A rapidly evolving secretome builds and patterns a sea shell

Background: Instructions to fabricate mineralized structures with distinct nanoscale architectures, such as seashells and coral and vertebrate skeletons, are encoded in the genomes of a wide variety of animals. In mollusks, the mantle is responsible for the extracellular production of the shell, directing the ordered biomineralization of CaCO3 and the deposition of architectural and color patterns. The evolutionary origins of the ability to synthesize calcified structures across various metazoan taxa remain obscure, with only a small number of protein families identified from molluskan shells. The recent sequencing of a wide range of metazoan genomes coupled with the analysis of gene expression in non-model animals has allowed us to investigate the evolution and process of biomineralization in gastropod mollusks. Results: Here we show that over 25% of the genes expressed in the mantle of the vetigastropod Haliotis asinina encode secreted proteins, indicating that hundreds of proteins are likely to be contributing to shell fabrication and patterning. Almost 85% of the secretome encodes novel proteins; remarkably, only 19% of these have identifiable homologues in the full genome of the patellogastropod Lottia scutum. The spatial expression profiles of mantle genes that belong to the secretome is restricted to discrete mantle zones, with each zone responsible for the fabrication of one of the structural layers of the shell. Patterned expression of a subset of genes along the length of the mantle is indicative of roles in shell ornamentation. For example, Has-sometsuke maps precisely to pigmentation patterns in the shell, providing the first case of a gene product to be involved in molluskan shell pigmentation. We also describe the expression of two novel genes involved in nacre (mother of pearl) deposition. Conclusion: The unexpected complexity and evolvability of this secretome and the modular design of the molluskan mantle enables diversification of shell strength and design, and as such must contribute to the variety of adaptive architectures and colors found in mollusk shells. The composition of this novel mantle-specific secretome suggests that there are significant molecular differences in the ways in which gastropods synthesize their shells.

Specific morphological features predictive for the basal phenotype in grade 3 invasive ductal carcinoma of breast

Aims: Cytokeratin (CK) 14, a myoepithelial marker, is also expressed in a proportion of breast carcinomas. There is evidence that these tumours show a differing metastatic pattern and clinical outcome from other invasive ductal carcinomas (IDCs) and may need different management. Currently, they are not identified in routine practice and no morphological guidelines exist to aid their identification. The aim of this study was to analyse the histological features of CK14+ IDC. Methods and results: A detailed histological review of 453 grade 3 IDCs revealed 88 (19.4%) that expressed CK14. Assessment was made independently by two pathologists using a standardized 'tick-box' proforma covering grade, architectural and cytological features. The results were analysed using logistic regression to identify features that predicted for basal phenotype. Concordance between the two pathologists was fair to good for most parameters (kappa 0.4-0.6). On multiple logistic regression, the basal phenotype was highly significantly associated with the presence of a central scar (P = 0.005), tumour necrosis (P < 0.0001), presence of spindle cells (P = 0.006) or squamous metaplasia (P < 0.0001), high total mitotic count (> 40 per 10 high-power field) (P = 0.0002) and high nuclear-cytoplasmic ratio (P = 0.0002). Conclusions: Specific morphological features are strongly associated with basal-like breast carcinoma. These could be used in routine diagnostic practice to identify this important subset of tumours.

Face recognition robust to head pose from one sample image

Most face recognition systems only work well under quite constrained environments. In particular, the illumination conditions, facial expressions and head pose must be tightly controlled for good recognition performance. In 2004, we proposed a new face recognition algorithm, Adaptive Principal Component Analysis (APCA) [4], which performs well against both lighting variation and expression change. But like other eigenface-derived face recognition algorithms, APCA only performs well with frontal face images. The work presented in this paper is an extension of our previous work to also accommodate variations in head pose. Following the approach of Cootes et al, we develop a face model and a rotation model which can be used to interpret facial features and synthesize realistic frontal face images when given a single novel face image. We use a Viola-Jones based face detector to detect the face in real-time and thus solve the initialization problem for our Active Appearance Model search. Experiments show that our approach can achieve good recognition rates on face images across a wide range of head poses. Indeed recognition rates are improved by up to a factor of 5 compared to standard PCA.

Architectural image and idiom: Making local

Using photographic images from South East Queensland mid-twentieth-century architecture, this essay investigates the translation and regeneration of modern themes into a local idiom that resonates with poetic qualities of pre-existent forms of inhabitation. It contributes to the discussion of the photograph's role in communicating meaning in architecture through its potential to "reveal" the idiomatic.

Rice morphogenesis and plant architecture: Measurement, specification and the reconstruction of structural development by 3D architectural modelling

Background and Aims The morphogenesis and architecture of a rice plant, Oryza sativa, are critical factors in the yield equation, but they are not well studied because of the lack of appropriate tools for 3D measurement. The architecture of rice plants is characterized by a large number of tillers and leaves. The aims of this study were to specify rice plant architecture and to find appropriate functions to represent the 3D growth across all growth stages. Methods A japonica type rice, 'Namaga', was grown in pots under outdoor conditions. A 3D digitizer was used to measure the rice plant structure at intervals from the young seedling stage to maturity. The L-system formalism was applied to create '3D virtual rice' plants, incorporating models of phenological development and leaf emergence period as a function of temperature and photoperiod, which were used to determine the timing of tiller emergence. Key Results The relationships between the nodal positions and leaf lengths, leaf angles and tiller angles were analysed and used to determine growth functions for the models. The '3D virtual rice' reproduces the structural development of isolated plants and provides a good estimation of the fillering process, and of the accumulation of leaves. Conclusions The results indicated that the '3D virtual rice' has a possibility to demonstrate the differences in the structure and development between cultivars and under different environmental conditions. Future work, necessary to reflect both cultivar and environmental effects on the model performance, and to link with physiological models, is proposed in the discussion.

Functional-structural plant modelling using a combination of architectural analysis, L-systems and a canonical model of function

This paper presents a new method for producing a functional-structural plant model that simulates response to different growth conditions, yet does not require detailed knowledge of underlying physiology. The example used to present this method is the modelling of the mountain birch tree. This new functional-structural modelling approach is based on linking an L-system representation of the dynamic structure of the plant with a canonical mathematical model of plant function. Growth indicated by the canonical model is allocated to the structural model according to probabilistic growth rules, such as rules for the placement and length of new shoots, which were derived from an analysis of architectural data. The main advantage of the approach is that it is relatively simple compared to the prevalent process-based functional-structural plant models and does not require a detailed understanding of underlying physiological processes, yet it is able to capture important aspects of plant function and adaptability, unlike simple empirical models. This approach, combining canonical modelling, architectural analysis and L-systems, thus fills the important role of providing an intermediate level of abstraction between the two extremes of deeply mechanistic process-based modelling and purely empirical modelling. We also investigated the relative importance of various aspects of this integrated modelling approach by analysing the sensitivity of the standard birch model to a number of variations in its parameters, functions and algorithms. The results show that using light as the sole factor determining the structural location of new growth gives satisfactory results. Including the influence of additional regulating factors made little difference to global characteristics of the emergent architecture. Changing the form of the probability functions and using alternative methods for choosing the sites of new growth also had little effect. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Movement and figurality: The circulation diagram and the history of the architectural plan

Knowledge of the plan competes with self-consciousness of experience. The less we are able to understand our spatio-visual experience by the abstract coordinates of the plan, the more we are thrust back into a lived experience of the building in duration. This formula, frequently unacknowledged, has been one of the main precepts of the experientialist modernism which arises out of the picturesque and which stands in critique of classical idealism. One of the paths to critique this formula is by showing that the attention to the experience of the spaces in duration is predicated on obscuring, complicating and weakening the apprehension of the plan as a figure. Another development in the practice of modern planning has been architects using a kind of over-drawing where human circulation diagrams or 'movement lines' are drawn expressively across the orthographic plane; thus representing the lived experience of buildings. We will show that these two issues are linked; the plan's weak figure and the privilege this supposes for durational experience has a corollary - experience itself demands to be visible in the plan, and this is one origin of the present fascination with 'diagramming'. In this paper we explore the practice of architectural planning and its theoretical underpinnings in an attempt to show the viability of a history of architectural planning methods.