Assessing the Impacts of Adaptation to Native-Range Habitats and Contemporary Founder Effects on Genetic Diversity in an Invasive Fish.

Species invading non-native habitats can cause irreversible environmental damage and economic harm. Yet, how introduced species become widespread invaders remains poorly understood. Adaptation within native-range habitats and rapid adaptation to new environments may both influence invasion success.

Ocean circulation contributes to genetic connectivity of limpet populations at deep-sea hydrothermal vents in a back-arc basin.

For endemic benthos inhabiting hydrothermal vent fields, larval recruitment is critical for population maintenance and colonization via migration among separated sites. The vent-endemic limpet, , is abundant at deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Okinawa Trough, a back-arc basin in the northwestern Pacific; nonetheless, it is endangered due to deep-sea mining. This species is associated with many other vent species and is an important successor in these vent ecosystems.

Early stages of polycrystalline diamond deposition: laser reflectance at substrates with growing nanodiamonds.

The chemical vapor deposition of polycrystalline diamond (PCD) films is typically done on substrates seeded with diamond nanoparticles. Specular laser reflectance has been used in tandem with a continuous film model to monitor the thickness of these films during their deposition. However, approaches to gain information on properties that strongly affect film morphology, such as the areal density of seeds, remain largely unexplored.

Resilience of native ant community against invasion of exotic ants after anthropogenic disturbances of forest habitats.

The positive association between disturbances and biological invasions is a widely observed ecological pattern in the Anthropocene. Such patterns have been hypothesized to be driven by the superior competitive ability of invaders or by modified environments, as well as by the interaction of these factors. An experimental study that tests these hypotheses is usually less feasible, especially in protected nature areas.

pH variation impacts molecular pathways associated with somatic cell reprogramming and differentiation of pluripotent stem cells.

Rationale: The study of somatic cell reprogramming and cell differentiation is essential for the application of recent techniques in regenerative medicine. It is, specifically, necessary to determine the appropriate conditions required for the induction of reprogramming and cell differentiation.

Methods: Based on a comprehensive literature review, the effects of pH fluctuation on alternative splicing, mitochondria, plasma membrane, and phase separation, in several cell types are discussed.

Aging markers in human urine: A comprehensive, non-targeted LC-MS study.

Metabolites in human biofluids document the physiological status of individuals. We conducted comprehensive, non-targeted, non-invasive metabolomic analysis of urine from 27 healthy human subjects, comprising 13 young adults (30 ± 3 years) and 14 seniors (76 ± 4 years). Quantitative analysis of 99 metabolites revealed 55 that displayed significant differences in abundance between the two groups.

Macroevolutionary integration of phenotypes within and across ant worker castes.

Phenotypic traits are often integrated into evolutionary modules: sets of organismal parts that evolve together. In social insect colonies, the concepts of integration and modularity apply to sets of traits both within and among functionally and phenotypically differentiated castes. On macroevolutionary timescales, patterns of integration and modularity within and across castes can be clues to the selective and ecological factors shaping their evolution and diversification.

Optimal reproductive phenology under size-dependent cannibalism.

Intra-cohort cannibalism is an example of a size-mediated priority effect. If early life stages cannibalize slightly smaller individuals, then parents face a trade-off between breeding at the best time for larval growth or development and predation risk from offspring born earlier. This game-theoretic situation among parents may drive adaptive reproductive phenology toward earlier breeding.

Testing ontogenetic patterns of sexual size dimorphism against expectations of the expensive tissue hypothesis, an intraspecific example using oyster toadfish ().

Trade-offs associated with sexual size dimorphism (SSD) are well documented across the Tree of Life. However, studies of SSD often do not consider potential investment trade-offs between metabolically expensive structures under sexual selection and other morphological modules. Based on the expectations of the expensive tissue hypothesis, investment in one metabolically expensive structure should come at the direct cost of investment in another.

Building Bridges through Science.

Science is ideally suited to connect people from different cultures and thereby foster mutual understanding. To promote international life science collaboration, we have launched "The Science Bridge" initiative. Our current project focuses on partnership between Western and Middle Eastern neuroscience communities.

Computational Model of Recurrent Subthalamo-Pallidal Circuit for Generation of Parkinsonian Oscillations.

Parkinson's disease is a movement disorder caused by dopamine depletion in the basal ganglia. Abnormally synchronized neuronal oscillations between 8 and 15 Hz in the basal ganglia are implicated in motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. However, how these abnormal oscillations are generated and maintained in the dopamine-depleted state is unknown.

Parallel STEPS: Large Scale Stochastic Spatial Reaction-Diffusion Simulation with High Performance Computers.

Stochastic, spatial reaction-diffusion simulations have been widely used in systems biology and computational neuroscience. However, the increasing scale and complexity of models and morphologies have exceeded the capacity of any serial implementation. This led to the development of parallel solutions that benefit from the boost in performance of modern supercomputers.

Association of TrkA and APP Is Promoted by NGF and Reduced by Cell Death-Promoting Agents.

The amyloid precursor protein (APP) interacts with the tropomyosin receptor kinase A (TrkA) in normal rat, mouse, and human brain tissue but not in Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain tissue. However, it has not been reported whether the two proteins interact directly, and if so, which domains are involved. Clarifying these points will increase our understanding of the role and regulation of the TrkA/APP interaction in normal brain functioning as well as in AD.

Epigenetic Control of Defense Signaling and Priming in Plants.

Immune recognition of pathogen-associated molecular patterns or effectors leads to defense activation at the pathogen challenged sites. This is followed by systemic defense activation at distant non-challenged sites, termed systemic acquired resistance (SAR). These inducible defenses are accompanied by extensive transcriptional reprogramming of defense-related genes.

A Model for the Application of Target-Controlled Intravenous Infusion for a Prolonged Immersive DMT Psychedelic Experience.

The state of consciousness induced by N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is one of the most extraordinary of any naturally-occurring psychedelic substance. Users consistently report the complete replacement of normal subjective experience with a novel "alternate universe," often densely populated with a variety of strange objects and other highly complex visual content, including what appear to be sentient "beings." The phenomenology of the DMT state is of great interest to psychology and calls for rigorous academic enquiry.

Non-linear leak currents affect mammalian neuron physiology.

In their seminal works on squid giant axons, Hodgkin, and Huxley approximated the membrane leak current as Ohmic, i.e., linear, since in their preparation, sub-threshold current rectification due to the influence of ionic concentration is negligible.

Basal ganglia-thalamus and the "crowning enigma".

When Hubel (1982) referred to layer 1 of primary visual cortex as "… a 'crowning mystery' to keep area-17 physiologists busy for years to come …" he could have been talking about any cortical area. In the 80's and 90's there were no methods to examine this neuropile on the surface of the cortex: a tangled web of axons and dendrites from a variety of different places with unknown specificities and doubtful connections to the cortical output neurons some hundreds of microns below. Recently, three changes have made the crowning enigma less of an impossible mission: the clear presence of neurons in layer 1 (L1), the active conduction of voltage along apical dendrites and optogenetic methods that might allow us to look at one source of input at a time.

Databases for multilevel biophysiology research available at Physiome.jp.

Physiome.jp (http://physiome.jp) is a portal site inaugurated in 2007 to support model-based research in physiome and systems biology.

Restructuring consciousness -the psychedelic state in light of integrated information theory.

The psychological state elicited by the classic psychedelics drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin, is one of the most fascinating and yet least understood states of consciousness. However, with the advent of modern functional neuroimaging techniques, the effect of these drugs on neural activity is now being revealed, although many of the varied phenomenological features of the psychedelic state remain challenging to explain. Integrated information theory (IIT) is one of the foremost contemporary theories of consciousness, providing a mathematical formalization of both the quantity and quality of conscious experience.

Rebuilding a realistic corticostriatal "social network" from dissociated cells.

Many of the methods available for the study of cortical influences on striatal neurons have serious problems. In vivo the connectivity is so complex that the study of input from an individual cortical neuron to a single striatal cell is nearly impossible. Mixed corticostriatal cultures develop many connections from striatal cells to cortical cells, in striking contrast to the fact that only connections from cortical cells to striatal cells are present in vivo.

Condition interference in rats performing a choice task with switched variable- and fixed-reward conditions.

Because humans and animals encounter various situations, the ability to adaptively decide upon responses to any situation is essential. To date, however, decision processes and the underlying neural substrates have been investigated under specific conditions; thus, little is known about how various conditions influence one another in these processes. In this study, we designed a binary choice task with variable- and fixed-reward conditions and investigated neural activities of the prelimbic cortex and dorsomedial striatum in rats.

A genomic approach to coral-dinoflagellate symbiosis: studies of Acropora digitifera and Symbiodinium minutum.

Far more intimate knowledge of scleractinian coral biology is essential in order to understand how diverse coral-symbiont endosymbioses have been established. In particular, molecular and cellular mechanisms enabling the establishment and maintenance of obligate endosymbiosis with photosynthetic dinoflagellates require further clarification. By extension, such understanding may also shed light upon environmental conditions that promote the collapse of this mutualism.

Quality assessment and control of tissue specific RNA-seq libraries of Drosophila transgenic RNAi models.

RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) is rapidly emerging as the technology of choice for whole-transcriptome studies. However, RNA-seq is not a bias free technique. It requires large amounts of RNA and library preparation can introduce multiple artifacts, compounded by problems from later stages in the process.