The longitudinal behavioral effects of acute exposure to galactic cosmic radiation in female C57BL/6J mice: Implications for deep space missions, female crews, and potential antioxidant countermeasures.

Galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) is an unavoidable risk to astronauts that may affect mission success. Male rodents exposed to 33-beam-GCR (33-GCR) show short-term cognitive deficits but reports on female rodents and long-term assessment are lacking. We asked: What are the longitudinal behavioral effects of 33-GCR on female mice? Also, can an antioxidant/anti-inflammatory compound (CDDO-EA) mitigate the impact of 33-GCR? Mature (6-month-old) C57BL/6J female mice received CDDO-EA (400 μg/g of food) or a control diet (vehicle, Veh) for 5 days and Sham-irradiation (IRR) or whole-body 33-GCR (0.

WGDTree: a phylogenetic software tool to examine conditional probabilities of retention following whole genome duplication events.

Background: Multiple processes impact the probability of retention of individual genes following whole genome duplication (WGD) events. In analyzing two consecutive whole genome duplication events that occurred in the lineage leading to Atlantic salmon, a new phylogenetic statistical analysis was developed to examine the contingency of retention in one event based upon retention in a previous event. This analysis is intended to evaluate mechanisms of duplicate gene retention and to provide software to generate the test statistic for any genome with pairs of WGDs in its history.

Multi-Domain Touchscreen-Based Cognitive Assessment of C57BL/6J Female Mice Shows Whole-Body Exposure to Fe Particle Space Radiation in Maturity Improves Discrimination Learning Yet Impairs Stimulus-Response Rule-Based Habit Learning.

Astronauts during interplanetary missions will be exposed to galactic cosmic radiation, including charged particles like Fe. Most preclinical studies with mature, "astronaut-aged" rodents suggest space radiation diminishes performance in classical hippocampal- and prefrontal cortex-dependent tasks. However, a rodent cognitive touchscreen battery unexpectedly revealed Fe radiation improves the performance of C57BL/6J male mice in a hippocampal-dependent task (discrimination learning) without changing performance in a striatal-dependent task (rule-based learning).

Characterizing the culturable surface microbiomes of diverse marine animals.

Biofilm-forming bacteria have the potential to contribute to the health, physiology, behavior and ecology of the host and serve as its first line of defense against adverse conditions in the environment. While metabarcoding and metagenomic information furthers our understanding of microbiome composition, fewer studies use cultured samples to study the diverse interactions among the host and its microbiome, as cultured representatives are often lacking. This study examines the surface microbiomes cultured from three shallow-water coral species and two whale species.