Complete genome sequence of phage Curie, a podovirus isolated from soil in Spokane, Washington.

Bacteriophage Curie is a podovirus that infects . The Curie genome spans 16,810 bp, has 90 bp terminal inverted repeats, and includes 23 protein-coding genes. Its genome architecture resembles phage PineapplePizza and other phi29-like phages.

Generalist herbivore response to volatile chemical induction varies along a gradient in soil salinization.

Elevated soil salinity directly modifies plant physiology and indirectly alters the biotic interactions that shape plant performance. However, it is unclear how soil salinization interacts with plant defenses to alter patterns of leaf consumption or herbivore survival, development, and performance. In this study, we carried out laboratory feeding trials and a common garden experiment to investigate how gradients in soil salinization interact with plant induction status (modified via exogenous application of methyl jasmonate [MeJA]) to influence feeding consumption and performance of the generalist herbivore Spodoptera exigua on tomato (Solanum lycoperscium) plants.

Sin Nombre virus prevalence from 2014-2017 in wild deer mice, Peromyscus maniculatus, on five of the California Channel Islands.

Sin Nombre virus (SNV) is a zoonotic virus that is highly pathogenic to humans. The deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, is the primary host of SNV, and SNV prevalence in P. maniculatus is an important indicator of human disease risk.

Extreme cold consistently reduces seedling growth but has species-specific effects on browse tolerance in summer.

Premise Of The Study: Extreme weather events can injure plants, causing decreased survival. However, we may underestimate the ecological importance of extreme events if they have strong sublethal effects that manifest after several months. We tested the hypothesis that late-winter extreme-cold events decrease the ability of woody plants to grow and tolerate stem removal in summer.

Plants eavesdrop on cues produced by snails and induce costly defenses that affect insect herbivores.

Although induced defenses are widespread in plants, the degree to which plants respond to herbivore kairomones (incidental chemicals that herbivores produce independent of herbivory), the costs and benefits of responding to cues of herbivory risk, and the ecological consequences of induced defenses remain unclear. We demonstrate that undamaged tomatoes, Solanum lycopersicum, induce defenses in response to a kairomone (locomotion mucus) of snail herbivores (Helix aspersa). Induced defense had significant costs and benefits for plants: plants exposed to snail mucus or a standard defense elicitor (methyl jasmonate, MeJA) exhibited slower growth, but also experienced less herbivory by an insect herbivore (Spodoptera exigua).

Changes in Trap Temperature as a Method to Determine Timing of Capture of Small Mammals.

Patterns of animal activity provide important insight into hypotheses in animal behavior, physiological ecology, behavioral ecology, as well as population and community ecology. Understanding patterns of animal activity in field settings is often complicated by the need for expensive equipment and time-intensive methods that limit data collection. Because animals must be active to be detected, the timing of detection (e.

Climatic variation and seed persistence: freeze-thaw cycles lower survival via the joint action of abiotic stress and fungal pathogens.

Global climate change is altering thermal cycles in soils during late winter, a transition that may directly threaten seed survival via abiotic stress, facilitate infection by soil-borne pathogens, or both. Using field-collected soil and seeds of the perennial bunchgrass Elymus canadensis, we tested the hypothesis that soil freeze-thaw events limit survival within the soil through direct effects on seed persistence and amplification of soil pathogen attack using a factorial experiment that manipulated freeze-thaw cycles (constant freeze vs. freeze-thaw) and fungicide addition.

Mechanism of FGF23 processing in fibrous dysplasia.

Fibroblast growth factor-23 (FGF23) is a phosphate- and vitamin D-regulating hormone derived from osteoblasts/osteocytes that circulates in both active (intact, iFGF23) and inactive (C-terminal, cFGF23) forms. O-glycosylation by O-glycosyl transferase N-acetylgalactosaminyltransferase 3 (ppGalNAcT3) and differential cleavage by furin have been shown to be involved in regulating the ratio of active to inactive FGF23. Elevated iFGF23 levels are observed in a number of hypophosphatemic disorders, such as X-linked, autosomal recessive, and autosomal dominant hypophosphatemic rickets, whereas low iFGF23 levels are found in the hyperphosphatemic disorder familial tumoral calcinosis/hyperphosphatemic hyperostosis syndrome.

Selective abrogation of the uPA-uPAR interaction in vivo reveals a novel role in suppression of fibrin-associated inflammation.

The urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR) has emerged as a potential regulator of cell adhesion, cell migration, proliferation, differentiation, and cell survival in multiple physiologic and pathologic contexts. The urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) was the first identified ligand for uPAR, but elucidation of the specific functions of the uPA-uPAR interaction in vivo has been difficult because uPA has important physiologic functions that are independent of binding to uPAR and because uPAR engages multiple ligands. Here, we developed a new mouse strain (Plau(GFDhu/GFDhu)) in which the interaction between endogenous uPA and uPAR is selectively abrogated, whereas other functions of both the protease and its receptor are retained.