Search

The life cycles of plants are characterized by two major life history transitions—germination and the initiation of flowering—the timing of which are important determinants of fitness. Unlike annuals, which make the transition from the vegetative to reproductive phase only once, perennials iterate reproduction in successive years. The floral repressor PERPETUAL FLOWERING 1 (PEP1), an ortholog of FLOWERING LOCUS C, in the alpine perennial Arabis alpina ensures the continuation of vegetative growth after flowering and thereby restricts the duration of the flowering episode. We performed greenhouse and garden experiments to compare flowering phenology, fecundity and seed traits between A. alpina accessions that have a functional PEP1 allele and flower seasonally and pep1 mutants and accessions that carry lesions in PEP1 and flower perpetually. In the garden, perpetual genotypes flower asynchronously and show higher winter mortality than seasonal ones. PEP1 also pleiotropically regulates seed dormancy and longevity in a way that is functionally divergent from FLC. Seeds from perpetual genotypes have shallow dormancy and reduced longevity regardless of whether they after‐ripened in plants grown in the greenhouse or in the experimental garden. These results suggest that perpetual genotypes have higher mortality during winter but compensate by showing higher seedling establishment. Differences in seed traits between seasonal and perpetual genotypes are also coupled with differences in hormone sensitivity and expression of genes involved in hormonal pathways. Our study highlights the existence of pleiotropic regulation of seed traits by hub developmental regulators such as PEP1, suggesting that seed and flowering traits in perennial plants might be optimized in a coordinated fashion., https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15003

Synthetic chemical fluorescent dyes promise to be useful for many applications in biology. Covalent, targeted labeling, such as with a SNAP-tag, uses synthetic dyes to label specific proteins in vivo for studying processes such as endocytosis or for imaging via super-resolution microscopy. Despite its potential, such chemical tagging has not been used effectively in plants. A major drawback has been the limited knowledge regarding cell wall and membrane permeability of the available synthetic dyes. Of 31 synthetic dyes tested here, 23 were taken up into BY-2 cells, while eight were not. This creates sets of dyes that can serve to measure endocytosis. Three of the dyes that were able to enter the cells, SNAP-tag ligands of diethylaminocoumarin, tetramethylrhodamine, and silicon-rhodamine 647, were used to SNAP-tag α-tubulin. Successful tagging was verified by live cell imaging and visualization of microtubule arrays in interphase and during mitosis in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) seedlings. Fluorescence activation-coupled protein labeling with DRBG-488 was used to observe PIN-FORMED2 (PIN2) endocytosis and delivery to the vacuole as well as preferential delivery of newly synthesized PIN2 to the actively forming cell plate during mitosis. Together, the data demonstrate that specific self-labeling of proteins can be used effectively in plants to study a wide variety of cellular and biological processes.

How the membrane trafficking system spatially organizes intracellular activities and intercellular signaling networks in plants is not well understood. Transport Protein Particle (TRAPP) complexes play key roles in the selective delivery of membrane vesicles to various subcellular compartments in yeast and animals but remain to be fully characterized in plants. Here, we investigated TRAPP complexes in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) using immunoprecipitation followed by quantitative mass spectrometry analysis of AtTRS33, a conserved core component of all TRAPP complexes. We identified 14 AtTRS33-interacting proteins, including homologs of all 13 TRAPP components in mammals and a protein that has homologs only in multicellular photosynthetic organisms and is thus named TRAPP-Interacting Plant Protein (TRIPP). TRIPP specifically associates with the TRAPPII complex through binary interactions with two TRAPPII-specific subunits. TRIPP colocalized with a subset of TRS33 compartments and trans-Golgi network markers in a TRS33-dependent manner. Loss-of-function tripp mutants exhibited dwarfism, sterility, partial photomorphogenesis in the dark, reduced polarity of the auxin transporter PIN2, incomplete cross wall formation, and altered localization of a TRAPPII-specific component. Therefore, TRIPP is a plant-specific component of the TRAPPII complex with important functions in trafficking, plant growth, and development.

Wheat ( Triticum spp), one of the oldest cultivated cereals, is a major food crop grown in many regions with temperate climates. At present, wheat is grown over a wider area than any other commercial crop. Given its importance, extensive marker-assisted breeding of wheat varieties has been

Genetic recombination is the process by which novel genotypes are generated from the genetic material of both parents. In eukaryotes, homologous chromosomes synapse and recombine during meiotic prophase I, during which double-stranded breaks (DSBs) are formed by DNA topoisomerases such as SPO11. If

The ethylene response factor (ERF) transcription factors are integral components of environmental stress signaling cascades, regulating a wide variety of downstream genes related to stress responses and plant development. However, the mechanisms by which ERF genes regulate the heat stress response are not well understood. Here, we uncover the positive role of ethylene signaling, ERF95 and ERF97 in basal thermotolerance of Arabidopsis thaliana. We demonstrate that ethylene signaling-defective mutants exhibit compromised basal thermotolerance, whereas plants with constitutively activated ethylene response show enhanced basal thermotolerance. EIN3 physically binds to the promoters of ERF95 and ERF97. Ectopic constitutive expression of ERF95 or ERF97 increases the basal thermotolerance of plants. In contrast, erf95 erf96 erf97 erf98 quadruple mutants exhibit decreased basal thermotolerance. ERF95 and ERF97 genetically function downstream of EIN3. ERF95 can physically interact with ERF97, and this interaction is heat inducible. ERF95 and ERF97 regulate a common set of target genes, including known heat-responsive genes and directly bind to the promoter of HSFA2. Thus, our study reveals that the EIN3-ERF95/ERF97-HSFA2 transcriptional cascade may play an important role in the heat stress response, thereby establishing a connection between ethylene and its downstream regulation in basal thermotolerance of plants.

Interactions between MADS box transcription factors are critical in the regulation of floral development, and shifting MADS box protein-protein interactions are predicted to have influenced floral evolution. However, precisely how evolutionary variation in protein-protein interactions affects MADS box protein function remains unknown. To assess the impact of changing MADS box protein-protein interactions on transcription factor function, we turned to the grasses, where interactions between B-class MADS box proteins vary. We tested the functional consequences of this evolutionary variability using maize (Zea mays) as an experimental system. We found that differential B-class dimerization was associated with subtle, quantitative differences in stamen shape. In contrast, differential dimerization resulted in large-scale changes to downstream gene expression. Differential dimerization also affected B-class complex composition and abundance, independent of transcript levels. This indicates that differential B-class dimerization affects protein degradation, revealing an important consequence for evolutionary variability in MADS box interactions. Our results highlight complexity in the evolution of developmental gene networks: changing protein-protein interactions could affect not only the composition of transcription factor complexes but also their degradation and persistence in developing flowers. Our results also show how coding change in a pleiotropic master regulator could have small, quantitative effects on development.

Plant defenses against herbivore or pathogen attack involve the coordination of multiple hormone-mediated signaling networks, including the jasmonate (JA) and brassinosteroid (BR) pathways. JA is an oxylipin phytohormone that triggers the transcription of defense-related proteins and secondary

In eukaryotes and archaea, protein-coding DNA is transcribed to mRNA via a preinitiation complex composed of over 100 proteins, among them regulatory proteins, numerous transcription factors, and RNA polymerase II—the enzyme that produces precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA). Although transcription is

Review of: Shefferson, Richard P., Jones, Owen R., and Salguero-Gomez R., eds. 2017. The Evolution of Senescence in the Tree of Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 402pp. ISBN 978–1107078505; $70 HB. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

This chapter explores the stylistic connections between J. S. Le Fanu’s influential ghost story ‘Green Tea’ and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Reading the two fictions through the rhetorical model of medical casework, it notes how both authors drew upon clinical paradigms as well as their own legal training in order to produce works that depict instances of malpractice on the part of a consulting physician. Within this context, the function of fictional editorship is discussed, as is the relationship of form to fiction produced within an Irish Gothic context.

The road to recovery from trauma cannot be seen in isolation. Isolation from self (self identity as well as self in the body) and from the world outside (family and society) is the tragedy of a survival system that kept hope and potential alive but extracts a heavy toll on living. In much the same way we, as facilitators on this journey of recovery, can no longer isolate ourselves as therapists from a world outside the consulting room. We have to take account of the real world outside, its particular culture as well as the reality of multi-professional involvement. Our clients/patients need encouragement to engage in the world of work, responsibilities and relationships alongside the therapeutic process. This piece examines the evolution of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the UK and the historic tensions between the National Health Service (NHS) and the private sector. It outlines a practice protocol that requires a diplomatic sensitivity to cultural differences within these two sectors. The ...

UNLABELLED • PREMISE OF THE STUDY Life-history theory predicts a trade-off between current and future reproduction for iteroparous organisms-as individuals age, the expected value of future reproduction declines, and thus reproductive effort is expected to be higher in later clutches than in earlier. In contrast, models explaining the evolution of semelparity treat semelparous reproduction as instantaneous, with no scope for intraindividual variation. However, semelparous reproduction is also extended, but over shorter time scales; whether there are similar age- or stage-specific changes in reproductive effort within a semelparous episode is unclear. In this study, we assessed whether semelparous individuals increase reproductive effort as residual reproductive value declines by comparing the reproductive phenotype of flowers at five different floral positions along a main inflorescence.• METHODS Using the herbaceous monocarp Lobelia inflata, we conducted a longitudinal study of 409 individuals including both laboratory and field populations over three seasons. We recorded six reproductive traits-including the length of three phenological intervals as well as fruit size, seed size, and seed number-for all plants across floral positions produced throughout the reproductive episode.• KEY RESULTS We found that while the rate of flower initiation did not change, flowers at distal (late) floral positions developed more quickly and contained larger seed than flowers at basal (early) floral positions did.• CONCLUSIONS Our results were consistent with the hypothesis that, like iteroparous organisms, L. inflata increases reproductive effort in response to low residual reproductive value.

Premise of the study: Nuclear microsatellite markers were developed for Lobelia inflata (Campanulaceae), an obligately self-fertilizing plant species, for use in the study of temporal fluctuation in allele frequency and of the genetic structure within and among populations. Methods and Results: We developed 28 primer pairs for L. inflata, all of which amplify CT dinucleotide repeats. We evaluated amplification of these loci in 53 L. inflata individuals at three sites in eastern North America and found that 24 loci showed microsatellite polymorphism. We also found that 16 loci amplified successfully in L. cardinalis, and 11 amplified successfully in L. siphilitica. Conclusions: These primers will be useful for assessing allelic diversity within and among populations of L. inflata, and show potential for use in congeneric species.

In 1890, 'The Snake’s Pass' was published in serialized form in the periodical 'The People'. It is the story of Arthur Severn, an Englishman who has inherited wealth and a title through an aunt who took him under her wing to the exclusion of closer relations. His inheritance includes land in Ireland, and now that he is a man of leisure, he decides to tour the west of Ireland. As Bram Stoker’s first full-length novel, 'The Snake’s Pass' is a heady blend of romance, travel narrative, adventure tale, folk tradition, and national tale. This early novel shows that, long before Dracula, Stoker used the genre of the novel to engage with questions of identity, gender, ethnic stereotype, and imperialism.

Rosenberg. G. D. & Hughes, W. W. 1991 01 15: A metabolic model for the determination of shell composition in the bivalve mollusc, Mytilus edulis. Lethaia, Vol. 24. pp. 83–96. Oslo. ISSN 0024–1164. This research describes compositional variations within the shell of the extant mussel Mytilur edulis and proposes that they are produced by metabolic gradients within the shell-secreting mantle. Because we have previously proposed that the same metabolic gradients are responsible for variations in shell form (curvature), we establish here a model for molluscan shell growth integrating. for the first time. shell form and composition with mantle metabolism. The electron microprobe was used to measure the distribution of Mg. S, and Ca in the outer calcitic shell layer of sectioned. polished, and either A1- or C-coated shell. Mg/Ca and S/Ca ratios in the outer shell are respectively 1.25 and 1.40 times higher along slow-growing, commissure-umbo axes of high shell curvature and high metabolic activity than along rapidly growing axes of low curvature and low metabolic activity. The ratios within the inner surface of the calcitic shell layer decline most rapidly along commissure-umbo axes where mantle metabolic activity also declines rapidly. We reject the null hypothesis, generally at high levels of significance (1-tests. F-tests. regression analyses, and discriminant analysis. with p 4 0.01) that there is no difference in either Mg or S concentration in sections of the calcitic shell layer that differ in shell curvature and mantle metabolic activity. We conclude that calcium (mineral)-rich portions of shells are energctically less costly to produce than matrix or minor element-rich portions. in agreement with the proposal that natural selection favors mineral-rich shells because they are more efficient to produce than matrix-rich shells. Among-specimen differences are also highly significant (mixed model ANOVA). This confirms our assertion that paleontologists need to describe variations in skeletal composition among populations and throughout ontogeny as systematically as classical taxonomists describe morphology. if ever the environmental and the genetic influences on skeletal composition are to be distinguished. Bivalves. biomineralization, shell composition. magnesium, sulfur, calcium, metabolism, growth. Mytillus edulis

Academic criticism has long speculated regarding the influence of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) on T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), though the novel itself is named neither in the poem nor in its at times ironic endnotes. The interface of the two works is inevitably problematic. Stoker’s ‘prurient, highly coloured sensationalist prose’, according to A. N. Wilson’s introduction to the 1983 Oxford World’s Classics edition of Dracula, ensures that Tt is not a great work of literature’.1 Conversely, The Waste Land, according to Calvin Bedient, is ‘the quintessential poem of Anglo-American modernism’—a text, in other words, unequivocally worthy of serious study and a suitable recipient, therefore, of a more favourable critical hyperbole.2 It is this gap between the serious and the sensationalist, between the unanimously accepted and the merely tolerated—in genre as much as in choice of texts—that has coloured the way in which academic criticism has reacted to the apparent presence of Dracula in The Waste Land. The intertextual trace of Stoker’s novel has been noted, but never explored at length. Unlike the allusions to Dante, Spenser or Shakespeare in The Waste Land, Dracula, a text neither historically canonical nor venerably antique, is conventionally mentioned merely in passing during analysis. If not an embarrassment, then it is an inconvenience for criticism—a private joke on Eliot’s part, never adequately explained, never worthy, indeed, of the effort of explanation, at least in the rarefied field of Modernist criticism.

Over the past decade Gothic criticism has arguably proved as responsive to innovation in the theory of colonial and postcolonial fictions as it was to developments in literary psychoanalysis some forty years earlier. The rise of a postcolonial discourse within the field, though, in a sense makes problematic the boundaries and definitions which demarcate what it is to be textually, discursively Gothic, and also highlights the temporal considerations which fracture as well as unify the integrity of the genre. For critics applying psychoanalysis to the Gothic in the 1960s, the situation was relatively uncomplicated: for Maurice Richardson, writing in 1959 for example, the psychoanalysable Gothic was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in 1897, not Richard Matheson’s equally vampiric novel I Am Legend, published five years earlier in 1954.1 Dracula, a non-contemporary artefact, essentially encodes a pattern of neurosis and repression which, because of its labyrinthine oppressiveness and sheer difference, functions in its own right as an effectively Gothic signifier, an intrusion of the repressive, guilty past into the enlightened, all-seeing present.

The genomes of pathogenic Haemophilus influenzae strains are larger than that of Rd KW20 (Rd), the nonpathogenic laboratory strain whose genome has been sequenced. To identify potential virulence genes, we examined genes possessed by Int1, an invasive nonencapsulated isolate from a meningitis patient, but absent from Rd. Int1 was found to have a novel gene termed lav , predicted to encode a member of the AIDA-I/VirG/PerT family of virulence-associated autotransporters (ATs). Associated with lav are multiple repeats of the tetranucleotide GCAA, implicated in translational phase variation of surface molecules. Laterally acquired by H. influenzae, lav is restricted in distribution to a few pathogenic strains, including H. influenzae biotype aegyptius and Brazilian purpuric fever isolates. The DNA sequence of lav is surprisingly similar to that of a gene previously described for Neisseria meningitidis . Sequence comparisons suggest that lav was transferred relatively recently from Haemophilus to Neisseria , shortly before the divergence of N. meningitidis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae . Segments of lav predicted to encode passenger and β-domains differ sharply in G+C base content, supporting the idea that AT genes have evolved by fusing domains which originated in different genomes. Homology and base sequence comparisons suggest that a novel biotype aegyptius AT arose by swapping an unrelated sequence for the passenger domain of lav . The unusually mobile lav locus joins a growing list of genes transferred from H. influenzae to Neisseria . Frequent gene exchange suggests a common pool of hypervariable contingency genes and may help to explain the origin of invasiveness in certain respiratory pathogens.

The opening words of Hall Caine’s obituary notice for his close friend and fellow author succinctly crystallise the nineteenth-century myth of Bram Stoker. In obituary tributes, Stoker is consistently portrayed as a gentleman of ‘great height and fine physique’ who ‘seemed to give up his life’ to his employer’s service, so much so that his achievements as Irving’s ‘fidus Achates’ could only be satisfactorily discerned through the successes of the actor’s long career.2 Caine, alone, tempers the portrayal of this ‘massive and muscular and almost volcanic personality’ with a privileged view of Stoker’s ‘big heart’ and an intimation of ‘his humanity’. Even these, though, find their expression in the context of Irving’s Lyceum Theatre: for Caine, Stoker’s ‘tender’ nature is remembered at ‘the front of a box-office, the door to the gallery, the passageway to the pit’.3 It would seem, therefore, that the Victorian and Edwardian public viewed Stoker largely as an appendage of Irving, a mythicised figure with a symbolic as well as actual role, rather than as an individual — or as an author — in his own right.

The history of Dracula as a text in the critical field arguably mirrors the change and development of that field over the last half of the twentieth century. Grandiose as this statement may seem, it is no exaggeration. The fortunes of this apparently ephemeral text replicate the transfer of the specific cultural activity of criticism from a tradition which, in the words of F.R. Leavis, made ‘important distinctions’ as to who and what was fit to be studied, to the open-ended and methodologically pluralist practice of Cultural Studies.1 Essentially, Stoker’s novel has undergone a series of changes in status in accordance with both what has been thought appropriate for the subject of criticism, and the nature of the methodology customarily employed in analysis.

Background Semelparity and iteroparity are considered to be distinct and alternative life-history strategies, where semelparity is characterized by a single, fatal reproductive episode, and iteroparity by repeated reproduction throughout life. However, semelparous organisms do not reproduce instantaneously; typically reproduction occurs over an extended time period. If variation in reproductive allocation exists within such a prolonged reproductive episode, semelparity may be considered iteroparity over a shorter time scale. This continuity hypothesis predicts that “semelparous” organisms with relatively low probability of survival after age at first reproduction will exhibit more extreme semelparity than those with high probability of adult survival. This contrasts with the conception of semelparity as a distinct reproductive strategy expressing a discrete, single, bout of reproduction, where reproductive phenotype is expected to be relatively invariant. Here, we manipulate expected season length—and thus expected adult survival—to ask whether Lobelia inflata, a classic “semelparous” plant, exhibits plasticity along a semelparous-iteroparous continuum. Results Groups of replicated genotypes were manipulated to initiate reproduction at different points in the growing season in each of three years. In lab and field populations alike, the norm of reaction in parity across a season was as predicted by the continuity hypothesis: as individuals bolted later, they showed shorter time to, and smaller size at first reproduction, and multiplied their reproductive organs through branching, thus producing offspring more simultaneously. Conclusions This work demonstrates that reproductive effort occurs along a semelparous-iteroparous continuum within a “semelparous” organism, and that variation in parity occurs within populations as a result of phenotypic plasticity.

Background Although semelparity is a life history characterized by a single reproductive episode within a single reproductive season, some semelparous organisms facultatively express a second bout of reproduction, either in a subsequent season (“facultative iteroparity”) or later within the same season as the primary bout (“secondary reproduction”). Secondary reproduction has been explained as the adaptive deferral of reproductive potential under circumstances in which some fraction of reproductive success would otherwise have been lost (due, for example, to inopportune timing). This deferral hypothesis predicts a positive relationship between constraints on primary reproduction and expression of secondary reproduction. The herbaceous monocarp Lobelia inflata has been observed occasionally to express a secondary reproductive episode in the field. However, it is unknown whether secondary reproduction is an example of adaptive reproductive deferral, or is more parsimoniously explained as the vestigial expression of iteroparity after a recent transition to semelparity. Here, we experimentally manipulate effective season length in each of three years to test whether secondary reproduction is a form of adaptive plasticity consistent with the deferral hypothesis. Results Our results were found to be inconsistent with the adaptive deferral explanation: first, plants whose primary reproduction was time-constrained exhibited decreased (not increased) allocation to subsequent secondary reproduction, a result that was consistent across all three years; second, secondary offspring—although viable in the laboratory—would not have the opportunity for expression under field conditions, and would thus not contribute to reproductive success. Conclusions Although alternative adaptive explanations for secondary reproduction cannot be precluded, we conclude that the characteristics of secondary reproduction found in L. inflata are consistent with predictions of incomplete or transitional evolution to annual semelparity.

We have analyzed the secondary structure, shape and dimensions of plasma sex steroid-binding protein (SBP) by CD, size-exclusion chromatography and electron microscopy. CD spectra show extrema at 186 nm and 216 nm characteristic for beta-sheet structures. Analysis with different algorithms indicates 15% alpha-helix, 43% beta-sheet and 10-16% beta-turn structures. An irreversible structural change is observed upon heating above 60 degrees C, which correlates with the loss of steroid-binding activity. As the SBP sequence shows similarity with domains of several multidomain proteins, including laminins, we evaluated the structure of domain G of laminin-1. The CD spectrum shows extrema at 200 nm and 216 nm. Deconvolution results in 13% alpha-helix, 32% beta-sheet and 15% beta-turn structures. Steroid-binding assays indicate that laminin and fragments thereof have no activity. Size-exclusion chromatography reveals that SBP has an extended shape and can be modeled as a cylinder with a length and diameter of 23 nm and 3 nm, respectively. This shape and the dimensions are in agreement with the appearance on electron micrographs. We propose a model for the structure of SBP in which two monomers assemble head to head with the steroid-binding site located in the center of the rod-like particle.

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are used extensively as undergraduate science lab instructors at universities, yet they often have having minimal instructional training and little is known about effective training methods. This blind randomized control trial study assessed the impact of two training regimens on GTA teaching effectiveness. GTAs teaching undergraduate biology labs (n = 52) completed five hours of training in either inquiry-based learning pedagogy or general instructional "best practices". GTA teaching effectiveness was evaluated using: (1) a nine-factor student evaluation of educational quality; (2) a six-factor questionnaire for student learning; and (3) course grades. Ratings from both GTAs and undergraduates indicated that indicated that the inquiry-based learning pedagogy training has a positive effect on GTA teaching effectiveness.

Scanning electron micrographs revealed growth increments in the primary shell layer of the extant terebratulid brachiopod Terebratalia transversa collected from Anacortes, Washington, USA, during the summers of 1982–1984. The increments extend into the secondary shell layer, but only as poorly-defined continuations. Growth increments narrow and widen cyclically, producing patterns similar to tidally-induced, fortnightly growth patterns in bivalve molluscs. “Asymmetric” increments or “doublets” that consist of paired wide and narrow bands present additional evidence that the growth pattern is produced by the interference of tidal (24 h 50 min) and solar (24 h) daily environmental influences on growth, as is the case in bivalves. Growth increments are relatively well-defined in specimens from tidal habitats and are poorly-defined in subtidal specimens. Specimens grown in laboratory aquaria and subjected to simulated tidal emersions and submersions had well-defined increments, whereas those that were continuously submerged in aquaria had poorly-defined increments, paralleling the distinctness in growth increments produced at various depths in the natural habitat. Production of growth increments in T. transversa may be related to valve movement and changes in mantle-cavity pH. When the valves are closed, pH drops and, when they are open, pH rises. Highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC) of mantle tissue and fluid failed to detect any single organic acid that could have been responsible for the pH changes, confirming that intermediate metabolism in T. transversa is very low compared to that of bivalve molluscs. Calculations indicate that cycles in intermediate metabolism may nevertheless be responsible for cycles in growth-increment production and shell dissolution.

1. 1. Amino acid metabolism in mantle tissue from the brachiopod T. transversa and the bivalve mollusc C. hastata was determined in vitro by measuring CO 2 evolved from 14 C labeled amino acids. 2. 2. Of the 19 amino acids assayed, the brachiopod metabolized 11 and the bivalve mollusc metabolized 14 in different rank orders. 3. 3. Aspartic acid ranked first for the brachiopod and accounted for 52% of the total CO 2 evolved, whilst valine ranked first for the bivalve mollusc and accounted for 29%. 4. 4. The brachiopod produced about 38 μmol CO 2 /g/hr from the amino acids metabolized, whereas the bivalve mollusc produced about 138 μmol CO 2 /g/hr. 5. 5. Results suggest that T. transversa and C. hastata , sympatric along the Pacific northwest coast, utilize different amino acids at different rates.

It has been two decades since Wells proposed that the duration of absolute geologic time could be estimated using growth patterns found in fossil corals. Since then, the temporal and environmental records encoded in the accretionary skeletons of other invertebrates also have been studied. Although extensive research on the significance of skeletal patterns has been done on bivalved molluscs, other taxa such as the brachiopods, bryozoans, cephalopods and echinoderms are in need of further study. For two taxa, the nautiloids and brachiopods, additional growth pattern data are presented here. These data indicate that erroneous geophysical conclusions about the length of the synodic lunar month were previously reached using what now appear to be unfounded assumptions about the temporal significance of their growth patterns. Assumptions regarding the temporal and environmental information contained in the skeletons of these poorly studied taxa need to be replaced by more extensive analyses using standardized techniques. Only then will we arrive at correct conclusions about the dynamical history of the Earth-Moon system.

Juvenile Terebratalia transversa (Brachiopoda) metabolize carbohydrates in the anterior-most marginal mantle at a rate of 0.46 μM glucose/g/hr (in vitro incubation of mantle in C14-glucose in a carrying medium of 10-3 M non-radioactive glucose). The rate declines to 0.18μM glucose/g/hr in full-grown specimens. Carbohydrate metabolism in the marginal (anterior-most) mantle averages approximately 3.7 times greater than metabolism in (a portion of the ‘posterior’) mantle situated between the coelomic canals and the marginal mantle. This ratio remains constant in specimens of all sizes (i.e. an ontogenetic trend in the ratio is absent at p≤ 0.05). Organic acids are not detectable within the mantle (HPLC techniques) even after simulated anoxia (N2 bubbling during mantle incubation). Glucose metabolism in vitro declines in both the marginal and ‘posterior’ mantles during anoxia and the metabolic ratio between marginal/‘posterior’ mantles becomes 1/1. We found no difference (at p≤ 0.05) in mean metabolic activity or in sue-related metabolic trends among populations from depths ranging between mean sea level and 70 m. However, the activity within the ‘posterior’ mantle was more variable in specimens from 70 m than in those from shallower habitats (10 m - mean sea level). The size of the specimens analyzed was most variable in the groups obtained from the shallowest habitats and least variable at 70 m depth. Our results may help define the energetics of fossil as well as living brachiopod shell growth. Brachiopod shell growth is known to be very slow relative to that of bivalves and our results indicate that this is a result of the animals' slow metabolism. The inflation of the valves in T. transversa is, in part, a function of the high ratio of intermediary metabolism in the marginal vs‘posterior’ mantle (i.e. parallels the relative growth rates at the shell margin vs‘posterior’ areas). We found that the bivalve, Chlamys hastata, which is commonly associated with T. transversa, has a lower ratio of metabolic activities in the ventral/dorsal mantle areas than the brachiopod has in the anterior/posterior. The difference produces a flatter shell in the bivalve in accord with allometric principles. The higher metabolic rate in the marginal vs‘posterior’ brachiopod mantle and its more pronounced decline with anaerobiosis is reflected in the greater definition of growth increments in the outer shell layer. Our results do not support recent generalizations that correlate shell thickness of a wide variety of invertebrates inversely with metabolic rate. Growth rate as determined from width of shell growth increments is a better index of metabolic rate. Although the genetic basis of glucose metabolism is unknown, the observed metabolic variability is consistent with suggestions that populations of marine organisms living in stable offshore environments are genetically more variable but morphologically more uniform than populations from shallow water. Furthermore, our results support suggestions that bivalved molluscs and brachiopods are very different metabolically, but the data are neutral with respect to theories of competitive exclusion of the two taxa throughout geologic history.

Protoplasts were isolated from cell cultures of oil palm (Elaeis Guineensis). The protoplasts were cultured on a "nurse" medium containing oil palm cells in the presence of which protoplasts formed cell walls and divided to form cell cultures.

There are important ontogenetic patterns in the distribution of Ca and Mg in both invertebrate and vertebrate skeletal tissues. These variations need to be defined before either the physiological or environmental significance of fluctuations in the inorganic skeletal components can be assessed fully. For example, biomineralogists have long known that organisms tend to exclude Mg from their skeletons because Mg inhibits calcification. However, we have found clearly defined, inverse Ca and Mg oscillations within skeletal tissues over a range in frequencies that are difficult to explain simply on the basis of random substitutions of Mg for Ca in the biomineral lattice. Moreover, our data suggest that there are ontogenetic trends in the development of the inverse oscillations. With mixed results, marine biologists have used Mg content in the skeletons of various invertebrates as an index of water temperature and of changing composition of seawater over the past 600 million years. Yet our analyses of the shells of invertebrates, such as brachiopods, reveal age-mediated concentrations of elements that complicate such generalizations.

As an author, Bram Stoker has long been the subject of an intense process of fictionalisation. This process is, arguably, almost totally a consequence of the critical drive to interpret Dracula through the biography of its author, to trace its origins in what have been conventionally interpreted as the significant but traumatic incidents of Stoker’s life, from his mysterious childhood illness to the alleged syphilis which supposedly hastened his death. As Barbara Belford asserts in the Introduction to her Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula (1996), Calumnies have been spawned to justify the premise that no genial Irishman could have written such a perversely sexual novel. In biography and fiction, Stoker variously has been given a frigid wife, a penchant for prostitutes (particularly during their menstrual period), a sexually transmitted disease, and inherited insanity. (1996: x)