Boll weevil found in pre-columbian cotton from Mexico.

A well-preserved, teneral adult female boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis Bohemnan (broad sense), was discovered in fragments of a cultivated cotton boll found in Guila Nacquitz Cave, Level A, dated about A.D. 900, near Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico. This find antedates any previously known association of the boll weevil with cultivated cotton by about 900 years and negates the contention that this association began in the 18th century. The specimen is intermediate in form between Anthonomus grandis grandis Boheman and the thurberia weevil, Anthonomus grandis thurberiae Pierce.

Bio-assays for microchemical environmental contaminants, with special reference to water supplies.

A solution of the problem of environmental contamination must be based on accurate measurement of the extent of the contamination and of the resulting hazards. This paper reviews the methods for the estimation of microchemical contaminants in water with the aid of living organisms. The methods are grouped according to the nature of the response of the organism to the contaminant-namely, acute response (usually death), behavioural change, physiological change, biochemical and histochemical change, ecological change, embryological and regenerational change, growth change, histological change and perception by man or aquatic organisms. Finally, the following problems are discussed: selection of appropriate tests and standardization, the dangers of sequential concentration and the need for multi-parametric assays (assays involving several responses of a single organism, or responses of several organisms) for complete characterization of the effects of a contaminant on the environment.

Identification, characterization, and functional analysis of a gene encoding the ferric uptake regulation protein in Bartonella species.

Environmental iron concentrations coordinately regulate transcription of genes involved in iron acquisition and virulence via the ferric uptake regulation (fur) system. We identified and sequenced the fur gene and flanking regions of three Bartonella species. The most notable difference between Bartonella Fur and other Fur proteins was a substantially higher predicted isoelectric point. No promoter activity or Fur autoregulation was detected using a gfp reporter gene fused to the 204 nucleotides immediately upstream of the Bartonella fur gene. Bartonella henselae fur gene expression complemented a Vibrio cholerae fur mutant.