TY - GEN A1 - Szymanski, Jedrzej A1 - Jozefczuk, Szymon A1 - Nikoloski, Zoran A1 - Selbig, Joachim A1 - Nikiforova, Victoria A1 - Catchpole, Gareth A1 - Willmitzer, Lothar T1 - Stability of metabolic correlations under changing environmental conditions in Escherichia coli : a systems approach N2 - Background: Biological systems adapt to changing environments by reorganizing their cellula r and physiological program with metabolites representing one important response level. Different stresses lead to both conserved and specific responses on the metabolite level which should be reflected in the underl ying metabolic network. Methodology/Principal Findings: Starting from experimental data obtained by a GC-MS based high-throughput metabolic profiling technology we here develop an approach that: (1) extracts network representations from metabolic conditiondependent data by using pairwise correlations, (2) determines the sets of stable and condition-dependent correlations based on a combination of statistical significance and homogeneity tests, and (3) can identify metabolites related to the stress response, which goes beyond simple ob servation s about the changes of metabolic concentrations. The approach was tested with Escherichia colias a model organism observed under four different environmental stress conditions (cold stress, heat stress, oxidative stress, lactose diau xie) and control unperturbed conditions. By constructing the stable network component, which displays a scale free topology and small-world characteristics, we demonstrated that: (1) metabolite hubs in this reconstructed correlation networks are significantly enriched for those contained in biochemical networks such as EcoCyc, (2) particular components of the stable network are enriched for functionally related biochemical path ways, and (3) ind ependently of the response scale, based on their importance in the reorganization of the cor relation network a set of metabolites can be identified which represent hypothetical candidates for adjusting to a stress-specific response. Conclusions/Significance: Network-based tools allowed the identification of stress-dependent and general metabolic correlation networks. This correlation-network-ba sed approach does not rely on major changes in concentration to identify metabolites important for st ress adaptation, but rather on the changes in network properties with respect to metabolites. This should represent a useful complementary technique in addition to more classical approaches. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 147 KW - Small-world networks KW - saccharomyces-cerevisiae KW - trehalose synthesis KW - gene-expression KW - stress-response Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45253 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Wienhöfer, Jan A1 - Germer, Kai A1 - Lindenmaier, Falk A1 - Färber, Arne A1 - Zehe, Erwin T1 - Applied tracers for the observation of subsurface stormflow at the hillslope scale N2 - Rain fall-runoff response in temperate humid headwater catchments is mainly controlled by hydrolo gical processes at the hillslope scale. Applied tracer experiments with fluore scent dye and salt tracers are well known tools in groundwater studies at the large scale and vadose zone studies at the plot scale, where they provide a means to characterise subsurface flow. We extend this approach to the hillslope scale to investigate saturated and unsaturated flow path s concertedly at a forested hill slope in the Austrian Alps. Dye staining experiments at the plot scale revealed that crack s and soil pipe s function as preferential flow path s in the fine-textured soils of the study area, and these preferenti al flow structures were active in fast subsurface transport of tracers at the hillslope scale. Breakthrough curves obtained under steady flow conditions could be fitted well to a one-dimensional convection-dispersion model. Under natural rain fall a positive correlation of tracer concentrations to the transient flows was observed. The results of this study demon strate qualitative and quantitative effects of preferential flow feature s on subsurface stormflow in a temperate humid headwater catchment. It turn s out that , at the hill slope scale, the interaction s of structures and processes are intrinsically complex, which implies that attempts to model such a hillslope satisfactorily require detailed investigation s of effective structures and parameters at the scale of interest. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 146 KW - Saturated hydraulic conductivity KW - preferential flow pathways KW - solute transport KW - runoff generation KW - fluorescent dyes Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45246 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Mell, Thomas A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Marschner, Alexander A1 - Villringer, Arno A1 - Reischies, Friedel M. A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R. T1 - Altered function of ventral striatum during reward-based decision making in old age N2 - Normal aging is associated with a decline in different cognitive domains and local structural atrophy as well as decreases in dopamine concentration and receptor density. To date, it is largely unknown how these reductions in dopaminergic neurotransmission affect human brain regions responsible for reward-based decision making in older adults. Using a learning criterion in a probabilistic object reversal task, we found a learning stage by age interaction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dIPFC) during decision making. While young adults recruited the dlPFC in an early stage of learning reward associations, older adults recruited the dlPFC when reward associations had already been learned. Furthermore, we found a reduced change in ventral striatal BOLD signal in older as compared to younger adults in response to high probability rewards. Our data are in line with behavioral evidence that older adults show altered stimulus-reward learning and support the view of an altered fronto-striatal interaction during reward-based decision making in old age, which contributes to prolonged learning of reward associations. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 182 KW - aging KW - fMRI KW - reward association learning KW - ventral striatum KW - decision making KW - dorsolateral prefrontal cortex Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45235 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Childs, Liam H. A1 - Nikoloski, Zoran A1 - May, Patrick A1 - Walther, Dirk T1 - Identification and classification of ncRNA molecules using graph properties N2 - The study of non-coding RNA genes has received increased attention in recent years fuelled by accumulating evidence that larger portions of genomes than previously acknowledged are transcribed into RNA molecules of mostly unknown function, as well as the discovery of novel non-coding RNA types and functional RNA elements. Here, we demonstrate that specific properties of graphs that represent the predicted RNA secondary structure reflect functional information. We introduce a computational algorithm and an associated web-based tool (GraPPLE) for classifying non-coding RNA molecules as functional and, furthermore, into Rfam families based on their graph properties. Unlike sequence-similarity-based methods and covariance models, GraPPLE is demonstrated to be more robust with regard to increasing sequence divergence, and when combined with existing methods, leads to a significant improvement of prediction accuracy. Furthermore, graph properties identified as most informative are shown to provide an understanding as to what particular structural features render RNA molecules functional. Thus, GraPPLE may offer a valuable computational filtering tool to identify potentially interesting RNA molecules among large candidate datasets. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 145 KW - RNA secondary structure KW - Noncoding RNAs KW - Structure prediction KW - Gene-expression KW - Structured RNAs Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45192 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Cox, Tom A1 - Maris, Tom A1 - Soetart, Karline A1 - Conley, Daniel A1 - van Damme, Stefan A1 - Meire, Patrick A1 - Middelburg, Jack J. A1 - Vos, Matthijs A1 - Struyf, Eric T1 - A macro-tidal freshwater ecosystem recovering from hypereutrophication : the Schelde lease study N2 - We report a 40 year record of eutrophication and hypoxia on an estuarine ecosystem and its recovery from hypereutrophication. After decades of high inorganic nutrient concentrations and recurring anoxia and hypoxia, we observe a paradoxical increase in chlorophyll-a concentrations with decreasing nutrient inputs. We hypothesise that algal growth was inhibited due to hypereutrophication, either by elevated ammonium concentrations, severe hypoxia or the production of harmful substances in such a reduced environment. We study the dynamics of a simple but realistic mathematical model, incorporating the assumption of algal growth inhibition. It shows a high algal biomass, net oxygen production equilibrium with low ammonia inputs, and a low algal biomass, net oxygen consumption equilibrium with high ammonia inputs. At intermediate ammonia inputs it displays two alternative stable states. Although not intentional, the numerical output of this model corresponds to observations, giving extra support for assumption of algal growth inhibition. Due to potential algal growth inhibition, the recovery of hypereutrophied systems towards a classical eutrophied state, will need reduction of waste loads below certain thresholds and will be accompanied by large fluctuations in oxygen concentrations. We conclude that also flow-through systems, heavily influenced by external forcings which partly mask internal system dynamics, can display multiple stable states. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 144 KW - Estuary SW Netherlands KW - southern North-Sea KW - Past 50 years KW - Westerschelde estuary KW - Marine ecosystems Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45180 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ziege, Madlen A1 - Mahlow, Kristin A1 - Hennige-Sulz, Carmen A1 - Kronmarck, Claudia A1 - Tiedemann, Ralph A1 - Streit, Bruno A1 - Plath, Martin T1 - Audience effects in the Atlantic molly (Poecilia mexicana) : prudent male mate choice in response to perceived sperm competition risk? N2 - Background: Multidirectional interactions in social networks can have a profound effect on mate choice behavior; e.g., Poecilia mexicana males show weaker expression of mating preferences when being observed by a rival. This may be an adaptation to reduce sperm competition risk, which arises because commonly preferred female phenotypes will receive attention also from surrounding males, and/or because other males can copy the focal male's mate choice. Do P. mexicana males indeed respond to perceived sperm competition risk? We gave males a choice between two females and repeated the tests under one of the following conditions: (1) an empty transparent cylinder was presented (control); (2) another ("audience") male inside the cylinder observed the focal male throughout the 2nd part, or (3) the audience male was presented only before the tests, but could not eavesdrop during the actual choice tests (non-specific sperm competition risk treatments); (4) the focal male could see a rival male interact sexually with the previously preferred, or (5) with the non-preferred female before the 2nd part of the tests (specific sperm competition risk treatments). Results: The strength of individual male preferences declined slightly also during the control treatment (1). However, this decrease was more than two-fold stronger in audience treatment (2), i.e., with non-specific sperm competition risk including the possibility for visual eavesdropping by the audience male. No audience effect was found in treatments (3) and (5), but a weak effect was also observed when the focal male had seen the previously preferred female sexually interact with a rival male (treatment 4; specific sperm competition risk). Conclusion: When comparing the two 'non-specific sperm competition risk' treatments, a very strong effect was found only when the audience male could actually observe the focal male during mate choice [treatment (2)]. This suggests that focal males indeed attempt to conceal their mating preferences so as to prevent surrounding males from copying their mate choice. When there is no potential for eavesdropping [treatment (3)], non-specific specific sperm competition risk seems to play a minor or no role. Our results also show that P. mexicana males tend to share their mating effort more equally among females when the resource value of their previously preferred mate decreases after mating with a rival male (perceived specific sperm competition risk), but this effect is comparatively weak. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 143 KW - Siamese fighting fish KW - Guppies poecilia-reticulata KW - Betta-splendens KW - Public information KW - Mating preferences Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45171 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gärtner, Tanja A1 - Steinfath, Matthias A1 - Andorf, Sandra A1 - Lisec, Jan A1 - Meyer, Rhonda C. A1 - Altmann, Thomas A1 - Willmitzer, Lothar A1 - Selbig, Joachim T1 - Improved heterosis prediction by combining information on DNA- and metabolic markers N2 - Background: Hybrids represent a cornerstone in the success story of breeding programs. The fundamental principle underlying this success is the phenomenon of hybrid vigour, or heterosis. It describes an advantage of the offspring as compared to the two parental lines with respect to parameters such as growth and resistance against abiotic or biotic stress. Dominance, overdominance or epistasis based models are commonly used explanations. Conclusion/Significance: The heterosis level is clearly a function of the combination of the parents used for offspring production. This results in a major challenge for plant breeders, as usually several thousand combinations of parents have to be tested for identifying the best combinations. Thus, any approach to reliably predict heterosis levels based on properties of the parental lines would be highly beneficial for plant breeding. Methodology/Principal Findings: Recently, genetic data have been used to predict heterosis. Here we show that a combination of parental genetic and metabolic markers, identified via feature selection and minimum-description-length based regression methods, significantly improves the prediction of biomass heterosis in resulting offspring. These findings will help furthering our understanding of the molecular basis of heterosis, revealing, for instance, the presence of nonlinear genotype-phenotype relationships. In addition, we describe a possible approach for accelerated selection in plant breeding. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 142 Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45132 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Durek, Pawel A1 - Schudoma, Christian A1 - Weckwerth, Wolfram A1 - Selbig, Joachim A1 - Walther, Dirk T1 - Detection and characterization of 3D-signature phosphorylation site motifs and their contribution towards improved phosphorylation site prediction in proteins N2 - Background: Phosphorylation of proteins plays a crucial role in the regulation and activation of metabolic and signaling pathways and constitutes an important target for pharmaceutical intervention. Central to the phosphorylation process is the recognition of specific target sites by protein kinases followed by the covalent attachment of phosphate groups to the amino acids serine, threonine, or tyrosine. The experimental identification as well as computational prediction of phosphorylation sites (P-sites) has proved to be a challenging problem. Computational methods have focused primarily on extracting predictive features from the local, one-dimensional sequence information surrounding phosphorylation sites. Results: We characterized the spatial context of phosphorylation sites and assessed its usability for improved phosphorylation site predictions. We identified 750 non-redundant, experimentally verified sites with three-dimensional (3D) structural information available in the protein data bank (PDB) and grouped them according to their respective kinase family. We studied the spatial distribution of amino acids around phosphorserines, phosphothreonines, and phosphotyrosines to extract signature 3D-profiles. Characteristic spatial distributions of amino acid residue types around phosphorylation sites were indeed discernable, especially when kinase-family-specific target sites were analyzed. To test the added value of using spatial information for the computational prediction of phosphorylation sites, Support Vector Machines were applied using both sequence as well as structural information. When compared to sequence-only based prediction methods, a small but consistent performance improvement was obtained when the prediction was informed by 3D-context information. Conclusion: While local one-dimensional amino acid sequence information was observed to harbor most of the discriminatory power, spatial context information was identified as relevant for the recognition of kinases and their cognate target sites and can be used for an improved prediction of phosphorylation sites. A web-based service (Phos3D) implementing the developed structurebased P-site prediction method has been made available at http://phos3d.mpimp-golm.mpg.de. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 141 KW - Support vector machines KW - Microarray data KW - Docking interactions KW - Signal-transduction KW - Sequence alignment Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45129 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Reusser, Dominik A1 - Blume, Theresa A1 - Schaefli, Bettina A1 - Zehe, Erwin T1 - Analysing the temporal dynamics of model performance for hydrological models N2 - The temporal dynamics of hydrological model performance gives insights into errors that cannot be obtained from global performance measures assigning a single number to the fit of a simulated time series to an observed reference series. These errors can include errors in data, model parameters, or model structure. Dealing with a set of performance measures evaluated at a high temporal resolution implies analyzing and interpreting a high dimensional data set. This paper presents a method for such a hydrological model performance assessment with a high temporal resolution and illustrates its application for two very different rainfall-runoff modeling case studies. The first is the Wilde Weisseritz case study, a headwater catchment in the eastern Ore Mountains, simulated with the conceptual model WaSiM-ETH. The second is the Malalcahuello case study, a headwater catchment in the Chilean Andes, simulated with the physicsbased model Catflow. The proposed time-resolved performance assessment starts with the computation of a large set of classically used performance measures for a moving window. The key of the developed approach is a data-reduction method based on self-organizing maps (SOMs) and cluster analysis to classify the high-dimensional performance matrix. Synthetic peak errors are used to interpret the resulting error classes. The final outcome of the proposed method is a time series of the occurrence of dominant error types. For the two case studies analyzed here, 6 such error types have been identified. They show clear temporal patterns, which can lead to the identification of model structural errors. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 140 KW - Rainfall-runoff response KW - Process identification KW - Improved calibration KW - Soil-moisture KW - Catchment Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45114 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Schröder, Florian A1 - Lisso, Janina A1 - Lange, Peggy A1 - Müssig, Carsten T1 - The extracellular EXO protein mediates cell expansion in Arabidopsis leaves N2 - Background: The EXO (EXORDIUM) gene was identified as a potential mediator of brassinosteroid (BR)-promoted growth. It is part of a gene family with eight members in Arabidopsis. EXO gene expression is under control of BR, and EXO overexpression promotes shoot and root growth. In this study, the consequences of loss of EXO function are described. Results: The exo loss of function mutant showed diminished leaf and root growth and reduced biomass production. Light and scanning electron microscopy analyses revealed that impaired leaf growth is due to reduced cell expansion. Epidermis, palisade, and spongy parenchyma cells were smaller in comparison to the wild-type. The exo mutant showed reduced brassinolide-induced cotyledon and hypocotyl growth. In contrast, exo roots were significantly more sensitive to the inhibitory effect of synthetic brassinolide. Apart from reduced growth, exo did not show severe morphological abnormalities. Gene expression analyses of leaf material identified genes that showed robust EXO-dependent expression. Growth-related genes such as WAK1, EXP5, and KCS1, and genes involved in primary and secondary metabolism showed weaker expression in exo than in wild-type plants. However, the vast majority of BR-regulated genes were normally expressed in exo. HA- and GFP-tagged EXO proteins were targeted to the apoplast. Conclusion: The EXO gene is essential for cell expansion in leaves. Gene expression patterns and growth assays suggest that EXO mediates BR-induced leaf growth. However, EXO does not control BR-levels or BR-sensitivity in the shoot. EXO presumably is involved in a signalling process which coordinates BR-responses with environmental or developmental signals. The hypersensitivity of exo roots to BR suggests that EXO plays a diverse role in the control of BR responses in the root. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 139 KW - Plant transformation KW - Gene expression KW - Wall proteins KW - Thaliana KW - Brassinosteroids Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45107 ER -