Tracing energy inputs into the seafloor using carbonate sediments.

Carbonate rocks provide unique and valuable sedimentary archives for secular changes in Earth's physical, chemical, and biological processes. However, reading the stratigraphic record produces overlapping, nonunique interpretations that stem from the difficulty in directly comparing competing biological, physical, or chemical mechanisms within a common quantitative framework. We built a mathematical model that decomposes these processes and casts the marine carbonate record in terms of energy fluxes across the sediment-water interface. Results showed that physical, chemical, and biological energy terms across the seafloor are subequal and that the energetic dominance of different processes varies both as a function of environment (e.g., onshore vs. offshore) as well as with time-varying changes in seawater chemistry and with evolutionary changes in animal abundance and behavior. We applied our model to observations from the end-Permian mass extinction-a massive upheaval in ocean chemistry and biology-revealing an energetic equivalence between two hypothesized drivers of changing carbonate environments: a reduction in physical bioturbation increased carbonate saturation states in the oceans. Early Triassic occurrences of 'anachronistic' carbonates-facies largely absent from marine environments after the Early Paleozoic-were likely driven more by reduction in animal biomass than by repeated perturbations to seawater chemistry. This analysis highlighted the importance of animals and their evolutionary history in physically shaping patterns in the sedimentary record via their impact on the energetics of marine environments.

Common latitudinal gradients in functional richness and functional evenness across marine and terrestrial systems.

Functional diversity is an important aspect of biodiversity, but its relationship to species diversity in time and space is poorly understood. Here we compare spatial patterns of functional and taxonomic diversity across marine and terrestrial systems to identify commonalities in their respective ecological and evolutionary drivers. We placed species-level ecological traits into comparable multi-dimensional frameworks for two model systems, marine bivalves and terrestrial birds, and used global species-occurrence data to examine the distribution of functional diversity with latitude and longitude. In both systems, tropical faunas show high total functional richness (FR) but low functional evenness (FE) (i.e. the tropics contain a highly skewed distribution of species among functional groups). Functional groups that persist toward the poles become more uniform in species richness, such that FR declines and FE rises with latitude in both systems. Temperate assemblages are more functionally even than tropical assemblages subsampled to temperate levels of species richness, suggesting that high species richness in the tropics reflects a high degree of ecological specialization within a few functional groups and/or factors that favour high recent speciation or reduced extinction rates in those groups.

Extinction risk in extant marine species integrating palaeontological and biodistributional data.

Extinction risk assessments of marine invertebrate species remain scarce, which hinders effective management of marine biodiversity in the face of anthropogenic impacts. To help close this information gap, in this paper we provide a metric of relative extinction risk that combines palaeontological data, in the form of extinction rates calculated from the fossil record, with two known correlates of risk in the modern day: geographical range size and realized thermal niche. We test the performance of this metric-Palaeontological Extinction Risk In Lineages (PERIL)-using survivorship analyses of Pliocene bivalve faunas from California and New Zealand, and then use it to identify present-day hotspots of extinction vulnerability for extant shallow-marine Bivalvia. Areas of the ocean where concentrations of bivalve species with higher PERIL scores overlap with high levels of climatic or anthropogenic stressors should be considered of most immediate concern for both conservation and management.

ATP5PO levels regulate enteric nervous system development in zebrafish, linking Hirschsprung disease to Down Syndrome.

Hirschsprung disease (HSCR) is a complex genetic disorder characterized by the absence of enteric nervous system (ENS) in the distal region of the intestine. Down Syndrome (DS) patients have a >50-fold higher risk of developing HSCR than the general population, suggesting that overexpression of human chromosome 21 (Hsa21) genes contribute to HSCR etiology. However, identification of responsible genes remains challenging. Here, we describe a genetic screening of potential candidate genes located on Hsa21, using the zebrafish. Candidate genes were located in the DS-HSCR susceptibility region, expressed in the human intestine, were known potential biomarkers for DS prenatal diagnosis, and were present in the zebrafish genome. With this approach, four genes were selected: RCAN1, ITSN1, ATP5PO and SUMO3. However, only overexpression of ATP5PO, coding for a component of the mitochondrial ATPase, led to significant reduction of ENS cells. Paradoxically, in vitro studies showed that overexpression of ATP5PO led to a reduction of ATP5PO protein levels. Impaired neuronal differentiation and reduced mitochondrial ATP production, were also detected in vitro, after overexpression of ATP5PO in a neuroblastoma cell line. Finally, epistasis was observed between ATP5PO and ret, the most important HSCR gene. Taken together, our results identify ATP5PO as the gene responsible for the increased risk of HSCR in DS patients in particular if RET variants are also present, and show that a balanced expression of ATP5PO is required for normal ENS development.

Spatial filters of function and phylogeny determine morphological disparity with latitude.

The drivers of latitudinal differences in the phylogenetic and ecological composition of communities are increasingly studied and understood, but still little is known about the factors underlying morphological differences. High-resolution, three-dimensional morphological data collected using computerized micro-tomography (micro-CT) allows comprehensive comparisons of morphological diversity across latitude. Using marine bivalves as a model system, this study combines 3D shape analysis (based on a new semi-automated procedure for placing landmarks and semilandmarks on shell surfaces) with non-shape traits: centroid size, proportion of shell to soft-tissue volume, and magnitude of shell ornamentation. Analyses conducted on the morphology of 95% of all marine bivalve species from two faunas along the Atlantic coast of North America, the tropical Florida Keys and the boreal Gulf of Maine, show that morphological shifts between these two faunas, and in phylogenetic and ecological subgroups shared between them, occur as changes in total variance with a bounded minimum rather than directional shifts. The dispersion of species in shell-shape morphospace is greater in the Gulf of Maine, which also shows a lower variance in ornamentation and size than the Florida Keys, but the faunas do not differ significantly in the ratio of shell to internal volume. Thus, regional differences conform to hypothesized effects of resource seasonality and predation intensity, but not to carbonate saturation or calcification costs. The overall morphological differences between the regional faunas is largely driven by the loss of ecological functional groups and family-level clades at high latitudes, rather than directional shifts in morphology within the shared groups with latitude. Latitudinal differences in morphology thus represent a complex integration of phylogenetic and ecological factors that are best captured in multivariate analyses across several hierarchical levels.

Effect of the host legume on acetylene reduction and hydrogen evolution by Rhizobium nitrogenase.

The relative efficiency (RE) of N(2) fixation (RE = 1 - [H(2) evolved in air]/[acetylene reduced]) was investigated in a Rhizobium strain lacking uptake hydrogenase activity (Hup(-)). Variation in RE of such strains presumably reflects changes in the electron allocation coefficient of nitrogenase. By artificially extending the normal dark period of 24-day-old Pisum sativum L. cv ;Alaska' inoculated with the Hup(-)R. leguminosarum strain 3740, reproducible changes in RE were obtained. The RE showed no change during a normal 8-hour night, but a significant increase in RE was measured after 20 hours in the dark. Upon returning to the normal 550 microEinsteins per square meter per second light treatment, RE declined to previous levels within 2 hours. If, after the 20-hour dark treatment, plants were returned to 90 or 190 microEinsteins per square meter per second or maintained in the dark, RE did not decline significantly. The RE varied inversely with changes in soluble sugar content of root nodules. A similar pattern of changes in RE during an extended dark period and subsequent light treatment was measured in 28-day-old Alaska peas and in the Hup(-)R. trifolii strain 162X99 in symbiosis with Trifolium subterraneum L. cv ;Woogenellup.' These results suggest that Rhizobium cells may produce short-term alterations in the electron allocation coefficient of nitrogenase in response to physiological changes. The observed changes in the bacterial RE favored N(2) reduction over proton reduction when soluble sugars provided by the host plant declined.

Host Plant Cultivar Effects on Hydrogen Evolution by Rhizobium leguminosarum.

The effect of host plant cultivar on H(2) evolution by root nodules was examined in symbioses between Pisum sativum L. and selected strains of Rhizobium leguminosarum. Hydrogen evolution from root nodules containing Rhizobium represents the sum of H(2) produced by the nitrogenase enzyme complex and H(2) oxidized by any uptake hydrogenase present in those bacterial cells. Relative efficiency (RE) calculated as RE = 1 - (H(2) evolved in air/C(2) H(2) reduced) did not vary significantly among ;Feltham First,' ;Alaska,' and ;JI1205' peas inoculated with R. leguminosarum strain 300, which lacks uptake hydrogenase activity (Hup(-)). That observation suggests that the three host cultivars had no effect on H(2) production by nitrogenase. However, RE of strain 128C53 was significantly (P

In Vivo Nitrogenase Regulation by Ammonium and Methylamine and the Effect of MSX on Ammonium Transport in Anabaena flos-aquae.

Ammonium suppresses nitrogenase activity in Anabaena flos-aquae (Lyng) Breb. at all pH values tested. l-Methionine-dl-sulfoximine at 1 millimolar totally inhibited glutamine synthetase, and 10 micromolar partially inhibited. Both concentrations protected nitrogenase activity from ammonium-induced suppression at pH 7.1 and 8.1. At pH 9.3 and 10.2, methionine sulfoximine did not alleviate the suppression of nitrogenase by ammonium. This pH-dependent protection of nitrogenase activity is a result of the noncompetitive inhibition of the ammonium transporter by methionine sulfoximine. At pH 7.1 and 8.2, ammonium is protonated and methionine sulfoximine inhibits its entry into the cell. At pH 9.3 and 10.2, unprotonated ammonia is abundant and may enter the cell independent of the transport system. The effects of ammonium are closely mimicked by the ammonium analog methylamine. These results suggest that ammonium per se is an important in vivo regulator of nitrogen fixation and its function can be mimicked by methylamine. Previous studies employing methionine sulfoximine may have to be re-evaluated in light of the inhibitory effects of methionine sulfoximine on the ammonium transporter.

Artificial neural networks for adolescent marijuana use and clinical features of marijuana dependence.

This article compares the performance of multiple logistic regression (MLR) with feed-forward, artificial neural network (ANN) models for the assessment of adolescent marijuana use and clinical features of dependence based on self-evaluation from recent National Household Surveys on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). The effect of training and testing the neural networks with randomly selected data was compared to data selected as a function of survey year. The technical aim of the study was to account for adolescent marijuana use and features of marijuana dependence based on experiences with alcohol and tobacco. Similarities observed in MLR and ANN model performance may indicate no major complex or nonlinear relationships in cross-sectional epidemiological data selected to model adolescent drug use and dependence in this specific application. We concluded that ANNs should be further studied in future longitudinal research, perhaps with modeling of recursive networks, allowing feedback from drug dependence to levels of marijuana use. The ANN models also have the potential to model drug use and dependence based on input parameters with no obvious direct link to drug involvement--e.g., polymorphisms associated with "openness to experience" or other personality traits hypothesized to function as distal antecedents, and could thus be implemented to identify higher risk youths using assessments indirectly related or nonlinearly associated to adolescent drug use and dependence but less sensitive to survey-related response tendencies.