negative bacteria employ type VI secretion systems (T6SSs) to inject protein toxins into neighboring cells. ...These interactions have been theorized to affect the composition of host-associated microbiomes, but the role of T6SSs in the evolution of gut communities is not well understood. We report the discovery of two T6SSs and numerous T6SS-associated Rhs toxins within the gut bacteria of honey bees and bumble bees. We sequenced the genomes of 28 strains of
, a characteristic bee gut microbe, and found tremendous variability in their Rhs toxin complements: altogether, these strains appear to encode hundreds of unique toxins. Some toxins are shared with
, a coresident gut symbiont, implicating horizontal gene transfer as a source of toxin diversity in the bee gut. We use data from a transposon mutagenesis screen to identify toxins with antibacterial function in the bee gut and validate the function and specificity of a subset of these toxin and immunity genes in
Using transcriptome sequencing, we demonstrate that
T6SSs and associated toxins are upregulated in the gut environment. We find that
Rhs loci have a conserved architecture, consistent with the C-terminal displacement model of toxin diversification, with Rhs toxins, toxin fragments, and cognate immunity genes that are expressed and confer strong fitness effects
Our findings of T6SS activity and Rhs toxin diversity suggest that T6SS-mediated competition may be an important driver of coevolution within the bee gut microbiota.
The structure and composition of host-associated bacterial communities are of broad interest, because these communities affect host health. Bees have a simple, conserved gut microbiota, which provides an opportunity to explore interactions between species that have coevolved within their host over millions of years. This study examined the role of type VI secretion systems (T6SSs)-protein complexes used to deliver toxic proteins into bacterial competitors-within the bee gut microbiota. We identified two T6SSs and diverse T6SS-associated toxins in bacterial strains from bees. Expression of these genes is increased in bacteria in the bee gut, and toxin and immunity genes demonstrate antibacterial and protective functions, respectively, when expressed in
Our results suggest that coevolution among bacterial species in the bee gut has favored toxin diversification and maintenance of T6SS machinery, and demonstrate the importance of antagonistic interactions within host-associated microbial communities.
We present long-term Ha monitoring results of five Be/X-ray binaries to study the Be disc size variations and their influence on type II (giant) X-ray outbursts. The work is done in the context of ...the viscous decretion disc model which predicts that Be discs in binary systems are truncated by resonant torques induced by the neutron star in its orbit. Our observations show that type II outbursts are not correlated (nor anticorrelated) with the disc size, as they are seen to occur both at relatively small and large Be disc radii. We discuss these observations in context of alternate interpretation of Be disc behaviour, such as precession, elongation and density effects, and with cognisance of the limitations of our disc size estimates.
Denosumab Therapy in Cherubism Liles, Steele I.; C. Hoppe, Ian; Arnold, Laura
The Cleft palate-craniofacial journal,
12/2023, Letnik:
60, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Cherubism is a rare disorder characterized by proliferative fibro-osseous lesions that result in bilateral bony hyperplasia of the face. Management varies based on symptom severity and includes ...longitudinal follow-up, pharmacotherapy, and/or surgical debulking. Off-label treatment with denosumab, a human monoclonal antibody that binds RANKL and inhibits osteoclast function to reduce bone resorption, can be beneficial in suppressing the proliferation of bone to minimize the need for surgery and to control postoperative reproliferation. Close follow-up is needed to maintain appropriate electrolyte levels. The present case demonstrates the achievement of symptomatic control with denosumab in a child with severe refractory cherubism.
ABSTRACT
We report the earliest ever detection of optical polarization from a GRB forward shock (GRB 141220A), measured $129.5{-}204.3\,$s after the burst using the multicolour RINGO3 optical ...polarimeter on the 2-m fully autonomous robotic Liverpool Telescope. The temporal decay gradient of the optical light curves from $86\,$ to $\sim 2200\,$s post-burst is typical of classical forward shocks with α = 1.091 ± 0.008. The low-optical polarization $P_{ BV} = 2.8 _{- 1.6} ^{+ 2.0} \, {{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ (2σ) at mean time $\sim 168\,$s post-burst is compatible with being induced by the host galaxy dust ($A_{V, {\rm HG}}= 0.71 \pm 0.15 \,$mag), leaving low polarization intrinsic to the GRB emission itself – as theoretically predicted for forward shocks and consistent with previous detections of low degrees of optical polarization in GRB afterglows observed hours to days after the burst. The current sample of early-time polarization data from forward shocks suggests polarization from (a) the Galactic and host galaxy dust properties (i.e. $P \sim 1-3{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$), (b) contribution from a polarized reverse shock (GRB deceleration time, jet magnetization) or (c) forward shock intrinsic polarization (i.e. $P \le 2{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$), which depends on the magnetic field coherence length-scale and the size of the observable emitting region (burst energetics, circumburst density).
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