Search

Evaluating neighborhood performance is crucial for achieving long-term zero-carbon goals, enabling efficient energy, cost, and resource sharing among buildings. This task requires balancing multiple criteria and managing uncertainties, emphasizing the importance of performance robustness alongside high performance. This article introduces a flexible multi-criteria approach for evaluating neighborhood performance, focusing on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy use across different life cycle stages. Flytårnet, a Norwegian neighborhood with zero-emission ambitions, serves as a case study. The methodology incorporates the T-robust method, an established robustness-based approach, to select high-performance, resilient neighborhood designs under various uncertainties. Results indicate that when assessing buildings as key components and considering energy delivered during the operational phase, including photovoltaic generation, the supplied energy ranges from 25 to 80 kWh/m2/year. Over a 60-year period, life cycle GHG emissions span from 4 to 12 kg CO2-eq./m2/year, accounting for uncertainties and encompassing material production and replacement, as well as energy consumption and generation. However, the optimal design choice varies based on whether life cycle stages beyond the use stage are considered. This research provides valuable insights for decision-makers and designers seeking effective neighborhood designs in early-stage planning, considering diverse and conflicting performance criteria to achieve zero-emission goals.

In this paper, we report a comprehensive and consistent annotation of the locus encoding the β-chain of the equine T-cell receptor (TRB), as inferred from recent genome assembly using bioinformatics tools. The horse TRB locus spans approximately 1 Mb, making it the largest locus among the mammalian species studied to date, with a significantly higher number of genes related to extensive duplicative events. In the region, 136 TRBV (belonging to 29 subgroups), 2 TRBD, 13 TRBJ, and 2 TRBC genes, were identified. The general genomic organization resembles that of other mammals, with a V cluster of 135 TRBV genes located upstream of two in-tandem aligned TRBD-J-C clusters and an inverted TRBV gene at the 3′ end of the last TRBC gene. However, the horse b-chain repertoire would be affected by a high number of non-functional TRBV genes. Thus, we queried a transcriptomic dataset derived from splenic tissue of a healthy adult horse, using each TRBJ gene as a probe to analyze clonotypes encompassing the V(D)J junction. This analysis provided insights into the usage of the TRBV, TRBD, and TRBJ genes and the variability of the non-germline-encoded CDR3. Our results clearly demonstrated that the horse β-chain constitutes a complex level of variability, broadly like that described in other mammalian species.

Transposable elements (TEs) have been historically depicted as detrimental genetic entities that selfishly aim at perpetuating themselves, invading genomes, and destroying genes. Scientists often co-opt “special” TEs to develop new and powerful genetic tools, that will hopefully aid in changing the future of the human being. However, many TEs are gentle, rarely unleash themselves to harm the genome, and bashfully contribute to generating diversity and novelty in the genomes they have colonized, yet they offer the opportunity to develop new molecular tools. In this review we summarize 30 years of research focused on the Bari transposons. Bari is a “normal” transposon family that has colonized the genomes of several Drosophila species and introduced genomic novelties in the melanogaster species. We discuss how these results have contributed to advance the field of TE research and what future studies can still add to the current knowledge.

Responsive building envelopes (RBEs) are central to developing sustainability strategies for zero emission/energy buildings (ZEBs). RBEs are a large group of complex technologies and systems, which is why multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are helpful to navigate sustainability assessments considering various performance indicators. This article first provides a literature review of assessment criteria and key performance indicators for RBEs and an analysis of existing robustness-based MCDM methods. Then, a methodological approach to assess RBE designs in ZEB projects is proposed as an extension of a novel robustness-based MCDM method that normalizes the objective functions according to defined targets and combines them into one comprehensive indicator (MT-KPI), thereby eliminating the need to weight objectives. The proposed methodological approach is finally tested on a case study of a Norwegian ZEB, where five competitive RBE designs (including building integrated photovoltaics, phase change material, and electrochromic windows) and eight occupancy and climate scenarios are investigated considering three main performance areas: energy use, thermal comfort, and load matching. The results in the case study show that with the proposed MCDM approach the different designs have MT-KPI values between 1.4 and 12.8, where a lower value is better. In this specific case, the most robust building RBE alternative was identified as the one with electrochromic windows and a control based on incident solar radiation and indoor air temperature.

Transposable elements (TEs) are constitutive components of both eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes. The role of TEs in the evolution of genes and genomes has been widely assessed over the past years in a variety of model and non-model organisms. Drosophila is undoubtedly among the most powerful model organisms used for the purpose of studying the role of transposons and their effects on the stability and evolution of genes and genomes. Besides their most intuitive role as insertional mutagens, TEs can modify the transcriptional pattern of host genes by juxtaposing new cis-regulatory sequences. A key element of TE biology is that they carry transcriptional control elements that fine-tune the transcription of their own genes, but that can also perturb the transcriptional activity of neighboring host genes. From this perspective, the transposition-mediated modulation of gene expression is an important issue for the short-term adaptation of physiological functions to the environmental changes, and for long-term evolutionary changes. Here, we review the current literature concerning the regulatory and structural elements operating in cis provided by TEs in Drosophila. Furthermore, we highlight that, besides their influence on both TEs and host genes expression, they can affect the chromatin structure and epigenetic status as well as both the chromosome’s structure and stability. It emerges that Drosophila is a good model organism to study the effect of TE-linked regulatory sequences, and it could help future studies on TE−host interactions in any complex eukaryotic genome.

The term heterochromatin has been long considered synonymous with gene silencing, but it is now clear that the presence of transcribed genes embedded in pericentromeric heterochromatin is a conserved feature in the evolution of eukaryotic genomes. Several studies have addressed the epigenetic changes that enable the expression of genes in pericentric heterochromatin, yet little is known about the evolutionary processes through which this has occurred. By combining genome annotation analysis and high-resolution cytology, we have identified and mapped 53 orthologs of D. melanogaster heterochromatic genes in the genomes of two evolutionarily distant species, D. pseudoobscura and D. virilis. Our results show that the orthologs of the D. melanogaster heterochromatic genes are clustered at three main genomic regions in D. virilis and D. pseudoobscura. In D. virilis, the clusters lie in the middle of euchromatin, while those in D. pseudoobscura are located in the proximal portion of the chromosome arms. Some orthologs map to the corresponding Muller C element in D. pseudoobscura and D. virilis, while others localize on the Muller B element, suggesting that chromosomal rearrangements that have been instrumental in the fusion of two separate elements involved the progenitors of genes currently located in D. melanogaster heterochromatin. These results demonstrate an evolutionary repositioning of gene clusters from ancestral locations in euchromatin to the pericentromeric heterochromatin of descendent D. melanogaster chromosomes. Remarkably, in both D. virilis and D. pseudoobscura the gene clusters show a conserved association with the HP1a protein, one of the most highly evolutionarily conserved epigenetic marks. In light of these results, we suggest a new scenario whereby ancestral HP1-like proteins (and possibly other epigenetic marks) may have contributed to the evolutionary repositioning of gene clusters into heterochromatin.

Buildings currently play a fundamental role for the achievement of the sustainable development goals as they are responsible for several environmental, social, and economic impacts. Energy renovation projects of existing buildings can support the reduction of environmental impacts by leading, at the same time, to economic and social advantages. In this paper, the life cycle assessment and life cycle costing methodologies were used in a combined performance assessment applied to a case study, i.e., the energy renovation project of a single-family house in Norway. Several scenarios based on alternative energy efficiency measures were analyzed, and life cycle environmental and economic indicators were computed, i.e., global warming potential (GWP), cumulative energy demand (CED), and net present cost (NPC). The results demonstrated the close to negative linear regression between the environmental and economic indicators computed. However, the values of CED and GWP for the best scenarios in environmental terms were respectively 50% and 32% lower than the values of the worst scenarios, while their NPC was around 6% higher than the lowest values. The findings can be helpful in the decision-making context towards a meaningful combination of environmental and economic assessments in building energy renovation projects for selecting the most sustainable scenario.

Constitutive heterochromatin is a ubiquitous and still unveiled component of eukaryotic genomes, within which it comprises large portions. Although constitutive heterochromatin is generally considered to be transcriptionally silent, it contains a significant variety of sequences that are expressed, among which about 300 single-copy coding genes have been identified by genetic and genomic analyses in the last decades. Here, we report the results of the evolutionary analysis of Yeti, an essential gene of Drosophila melanogaster located in the deep pericentromeric region of chromosome 2R. By FISH, we showed that Yeti maintains a heterochromatin location in both D. simulans and D. sechellia species, closely related to D. melanogaster, while in the more distant species e.g., D. pseudoobscura and D. virilis, it is found within euchromatin, in the syntenic chromosome Muller C, that corresponds to the 2R arm of D. melanogaster chromosome 2. Thus, over evolutionary time, Yeti has been resident on the same chromosomal element, but it progressively moved closer to the pericentric regions. Moreover, in silico reconstruction of the Yeti gene structure in 19 Drosophila species and in 5 non-drosophilid dipterans shows a rather stable organization during evolution. Accordingly, by PCR analysis and sequencing, we found that the single intron of Yeti does not undergo major intraspecies or interspecies size changes, unlike the introns of other essential Drosophila heterochromatin genes, such as light and Dbp80. This implicates diverse evolutionary forces in shaping the structural organization of genes found within heterochromatin. Finally, the results of dS - dN tests show that Yeti is under negative selection both in heterochromatin and euchromatin, and indicate that the change in genomic location did not affected significantly the molecular evolution of the gene. Together, the results of this work contribute to our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of constitutive heterochromatin in the genomes of higher eukaryotes.

Retrotranspostion of I factors in the female germline of Drosophila melanogaster is responsible for the so called I-R hybrid dysgenesis, a phenomenon that produces a broad spectrum of genetic abnormalities including reduced fertility, increased frequency of mutations and chromosome loss. Transposition of I factor depends on cellular conditions that are established in the oocytes of the reactive females and transmitted to their daughters. The so-called reactivity is a cellular state that may exhibit variable levels of expression and represents a permissive condition for I transposition at high levels. Defective I elements have been proposed to be the genetic determinants of reactivity and, through their differential expression, to modulate transposition of active copies in somatic and/or germ line cells. Recently, control of transposable element activity in the germ line has been found to depend on pi-RNAs, small repressive RNAs interacting with Piwi-family proteins and derived from larger transposable elements (TE)-derived primary transcripts. In particular, maternally transmitted I-element piRNAs originating from the 42AB region of polytene chromosomes were found to be involved in control of I element mobility. In the present work, we use a combination of cytological and molecular approaches to study the activity of I elements in three sublines of the inducer y; cn bw; sp isogenic strain and in dysgenic and non-dysgenic genetic backgrounds. Overall, the results of FISH and Southern blotting experiments clearly show that I elements are highly unstable in the Montpellier subline in the absence of classical dysgenic conditions. Such instability appears to be correlated to the amount of 5' and 3' I element transcripts detected by quantitative and real-time RT-PCR. The results of this study indicate that I elements can be highly active in the absence of a dysgenic crosses. Moreover, in the light of our results caution should be taken to assimilate the genomic annotation data on transposable elements to all y; cn bw sp sublines.

Abstract  Centromeres are complex structures involved in an evolutionarily conserved function, the correct segregation of chromosomes and chromatids during meiosis and mitosis. The centromere is determined by epigenetic processes that result in a particular nucleosome organization (CEN chromatin) that differs from the rest of the chromatin including the heterochromatin that normally surrounds the centromere in higher organisms. Many of the current models of centromere origin and organization rely on the molecular and cytological characterization of minichromosomes and their derivatives, and on studies on the origin and maintenance of neocentromeres. Here, we describe the peculiar centromere organization observed in In(2Rh)PL, a paracentric D. melanogaster inversion in which the centromere is maintained in its natural context but is directly flanked by a euchromatic domain as a result of the rearrangement. We have identified the breakpoints of the inversion and show that the proximal one is within the centromere region. The data presented suggest that, notwithstanding the loss of all the pericentric 2Rh heterochromatin, the centromere of the In(2Rh)PL chromosome is still active but presents a nucleosomal organization quite different from the organization usually observed in the centromeric region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  In this work the structural variations of Terminal Inverted Repeats (TIR) of Bari like transposons in Drosophila species has been studied. The aim is to try and assess the relevance of different variants in the evolutionary distribution of Bari elements. Bari is a member of the widespread Tc1 superfamily of transposable elements that has colonized most species of the Drosophila genus. We previously reported the structure of two related elements that differ in their TIR organization: Bari1 harbouring 26-bp TIR (short TIRs) and Bari2 with about 250-bp TIR (long TIR). While elements with short TIRs are complete and potentially autonomous, long ones are invariably composed of defective copies. The results show that in D. pseudobscura, D. persimilis and D. mojavensis, there is a third class of Bari elements, Bari3, that exhibit a long TIR structure and are not defective. Phylogenetic relationships among reconstructed transposases are consistent with the three subfamilies sharing a common origin. However, the final TIR organization into long or short structure is not related by descent but appears to be lineage-specific. Furthermore, we show that, independently of origin and organization, within the 250-bp terminal sequences there are three regions that are conserved in both sequence and position suggesting they are under functional constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]