Heatwaves exacerbate pollen limitation through reductions in pollen production and pollen vigour.

Increasingly frequent heat waves threaten the reproduction of flowering plants; compromising the future persistence, adaptive capacity, and dispersal of wild plant populations, and also the yield of fruit-bearing crop plants. Heat damages the development of sensitive floral organs and gametes, which inhibits pollen germination, pollen tube growth, and fertilization. However, the role of heat has not been integrated into the framework of pollen quantity and quality limitation and how heat influences the success of cross and self-pollination.

Warming summer temperatures are rapidly restructuring North American bumble bee communities.

A rapidly warming climate is driving changes in biodiversity worldwide, and its impact on insect communities is critical given their outsized role in ecosystem function and services. We use a long-term dataset of North American bumble bee species occurrences to determine whether the community temperature index (CTI), a measure of the balance of warm- and cool-adapted species in a community, has increased given warming temperatures. CTI has increased by an average of 0.

Landscape-scale floral resource discontinuity decreases bumble bee occurrence and alters community composition.

Agricultural practices and intensification during the past two centuries have dramatically altered the abundance and temporal continuity of floral resources that support pollinating insects such as bumble bees. Long-term trends among bumble bees within agricultural regions suggest that intensive agricultural conditions have created inhospitable conditions for some species, while other species have maintained their relative abundances despite landscape-level changes in flower availability. Bumble bee responses to spatiotemporal resource heterogeneity have been explored at the colony and behavioral level, but we have yet to understand whether these conditions drive community structure and ultimately explain the diverging patterns in long-term species trends.

Biological skin regeneration using epigenetic targets.

Epigenetics targets are the newest branches for building a novel platform of drugs for preventive and regenerative skin health care. Epigenetic regions [vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ), DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs), histone deacetylase 1/2 (HDAC1/2), and miRNA) are innovative druggable targets. As we discuss here, a series of epigenetic-based small molecules are undergoing both clinical and preclinical trials for skin regeneration.

The Promoter of the Immune-Modulating Gene of the Uropathogenic Strain CFT073 Reacts to the Pathogen's Environment.

The (TcpC) of the uropathogenic strain CFT073 modulates innate immunity by interfering with the Toll-like receptor and NALP3 inflammasome signaling cascade. During a urinary tract infection the pathogen encounters epithelial and innate immune cells and replicates by several orders of magnitude. We therefore analyzed whether these cell types and also the density of the pathogen would induce the recently defined promoter of the CFT073 gene to, in time, dampen innate immune responses.

Activity-Guided Characterization of COX-2 Inhibitory Compounds in L. Extracts.

Inflammation is the body's response to infection or tissue injury in order to restore and maintain homeostasis. Prostaglandin E2 (PGE-2) derived from arachidonic acid (AA), via up-regulation of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), is a key mediator of inflammation and can also be induced by several other factors including stress, chromosomal aberration, or environmental factors. Targeting prostaglandin production by inhibiting COX-2 is hence relevant for the successful resolution of inflammation.

A meta-analysis of single visit pollination effectiveness comparing honeybees and other floral visitors.

Premise: Many animals provide ecosystem services in the form of pollination including honeybees, which have become globally dominant floral visitors. A rich literature documents considerable variation in single visit pollination effectiveness, but this literature has yet to be extensively synthesized to address whether honeybees are effective pollinators.

Methods: We conducted a hierarchical meta-analysis of 168 studies and extracted 1564 single visit effectiveness (SVE) measures for 240 plant species.

Historical decrease in agricultural landscape diversity is associated with shifts in bumble bee species occurrence.

Agricultural intensification is a key suspect among putative drivers of recent insect declines, but an explicit link between historical change in agricultural land cover and insect occurrence is lacking. Determining whether agriculture impacts beneficial insects (e.g.

Regulation of Expression of the Gene of the Uropathogenic Strain CFT073.

The uropathogenic strain CFT073 causes kidney abscesses in mice Toll/interleukin-1 receptor domain-containing protein C (TcpC) dependently and the corresponding gene is present in around 40% of isolates of pyelonephritis patients. It impairs the Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling chain and the NACHT leucin-rich repeat PYD protein 3 inflammasome (NLRP3) by binding to TLR4 and myeloid differentiation factor 88 as well as to NLRP3 and caspase-1, respectively. Overexpression of the gene stopped replication of CFT073.

Identification of plant metabolite classes from Waltheria Indica L. extracts regulating inflammatory immune responses via COX-2 inhibition.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Waltheria Indica L. is traditionally used in Africa, South America and Hawaii to treat pain, anemia, diarrhea, epilepsy and inflammatory related diseases.

Aim Of The Study: This study aimed to identify extraction parameters to maximize tiliroside yield and to quantitative secondary metabolite composition of Waltheria Indica under various extraction conditions.

Proteomics of Galápagos Marine Iguanas Links Function of Femoral Gland Proteins to the Immune System.

Communication between individuals via molecules, termed chemosignaling, is widespread among animal and plant species. However, we lack knowledge on the specific functions of the substances involved for most systems. The femoral gland is an organ that secretes a waxy substance involved in chemical communication in lizards.

Levan-based hydrogels for controlled release of Amphotericin B for dermal local antifungal therapy of Candidiasis.

Hydrogels from Halomonas levan polysaccharide were prepared at different crosslinking densities. Swelling results demonstrated pH dependent rather than temperature dependent swelling of the hydrogel and the highest swelling value was achieved at basic conditions with a swelling ratio of 9.1 ± 0.

High-Pressure Synthesis and Ferrimagnetism of NiTeO-Type MnScMO (M = Nb, Ta).

The corundum-related oxides MnScNbO and MnScTaO were synthesized at high pressure and high temperature (6 GPa and 1475 K). Analysis of the synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction shows that MnScNbO and MnScTaO crystallize in NiTeO-type noncentrosymmetric crystal structures with space group 3. The asymmetric crystal structure was confirmed by second harmonic generation measurement.

Evidence for polarized nanoregions from the domain dynamics in multiferroic LiCuVO.

LiCuVO is a model system of a 1D spin-1/2 chain that enters a planar spin-spiral ground state below its Néel temperature of 2.4 K due to competing nearest and next nearest neighbor interactions. The spin-spiral state is multiferroic with an electric polarization along the a axis which has been proposed to be caused purely by the spin supercurrent mechanism.

Generation of site-distinct N-glycan variants for in vitro bioactivity testing.

Glycosylation, a critical product quality attribute, may affect the efficacy and safety of therapeutic proteins in vivo. Chinese hamster ovary fed-batch cell culture batches yielded consistent glycoprofiles of a Fc-fusion antibody comprizing three different N-glycosylation sites. By adding media supplements at specific concentrations in cell culture and applying enzymatic glycoengineering, a diverse N-glycan variant population was generated, including high mannose, afucosylated, fucosylated, agalactosylated, galactosylated, asialylated, and sialylated forms.

Reversible Structural Transformation between Polar Polymorphs of LiGeTeO.

LiGeTeO prepared at ambient pressure adopts the corundum derivative ordered ilmenite structure (rhombohedral R3). When heated at 1073 K and 3-5 GPa, the as-made LiGeTeO can convert into a LiSbO-derived LiTiTeO-type phase (orthorhombic Pnn2), which is the third LiSbO-derived double ABB'O phase in addition to LiTiTeO and LiSnTeO. This Pnn2 LiGeTeO phase spontaneously reverts to the R3 phase if annealed up to 1023 K at ambient pressure.

Magnetostriction-polarization coupling in multiferroic MnMnWO.

Double corundum-related polar magnets are promising materials for multiferroic and magnetoelectric applications in spintronics. However, their design and synthesis is a challenge, and magnetoelectric coupling has only been observed in NiTeO among the known double corundum compounds to date. Here we address the high-pressure synthesis of a new polar and antiferromagnetic corundum derivative MnMnWO, which adopts the NiTeO-type structure with low temperature first-order field-induced metamagnetic phase transitions (T  = 58 K) and high spontaneous polarization (~ 63.

Cell culture media supplemented with raffinose reproducibly enhances high mannose glycan formation.

Glycosylation plays a pivotal role in pharmacokinetics and protein physiochemical characteristics. In particular, effector functions including antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) can be desired, and it has been described that high-mannose species exhibited enhanced ADCC. In this work we present the trisaccharide raffinose as a novel cell culture medium supplement to promote high mannose N-glycans in fed-batch cultures, which is sought after in the development of biosimilars to match the quality profile of the reference medicinal product (RMP) also.

Parallel experimental design and multivariate analysis provides efficient screening of cell culture media supplements to improve biosimilar product quality.

Rational and high-throughput optimization of mammalian cell culture media has a great potential to modulate recombinant protein product quality. We present a process design method based on parallel design-of-experiment (DoE) of CHO fed-batch cultures in 96-deepwell plates to modulate monoclonal antibody (mAb) glycosylation using medium supplements. To reduce the risk of losing valuable information in an intricate joint screening, 17 compounds were separated into five different groups, considering their mode of biological action.