Landscape changes in Serra do Japi: legal protection or scientific expectation?

The creation of new legally protected areas brings many conflicts that distance the real landscape from the expected according to environmental law or conservation researchers. In this study, we mapped and compared the changes in Serra da Japi (Sao Paulo State, Brazil) throughout 40 years with scenarios of legal protection and scientific expectation on forest conservation, to evaluate the distance between them. This may allow us to infer the direction of historical changes and assist in the debate among decision makers. The results showed that most legal requirements on forest protection in the current landscape have been met. The 1960s was the period when the forest cover was closest to the desirable conservation stage. Although the Serra do Japi has maintained large areas of forests during the entire study period, human interference increased with the expansion of reforestation and urban areas, and access roads were identified as a primary potential driving forces of change. In addition, habitat loss was observed in the landscape, which can represent the first phase of a sequence of modifications detrimental to the environmental conservation of this protected area, including decision changes to land use. In conclusion, the changes evolved toward conservation expectations, but not toward the forest configuration of scientific expectation.

Genetic and environmental risk factors in congenital heart disease functionally converge in protein networks driving heart development

Congenital heart disease (CHD) occurs in similar to 1% of newborns. CHD arises from many distinct etiologies, ranging from genetic or genomic variation to exposure to teratogens, which elicit diverse cell and molecular responses during cardiac development. To systematically explore the relationships between CHD risk factors and responses, we compiled and integrated comprehensive datasets from studies of CHD in humans and model organisms. We examined two alternative models of potential functional relationships between genes in these datasets: direct convergence, in which CHD risk factors significantly and directly impact the same genes and molecules and functional convergence, in which risk factors significantly impact different molecules that participate in a discrete heart development network. We observed no evidence for direct convergence. In contrast, we show that CHD risk factors functionally converge in protein networks driving the development of specific anatomical structures (e.g., outflow tract, ventricular septum, and atrial septum) that are malformed by CHD. This integrative analysis of CHD risk factors and responses suggests a complex pattern of functional interactions between genomic variation and environmental exposures that modulate critical biological systems during heart development.