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"Institute of Human Technology"
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Effects of temporal floral resource availability and non-crop habitats on broad bean pollination
ContextFlowering plants can enhance wild insect populations and their pollination services to crops in agricultural landscapes, especially when they flower before the focal crop. However, characterizing the temporal availability of specific floral resources is a challenge.ObjectivesDeveloping an index for the availability of floral resources at the landscape scale according to the specific use by a pollinator. Investigating whether detailed and temporally-resolved floral resource maps predict pollination success of broad bean better than land cover maps.MethodsWe mapped plant species used as pollen source by bumblebees in 24 agricultural landscapes and developed an index of floral resource availability for different times of the flowering season. To measure pollination success, patches of broad bean (Vicia faba), a plant typically pollinated by bumblebees, were exposed in the center of selected landscapes.ResultsHigher floral resource availability before bean flowering led to enhanced seed set. Floral resource availability synchronous to broad bean flowering had no effect. Seed set was somewhat better explained by land cover maps than by floral resource availability, increasing with urban area and declining with the cover of arable land.ConclusionsThe timing of alternative floral resource availability is important for crop pollination. The higher explanation of pollination success by land cover maps than by floral resource availability indicates that additional factors such as habitat disturbance and nesting sites play a role in pollination. Enhancing non-crop woody plants in agricultural landscapes as pollen sources may ensure higher levels of crop pollination by wild pollinators such as bumblebees.
Journal Article
Ethylene-inducible DNA binding proteins that interact with an ethylene-responsive element
We demonstrated that the GCC box, which is an 11-bp sequence (TAAGAGCCGCC) conserved in the 5' upstream region of ethylene-inducible pathogenesis-related protein genes in Nicotiana spp and in some other plants, is the sequence that is essential for ethylene responsiveness when incorporated into a heterologous promoter. Competitive gel retardation assays showed DNA binding activities to be specific to the GCC box sequence in tobacco nuclear extracts. Four different cDNAs encoding DNA binding proteins specific for the GCC box sequence were isolated, and their products were designated ethylene-responsive element binding proteins (EREBPs). The deduced amino acid sequences of EREBPs exhibited no homology with those of known DNA binding proteins or transcription factors; neither did the deduced proteins contain a basic leucine zipper or zinc finger motif. The DNA binding domain was identified within a region of 59 amino acid residues that was common to all four deduced EREBPs. Regions highly homologous to the DNA binding domain of EREBPs were found in proteins deduced from the cDNAs of various plants, suggesting that this domain is evolutionarily conserved in plants. RNA gel blot analysis revealed that accumulation of mRNAs for EREBPs was induced by ethylene, but individual EREBPs exhibited different patterns of expression
Journal Article
Transient activation and tyrosine phosphorylation of a protein kinase in tobacco cells treated with a fungal elicitor
Suspension-cultured tobacco cells respond to fungal elicitor by activating the transcription of so-called defense genes. This response has been shown to be blocked by staurosporine, an inhibitor of protein kinases, and by Gd3+, which blocks Ca2+ channels. We report here that treating tobacco cells with the elicitor triggers the rapid and transient activation of a 47-kD protein kinase that phosphorylates serine and/or threonine residues of the myelin basic protein (MBP). Staurosporine and Gd3+ inhibited the elicitor-induced activation of the 47-kD MBP kinase, and staurosporine inhibited the activity of the MBP kinase itself. In the presence of either cycloheximide or calyculin A, the elicitor induced sustained activation of the MBP kinase. Immunoblot and immunoprecipitation analysis using a phosphotyrosine-specific antibody showed that tyrosine phosphorylation of the 47-kD MBP kinase was induced in tobacco cells that had been treated with the elicitor. The results suggest that the 47-kD MBP kinase is a component of the pathway for transduction of the elicitor signal in tobacco cells and that the activity of the MBP kinase is regulated by the post-translational phosphorylation of tyrosine residues
Journal Article
Investigating the impact of indoor wood element combinations on human subjective thermal perception in cold region using virtual reality technology
Wooden materials can influence the human body’s thermal perception of indoor environments through visual stimuli, particularly in cold regions. Optimizing the allocation of indoor wood elements has the potential to conserve resources, reduce emissions, and enhance quality of life. This study investigated how different combinations of indoor wood elements affect human thermal perception in cold regions by using virtual reality to simulate various living room environments. The participants experienced a living room environment with different wood element configurations and reported their subjective thermal perceptions. The results revealed that the coverage and natural color of wood significantly affect thermal perception, with natural color having the most substantial influence. In contrast to conventional beliefs, increasing wood coverage does not consistently increase warmth. Notably, yellow-white wood tones evoke a greater sense of warmth than other warm tones do, challenging established views on warm tone applications. These findings offer new perspectives on the use of wood in indoor environmental design.
Journal Article
Interaction of tobacco nuclear protein with an elicitor-responsive element in the promoter of a basic class I chitinase gene
The expression of tobacco class I chitinase genes is effectively induced by a fungal elicitor in suspension-cultured cells. A putative cis-acting elicitor-responsive element (EIRE) was identified previously in the promoter of the class I chitinase gene, CHN5O. To confirm that the EIRE sequence directly mediates the regulation of gene expression by the elicitor, I constructed a deleted promoter that controlled a reporter gene for beta-glucuronidase (gus) and examined expression of the construct in transgenic tobacco calli. Both expression and responsiveness to the elicitor disappeared, when the region of the promoter that included the EIRE sequence had been deleted. To define the specific sequence within the EIRE that interacts with nuclear factor(s), a gel mobility shift assay was performed with wild-type and mutated elements. Results of binding and competition experiments revealed that the nuclear factor(s) bound specifically to the sequence motif, (-534)GGTCANNNAGTC(-523), and that both of the repeated sites were involved in the binding of the nuclear factors. Moreover, the binding was influenced by the distance between the two repeated sites. In addition, the elicitor-inducible activity of the binding to this motif was reduced in nuclear extracts prepared from the cells that had been treated with cycloheximide or staurosporine.
Journal Article
Development of Variable Scaling Teleoperation Framework for Improving Teleoperation Performance
Teleoperation systems have been used in various industrial field to extend abilities of operator. However, different characteristics between master device and slave robot, and limited information from a remote environment increase difficulties of teleoperation and the cognitive load of operators. In this study, we propose the user controlled variable scaling teleoperation framework to improve manipulation abilities for both contact and non-contact tasks. The proposed framework includes the position scaling mode, impedance scaling mode and unit process recognition system. The operator can modulate a position scale or impedance scale of slave robot in real-time. The scaling mode is switched between two scaling mode according to a result of the unit process recognition system. The unit process recognition system recognizes whether a current subtask is a contact task or non-contact task. Teleoperation experiments were performed to evaluate the proposed teleoperation framework. Contact force, task completion time, and NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) were measured to evaluate the performance of operators. Using the proposed framework reduced the contact force, completion time and NASA-TLX score by 48.9%, 20.2% and 36.6%, respectively, compared to the fixed-scale teleoperation framework. Results of experiments show that the proposed framework improves manipulation abilities for both non-contact and contact tasks.
Journal Article
Human intracellular ISG15 prevents interferon-α/β over-amplification and auto-inflammation
Intracellular ISG15 is an interferon (IFN)-α/β-inducible ubiquitin-like modifier which can covalently bind other proteins in a process called ISGylation; it is an effector of IFN-α/β-dependent antiviral immunity in mice. We previously published a study describing humans with inherited ISG15 deficiency but without unusually severe viral diseases. We showed that these patients were prone to mycobacterial disease and that human ISG15 was non-redundant as an extracellular IFN-γ-inducing molecule. We show here that ISG15-deficient patients also display unanticipated cellular, immunological and clinical signs of enhanced IFN-α/β immunity, reminiscent of the Mendelian autoinflammatory interferonopathies Aicardi-Goutières syndrome and spondyloenchondrodysplasia. We further show that an absence of intracellular ISG15 in the patients' cells prevents the accumulation of USP18, a potent negative regulator of IFN-α/β signalling, resulting in the enhancement and amplification of IFN-α/β responses. Human ISG15, therefore, is not only redundant for antiviral immunity, but is a key negative regulator of IFN-α/β immunity. In humans, intracellular ISG15 is IFN-α/β-inducible not to serve as a substrate for ISGylation-dependent antiviral immunity, but to ensure USP18-dependent regulation of IFN-α/β and prevention of IFN-α/β-dependent autoinflammation.
Journal Article
Trends in DNA Methylation with Age Replicate Across Diverse Human Populations
Aging is associated with widespread changes in genome-wide patterns of DNA methylation. Thousands of CpG sites whose tissue-specific methylation levels are strongly correlated with chronological age have been previously identified. However, the majority of these studies have focused primarily on cosmopolitan populations living in the developed world; it is not known if age-related patterns of DNA methylation at these loci are similar across a broad range of human genetic and ecological diversity. We investigated genome-wide methylation patterns using saliva- and whole blood-derived DNA from two traditionally hunting and gathering African populations: the Baka of the western Central African rain forest and the ≠Khomani San of the South African Kalahari Desert. We identified hundreds of CpG sites whose methylation levels are significantly associated with age, thousands that are significant in a meta-analysis, and replicate trends previously reported in populations of non-African descent. We confirmed that an age-associated site in the promoter of the gene ELOVL2 shows a remarkably congruent relationship with aging in humans, despite extensive genetic and environmental variation across populations. We also demonstrate that genotype state at methylation quantitative trait loci (meQTLs) can affect methylation trends at some age-associated CpG sites. Our study explores the relationship between CpG methylation and chronological age in populations of African hunter-gatherers, who rely on different diets across diverse ecologies. While many age-related CpG sites replicate across populations, we show that considering common genetic variation at meQTLs further improves our ability to detect previously identified age associations.
Journal Article
Stable Polycomb-dependent transgenerational inheritance of chromatin states in Drosophila
Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI) describes the transmission of alternative functional states through multiple generations in the presence of the same genomic DNA sequence. Very little is known about the principles and the molecular mechanisms governing this type of inheritance. Here, by transiently enhancing 3D chromatin interactions, we established stable and isogenic Drosophila epilines that carry alternative epialleles, as defined by differential levels of Polycomb-dependent trimethylation of histone H3 Lys27 (forming H3K27me3). After being established, epialleles can be dominantly transmitted to naive flies and can induce paramutation. Importantly, epilines can be reset to a naive state by disruption of chromatin interactions. Finally, we found that environmental changes modulate the expressivity of the epialleles, and we extended our paradigm to naturally occurring phenotypes. Our work sheds light on how nuclear organization and Polycomb group (PcG) proteins contribute to epigenetically inheritable phenotypic variability.
Journal Article