First Description of Sulphur-Oxidizing Bacterial Symbiosis in a Cnidarian (Medusozoa) Living in Sulphidic Shallow-Water Environments.

Background: Since the discovery of thioautotrophic bacterial symbiosis in the giant tubeworm Riftia pachyptila, there has been great impetus to investigate such partnerships in other invertebrates. In this study, we present the occurrence of a sulphur-oxidizing symbiosis in a metazoan belonging to the phylum Cnidaria in which this event has never been described previously.

Methodology/principal Findings: Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) observations and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXs) analysis, were employed to unveil the presence of prokaryotes population bearing elemental sulphur granules, growing on the body surface of the metazoan.

Re-expression of IGF-II is important for beta cell regeneration in adult mice.

Background: The key factors which support re-expansion of beta cell numbers after injury are largely unknown. Insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II) plays a critical role in supporting cell division and differentiation during ontogeny but its role in the adult is not known. In this study we investigated the effect of IGF-II on beta cell regeneration.

WHIDE--a web tool for visual data mining colocation patterns in multivariate bioimages.

Motivation: Bioimaging techniques rapidly develop toward higher resolution and dimension. The increase in dimension is achieved by different techniques such as multitag fluorescence imaging, Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption / Ionization (MALDI) imaging or Raman imaging, which record for each pixel an N-dimensional intensity array, representing local abundances of molecules, residues or interaction patterns. The analysis of such multivariate bioimages (MBIs) calls for new approaches to support users in the analysis of both feature domains: space (i.

RAMTaB: robust alignment of multi-tag bioimages.

Background: In recent years, new microscopic imaging techniques have evolved to allow us to visualize several different proteins (or other biomolecules) in a visual field. Analysis of protein co-localization becomes viable because molecules can interact only when they are located close to each other. We present a novel approach to align images in a multi-tag fluorescence image stack.

c-Myc directly induces both impaired insulin secretion and loss of β-cell mass, independently of hyperglycemia in vivo.

c-Myc (Myc) is a mediator of glucotoxicity but could also independently compromise β-cell survival and function. We have shown that after Myc activation in adult β-cells in vivo, apoptosis is preceded by hyperglycemia, suggesting glucotoxicity might contribute to Myc-induced apoptosis. To address this question conditional Myc was activated in β-cells of adult pIns-c-MycER(TAM) mice in vivo in the presence or absence of various glucose-lowering treatments, including exogenous insulin and prior to transplantation with wild-type islets.

Non-β-cell progenitors of β-cells in pregnant mice.

Pregnancy is a normal physiological condition in which the maternal β-cell mass increases rapidly about two-fold to adapt to new metabolic challenges. We have used a lineage tracing of β-cells to analyse the origin of new β-cells during this rapid expansion in pregnancy. Double transgenic mice bearing a tamoxifen-dependent Cre-recombinase construct under the control of a rat insulin promoter, together with a reporter Z/AP gene, were generated.

Integrating semantic annotation and information visualization for the analysis of multichannel fluorescence micrographs from pancreatic tissue.

The challenging problem of computational bioimage analysis receives growing attention from life sciences. Fluorescence microscopy is capable of simultaneously visualizing multiple molecules by staining with different fluorescent dyes. In the analysis of the result multichannel images, segmentation of ROIs resembles only a first step which must be followed by a second step towards the analysis of the ROI's signals in the different channels.

Brief inactivation of c-Myc is not sufficient for sustained regression of c-Myc-induced tumours of pancreatic islets and skin epidermis.

Background: Tumour regression observed in many conditional mouse models following oncogene inactivation provides the impetus to develop, and a platform to preclinically evaluate, novel therapeutics to inactivate specific oncogenes. Inactivating single oncogenes, such as c-Myc, can reverse even advanced tumours. Intriguingly, transient c-Myc inactivation proved sufficient for sustained osteosarcoma regression; the resulting osteocyte differentiation potentially explaining loss of c-Myc's oncogenic properties.

Differential regulation by ambient pH of putative virulence factor secretion by the phytopathogenic fungus Botrytis cinerea.

Abstract The fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea is capable of developing on a wide variety of host plants that differ greatly in their pH values and biochemical defences. To evaluate whether the pH of the host tissue can regulate the production of pathogenicity factors by this fungus, we examined the ability of two isolates of B. cinerea that originated from different plant species to secrete putative virulence elements on synthetic media buffered at pH 2.