Search results for " Signature"
showing 10 items of 152 documents
Light availability and land‐use history drive biodiversity and functional changes in forest herb layer communities
2020
International audience; A central challenge of today's ecological research is predicting how ecosystems will develop under future global change. Accurate predictions are complicated by (a) simultaneous effects of different drivers, such as climate change, nitrogen deposition and management changes; and (b) legacy effects from previous land use. We tested whether herb layer biodiversity (i.e. richness, Shannon diversity and evenness) and functional (i.e. herb cover, specific leaf area [SLA] and plant height) responses to environmental change drivers depended on land-use history. We used resurvey data from 192 plots across nineteen European temperate forest regions, with large spatial variabi…
Cytosolic calcium rises and related events in ergosterol-treated Nicotiana cells
2011
International audience; The typical fungal membrane component ergosterol was previously shown to trigger defence responses and protect plants against pathogens. Most of the elicitors mobilize the second messenger calcium, to trigger plant defences. We checked the involvement of calcium in response to ergosterol using Nicotiana plumbaginifolia and Nicotiana tabacum cv Xanthi cells expressing apoaequorin in the cytosol. First, it was verified if ergosterol was efficient in these cells inducing modifications of proton fluxes and increased expression of defence-related genes. Then, it was shown that ergosterol induced a rapid and transient biphasic increase of free [Ca2þ]cyt which intensity dep…
Moderated Redactable Blockchains: A Definitional Framework with an Efficient Construct
2020
Blockchain is a multiparty protocol to reach agreement on the order of events, and to record them consistently and immutably without centralized trust. In some cases, however, the blockchain can benefit from some controlled mutability. Examples include removing private information or unlawful content, and correcting protocol vulnerabilities which would otherwise require a hard fork. Two approaches to control the mutability are: moderation, where one or more designated administrators can use their private keys to approve a redaction, and voting, where miners can vote to endorse a suggested redaction. In this paper, we first present several attacks against existing redactable blockchain solut…
A population genomics analysis of the native Irish Galway sheep breed.
2019
SUMMARYThe Galway sheep population is the only native Irish sheep breed and represents an important livestock genetic resource, which is currently categorised as “at-risk”. In the present study, comparative population genomics analyses of Galway sheep and other sheep populations of European origin were used to investigate the microevolution and recent genetic history of the breed. These analyses support the hypothesis that British Leicester sheep were used in the formation of the Galway breed and suggest more recent gene flow from the Suffolk sheep breed. When compared to conventional and endangered breeds, the Galway breed was intermediate in effective population size, genomic inbreeding a…
Cadmium-Associated Molecular Signatures in Cancer Cell Models
2021
Simple Summary The exposure of cancer cells to cadmium compounds may be associated with the acceleration of tumor progression. It is known that cadmium is a transcriptional regulator, and the study of differentially expressed genes has enabled the identification and classification of cadmium-associated molecular signatures as useful biomarkers that are potentially transferable to clinical research. This review recapitulates the studies that report the detection of such signatures in breast, gastric, colon, liver, lung, and nasopharyngeal tumor cell models, as specifically demonstrated by individual gene or whole genome expression profiling. Abstract The exposure of cancer cells to cadmium a…
Fifteen Shades of Grey: Combined Analysis of Genome-Wide SNP Data in Steppe and Mediterranean Grey Cattle Sheds New Light on the Molecular Basis of C…
2020
Coat color is among the most distinctive phenotypes in cattle. Worldwide, several breeds share peculiar coat color features such as the presence of a fawn pigmentation of the calf at birth, turning over time to grey, and sexual dichromatism. The aim of this study was to search for polymorphisms under differential selection by contrasting grey cattle breeds displaying the above phenotype with non-grey cattle breeds, and to identify the underlying genes. Using medium-density SNP array genotype data, a multi-cohort FST-outlier approach was adopted for a total of 60 pair-wise comparisons of the 15 grey with 4 non-grey cattle breeds (Angus, Limousin, Charolais, and Holstein), with the latter sel…
Genome-Wide Analysis Reveals Selection Signatures Involved in Meat Traits and Local Adaptation in Semi-Feral Maremmana Cattle
2021
The Maremmana cattle is an ancient Podolian-derived Italian breed raised in semi-wild conditions with distinctive morphological and adaptive traits. The aim of this study was to detect potential selection signatures in Maremmana using medium-density single nucleotide polymorphism array. Putative selection signatures were investigated combining three statistical approaches designed to quantify the excess of haplotype homozygosity either within (integrated haplotype score, iHS) or among pairs of populations (Rsb and XP-EHH), and contrasting the Maremmana with a single reference population composed of a pool of seven Podolian-derived Italian breeds. Overall, the three haplotype-based analyses …
Centenarians: An excellent example of resilience for successful ageing.
2020
Centenarians are remarkable not only because of their prolonged life, but also because they compress morbidity until the very last moments of their lives, thus being proposed as a model of successful, extraordinary ageing. From the medical viewpoint, centenarians do not escape the physiological decline or the age-related diseases or syndromes (i.e. frailty), but the rate of such processes is slow enough to be counterbalanced by their increased intrinsic capacity to respond to minor stresses of daily life (i.e. resilience). These new concepts are reviewed in this paper. Allostatic stresses lead to a chronic low-grade inflammation that has led to the proposal of the "inflammaging" theory of a…
Primary sjogren syndrome: Focus on innate immune cells and inflammation
2020
Primary Sjogren Syndrome (pSS) is a complex, multifactorial rheumatic disease that mainly targets salivary and lacrimal glands, inducing epithelitis. The cause behind the autoimmunity outbreak in pSS is still elusive; however, it seems related to an aberrant reaction to exogenous triggers such as viruses, combined with individual genetic pre-disposition. For a long time, autoantibodies were considered as the hallmarks of this disease; however, more recently the complex interplay between innate and adaptive immunity as well as the consequent inflammatory process have emerged as the main mechanisms of pSS pathogenesis. The present review will focus on innate cells and on the principal mechani…
miRNomic Signature in Very Low Birth-Weight Neonates Discriminates Late-Onset Gram-Positive Sepsis from Controls
2021
Background and Objectives. Neonatal sepsis is a serious condition with a high rate of mortality and morbidity. Currently, the gold standard for sepsis diagnosis is a positive blood culture, which takes 48–72 h to yield results. We hypothesized that identifying differentially expressed miRNA pattern in neonates with late-onset Gram-positive sepsis would help with an earlier diagnosis and therapy. Methods. This is a prospective observational study in newborn infants with late-onset Gram positive bacterial sepsis and non-septic controls. Complementary to blood culture, an aliquot of 0.5 mL of blood was used to determine small non-coding RNA expression profiling using the GeneChip miRNA 4.0 Arr…