Mechanisms of Selenium Enrichment and Measurement in Brassicaceous Vegetables, and Their Application to Human Health.

Selenium (Se) is an essential micronutrient for human health. Se deficiency affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, particularly in developing countries, and there is increasing awareness that suboptimal supply of Se can also negatively affect human health. Selenium enters the diet primarily through the ingestion of plant and animal products.

Reprograms Gene Expression in Arabidopsis Phosphate Metabolism Mutants But Does Not Compensate for Phosphate Limitation.

is an endophytic fungus of Sebacinaceae which colonizes the roots of many plant species and confers benefits to the hosts. We demonstrate that approximately 75% of the genes, which respond to in Arabidopsis roots, differ among seedlings grown on normal phosphate (Pi) or Pi limitation conditions, and among wild-type and the mutant impaired in the regulation of the Pi metabolism. Mapman analyses suggest that the fungus activates different signaling, transport, metabolic and developmental programs in the roots of wild-type and seedlings under normal and low Pi conditions.

Development and Plasticity of Cognitive Flexibility in Early and Middle Childhood.

Cognitive flexibility, the ability to flexibly switch between tasks, is a core dimension of executive functions (EFs) allowing to control actions and to adapt flexibly to changing environments. It supports the management of multiple tasks, the development of novel, adaptive behavior and is associated with various life outcomes. Cognitive flexibility develops rapidly in preschool and continuously increases well into adolescence, mirroring the growth of neural networks involving the prefrontal cortex.

Lipocalin-2 induces NLRP3 inflammasome activation via HMGB1 induced TLR4 signaling in heart tissue of mice under pressure overload challenge.

Lipocalin-2 (also known as NGAL) levels are elevated in obesity and diabetes yet relatively little is known regarding effects on the heart. We induced pressure overload (PO) in mice and found that lipocalin-2 knockout (LKO) mice exhibited less PO-induced autophagy and NLRP3 inflammasome activation than Wt. PO-induced mitochondrial damage was reduced and autophagic flux greater in LKO mice, which correlated with less cardiac dysfunction.

Unexpected Dominance of Elusive Acidobacteria in Early Industrial Soft Coal Slags.

Acid mine drainage (AMD) and mine tailing environments are well-characterized ecosystems known to be dominated by organisms involved in iron- and sulfur-cycling. Here we examined the microbiology of industrial soft coal slags that originate from alum leaching, an ecosystem distantly related to AMD environments. Our study involved geochemical analyses, bacterial community profiling, and shotgun metagenomics.

Monosynaptic Stretch Reflex Fails to Explain the Initial Postural Response to Sudden Lateral Perturbations.

Postural reflexes are essential for locomotion and postural stability, and may play an important role in the etiology of chronic back pain. It has recently been theoretically predicted, and with the help of unilateral perturbations of the trunk experimentally confirmed that the sensorimotor control must lower the reflex amplitude for increasing reflex delays to maintain spinal stability. The underlying neuromuscular mechanism for the compensation of postural perturbations, however, is not yet fully understood.

Microbial Community Dynamics in Soil Depth Profiles Over 120,000 Years of Ecosystem Development.

Along a long-term ecosystem development gradient, soil nutrient contents and mineralogical properties change, therefore probably altering soil microbial communities. However, knowledge about the dynamics of soil microbial communities during long-term ecosystem development including progressive and retrogressive stages is limited, especially in mineral soils. Therefore, microbial abundances (quantitative PCR) and community composition (pyrosequencing) as well as their controlling soil properties were investigated in soil depth profiles along the 120,000 years old Franz Josef chronosequence (New Zealand).

Mindlessly Polite: A Conceptual Replication of the Emotional Seesaw Effect on Compliance and Information Processing.

Recent studies demonstrated that the sequential induction of contrasting negative and positive emotions can be used as a social influence technique. The original field experiments found that whenever a sudden change in the emotional dynamic occurs - from negative to positive or vice versa - an increase in compliant behavior and an impairment in cognitive functioning can be observed. The goal of the present experiments was a conceptual replication and extension of the results in a more controlled and counterbalanced fashion.

The Processing of Somatosensory Information Shifts from an Early Parallel into a Serial Processing Mode: A Combined fMRI/MEG Study.

The question regarding whether somatosensory inputs are processed in parallel or in series has not been clearly answered. Several studies that have applied dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to fMRI data have arrived at seemingly divergent conclusions. However, these divergent results could be explained by the hypothesis that the processing route of somatosensory information changes with time.

Testlet-Based Multidimensional Adaptive Testing.

Multidimensional adaptive testing (MAT) is a highly efficient method for the simultaneous measurement of several latent traits. Currently, no psychometrically sound approach is available for the use of MAT in testlet-based tests. Testlets are sets of items sharing a common stimulus such as a graph or a text.

Corrigendum: Community Composition and Abundance of Bacterial, Archaeal, and Nitrifying Populations in Savanna Soils on Contrasting Bedrock Material in Kruger National Park, South Africa.

[This corrects the article on p. 1638 in vol. 7, PMID: 27807431.

species Rewired Hyphae Developmental Programs for Chlamydospore Formation.

Chlamydospore formation is a characteristic of many fungal species, among them the closely related human-pathogenic dimorphic yeasts and . Whereas function and regulation of filamentation are well-studied in these species, the basis of chlamydospore formation is mostly unknown. Here, we investigate the contribution of environmental and genetic factors and identified central proteins involved in species-specific regulation of chlamydosporulation.

Community Composition and Abundance of Bacterial, Archaeal and Nitrifying Populations in Savanna Soils on Contrasting Bedrock Material in Kruger National Park, South Africa.

Savannas cover at least 13% of the global terrestrial surface and are often nutrient limited, especially by nitrogen. To gain a better understanding of their microbial diversity and the microbial nitrogen cycling in savanna soils, soil samples were collected along a granitic and a basaltic catena in Kruger National Park (South Africa) to characterize their bacterial and archaeal composition and the genetic potential for nitrification. Although the basaltic soils were on average 5 times more nutrient rich than the granitic soils, all investigated savanna soil samples showed typically low nutrient availabilities, i.

Experimental Biodiversity Enrichment in Oil-Palm-Dominated Landscapes in Indonesia.

Tropical biodiversity is threatened by the expansion of oil-palm plantations. Reduced-impact farming systems such as agroforests, have been proposed to increase biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In regions where oil-palm plantations already dominate the landscape, this increase can only be achieved through systematic ecological restoration.

Are There Abnormalities in Peripheral and Central Components of Somatosensory Evoked Potentials in Non-Specific Chronic Low Back Pain?

Chronic low back pain (CLBP) was shown to be associated with longer reflex response latencies of trunk muscles during external upper limb perturbations. One theoretical, but rarely investigated possibility for longer reflex latencies might be related to modulated somatosensory information processing. Therefore, the present study investigated somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) to median nerve stimulation in CLBP patients and healthy controls (HC).

Rod Driven Frequency Entrainment and Resonance Phenomena.

A controversy exists on photic driving in the human visual cortex evoked by intermittent photic stimulation. Frequency entrainment and resonance phenomena are reported for frequencies higher than 12 Hz in some studies while missing in others. We hypothesized that this might be due to different experimental conditions, since both high and low intensity light stimulation were used.

Dynamic Immune Cell Recruitment After Murine Pulmonary Aspergillus fumigatus Infection under Different Immunosuppressive Regimens.

Humans are continuously exposed to airborne spores of the saprophytic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus. However, in healthy individuals pulmonary host defense mechanisms efficiently eliminate the fungus. In contrast, A.

Superimposed Pristine Limestone Aquifers with Marked Hydrochemical Differences Exhibit Distinct Fungal Communities.

Fungi are one important group of eukaryotic microorganisms in a diverse range of ecosystems, but their diversity in groundwater ecosystems is largely unknown. We used DNA-based pyro-tag sequencing of the fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rDNA gene to investigate the presence and community structure of fungi at different sampling sites of two superimposed limestone aquifers ranging from 8.5 to 84 m depth in the newly established Hainich Critical Zone Exploratory (Hainich CZE).

Root-Lesion Nematodes Suppress Cabbage Aphid Population Development by Reducing Aphid Daily Reproduction.

Empirical studies have shown that belowground feeding herbivores can affect the performance of aboveground herbivores in different ways. Often the critical life-history parameters underlying the observed performance effects remain unexplored. In order to better understand the cause for the observed effects on aboveground herbivores, these ecological mechanisms must be better understood.

Adaptation Duration Dissociates Category-, Image-, and Person-Specific Processes on Face-Evoked Event-Related Potentials.

Several studies demonstrated that face perception is biased by the prior presentation of another face, a phenomenon termed as face-related after-effect (FAE). FAE is linked to a neural signal-reduction at occipito-temporal areas and it can be observed in the amplitude modulation of the early event-related potential (ERP) components. Recently, macaque single-cell recording studies suggested that manipulating the duration of the adaptor makes the selective adaptation of different visual motion processing steps possible.