Transcriptional control of photosynthetic capacity: conservation and divergence from Arabidopsis to rice.

Contents 32 I. 32 II. 33 III. 36 IV. 41 43 References 43 SUMMARY: Photosynthesis is one of the most important biological processes on Earth. It provides the consumable energy upon which almost all organisms are dependent, and modulates the composition of the planet's atmosphere. To carry out photosynthesis, plants require a large cohort of genes. These genes encode proteins that capture light energy, store energy in sugars and build the subcellular structures required to facilitate this energy capture. Although the function of many of these genes is known, little is understood about the transcriptional networks that coordinate their expression. This review places our understanding of the transcriptional regulation of photosynthesis in Arabidopsis thaliana in an evolutionary context, to provide new insight into transcriptional regulatory networks that control photosynthesis gene expression in grasses. The similarities and differences between the rice and Arabidopsis networks are highlighted, revealing substantial disparity between the two systems. In addition, avenues are identified that may be exploited for photosynthesis engineering projects in the future.

The interplay of vaccination and vector control on small dengue networks.

Dengue fever is a major public health issue affecting billions of people in over 100 countries across the globe. This challenge is growing as the invasive mosquito vectors, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, expand their distributions and increase their population sizes. Hence there is an increasing need to devise effective control methods that can contain dengue outbreaks. Here we construct an epidemiological model for virus transmission between vectors and hosts on a network of host populations distributed among city and town patches, and investigate disease control through vaccination and vector control using variants of the sterile insect technique (SIT). Analysis of the basic reproductive number and simulations indicate that host movement across this small network influences the severity of epidemics. Both vaccination and vector control strategies are investigated as methods of disease containment and our results indicate that these controls can be made more effective with mixed strategy solutions. We predict that reduced lethality through poor SIT methods or imperfectly efficacious vaccines will impact efforts to control disease spread. In particular, weakly efficacious vaccination strategies against multiple virus serotype diversity may be counter productive to disease control efforts. Even so, failings of one method may be mitigated by supplementing it with an alternative control strategy. Generally, our network approach encourages decision making to consider connected populations, to emphasise that successful control methods must effectively suppress dengue epidemics at this landscape scale.