Category Archives: Biology

Biology

Olson offers students a window into aquatic world – Nebraska Today

Lincoln, Neb. Carly Olson grew up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, surrounded by but never seeing the fascinating aquatic life she would one day build a career upon.

The aquatic life eventually catching her eye wasnt the famed walleye of Minnesota but zooplankton. In particular, Olson became interested in the microscopic crustaceans that feed on algae and then serve as fish food themselves.

Although she had grown up fishing and swimming in lakes and streams, she learned of the existence of zooplankton only after trying to sign up for a pre-veterinarian class at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

When she couldnt get into the already-full class, she took a class in marine biology instead.

"I took that course, and I was hooked," she said. "I was like, 'Yup, this is it.'"

With a microscope, she could see the many zooplankton that help balance the food web in inland waters and help keep these ecosystems healthy.

"It really just was like, 'There's this whole other world to discover and learn about.' That was just really fascinating to me," she said.

Olson went on to earn her bachelor's degree in biology with an emphasis in aquatic science in Wisconsin. She then earned her doctorate in biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame. She now works withJessica Cormanas a postdoctoral researcher on astoichiometry projectfunded by EPSCoR and teaches limnology, the study of inland waters.

In late July and early August, she will teach a three-week, three-credit limnology course at theCedar Point Biological Stationnear Lake McConaughy in western Nebraska. She taught it last summer for two weeks but extended it another week after students suggested she do so in follow-up surveys about the class.

During last summers course, she led six students in collecting water samples from Lake Ogallala, five lakes at Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge, the North Platte River and a groundwater-fed stream. They examined the water samples with microscopes to figure out which zooplankton made up the community serving as food for fish and keeping algae in check. Students had the assignment to draw 30 organisms they saw.

They also took measurements of nitrogen, phosphorus and chlorophyll a in the water samples. These serve as nutrients for algae and are an important part of the food web, but in too high amounts, they can result in harmful algae blooms that strip the water of oxygen.

Olson had the students enter the data they collected in Excel and create figures and plots to summarize it. She instructed them in ecological stoichiometry, looking at the ratio of elements in the water to see if they were balanced right for aquatic life.

They used sensors to measure the different oxygen and temperature levels in the water. They also visited the hydroelectric dam on Lake McConaughey and worked with Nebraska Game and Parks to catch and view fish in Lake Ogallala.

"Surprisingly, western Nebraska is a really great place to teach limnology," Olson said. "There's a lot of water and interesting systems to contrast out there in the Sandhills."

This summer, she plans to add a trip to the Snowy Range in Wyoming to contrast alpine lakes with the Sandhills ones.Daniel Gschwentner, the graduate student who served as her teaching assistant in the class last summer, will coteach. They have opened the class to graduate students as well as undergraduates.

Olson said she would like to increase enrollment in the class, now at seven or eight students. Students generally pay only tuition for the class because they stay in cabins at the Cedar Point Biological Station and receive scholarships covering room and board.

Student feedback on last summers class was positive, she said, and she learned a lot from the class too.

"This course really solidified I can create a course from scratch--with help, for sure," she said. "And I can lead these students and create a really great, effective and enriching learning experience for them and create some sort of community.

The experience confirmed for her that she was on the right track for her career, she said.

The School of Natural Resources seconded that notion by awarding her the Postdoctoral Excellence Award at the school banquet on April 6, 2024.

Looking forward, Olson said she is considering being a professor or researcher in state or federal government.

"I feel myself being pulled towards making sure that I have some element of teaching and mentoring in my work," she said.

And the decision to continue with water at the center of her career makes sense to her when she reflects on her life and growing up near the Mississippi River in South Saint Paul and then the Saint Croix River in Stillwater, Minnesota.

"I've always lived right next to a big river," she said. "Even in my day-to-day life, water has always been there.

Link:

Olson offers students a window into aquatic world - Nebraska Today

Biology

Now you can get a bachelor’s degree in biology in Greenland – Polarjournal

The courses of the new biology curriculum is based on Greenlandic experiences and scientific findings. The course names are derived from Greenlandic names for seals or reindeer. Starting with 12 students, applications are open and the course will start on February 1st, 2025. Image: Daniel Lyberth Hauptmann

A new chapter is being added to Greenlands university history these weeks. For many years, educating biologists within the country has been a dream. A dream that has now come true.

Ilisimatusarfik and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources have jointly established a new bachelors degree in biology called SILA, which is now open for applications for admission to the course. The biology education is based in Nuuk. Many families in Greenland are lucky to have a relationship with hunting, fishing, and being out in nature. It is an obvious strength to build an education on, says Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann, head of the department for the new SILA biology education. She adds: We have an enormous amount of biological knowledge in our society, so SILA aims to build on the knowledge people already have.

For Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann, who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology, the story began in 2016 when she wrote a blog post. The post contained the first tentative ideas for what would later become SILA. The thoughts revolved around the idea that it would be ideal for Greenland to have a biology program that builds on the experience and skills many people in the population already possess. I come from a family and a culture where reindeer hunting is very significant. It dawned on me how much biological knowledge is needed for reindeer hunting and how great it would be to include hunting as part of an education, Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann explains.

We are so excited. Who will be our students? How will this be for them? Will it be as good as we dream about?

Over the past three years, she has been responsible for fulfilling the dream of a Greenlandic biology program. And now we are finally here. We have created the program. We have a course called Tuttu (reindeer). And we will go reindeer hunting. Its quite touching to think about.

In addition to Tuttu, the semester plan also includes courses named Appa (thick-billed murre), Siku (ice), Puisi (seal), and Imaq (the sea). These courses are all based on Greenlandic reality. For Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann and the rest of the SILA staff, its obvious why Greenland should be able to train its own biologists. Over 90 percent of our income in this country is based on living creatures from the sea. Its the fisheries that pay for our hospitals. Its the fisheries that pay for our daycare centers. So, of course, we need a population with the skills to understand the ecosystems we are a part of and who can manage them, Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann states.

However, Aviaja Hauptmann Lyberth believes that the program is valuable not only for Greenlandic society but also for individuals. Education is about much more than just entering the job market. Education is also a process where people discover how to make a difference in the world. Not only by acquiring concrete tools but also by developing a critical sense and discovering who they are as a person, she says. So we want this program to build confidence in people.

With this in mind, they have made it possible for applicants to qualify for the program in various ways so everyone has equal opportunities to enter the program. There is room for the person who has achieved top grades in school and has always known they want to pursue something in the natural sciences. But there is also room for the group for whom the school system wasnt designed but who actually have a lot of biological knowledge and can contribute significantly to society, says Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann. Therefore, Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann and her colleagues will give the most weight to the motivated application when selecting the first students at SILA.

The first class at SILA has room for 12 students. The classes will take place in the Pikialaarfik building at Ilimarfik (the campus area in Nuuk), where the program is also located today. Applications are open now and until November 1. We are so excited. Who will be our students? How will this be for them? Will it be as good as we dream about? Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann and her colleagues will find out on February 1, 2025, when the doors at Pikialaarfik open for the first students.

Text: Nicolline Larsen, Photos: Daniel Lyberth Hauptmann

Interested? Applicants can find all information here

More on the subject

Read more:

Now you can get a bachelor's degree in biology in Greenland - Polarjournal

Biology

On the water front: invasive lake species – UMN News

Some of the most destructive invasive species come in small packages. Few come smaller than the spiny water flea, a tiny crustacean with a long, spiked tail.

Spinies and the more famous zebra mussels change lake ecosystems far out of proportion to their size. At the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Gretchen Hansen is untangling the web of biological and chemical impacts that these and other aquatic invasive species weave.

A lot of our research focuses on documenting impacts while also identifying places that are more sensitive or more resilient, says Hansen, an assistant professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology. We also study climate change and how lakes and fish respond.

Spinies are part of the zooplanktontiny animals that drift around with tiny plants called phytoplankton. So are native water fleas, which are eaten by many young fish and, unfortunately, spinies. Spinies afflict lakes large and small, including Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, and Minnesotas Lake Mille Lacs.

See the original post here:

On the water front: invasive lake species - UMN News

Biology

Network-driven cancer cell avatars for combination discovery and biomarker identification for DNA damage response … – Nature.com

Black, J. R. M. & McGranahan, N. Genetic and non-genetic clonal diversity in cancer evolution. Nat. Rev. Cancer 21, 379392 (2021).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Dagogo-Jack, I. & Shaw, A. T. Tumour heterogeneity and resistance to cancer therapies. Nat. Rev. Clin. Oncol. 15, 8194 (2018).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Junttila, M. R. & de Sauvage, F. J. Influence of tumour micro-environment heterogeneity on therapeutic response. Nature 501, 346354 (2013).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Topalian, S. L., Taube, J. M., Anders, R. A. & Pardoll, D. M. Mechanism-driven biomarkers to guide immune checkpoint blockade in cancer therapy. Nat. Rev. Cancer 16, 275287 (2016).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Purim, O. et al. Biomarker-driven therapy in metastatic gastric and esophageal cancer: Real-life clinical experience. Target Oncol. 13, 217226 (2018).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Sveen, A., Kopetz, S. & Lothe, R. A. Biomarker-guided therapy for colorectal cancer: Strength in complexity. Nat. Rev. Clin. Oncol. 17, 1132 (2020).

Article PubMed Google Scholar

Hanahan, D. & Weinberg, R. A. Hallmarks of cancer: The next generation. Cell 144, 646674 (2011).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Celi-Terrassa, T. & Kang, Y. Distinctive properties of metastasis-initiating cells. Genes Dev. 30, 892908 (2016).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Roos, W. P., Thomas, A. D. & Kaina, B. DNA damage and the balance between survival and death in cancer biology. Nat. Rev. Cancer 16, 2033 (2016).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Brown, J. S., O'Carrigan, B., Jackson, S. P. & Yap, T. A. Targeting DNA repair in cancer: Beyond PARP Inhibitors. Cancer Discov. 7, 2037 (2017).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Pili, P. G., Tang, C., Mills, G. B. & Yap, T. A. State-of-the-art strategies for targeting the DNA damage response in cancer. Nat. Rev. Clin. Oncol. 16, 81104 (2019).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Cleary, J. M., Aguirre, A. J., Shapiro, G. I. & DAndrea, A. D. Biomarker-guided development of DNA repair inhibitors. Mol. Cell 78, 10701085 (2020).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Palmer, A. C., Chidley, C. & Sorger, P. K. A curative combination cancer therapy achieves high fractional cell killing through low cross-resistance and drug additivity. Elife 8, e50036 (2019).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Palmer, A. C. & Sorger, P. K. Combination cancer therapy can confer benefit via patient-to-patient variability without drug additivity or synergy. Cell 171, 16781691.e13 (2017).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Dry, J. R., Yang, M. & Saez-Rodriguez, J. Looking beyond the cancer cell for effective drug combinations. Genome Med 8, 125 (2016).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Al-Lazikani, B., Banerji, U. & Workman, P. Combinatorial drug therapy for cancer in the post-genomic era. Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 679692 (2012).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Menden, M. P. et al. Community assessment to advance computational prediction of cancer drug combinations in a pharmacogenomic screen. Nat. Commun. 10, 2674 (2019).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Paller, C. J. et al. Factors affecting combination trial success (FACTS): Investigator survey results on early-phase combination trials. Front. Med. (Lausanne) 6, 122 (2019).

Article PubMed Google Scholar

Huang, L. et al. Driver network as a biomarker: systematic integration and network modeling of multi-omics data to derive driver signaling pathways for drug combination prediction. Bioinformatics 35, 37093717 (2019).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Celebi, R., Bear Dont Walk, O., Movva, R., Alpsoy, S. & Dumontier, M. In-silico prediction of synergistic anti-cancer drug combinations using multi-omics data. Sci. Rep. 9, 8949 (2019).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Preuer, K. et al. DeepSynergy: Predicting anti-cancer drug synergy with deep learning. Bioinformatics 34, 15381546 (2018).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Bulusu, K. C. et al. Modelling of compound combination effects and applications to efficacy and toxicity: state-of-the-art, challenges and perspectives. Drug Discov. Today 21, 225238 (2016).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Yuan, B. et al. CellBox: Interpretable machine learning for perturbation biology with application to the design of cancer combination therapy. Cell Syst. 12, 128140.e4 (2021).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Zou, J. et al. Neighbor communities in drug combination networks characterize synergistic effect. Mol. Biosyst. 8, 3185 (2012).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Kholodenko, B. N. et al. Untangling the wires: a strategy to trace functional interactions in signaling and gene networks. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99, 1284112846 (2002).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Kholodenko, B. N., Rauch, N., Kolch, W. & Rukhlenko, O. S. A systematic analysis of signaling reactivation and drug resistance. Cell Rep. 35, 109157 (2021).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Rukhlenko, O. S. et al. Dissecting RAF inhibitor resistance by structure-based modeling reveals ways to overcome oncogenic RAS Signaling. Cell Syst. 7, 161179.e14 (2018).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Erdem, C. et al. A scalable, open-source implementation of a large-scale mechanistic model for single cell proliferation and death signaling. Nat. Commun. 13, 3555 (2022).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Frhlich, F. et al. Efficient parameter estimation enables the prediction of drug response using a mechanistic pan-cancer pathway model. Cell Syst. 7, 567579.e6 (2018).

Article PubMed Google Scholar

Szalay, K. Z. & Csermely, P. Computer implemented method, processor device and computer program product for designing intervention into real complex systems (2020).

Bliss, C. I. The toxicity of poisons applied jointly 1. Ann. Appl. Biol. 26, 585615 (1939).

Article CAS Google Scholar

Kim, H. et al. Targeting the ATR/CHK1 axis with PARP inhibition results in tumor regression in BRCA-mutant ovarian cancer models. Clin. Cancer Res 23, 30973108 (2017).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Hinton, G. E. Connectionist learning procedures. Artif. Intell. 40, 185234 (1989).

Article Google Scholar

Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R. & Friedman, J. Linear methods for regression. in 4399 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-84858-7_3.

Ke, G. et al. LightGBM: A highly efficient gradient boosting decision tree. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30, 31483156 (Curran Associates, Inc., 2017).

Chen, D., Liu, X., Yang, Y., Yang, H. & Lu, P. Systematic synergy modeling: Understanding drug synergy from a systems biology perspective. BMC Syst. Biol. 9, 56 (2015).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Chen, D., Zhang, H., Lu, P., Liu, X. & Cao, H. Synergy evaluation by a pathway-pathway interaction network: A new way to predict drug combination. Mol. Biosyst. 12, 614623 (2016).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Parker, J. L. et al. Does biomarker use in oncology improve clinical trial failure risk? A large-scale analysis. Cancer Med. 10, 19551963 (2021).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Riches, L. C. et al. Pharmacology of the ATM inhibitor AZD0156: Potentiation of irradiation and olaparib responses preclinically. Mol. Cancer Ther. 19, 1325 (2020).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Mak, J. P. Y., Ma, H. T. & Poon, R. Y. C. Synergism between ATM and PARP1 inhibition involves DNA damage and abrogating the G 2 DNA damage checkpoint. Mol. Cancer Ther. 19, 123134 (2020).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Lloyd, R. L. et al. Combined PARP and ATR inhibition potentiates genome instability and cell death in ATM-deficient cancer cells. Oncogene 39, 48694883 (2020).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Kim, K. A. et al. Systematic calibration of a cell signaling network model. BMC Bioinforma. 11, 202 (2010).

Article Google Scholar

Kamel, D., Gray, C., Walia, J. S. & Kumar, V. PARP inhibitor drugs in the treatment of breast, ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancers: An update of clinical trials. Curr Drug Targets 19, (2018).

Zhu, H. et al. PARP inhibitors in pancreatic cancer: molecular mechanisms and clinical applications. Mol. Cancer 19, 49 (2020).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Mirza, M. R. et al. The forefront of ovarian cancer therapy: Update on PARP inhibitors. Ann. Oncol. 31, 11481159 (2020).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Noordermeer, S. M. & van Attikum, H. PARP inhibitor resistance: A tug-of-war in BRCA-mutated cells. Trends Cell Biol. 29, 820834 (2019).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Criscuolo, D., Morra, F., Giannella, R., Cerrato, A. & Celetti, A. Identification of novel biomarkers of homologous recombination defect in DNA repair to predict sensitivity of prostate cancer cells to PARP-inhibitors. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 20, 3100 (2019).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Polzien, L. et al. Identification of novel in vivo phosphorylation sites of the human proapoptotic protein BAD: pore-forming activity of BAD is regulated by phosphorylation. J. Biol. Chem. 284, 2800428020 (2009).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Avvakumov, N. et al. Conserved molecular interactions within the HBO1 acetyltransferase complexes regulate cell proliferation. Mol. Cell Biol. 32, 689703 (2012).

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Hanigan, C. L. et al. An inactivating mutation in HDAC2 leads to dysregulation of apoptosis mediated by APAF1. Gastroenterology 135, 16541664.e2 (2008).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Park, J.-M. & Kang, T.-H. Transcriptional and posttranslational regulation of nucleotide excision repair: The guardian of the genome against ultraviolet radiation. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 17, 1840 (2016).

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Marteijn, J. A., Lans, H., Vermeulen, W. & Hoeijmakers, J. H. J. Understanding nucleotide excision repair and its roles in cancer and ageing. Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 15, 465481 (2014).

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Here is the original post:

Network-driven cancer cell avatars for combination discovery and biomarker identification for DNA damage response ... - Nature.com

Biology

Armenian students win eight medals at 4th International Applied Biology Olympiad Public Radio of Armenia – Public Radio of Armenia Official Web site

Armenian representatives won 2 gold, 5 silver and 1 bronze medals at the 4th International Applied Biology Olympiad (IABO) held on June 20-23 in Bali, Indonesia.

All eight students representing the three educational centers of Armenia won medals.

The Armenian team was led by Vahagn Gevorgyan, a biology teacher at Quantum college.

11th-grade student of Quantum College Aram Kerobyan and 10th-grade student of YSU STEM School Mariam Galstyan won gold medals. Silver medals were won by Ara Melkonyan and Hrachya Sevoyan, 11th grade students of Quantum College. Ani Gevorgyan, 9th grade student of Quantum College, Nane Ananikyan, 10th grade student of YSU STEM School, and 10th grade student of Hrazdan High School No. 10, Ellen Danielyan. Hayk Harutyunyan, a student of the 10th grade of Quantum College, won a bronze medal.

The students had previously participated in the online format and passed the preliminary two rounds and had the opportunity to participate in the final round.

More than 100 students from Armenia, US, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal and Philippines participated in the final round.

See the original post here:

Armenian students win eight medals at 4th International Applied Biology Olympiad Public Radio of Armenia - Public Radio of Armenia Official Web site

Biology

New tomato, potato family tree shows that fruit color and size evolved together – EurekAlert

image:

Fruits of plants in the genus Solanumare incredibly diverse in color and size. A new family tree of this genus, created by a team led by Penn State researchers, helps explain this striking diversity andhow the fruits might have evolved.

Credit: Joo Vitor Messeder / Penn State

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Fruits of Solanum plants, a group in the nightshade family, are incredibly diverse, ranging from sizable red tomatoes and purple eggplants to the poisonous green berries on potato plants. A new and improved family tree of this group, produced by an international team led by researchers at Penn State, helps explain the striking diversity of fruit colors and sizes and how they might have evolved.

The team found that the size and color of fruits evolved together and that fruit-eating animals were like not the primary drivers of the fruits evolution, as had been previously thought. The study, published in the journal New Phytologist, may also provide insight into breeding agriculturally important plants with more desirable traits, the researchers said.

There are about 1,300 species in the genus Solanum, making it one of the most diverse plant genera in the world, said Joo Vitor Messeder, graduate student in ecology and biology in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and Huck Institutes for the Life Sciences and lead author of the paper. Since the 1970s and 80s, researchers have suggested that birds, bats and other fruit-eating animals have driven the evolution of fruits like those in Solanum. However, the importance of the evolutionary history of the plants has been underestimated or rarely considered when evaluating the diversification of fleshy fruits. To better test this hypothesis, we needed first to produce a more robust phylogeny, or family tree, of this plant group to improve our understanding of the relationships between species.

Plants in the genus Solanum produce fruits with a wide variety of sizes, colors and nutritional values. They can appear black, purple, red, green, yellow or orange and range in size from less than a quarter of an inch to as much as 8 inches, or 0.5 to 20 centimeters. In addition to agriculturally important plants, some plants in the group are cultivated for their ornamental flowers, and the fruits of many of these plants are eaten by humans and a large diversity of animals, including birds, bats, reptiles, primates and other land mammals.

The researchers collected samples of plants from across the world, including wild plants from Brazil, Peru and Puerto Rico and plants from botanical gardens, and sequenced their genes from RNA. They supplemented with previously collected samples and publicly available data, ultimately comparing the sequences of 1,786 genes from a total of 247 species to reconstruct the Solanum family tree. This included representatives from all 10 of the major clades the branches of the tree and 39 of 47 minor clades within the genus.

By using thousands of genes shared among species that effectively represented the entire genus, we significantly improved the Solanum family tree, making it the most comprehensive to date, said Messeder, who conducted the research in the lab of Hong Ma, Huck Chair in Plant Reproductive Development and Evolution and professor of biology at Penn State and a co-corresponding author of the paper. Recent advances in technology allowed us to use more genes than previous studies, which faced many challenges in resolving relationships between species and clades. This improved tree helps us understand when different fruit colors and sizes originated or how they changed as new plant species came about.

The researchers added considerable resolution of the smaller branches in the group that includes potatoes and tomatoes, as well as their closely and more distantly related wild species. The insights gained, the researchers said, could support crop improvement programs for these species and other crops in the genus.

If the closest wild relatives of important agricultural crops have desirable traits, it is possible to breed crops with those species or borrow their genes, for example to improve resistance to temperature or pests or to produce larger fruits or fruits of a certain color, Messeder said.

The researchers found that the color and size of Solanum fruits was fairly conserved over evolutionary history, meaning that closely related species tend to have similar fruits. The evolution of fruit color and size is also correlated, with changes in one trait often corresponding to changes in the other, leading fruits of certain colors to be bigger than fruits of other colors.

These results suggest that physiological and molecular mechanisms may play a role in keeping the evolution of fruit color and size tied together, Messeder said. While frugivores or animals that primarily eat fruit and seed dispersers may influence diversification, we need to consider all of the possibilities when studying how fruits became so diverse.

The researchers also clarified the origin and diversification timeline of this genus, in part by including recent information from the oldest nightshade family fossil from a different genus in the Nightshade family whose fossil was dated to about 52 million years ago and from particular genes that improved estimates of the length of evolutionary branches. The researchers dated the origin of Solanum to about 53.1 million years ago a full 30 million years earlier than prior estimates that were based on genes from other parts of the plant cell. This paints a new picture of the environment that might have shaped how these plants diversified into new groups and species.

The Earths environment changed dramatically during the 30 million years in terms of temperature, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, geography and animal diversity, Messeder said. Now that we know when Solanum and its subgroups originated, we can think about the conditions that might have promoted the diversification of that group, as well as how other organisms might have played a role.

The team found that the earliest members of Solanum had medium-sized berries that remained green when ripe, and that green and yellow fruits of this group became more diverse around 14 million years ago. The researchers speculated that bats might have played a role in this diversification, given their similar evolutionary timeline and that they are the primary dispersers of modern green and yellow Solanum fruits. As new bat species arose and expanded where they were living during this time, they ate Solanum fruits and carried their seeds to new environments. Next, the researchers plan to explore how modern interactions between animals and the fruit they eat may shed light on the evolution of both groups as well as explore the evolution of certain genes relevant to fruit color and size.

In addition to Messeder and Ma, the research team includes Toms Carlo, professor of biology at Penn State; Guojin Zhang, postdoctoral researcher at Penn State at the time of the research; Juan David Tovar at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil; Csar Arana at the National University of San Marcos in Peru; and Jie Huang and Chien-Hsun Huang at Fudan University in China.

Funding from the Fulbright Commission, the CAPES Foundation in Brazil, the Penn State Department of Biology, the Hill Memorial Fund from the Pen State Eberly College of Science, the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the International Association for Plant Taxonomy and the Society of Herbarium Curators supported this research.

Experimental study

Not applicable

A highly resolved nuclear phylogeny uncovers strong phylogenetic conservatism and correlated evolution of fruit color and size in Solanum L.

27-May-2024

Read more:

New tomato, potato family tree shows that fruit color and size evolved together - EurekAlert

Biology

Exploring the biology behind maternal mental health disorders – News-Medical.Net

Pregnancy and new motherhood transform a woman's body as well as her life. While this is often a joyous time, it can sometime lead to mental health disorders, most often anxiety and depression. These conditions can be detrimental to the mother's health and that of her child, but despite the high stakes, modern medicine often fails to address them. By teasing out the biological mechanisms underlying these pregnancy-related disorders, investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine are laying the groundwork for new ways to detect and treat women at risk.

The statistics for depression that occurs after delivery, or postpartum, reflect a particularly abysmal reality: Clinicians successfully treat only about three percent of women with this disorder. For those who become depressed before giving birth, that number rises only slightly, to around five percent.

We do a shockingly bad job in this country of detecting and treating women who have pregnancy-related depression."

Dr. Lauren M. Osborne, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine andreproductive psychiatrist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center

In one effort to ameliorate this problem, she and her colleagues have begun a perinatal wellness program that embeds experts in pregnancy and postpartum mental health into obstetric care.

Left untreated, anxiety and depression can cause significant harm, potentially negatively affecting a child's development and behavior over time and putting mothers at increased risk of substance abuse and suicide. The low rates of successful treatment reflect a series of shortfalls in the healthcare system's capacity to intervene, beginning with difficulty predicting who is at heightened risk.

Studies have established that certain psychological and social factors, such as a history of mental illness, low education level, or a lack of support, increase risk for pregnancy-related mental health illnesses. But scientists know less about the biological dimensions of these conditions.

"We have this special window of time, where something makes women vulnerable to mood and anxiety disorders," said Dr. Jonathan Power, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, who is tracking women to see how their brain activity changes with pregnancy and into motherhood. "We don't know definitively what that is, but we have some likely candidates."

These potential culprits are changes in the immune system and fluctuations in hormones, according to Dr. Power. By investigating them in detail, he and Dr. Osborne hope, over the long term, to help turn medicine's track record around.

Dr. Osborne's research on the first of these potential culprits has pointed toward the possibility of pre-empting postpartum depression.

During pregnancy, the immune system's complex, defensive network must adapt to tolerate another living being within its perimeter, while still defending against threats from outside. Dr. Osborne's research has offered some clues, such as differences in T-cell activity, linking abnormal immunological activity during pregnancy with anxiety and depression.

In a study in Molecular Psychiatry, her team identified another key difference, shifts in a particular type of intercellular communication package released by two types of immune cells, macrophages and monocytes.

Under normal circumstances, cells expel bits of RNA, a relative of DNA, into the bloodstream, bundled within tiny packages. These packages increase in pregnancy, and the RNA found within them may contribute to implantation of the embryo and other processes.

Dr. Osborne and her colleagues examined the RNA within blood samples taken from women during pregnancy and up to six months after they had delivered. Among the women who were not depressed in pregnancy but went on to develop postpartum depression, the researchers saw a warning sign. During the 2nd and 3rd trimester of their pregnancies, the presence of a certain type of RNA package from the immune cells dropped off a change not seen among the women who did not become depressed.

This clear difference could provide the basis for a blood test to predict risk, according to Dr. Osborne.

"If we knew who would become sick, we could direct mental health resources to the people at highest risk early on, so we would be engaging in prevention rather than treatment," she said.

For those women who do develop postpartum depression and anxiety, treatment, including psychotherapy and medication, is currently available. Dr. Osborne notes that anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications, while not risk free, are compatible with pregnancy and breastfeeding. However, pregnant women and mothers are often concerned about the medication's potential effects on their babies.

In her own experience, Dr. Osborne has found that women want medications developed specifically for pregnancy-related conditions. However, until relatively recently, their only options were medications used to treat anxiety and depression in the general populations. A new class of drugs for postpartum depression shows that a more targeted approach is possible. These new medications, brexanolone and zuranolone, rely on a synthetic version of a hormone, allopregnanolone (a metabolite of progesterone produced in the brain), which fluctuates dramatically with pregnancy and delivery.

Shifts in hormone levels are the second likely candidate Dr. Osborne and Dr. Power are pursuing. During pregnancy, levels of estrogen, progesterone and allopregnanolone rise dramatically. Then, within 24 hours of delivery, they plummet. These fluctuations appear to cause problems for certain women.

With support from a pilot grant, the 1907 Trailblazer Award from the 1907 Foundation, Dr. Power has begun looking for three-way relationships among changes in hormone levels, mood, and brain activity detected by MRI scans. His goal is to track all three from before conception up to a year after delivery.

To find women before they become pregnant, he has partnered with the Ronald O. Perelman and Claudia Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine to recruit those undergoing fertility treatments. Once enrolled, the participants complete daily, roughly one-minute, digital surveys about their mood, sleep, exercise and other activities.

Statistically, some of the women who are trying to become pregnant will go on to struggle with mood or anxiety after they conceive. "So, is there something about the brain scans beforehand that leads to a prediction about who's going to be troubled and who's going to do OK?" Dr. Power said.

Any such insight remains far off, however. He views the stage of current brain imaging research as similar to the studies in the 1990s that examined the role of hormones, including allopregnanolone, in the brain and so laid the foundation for the recently approved drugs for postpartum depression.

Like that research, the studies he and Dr. Osborne are conducting could one day make similar advancements possible.

"This is about understanding why it's happening, which then gradually serves as the basis for developing therapies," he said.

Link:

Exploring the biology behind maternal mental health disorders - News-Medical.Net