Endocrine control of sexual behavior in mammals

Résumé L'auteur présente une revue critique des bases expérimentales de l'hypothèse neuro-endocrine du comportement sexuel des mammifères.

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Presented before the symposium on sexual behavior sponsored by the section of Animal Behavior and Sociobiology of the Ecological Society at the 1957 Meeting of the AAAS. Paper No. 2254 in the journal series of the Pennsylvania Experiment Station.     

Ozone production by a corona-type loudspeaker and its toxic effects in mice

Résumé L'ionophone est un émetteur sonique et ultra-sonique qui utilise la particularité qu'ont les gaz d'être ionisés sous l'effet d'une tension électrique très élevée et de haute fréquence. Ce générateur est aussi un ozoniseur efficient et il est nécessaire de ne l'employer qu'avec une ventilation appropriée.

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Paper No. 2397 in the Journal Series of the Agricultural Experiment Station.     

Collective synthesis of natural products by means of organocascade catalysis

Organic chemists are now able to synthesize small quantities of almost any known natural product, given sufficient time, resources and effort. However, translation of the academic successes in total synthesis to the large-scale construction of complex natural products and the development of large collections of biologically relevant molecules present significant challenges to synthetic chemists. Here we show that the application of two nature-inspired techniques, namely organocascade catalysis and collective natural product synthesis, can facilitate the preparation of useful quantities of a range of structurally diverse natural products from a common molecular scaffold. The power of this concept has been demonstrated through the expedient, asymmetric total syntheses of six well-known alkaloid natural products: strychnine, aspidospermidine, vincadifformine, akuammicine, kopsanone and kopsinine.     

A conditional knockout resource for the genome-wide study of mouse gene function

Gene targeting in embryonic stem cells has become the principal technology for manipulation of the mouse genome, offering unrivalled accuracy in allele design and access to conditional mutagenesis. To bring these advantages to the wider research community, large-scale mouse knockout programmes are producing a permanent resource of targeted mutations in all protein-coding genes. Here we report the establishment of a high-throughput gene-targeting pipeline for the generation of reporter-tagged, conditional alleles. Computational allele design, 96-well modular vector construction and high-efficiency gene-targeting strategies have been combined to mutate genes on an unprecedented scale. So far, more than 12,000 vectors and 9,000 conditional targeted alleles have been produced in highly germline-competent C57BL/6N embryonic stem cells. High-throughput genome engineering highlighted by this study is broadly applicable to rat and human stem cells and provides a foundation for future genome-wide efforts aimed at deciphering the function of all genes encoded by the mammalian genome.     

Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?

Palaeontologists characterize mass extinctions as times when the Earth loses more than three-quarters of its species in a geologically short interval, as has happened only five times in the past 540?million years or so. Biologists now suggest that a sixth mass extinction may be under way, given the known species losses over the past few centuries and millennia. Here we review how differences between fossil and modern data and the addition of recently available palaeontological information influence our understanding of the current extinction crisis. Our results confirm that current extinction rates are higher than would be expected from the fossil record, highlighting the need for effective conservation measures.     

平衡态电弧等离子体统计热力学属性的计算

以热力学平衡和化学平衡假设为前提,在求解电弧等离子体统计热力学参数的基本原理的基础上,考虑了粒子激发态的影响,得到精确的粒子配分函数,进而运用德拜模型将等离子体粒子相作用的影响包含在内,从化学平衡方程得到氮气和氩气平衡态电弧等离子体内部粒子成分与温度、气压的函数,并以此计算获得相应的统计热力学参数.利用此方法计算出了不同气压条件下(0.01、0.10、0.30、0.50、1.00MPa)、不同温度范围内(300～40 000K)氮气和氩气电弧等离子体热力学参数,并与以往文献中的部分结果进行了对比与分析.结果表明,在15 000K以内统计热力学参数的计算结果良好,随着温度的继续升高,计算结果产生了误差,误差主要来源于配分函数计算方法和德拜修正带来的计算精度的差异.     

Whole-genome analysis of diverse Chlamydia trachomatis strains identifies phylogenetic relationships masked by current clinical typing

Chlamydia trachomatis is responsible for both trachoma and sexually transmitted infections, causing substantial morbidity and economic cost globally. Despite this, our knowledge of its population and evolutionary genetics is limited. Here we present a detailed phylogeny based on whole-genome sequencing of representative strains of C. trachomatis from both trachoma and lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV) biovars from temporally and geographically diverse sources. Our analysis shows that predicting phylogenetic structure using ompA, which is traditionally used to classify Chlamydia, is misleading because extensive recombination in this region masks any true relationships present. We show that in many instances, ompA is a chimera that can be exchanged in part or as a whole both within and between biovars. We also provide evidence for exchange of, and recombination within, the cryptic plasmid, which is another key diagnostic target. We used our phylogenetic framework to show how genetic exchange has manifested itself in ocular, urogenital and LGV C. trachomatis strains, including the epidemic LGV serotype L2b.     

Comparing strategies to fine-map the association of common SNPs at chromosome 9p21 with type 2 diabetes and myocardial infarction

Noncoding variants at human chromosome 9p21 near CDKN2A and CDKN2B are associated with type 2 diabetes, myocardial infarction, aneurysm, vertical cup disc ratio and at least five cancers. Here we compare approaches to more comprehensively assess genetic variation in the region. We carried out targeted sequencing at high coverage in 47 individuals and compared the results to pilot data from the 1000 Genomes Project. We imputed variants into type 2 diabetes and myocardial infarction cohorts directly from targeted sequencing, from a genotyped reference panel derived from sequencing and from 1000 Genomes Project low-coverage data. Polymorphisms with frequency >5% were captured well by all strategies. Imputation of intermediate-frequency polymorphisms required a higher density of tag SNPs in disease samples than is available on first-generation genome-wide association study (GWAS) arrays. Our association analyses identified more comprehensive sets of variants showing equivalent statistical association with type 2 diabetes or myocardial infarction, but did not identify stronger associations than the original GWAS signals.