333,296 research outputs found
Biting midges from Dominican amber : 3. Species of the tribes Culicoidini and Ceratopogonini (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae)
No full textThe following 10 new species of biting midges are described and illustrated from Dominican amber: Culicoides (Oecacta) antilleanus, C. (0.) brodzinskyi, C. (0.) ambericus, C. (0.) hispanicolus, C. mammalicolus, Brachypogon (B.) american us, B. (Isohelea) dominicanus, B. (Isohelea) prominuloides, Stilobezzia (S.) antilleana and S. (Acanthohelea) dominicana. Two other species, in Nannohelea and Stilobezzia, are described but not named. Stilobezzia (Acanthohelea) wirthicola is a new name for Stilobezzia (A.) succinea Szadziewski from Miocene Saxonian amber, which is preoccupied by the extant Stilobezzia succinea Ingram and Macfie, from Argentina
Burmese amber fossils bridge the gap in the Cretaceous record of polypod ferns
No full textpublisher: Elsevier articletitle: Burmese amber fossils bridge the gap in the Cretaceous record of polypod ferns journaltitle: Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ppees.2016.01.003 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.Copyright © 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. This document is the authors' final accepted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it.NHM Repositor
Discolomopsis dominicana : a new genus and species of Endomychidae (Coleoptera) from Dominican amber
No full textDiscolomopsis, a new genus of Endomychidae (Coleoptera: Cucujoidea), is described and illustrated based on a fossil endomychid embedded in amber resin from the Dominican Republic. Discolomopsis dominicana sp. nov. is designated as the type species for the genus
James Young
No full textJames Young oral history as conducted by Amber Zimmerman. Mr. Young talks about early life growing up in Oklahoma, picking cotton from the age of five, and marrying the only girl he ever loved. He held several jobs before joining the Fish and Wildlife Service, including owning his own store. He would spend 27 years at Washita National Wildlife Refuge, while also helping out at other refuges including Optima National Wildlife Refuge and Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. Mr. Young shares stories of his time with the Service and feels very lucky to have had the position and career he had. Organization: FWS1
Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: James Young
Date of Interview: February 21, 2017
Location of Interview: Washita National Wildlife Refuge, OK
Interviewer: Amber Zimmerman
Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service: 27 years
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held: Wage Grade maintenance personnel at Washita National Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma
Most Important Projects: Worked on building the Centennial Trail; helped with banding ducks/geese;
Colleagues and Mentors: Wade Pratt, Ken Butts, Johnny Parker, David Maple, Danny Moss, Ralph Bryant, Paul Swanson, Ron Price, Dan Zerby, Brent Giezentanner
Most Important Issues: Not having the right equipment needed to do work on refuge.
Brief Summary of Interview: Mr. Young talks about early life growing up in Oklahoma, picking cotton from the age of five, and marrying the only girl he ever loved. He held several jobs before joining the Fish and Wildlife Service, including owning his own store. He would spend 27 years at Washita National Wildlife Refuge, while also helping out at other refuges including Optima National Wildlife Refuge and Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. Mr. Young shares stories of his time with the Service and feels very lucky to have had the position and career he had.
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AMBER: This is Amber Zimmerman, the heritage coordinator for Region 2 and I am interviewing Jim Young today here at the Washita National Wildlife Refuge headquarters. It is February the 21st of 2017. So welcome Jim.
JIM: Hello Amber.
AMBER: Glad to have you here today. So we’ve already gone over what we’re going to be talking about. We’re really excited to hear about Jim’s experience, he worked as a maintenance worker here at Washita for twenty—
JIM: Seven.
AMBER: —seven years.
JIM: Almost on full-time.
AMBER: Almost (chuckling). Alright, so I guess we’ll go ahead and get the back story before we get started on your Service career. Could you give me the very beginning, where were you born and when?
JIM: Well I was born Sayre, Oklahoma 3/19/41. And there was twenty members of my family served in World War II and I’ve always been real patriotic because of that. My folks moved to California, my folks divorced when I was five years old. I had four different sets of great grandparents that homesteaded at Berlin, Oklahoma, south of Cheyenne. And we came back to Berlin because I had so many family members there. I started pulling cotton when I was five years old, just so we could eat. You got two cents a pound and I could pull a hundred pounds a day and that was two dollars.
AMBER: Wow, that’s amazing! So you grew up in Sayre in western Oklahoma areas.
JIM: I’ve never been out of western Oklahoma. Roger Mills, Beckham, and Custer.
AMBER: So outside of cotton picking as a kid, what else did you do out here in western Oklahoma?
JIM: Well when I got in high school, my uncle was a foreman on a big ranch south of Cheyenne and I spent all my time on that ranch in the summertime. But cotton was king, and I always went to a country school, little country schools turned out six weeks every fall so the kids could help harvest the cotton. I would work all summer, when school started I would buy me five pairs of jeans, five short sleeve shirts, some underwear, and a new pair of shoes. Then with my cotton picking money in the fall I’d buy me five more jeans, five flannel shirts, a coat; I pretty well supported myself from the time I was five years old.
AMBER: Wow that is amazing. Okay so you mentioned you went to the country schools out here in western Oklahoma. So was there any teachers or mentors in your family or in the schools that really influenced your life?
JIM: Well I’ve had a lot, being raised like I was raised, I never had the opportunity to be a kid, I always had to act like a grown up. So all of the people that I admired and looked up to were older men, 60, 70, 80 years old. And they’d been a big influence, of course, on my mother’s side I had three uncles, three boys were born in 39 months. And 3
they were all World War II veterans and they were always my heroes. We came back from California when I was five, all my uncles were in World War II and my granddad had me drive a team of wagon full of hay and cake so he could feed the cattle. And I’d been infected with the cattle disease ever since I was five years old.
AMBER: Cotton and cattle, alright. And I also know that you’ve got a lot of experience with horses.
JIM: Yes, I have a little experience with horses.
AMBER: So that’s how you got the job done back then, wasn’t necessarily the way we farm today then.
JIM: No, no there wasn’t any tractor.
AMBER: Not the easy way.
JIM: We lived there at Berlin and there was one big landowner, I don’t know how many acres he had, but there would be twenty family members pulling cottons; aunts, and uncles, and cousins. Well at four o’clock every Saturday afternoon, everybody would go to their respective homes, they would clean up, and they would come back. The ladies would get in the back of the pickup, us kids would get on top of a load of cotton, it was twenty miles down to Elk City. We would go down through the [unintelligible@00:04:56, sounds like breaks or brakes] to Elk. The gin was right by Main Street, we would take the cotton to the gin. The ladies would do their shopping, and then they had a preview at twelve o’clock, when we got out of the preview, we’d go back to the gin, we’d get in an old empty cotton trailer, snake our way all the way back to Berlin, get home two, three o’clock in the morning. Next Saturday was ready to do it all over.
AMBER: Wow! And so you’re talking about a cotton trailer pulled behind a team?
JIM: We had pickups.
AMBER: Oh, thank goodness. I was like, you really did things the old fashioned way. [laughing]
JIM: One of our grandpas, he could do anything; I’ve seen him roll a smoke, he always smoked Bull Durham, come in little bitty sacks. I’d seen him loping a horse and roll him a cigarette, but he could not drive a pickup. One Christmas, there was about seven or eight of us grandkids, we were little bitty farts, and he got out to open the gate and that pick up starting rolling, and run through the gate, grandpa was hollering, “OH YOU S.O.B, WHOA,WHOA, WHOA!” There’s a big ole deep canyon, just before it went over that canyon, it hit a rock and stopped. But he never did master a vehicle.
AMBER: Oh wow! So you went to all of your schooling out here in western Oklahoma, and I know that you and JoJo have been married a very long time. Did you guys meet while you were still in school?
JIM: I went to school at Stafford, the refuge in Foss Dam took out Stafford School, they started buying this land for this refuge in about ’55 or ’56. And there were so many families that the government bought them out, the school didn’t have enough kids to continue and 4
that caused Stafford School to go out. I guess I was in the eighth grade, girls were the furthest thing from my mind; all I wanted to do was play baseball or basketball. And one day my sister, she was younger than I, a couple years younger. She said, “You need to come to study hall right after lunch.” I walked into study hall and JoJo was in there, and she said, “This girl wants to meet you.”
AMBER: [chuckling] Oh really!
JIM: So the next day we wound up at baseball diamond on the bleachers, and she was sitting on one end and I was sitting; it took us about thirty minutes until we finally got together; we’ve been together now for almost 60 years.
AMBER: That is awesome.
JIM: Well it’s pretty neat to get to marry the only girl you ever loved your whole life and get to spend most of your life with her.
AMBER: It is, what a blessing. And I know she’s been with you all the way since school times, so obviously with all of your careers, including your Service career, and we’ll talk about that here in just a minute. Before we get to that though, I’m pretty sure before you came to us at the Service, how many kids do you have?
JIM: We have three, two daughters and a so.
AMBER: Two daughters and a son, and—
JIM: And eight grandkids and four great grandkids.
AMBER: Awesome. So I guess go ahead and let’s get caught up to, before you started with the Service, I know that certainly wasn’t your first job.
JIM: No.
AMBER: So let’s talk work. What did you start out with other than cotton picking at five and as a kid?
JIM: I got married the last semester of my senior year, my wife, she was in her second year at Southwestern. She had took a 40 hour business course and there was a supermarket there at Clinton. I was working for them and going to school at Merritt, west of Elk City, and when we got married we moved to Clinton and I went to work for Fowler IGA, worked in produce. We got married in December of 1959. And August of 1960, they were building Foss Dam and the contractor was a big shot from California. Anyway, the main foreman had a motel room there in Clinton, and he always came by the store every afternoon. That was before the equipment had much air conditioning, and he would always come buy him a pint of ice cream, go to his motel room, take him a shower, and then he’d would go eat that evening. When he’d come in that evening and he said, “We closed the gates on Foss Dam.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yes sir we did.” And I got off at six o’clock and I told my wife, I said “We’ve got to go to Foss Dam.” She says, “What do we want to go to Foss Dam for?” I said, “Well they’ve closed the gates on the dam and I want to get a picture.” And I’ve got a picture of my wife standing down at the south end of the dam by that draw down, and there’s probably ten or fifteen acres of water out there. 5
AMBER: Oh, how awesome. Any chance you’ve still got that picture?
JIM: I asked my wife if she knew, because I knew you were going to ask, she says, “I don’t know where it’s at.” I dug it up one time and brought it up and showed it to Parker.
AMBER: Well if you ever happen to come across it again, you know where to find me.
JIM: We’re going to make a little more of an effort to find it.
AMBER: So even before the refuge was, you guys were already here seeing the beginnings of it.
JIM: Well when you’ve got four different sets of great grandparents that homestead this country; we’ve never lived over twenty miles, either one of us, where we started. Not many people don’t venture that far from home.
AMBER: So you’re working produce, and I know just from knowing you before that you ended up a store of your own to run. How’d that happen?
JIM: I guess in 1963, I would have been 22; Frito Lay had a route come open and the boy that had the route suggested I put my app. in and I was likely enough to get hired or whatever and I worked for Frito Lay for ten years. Well I called on the little store at Butler and I told my wife, I said, “That thing ever comes up for sale, Bill ever decides to sell that thing, I would like to buy it.” Well we had bought eighty acres of land and then we bought a half section. Well Frito has this rule they want you broke and your nose to grindstone. No outside activities and I had a supervisor come out and ride with me and I said something about buying this other land. Well within a month, they came out and checked me out, fired my butt.
AMBER: Fired you for owning your own property for farming.
JIM: Well they had some other reasons, but that’s the real reason. And it wasn’t two or three months later I heard that Bill had his store for sale and we went up and bought the store and we ran that store for about ten years. And during oil boom in the ‘80’s, one of my buddies called me one day, he said, “Hey, I hear you been might wanting to sell.” And I said, “Well the thought crossed my mind.” He said, “What do you want for it?” And I just pulled a figure off the top of my head. A week later he calls, he says, “When do you want to inventory?” I said, “What do you mean inventory?” He said, “You remember I called you about buying..?” I said, “Yeah, but I thought you were just BS’ing me.” He said, “Oh no, I’m serious. I’ve been to the bank, I’ve got the money.” I said, “Lloyd I told you what I’d do and if you’re crazy enough to do it, we’ll inventory the first of the month.” Well I had no more and sold the store and I always got my hair cut over at Jones Barber Shop in Hammon. Jack Warner and Joe Hutch had both retired; I was in there getting a haircut and old Warner said, “Young, what are you doing?” I said, “Oh, I’m just playing around down at the farm.” He said, “Well the refuge has to have a couple maintenance guys,” said, “you need to get your butt out and put your application in.” I didn’t think too much about it, so I went home and told my wife, I said, “Old Warner wanting me to go up and put my 6
application in.” She said, “Well you know you’ve got a boy just fix to start college, it should would be nice if you’d get on a pay roll.
AMBER: Good timing again then.
JIM: Yeah, we’d sit there, my wife had that little old typewriter, we worked for four hours filling out all that paperwork and brought it up here. I was in the top three and I was selected, but before I could get hired they put a freeze on the hiring. So they couldn’t hire me.
AMBER: That sounds familiar.
JIM: Well about a year later, old Ken Butts called me again, he said, “Are you still interested?” I said, “Yeah, I guess so.” Well we go through the whole rigamarole again and I come out the top three again. Well one of the boys had a military service so that bumped me back to number two. When they did the background check on him, he had a felony. And I didn’t realize it until my retirement party, but ole Brent Giezentanner and I had always been buddies, when I was in the store, he was a manager out here. And we had a JC Chapter and one year I’d be president, he’d be vice president, and we’d switch. Anyway, we had a real nice relationship, and I didn’t realize that Giezentanner pulled a few strings for me out at the regional office.
AMBER: Okay, so who was the manager that actually hired you?
JIM: Ken Butts.
AMBER: Ken Butts hired you, and that was after Giezentanner had left a few years before.
JIM: Yeah.
AMBER: Well that worked out pretty well.
JIM: Well when Giezentanner was here, he said, “I’m going to be the manager of Aransas.” Back then they had the trainee deals where the kids could go to college and work. And anyway, he’d been down there and then they, when this refuge got opened, they sent him up here and he got to be the manager. Well while he was here, the Hawaiian Complex came open and he told me, “I put in.” I said, “Giezentanner, you don’t have a chance of going to Hawaii. You don’t have that much experience, there’s no way.” About a month later I’d seen him, he said, “I’m packing my bags, I’m going to Hawaii.”
AMBER: [chuckling] Well that worked out really well for him too.
JIM: Well then he came back to the regional office and [unintelligible@00:15:14] Frank, I can’t remember the man’s last name, had been the manager down at Aransas for thirty or forty years and he finally retired. Well we were down there eating lunch one day, and Ken Butts had been an assistant manager at Aransas before he became the manager here. Well we were eating lunch down there and old Hollingsworth, he popped off, “Well I can tell you who’s going to be the next manager at Aransas.” Old Wade says, “Who’s that?” And he said, “Ken Butts.” I said, “I can tell you who’s going to be the manager at Aransas.” He said, “Who do you think?” I said, “It’s going to be Brent Giezentanner.” He said “Ahhhh.” I said, “You don’t know that guy, he’s got a lot grit and 7
determination.” And he wound up with it.
AMBER: You called that one then.
JIM: Well I guess I did.
AMBER: So you worked here for 27 years, and during that time, Ken Butts was the first manager. How many managers did you work under during that time?
JIM: Six.
AMBER: Six managers. Not bad for 27 years; we’re a very small refuge.
JIM: Out of those six, there were five of them that were Okie’s and seemed like the people that are raised in your own local, I don’t know, I’m must be prejudiced, you’re an exception to the rule Amber.
AMBER: Hey, I was born in Oklahoma.
JIM: Well I know and you came off the ranch too, you’ve got some common sense.
AMBER: [laughing] There you go. So I know our wage grade professionals and our managers have all worked together to get stuff done on the refuge, but I know sometimes there’s different ideas about what needs to be done and when and how, especially. So you worked through six different managers and a lot of staff turnover, right?
JIM: Oh yes. We had, I don’t know how many assistants we had. I know of four; seemed like the girl assistants were just head and shoulders above the boys. Why, I don’t know. And there were four girls out of this refuge that I worked under, became managers at different refuges.
AMBER: Yeah, and you’re still friends with several of those right?
JIM: Yes.
AMBER: Jennifer.
JIM: Yeah, Jennifer, she went to Aransas.
AMBER: Jennifer Sanchez.
JIM: Yes. She was over Matagorda Island, and when Giezentanner retired, Bruce Spencer and I and our wives went down to Giezentanner’s retirement. And Jennifer told me, said “If you ever come down here, I’ll take you out to the island.” And she took us out there on the barge, we got out there; she drove us around about two hours, she said, “I’ve got things I’ve got to do, here’s this scout, if you don’t want to swim back to shore, you better be here at four o’clock because I’m leaving.” And we took off, I guess that was one of the main highlights of my career, was getting to explore on Matagorda Island. The cranes were there, and you got to see them in their habitat.
AMBER: Oh yeah, a little bit different than what we’ve got up here in Oklahoma.
JIM: Yes, yes.
AMBER: So you enjoyed some trips down to the ocean throughout your career, or was that not something you got to do very often?
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JIM: My wife is, she’s a fish, I’m not. I’d rather be out in the middle of a pasture.
AMBER: Nice to visit but not to stay.
JIM: Yeah.
AMBER: Well did you get to take any other really neat trips during your career?
JIM: Well one of the nicest deals, I was lucky enough to get to go to NCTC at [West] Virginia. I was one of the maintenance guys selected and when David Maple was here, he put in a kind word for me. I don’t know how he convinced somebody to select to me but anyway, I got to go and that was a real treat.
AMBER: So that would have been, is that one of the wage grade workshops?
JIM: Yes. Got to meet boys from all over the United States.
AMBER: Well that’s always neat. So that would have probably been in the early 2000’s then?
JIM: Yeah.
AMBER: Okay.
JIM: The neatest thing about this, one uncle I was telling you about at Cheyenne, he was on them islands, Atoll.
AMBER: Midway Atoll.
JIM: Yeah, there was another. Anyway, he was over those islands and this one kid he run a boat between the islands. I got to visit with him at the meeting up there.
AMBER: Oh neat, so you guys had some other maintenance from everywhere.
JIM: All over the United States, yes.
AMBER: Oh wow, that’s amazing.
JIM: That was really a neat deal.
AMBER: Now I know a lot of times we talk about your experience here working at Washita, and we do have our satellite, Optima, and you were the main one that went up and worked for years up at Optima. You have any Optima stories to share?
JIM: Well I sure do. That Optima, Wade Pratt always took care of it because he had a boy that lived at Liberal, just north of there, and after Wade retired there wasn’t nobody that wanted to go to Optima, so I opened my big mouth and kind of volunteered. The first time I ever went up there, I thought this is the most God forsaken country in the whole wide world, but I learned to love it; that’s a different ecosystem, you’re see birds and animals up there that you won’t see anywhere else in the state of Oklahoma. You’re talking about the Optima deal, one time when Wade was up there, he came back and he had a picture of a moose.
AMBER: We have that here framed.
JIM: I said, “Wade, what in the world were you drinking? There’s not any moose up there!” And he showed me the picture. Well that was kind of a neat deal. 9
AMBER: Yeah, we have that confirmed moose sighting. What year, was that in the ‘80’s?
JIM: Yes, yes.
AMBER: Yeah, 1980’s. Well I know Optima is certainly a different beast, it’s got some sandier soils and I know I’ve heard a few stories from you and our co-op farmer and how important that relationship is. Do you have any of those kind of fun stories?
JIM: Well I’ve got one that’s not; on this refuge I knew every farmer around here. If I was out working, there weren’t nobody around, I felt free to go steal a pickup or tractor, whatever I needed. Well me and another boy was up there, we were on the northeast corner of the refuge in one of those 6 cylinder, 3 speed Dodge pickup, 2-wheel drive. And we set that sucker down on all four wheels, we couldn’t go anywhere. So I told Rick, I said “You stay here, I’ll wal
Amber for Artemis. Amber finds from the Artemision at Ephesos,
No full textAlmost 700 amber objects were unearthed during the British and Austrian excavations in the sanctuary of Artemis at Ephesus, the majority of which were found in the centre of the sanctuary. During the reconstruction of the first temple for Artemis (Naos 1), a hoard consecrated around 650 to 640 BC was deposited there as a building sacrifice and contained gold jewellery and amber along with other valuable
objects. The amber from the Artemision represents the largest find complex of this nature in the entire Eastern Mediterranean region. It includes carved figures, beads, pendants, spacers, inlays and pinheads, but also unworked amber. The forms and types of the individual objects find their closes parallels above all in Italy, where amber from the Baltic was traded since the Bronze Age.
Archaeometric investigations prove that the Ephesian finds were also made from Baltic raw material. A large number of similar individual parts contained in the hoard indicate that a magnificent piece of jewellery, made of small pieces, was a wide girdle offered to the goddess Artemis as the protector of woman in labour. This girdle can be used to establish a connection with Southern Italy, where the colony of Siris offered itself as a mediator of amber jewellery of the Oinotrian type. All forms considered together prove the existence of a workshop in the Artemision in the 7th century BC that produced also amber jewellery
Oral History Interview, Amber Steiger (2560)
No full textIn her 2025 interview with Edwin Thomas, Amber Steiger discusses her experience as a second-year PhD student in UW-Madison’s Gender & Women’s Studies (GWS) Department. To learn more about this oral history, download & review the index first (or transcript if available). It will help determine which audio file(s) to download & listen to.In her 2025 interview with Edwin Thomas, Amber Steiger discusses her experience as a second-year PhD student in UW-Madison’s Gender & Women’s Studies (GWS) Department. She mentions taking a gender studies class at a community college that sparked her interest in the field and discusses being a member of the final cohort to graduate from UW-Madison’s GWS Department’s master’s degree program. Steiger also touches on how current events have impacted how she teaches her classes and the importance of a GWS education. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the GWS @ 50 Oral History Project of the UW-Madison Archives & Records Management oral history collection
pFAR plasmids: New Eukaryotic Expression Vectors for Gene Therapy, devoid of Antibiotic Resistance Markers
No full textEfficient production of eukaryotic expression vectors requires the selection of plasmid-containing bacteria. To avoid the risk of dissemination of antibiotic resistance markers, we developed a new system to produce a family of plasmids Free of Antibiotic Resistance genes, called pFARs. The strategy is based on the suppression of a chromosomal nonsense mutation by a plasmid-borne function. The amber mutation was introduced into the Escherichia coli thyA gene that encodes a thymidylate synthase required for dTMP synthesis, resulting in thymidine auxotrophy. In parallel, a small plasmid vector that carries an amber suppressor t-RNA gene was entirely synthesised. The introduction of pFAR plasmids into an optimised thyA mutant restored normal growth to the auxotrophic strain, and led to an efficient production of monomeric supercoiled plasmids, as required for clinical trials. Luciferase activities measured after intramuscular injection and electrotransfer of LUC-encoding pFAR vector were similar to those obtained with a commercial vector containing the same expression cassette. Interestingly, whereas luciferase activities decreased within three weeks after intradermal electrotransfer of conventional expression vectors, sustained levels were observed with the pFAR derivative. Thus, pFAR plasmids represent a novel family of biosafe eukaryotic expression vectors, suitable for gene therapy
Amber Coniopterygidae.
No full text20 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 26 cm.The genus Spiloconis Enderlein is comprised of six Recent Asian and Pacific species, ranging from Sri Lanka (and possibly Madagascar) in the west to eastern Australia and Fiji in the east. Two species previously described in Miocene amber from the Dominican Republic, Spiloconis glaesaria Meinander and S. oediloma Engel and Grimaldi, are redescribed for some details. Spiloconis eominuta Grimaldi and Engel, new species, is described in earliest Eocene Cambay amber from Gujarat, India, which has well-preserved male terminalia. Neoconis paleocaribis Grimaldi and Engel, new species, is described from Dominican amber; this Recent genus is known from the southern United States and neotropics. The fossil Spiloconis may have significant biogeographic implications, but definitive determination of this requires a phylogenetic analysis of the 16 Recent genera in the monophyletic subfamily Aleuropteryginae. A Dominican amber-Australasian distribution pattern is known for 18 genera of insects in myriad orders (including Spiloconis), which are briefly reviewed
Analysis of Abietane-Type Diterpenoids from Baltic Amber Samples
No full textAn urgent need exists for novel therapeutics to combat antibiotic-resistant microorganisms, but identification of new drug scaffolds for this purpose remains a challenge. Fossilized material is an emerging source of new chemical matter for drug development. Variations in metabolites produced by extinct species, as well as biotransformations occurring during fossilization, may yield new starting points for therapeutics residing in underexplored chemical space. A promising source of such paleopharmaceuticals is Baltic amber, a fossilized plant resin chiefly produced by extinct pines of the family Sciadopityaceae, and found in the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Amber has found use in Baltic ethnopharmacology for centuries; however, a systematic and quantitative identification of amber’s bioactive constituents is yet to be reported. Here we present optimized extraction protocols and preliminary GC-MS analyses of Baltic amber samples collected from central Lithuania, as well as comparative analyses of an extant Sciadopitys species: S. verticillata, the Japanese umbrella pine. These experiments revealed the presence of a wide variety of abietane-type diterpenoids unique to the fossilized material, which is of interest given the reported antibacterial, antitumor and antifungal potencies of abietates and related analogs. Three abietates were subsequently confirmed to be selectively active against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Our results support the prioritization of novel abietanes in anti-infective drug design campaigns, and also point to fossilized material as an untapped source of previously uninvestigated natural product-based therapeutic analogs
First discovery of Antarctic amber [Short note]
No full textHere, we report the first discovery of Antarctic fossil resin (commonly referred to as amber) within a ~5 cm-thick lignite layer, which constitutes the top part of a ~3 m-long palynomorph-rich and root-bearing carbonaceous mudstone of mid-Cretaceous age (Klages et al. 2020). The sedimentary sequence (Fig. 1) was recovered by the MARUM-MeBo70 seafloor drill rig at Site PS104_20 (73.57° S, 107.09° W; 946 m water depth) from the mid-shelf section of Pine Island trough in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, during RV Polarstern Expedition PS104 in early 2017 (Gohl 2017; Fig. 1a). So far, amber deposits have been described from every continent except Antarctica (Langenheim 2003, Quinney et al. 2015; Fig. 1a)
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