Phylogenomics of Piranhas and Pacus (Serrasalmidae) Uncovers How Dietary Convergence and Parallelism Obfuscate Traditional Morphological Taxonomy.

The Amazon and neighboring South American river basins harbor the world's most diverse assemblages of freshwater fishes. One of the most prominent South American fish families is the Serrasalmidae (pacus and piranhas), found in nearly every continental basin. Serrasalmids are keystone ecological taxa, being some of the top riverine predators as well as the primary seed dispersers in the flooded forest. Despite their widespread occurrence and notable ecologies, serrasalmid evolutionary history and systematics are controversial. For example, the sister taxon to serrasalmids is contentious, the relationships of major clades within the family are inconsistent across different methodologies, and half of the extant serrasalmid genera are suggested to be non-monophyletic. We analyzed exon capture to reexamine the evolutionary relationships among 63 (of 99) species across all 16 serrasalmid genera and their nearest outgroups, including multiple individuals per species to account for cryptic lineages. To reconstruct the timeline of serrasalmid diversification, we time-calibrated this phylogeny using two different fossil-calibration schemes to account for uncertainty in taxonomy with respect to fossil teeth. Finally, we analyzed diet evolution across the family and comment on associated changes in dentition, highlighting the ecomorphological diversity within serrasalmids. We document widespread non-monophyly of genera within Myleinae, as well as between Serrasalmus and Pristobrycon, and propose that reliance on traits like teeth to distinguish among genera is confounded by ecological homoplasy, especially among herbivorous and omnivorous taxa. We clarify the relationships among all serrasalmid genera, propose new subfamily affiliations, and support hemiodontids as the sister taxon to Serrasalmidae. [Characiformes; exon capture; ichthyochory; molecular time-calibration; piscivory.].

Teleocichla preta, a new species of cichlid from the Rio Xingu Basin in Brazil (Teleostei: Cichlidae).

Teleocichla preta nov. sp. inhabits the rapids along the Rio Xingu and lower portion of the Rio Iriri. It is the largest species in the genus, reaching 121·3 mm standard length (LS ) while others do not reach more than 87·8 mm LS . Teleocichla preta is distinguished from all other species of Teleocichla by the unique blackish (in live specimens) or dark brown (preserved specimens) overall colouration of the body, which masks the faint vertical bars or zig-zag pattern of blotches on the flanks. Teleocichla preta also has a deeper body and a deep laterally compressed caudal peduncle, unlike any other congener, as well as a stout lower pharyngeal tooth plate bearing molariform teeth on its median area.

Mass-Up: an all-in-one open software application for MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry knowledge discovery.

BACKGROUND: Mass spectrometry is one of the most important techniques in the field of proteomics. MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry has become popular during the last decade due to its high speed and sensitivity for detecting proteins and peptides. MALDI-TOF-MS can be also used in combination with Machine Learning techniques and statistical methods for knowledge discovery. Although there are many software libraries and tools that can be combined for these kind of analysis, there is still a need for all-in-one solutions with graphical user-friendly interfaces and avoiding the need of programming skills. RESULTS: Mass-Up, an open software multiplatform application for MALDI-TOF-MS knowledge discovery is herein presented. Mass-Up software allows data preprocessing, as well as subsequent analysis including (i) biomarker discovery, (ii) clustering, (iii) biclustering, (iv) three-dimensional PCA visualization and (v) classification of large sets of spectra data. CONCLUSIONS: Mass-Up brings knowledge discovery within reach of MALDI-TOF-MS researchers. Mass-Up is distributed under license GPLv3 and it is open and free to all users at http://sing.ei.uvigo.es/mass-up.

Adaptive landscape and functional diversity of Neotropical cichlids: implications for the ecology and evolution of Cichlinae (Cichlidae; Cichliformes).

Morphological, lineage and ecological diversity can vary substantially even among closely related lineages. Factors that influence morphological diversification, especially in functionally relevant traits, can help to explain the modern distribution of disparity across phylogenies and communities. Multivariate axes of feeding functional morphology from 75 species of Neotropical cichlid and a stepwise-AIC algorithm were used to estimate the adaptive landscape of functional morphospace in Cichlinae. Adaptive landscape complexity and convergence, as well as the functional diversity of Cichlinae, were compared with expectations under null evolutionary models. Neotropical cichlid feeding function varied primarily between traits associated with ram feeding vs. suction feeding/biting and secondarily with oral jaw muscle size and pharyngeal crushing capacity. The number of changes in selective regimes and the amount of convergence between lineages was higher than expected under a null model of evolution, but convergence was not higher than expected under a similarly complex adaptive landscape. Functional disparity was compatible with an adaptive landscape model, whereas the distribution of evolutionary change through morphospace corresponded with a process of evolution towards a single adaptive peak. The continentally distributed Neotropical cichlids have evolved relatively rapidly towards a number of adaptive peaks in functional trait space. Selection in Cichlinae functional morphospace is more complex than expected under null evolutionary models. The complexity of selective constraints in feeding morphology has likely been a significant contributor to the diversity of feeding ecology in this clade.

Ultrasonic-based membrane aided sample preparation of urine proteomes.

A new ultrafast ultrasonic-based method for shotgun proteomics as well as label-free protein quantification in urine samples is developed. The method first separates the urine proteins using nitrocellulose-based membranes and then proteins are in-membrane digested using trypsin. The enzymatic digestion process is accelerated from overnight to four minutes using a sonoreactor ultrasonic device. Overall, the sample treatment pipeline comprising protein separation, digestion and identification is done in just 3h. The process is assessed using urine of healthy volunteers. The method shows that male can be differentiated from female using the protein content of urine in a fast, easy and straightforward way. 232 and 226 proteins are identified in urine of male and female, respectively. From this, 162 are common to both genders, whilst 70 are unique to male and 64 to female. From the 162 common proteins, 13 are present at levels statistically different (p < 0.05). The method matches the analytical minimalism concept as outlined by Halls, as each stage of this analysis is evaluated to minimize the time, cost, sample requirement, reagent consumption, energy requirements and production of waste products.

Dithiothreitol-based protein equalization technology to unravel biomarkers for bladder cancer.

This study aimed to assess the benefits of dithiothreitol (DTT)-based sample treatment for protein equalization to assess potential biomarkers for bladder cancer. The proteome of plasma samples of patients with bladder carcinoma, patients with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and healthy volunteers, was equalized with dithiothreitol (DTT) and compared. The equalized proteomes were interrogated using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry. Six proteins, namely serum albumin, gelsolin, fibrinogen gamma chain, Ig alpha-1 chain C region, Ig alpha-2 chain C region and haptoglobin, were found dysregulated in at least 70% of bladder cancer patients when compared with a pool of healthy individuals. One protein, serum albumin, was found overexpressed in 70% of the patients when the equalized proteome of the healthy pool was compared with the equalized proteome of the LUTS patients. The pathways modified by the proteins differentially expressed were analyzed using Cytoscape. The method here presented is fast, cheap, of easy application and it matches the analytical minimalism rules as outlined by Halls. Orthogonal validation was done using western-blot. Overall, DTT-based protein equalization is a promising methodology in bladder cancer research.

BioAnnote: a software platform for annotating biomedical documents with application in medical learning environments.

Automatic term annotation from biomedical documents and external information linking are becoming a necessary prerequisite in modern computer-aided medical learning systems. In this context, this paper presents BioAnnote, a flexible and extensible open-source platform for automatically annotating biomedical resources. Apart from other valuable features, the software platform includes (i) a rich client enabling users to annotate multiple documents in a user friendly environment, (ii) an extensible and embeddable annotation meta-server allowing for the annotation of documents with local or remote vocabularies and (iii) a simple client/server protocol which facilitates the use of our meta-server from any other third-party application. In addition, BioAnnote implements a powerful scripting engine able to perform advanced batch annotations.

Fast human serum profiling through chemical depletion coupled to gold-nanoparticle-assisted protein separation.

The use of chemical protein depletion in conjunction with gold-based nanoparticles for fast matrix assisted laser desoption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry-based human serum profiling was assessed. The following variables influencing the process were optimized: (i) amount of nanoparticles, (ii) sample pH, (iii) amount of protein and (iv) incubation time. pH was found the most important factor to be controlled, with an optimum range comprised between 5.8 and 6.4. The minimum incubation time to obtain an adequate profiling was 30 min. Using this approach, serum from five patients with lymphoma, five patients with myeloma and from two healthy volunteers were correctly classified using Principal component analysis.

Habitat structural complexity and morphological diversity of fish assemblages in a Neotropical floodplain river.

High species richness and evenness in structurally complex habitats has been hypothesized to be associated with niche partitioning. To test this idea, relationships between habitat structural complexity in river littoral-zone habitats and morphological diversity of tropical fishes were examined in the Cinaruco River, Venezuela. Six habitat attributes were quantified in 45 sites spanning a range of structural complexity. Fishes were collected during day and night to estimate species density and relative abundances at each site. Twenty-two morphological variables were measured for each species. Principal components analysis (PCA) of physical habitat data yielded two axes that modeled >80% of variation across sites. The first two axes from PCA of fish morphological variables modeled >70% of variation. Species density during both day and night was negatively associated with flow velocity and positively associated with habitat complexity. Similarity of day and night samples from the same site was significantly greater for sites with high habitat complexity and low flow. In general, mean local assemblage morphological PC scores were not significantly associated with habitat PC scores. Average, maximum, and standard deviation of morphological Euclidean distances of local assemblages revealed positive associations with structural complexity and negative associations with flow. These relationships held even when the positive relationship of species density was statistically removed from assemblage morphological patterns. Findings suggest that both species niche compression and assemblage niche space increase when habitat complexity is greater and flow velocity is lower in this tropical lowland river.