30 research outputs found
Implementing Portfolios of Adaptation Strategies on U.S. Conservation Lands in the Anthropocene
No full text) hybrid zone on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
No full textWe investigated the genetic makeup of Lutz spruce, a natural hybrid between white and Sitka spruce on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Microsatellites indicate 72% of individuals sampled had predominantly white spruce ancestry whereas 14% had predominantly Sitka spruce ancestry; some individuals classified as white spruce had Sitka spruce plastid genotypes. As Picea mitochondria are maternally inherited and plastids are paternally inherited, it appears that white spruce was the ancestral seed parent of nearly all spruce on the peninsula, whereas Sitka spruce alleles originated from pollen. Pollen records show that white spruce colonized the western peninsula ~8,500 YBP from glacial refugium, whereas Sitka spruce arrived on the eastern peninsula ~4,000 YBP after migrating up the Pacific coast. Our data suggest that Sitka spruce migration onto the western peninsula may have occurred not via seed dispersal, but by long distance transport of wind-borne pollen and subsequent hybridization with established white spruce populations. Hybridization was an important mechanism that allowed Sitka spruce to expand the leading edge of its range in response to historical climate change. As the climate continues to warm, climate envelope modeling suggests Lutz spruce may ultimately displace white spruce on the western peninsula even as Sitka spruce is constrained to the eastern peninsula where it will continue to hybridize.The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the pdf file of the accepted manuscript may differ slightly from what is displayed on the item page. The information in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript reflects the original submission by the author
Using topographic geodiversity to connect conservation lands in the Central Yukon, Alaska
No full textFactors influencing individual management preferences for facilitating adaptation to climate change within the National Wildlife Refuge System
No full textFigure 10 from: Bowser ML, Brassfield R, Dziergowski A, Eskelin T, Hester J, Magness DR, McInnis M, Melvin T, Morton JM, Stone J (2020) Towards conserving natural diversity: A biotic inventory by observations, specimens, DNA barcoding and high-throughput sequencing methods. Biodiversity Data Journal 8: e50124. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e50124
No full textFigure 10 UPGMA tree of communities at sampling sites, based on Jaccard coefficients. Colour-filled boxes represent sampling sites. Colours in filled boxes correspond to colours of land cover classes from Homer et al. (2015) and Fig. 2. Five groups have been highlighted by coloured tree branches
A climate-change adaptation framework to reduce continental-scale vulnerability across conservation reserves
No full textPlacental DEPTOR as a stress sensor during pregnancy
No full textThe author(s) has paid for this article to be freely available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright @ 2012 Portland Press. The article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.DEPTOR [DEP-domain-containing and mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin)-interacting protein] is a modulator of mTOR signalling that binds to mTORC (mTOR complex) 1 and mTORC2. However, to date, the precise functions of DEPTOR are not fully elucidated, particularly in reproductive tissues where mTOR acts as a placental nutrient sensor. Pregnancy is associated with major physiological and psychosocial changes and adaptation to these changes is crucial for normal fetal development. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that maternal stress can affect mTOR signalling at term, and, as a result, influence placental growth. We first investigated the expression of DEPTOR, mTOR, rictor (rapamycin-insensitive companion of mTOR) and raptor (regulatory associated protein of mTOR) from human placentas (n=23) using Q-PCR (quantitative PCR), and correlated these data to days of pregnancy and maternal stress, as well as placental and fetal weight. Maternal and fetal cortisol levels were also measured. JEG-3 and BeWo cells, used as placental in vitro models, were treated with cortisol and DEPTOR expression was assessed using Q-PCR. DEPTOR appears to be the predominant transcript in the human placenta compared with mTOR, rictor and raptor in both term (n=13) and preterm (n=10) placentas as assessed by Q-PCR. There was a significantly lower level only of log-DEPTOR gene expression in the high stress group (-1.34) than in the low stress group (0.07; t₂₀=2.41, P=0.026). Interestingly, mothers with high stress had significantly elevated levels of cortisol (8555 pg/ml) compared with those with low stress (4900 pg/ml). We then tested the hypothesis that cortisol can directly affect DEPTOR expression. When BeWo cells were treated with cortisol 10, 100 and 1000 nM, the expression of DEPTOR was significantly down-regulated by 50, 41 and 39% (all P<0.05) respectively when compared with basal levels. Treatment of JEG-3 cells with cortisol, led to a significant decrease of DEPTOR expression at 100 nM (39%, P<0.05) and at 1000 nM (73%, P<0.01). These novel findings are indicative of a higher order of complexity of DEPTOR signalling in the human placenta that is affected by maternal stress, which could affect pregnancy outcome
Sorting live stem cells based on Sox2 mRNA expression.
No full textPMCID: PMC3507951This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.While cell sorting usually relies on cell-surface protein markers, molecular beacons (MBs) offer the potential to sort cells based on the presence of any expressed mRNA and in principle could be extremely useful to sort rare cell populations from primary isolates. We show here how stem cells can be purified from mixed cell populations by sorting based on MBs. Specifically, we designed molecular beacons targeting Sox2, a well-known stem cell marker for murine embryonic (mES) and neural stem cells (NSC). One of our designed molecular beacons displayed an increase in fluorescence compared to a nonspecific molecular beacon both in vitro and in vivo when tested in mES and NSCs. We sorted Sox2-MB(+)SSEA1(+) cells from a mixed population of 4-day retinoic acid-treated mES cells and effectively isolated live undifferentiated stem cells. Additionally, Sox2-MB(+) cells isolated from primary mouse brains were sorted and generated neurospheres with higher efficiency than Sox2-MB(-) cells. These results demonstrate the utility of MBs for stem cell sorting in an mRNA-specific manner
