Polymorphisms of the estrogen receptor alpha (ESR1) gene and the risk of Alzheimer's disease in a southern Chinese community

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease with a higher prevalence in women. Expression of estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1) gene has been identified throughout the brain. Owing to the putative neuroprotective effects of estrogen, estro

Evidence for Positive Selection on the Osteogenin (BMP3) Gene in Human Populations

Background: Human skeletal system has evolved rapidly since the dispersal of modern humans from Africa, potentially driven by selection and adaptation. Osteogenin (BMP3) plays an important role in skeletal development and bone osteogenesis as an antagonist of the osteogenic bone morphogenetic proteins, and negatively regulates bone mineral density. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we resequenced the BMP3 gene from individuals in four geographically separated modern human populations. Features supportive of positive selection in the BMP3 gene were found including the presence of an excess of nonsynonymous mutations in modern humans, and a significantly lower genetic diversity that deviates from neutrality. The prevalent haplotypes of the first exon region in Europeans demonstrated features of long-range haplotype homogeneity. In contrast with findings in European, the derived allele SNP Arg192Gln shows higher extended haplotype homozygosity in East Asian. The worldwide allele frequency distribution of SNP shows not only a high-derived allele frequency in Asians, but also in Americans, which is suggestive of functional adaptation. Conclusions/Significance: In conclusion, we provide evidence for recent positive selection operating upon a crucial gene in skeletal development, which may provide new insight into the evolution of the skeletal system and bone development.

Adaptive Evolution of Digestive RNASE1 Genes in Leaf-Eating Monkeys Revisited: New Insights from Ten Additional Colobines

Pancreatic RNase genes implicated in the adaptation of the colobine monkeys to leaf eating have long intrigued evolutionary biologists since the identification of a duplicated RNASE1 gene with enhanced digestive efficiencies in Pygathrix nemaeus. The recent emergence of two contrasting hypotheses, that is, independent duplication and one-duplication event hypotheses, make it into focus again. Current understanding of Colobine RNASE1 gene evolution of colobine monkeys largely depends on the analyses of few colobine species. The present study with more intensive taxonomic and character sampling not only provides a clearer picture of Colobine RNASE1 gene evolution but also allows to have a more thorough understanding about the molecular basis underlying the adaptation of Colobinae to the unique leaf-feeding lifestyle. The present broader and detailed phylogenetic analyses yielded two important findings: 1) All trees based on the analyses of coding, noncoding, and both regions provided consistent evidence, indicating RNASE1 duplication occurred after Asian and African colobines speciation, that is, independent duplication hypothesis; 2) No obvious evidence of gene conversion in RNASE1 gene was found, favoring independent evolution of Colobine RNASE1 gene duplicates. The conclusion drawn from previous studies that gene conversion has played a significant role in the evolution of Colobine RNASE1 was not supported. Our selective constraint analyses also provided interesting insights, with significant evidence of positive selection detected on ancestor lineages leading to duplicated gene copies. The identification of a handful of new adaptive sites and amino acid changes that have not been characterized previously also provide a necessary foundation for further experimental investigations of RNASE1 functional evolution in Colobinae.

Changes in length and weight of milkfish fry preserved in formalin

Fry shrank immediately after they were preserved in formalin, but from the second week onwards shrinkage was almost nil. Fry in freshwater formalin solutions shrunk less than those in seawater formalin solutions. It is recommended that milkfish Chanos) fry be preserved in formalin solutions for 1 wk prior to length measurement and at least for 3 wks before determining body weight.

Developmental and ecological stages in the life history of milkfish Chanos chanos Forsskal

Seven stages in the life history of the milkfish C. chanos , are recognized and suggested: A, embryonic; B, yolksac larval; C, larval; D, postlarval; E, juvenile; F, subadult; G. adult. An outline is presented of the life history. It is concluded that the milkfish, throughout the known stages of their life history are well adapted and equipped for optimal survival. High swimming performance, broad flexibility in feeding habits, high adaptability to a wide range of physicochemical conditions of the environment are but a few of the adaptations. The main driving force in all developmental stages is the evolutionary response to food distribution and availability followed by predation pressure.

Occurrence of milkfish, Chanos chanos (Forsskal) eggs around Panay Island, Philippines

The study documents the occurrence of milkfish, Chanos chanos (Forsskal) eggs around Panay Island, Philippines: in Cuyo East Pass, Panay Gulf, Visayan Sea, Sibuyan Sea and Cagayan Islands. Most of the eggs, 545 out of 551, were obtained from Cuyo East Pass compared to Cagayan Islands and Sibuyan Sea while no milkfish egg was recovered from either Panay Gulf or Visayan Sea.

Fractal dimension, wavelet shrinkage and anomaly detection for mine hunting

An anomaly detection approach is considered for the mine hunting in sonar imagery problem. The authors exploit previous work that used dual-tree wavelets and fractal dimension to adaptively suppress sand ripples and a matched filter as an initial detector. Here, lacunarity inspired features are extracted from the remaining false positives, again using dual-tree wavelets. A one-class support vector machine is then used to learn a decision boundary, based only on these false positives. The approach exploits the large quantities of 'normal' natural background data available but avoids the difficult requirement of collecting examples of targets in order to train a classifier. © 2012 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

中国胭脂鱼的骨骼形态和胭脂鱼科的分类位置

<正> 中国胭脂鱼Myxocyprinus asiaticus(Bleeker)是迄今知道胭脂鱼科(Catostomidae)分布于我国的一个种,而该科的大多数种属分布于北美洲,总计有14个现存属,大约80个种(Miller,1958)。 方炳文(Fang,1934)对中国胭脂鱼除了发表一个头骨及下咽齿的照片外,主要是阐明这种鱼的体形随不同体长(实际是不同龄期)而改变的事实。Nelson(1948)作了胭脂鱼韦氏器的比较解剖,他提到中国胭脂鱼第二和第三脊椎具有分离的椎体和第一脊椎存在一对横突之外,只简单地

Hermetically-coated superparamagnetic Fe2O3 particles with SiO2 nanofilms

Magnetic nanoparticles are frequently coated with SiO2to improve their functionality and bio-compatibility in a range of biomedical and polymer nanocomposile applications. In this paper, a scalable flame aerosol technology is used to produce highly dispersible, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles hermetically coaled with silica to retain full magnetization performance. Iron oxide particles were produced by flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) of iron acelylacetonale in xylene/acetonitrile solutions, and the resulting aerosol was in situ coaled with SiO2 by oxidation of swirling hexamethlydisiloxane vapor. The process allows independent control of the core Fe2O3, particle properties and the thickness of their silica coaling film. This ensures that the non-magnetic SiO2 layer can be closely controlled and minimized. The optimal SiO2 content for complete (hermetic) encapsulation of the magnetic core particles was determined by isopropanol chemisorption. The magnetization of Fe2O3 coated with about 2 nm thin SiO2 layers was nearly identical lo that of uncoated, pure Fe2O3 nanoparlicles.

Hermetically coated superparamagnetic Fe2O3 particles with SiO2 nanofilms

Magnetic nanoparticles are frequently coated with SiO2 to improve their functionality and biocom-patibility in a range of biomedical and polymer nanocomposite applications. In this paper, a scalable flame aerosol technology is used to produce highly dispersible, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles hermetically coated with silica to retain full magnetization performance. Iron oxide particles were produced by flame spray pyrolysis of iron acetylacetonate in xylene/acetonitrile solutions and the resulting aerosol was in situ coated with silicon dioxide by oxidation of swirling hexamethlydisiloxane vapor. The process allows independent control of the core Fe2O3 (maghemite) particle properties and the thickness of their silica coating film. This ensures that the nonmagnetic SiO2 layer can be closely controlled and minimized. The optimal SiO2 content for complete (hermetic) encapsulation of the magnetic core particles was determined by isopropanol chemisorption. The magnetization of Fe 2O3 coated with about 2 nm thin SiO2 layers was nearly identical to that of uncoated, pure Fe2O3 nanoparticles. © 2009 American Chemical Society.

P-选择素Lectin结构域变构的模拟预测

<正>粘附分子选择素(selectin)家族成员与其配体间相互作用介导的细胞粘附在炎症级联反应、肿瘤转移和淋巴细胞归巢等病理、生理过程中起重要作用(Bevilacqua and Nelson,1993)。其结构组成从远离细胞表面

P-选择素Lectin结构域变构的模拟预测

<正>粘附分子选择素(selectin)家族成员与其配体间相互作用介导的细胞粘附在炎症级联反应、肿瘤转移和淋巴细胞归巢等病理、生理过程中起重要作用(Bevilacqua and Nelson,1993)。其结构组成从远离细胞表面的N-末端到胞内C-末端,依次为:钙型凝集素功能区(Calcium-type lectin domain,Lec),类上皮生长因子功