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- 11 beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 2 (1)
- Cortisol vertical bar metabolism (1)
- HSD11B2[CA]n polymorphism (1)
- Placenta (1)
- Pregnancy (1)
- aging (1)
- attentional control (1)
- auditory perception (1)
- child development (1)
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Background/Aims: Cortisol plays an important role during pregnancy. It controls maternal glucose metabolism and fetal development. Cortisol metabolism is partially controlled by the 11b-HSD2. This enzyme is expressed in the kidney and human placenta. The activity of the enzyme is partially controlled by functional polymorphisms: the HSD11B2[CA]n microsatellite polymorphism. The impact of this functional gene polymorphism on cortisol metabolism and potential effects on the newborn's is unknown so far. Methods: In the current prospective birth cohort study in southern Asia, we analyzed the association of the HSD11B2[CA]n microsatellite polymorphisms in 187 mothers and their newborn's on maternal and newborn's serum cortisol concentrations. Results: Using multivariable regression analyses considering known confounding ( gestational age, newborn's gender, the labor uterine contraction states and the timing during the day of blood taking), we showed that the fetal HSD11B2[CA]n microsatellite polymorphisms in the first intron was related to maternal cortisol concentration ( R2=0.26, B=96.27, p=0.007), whereas as the newborn's cortisol concentrations were independent of fetal and maternal HSD11B2[CA] n microsatellite polymorphism. Conclusions: Our study showed for the first time that the fetal HSD11B2[CA]n microsatellite polymorphism of the HSD11B2 gene in healthy uncomplicated human pregnancy is associated with maternal cortisol concentration. This indicates that fetal genes controlling cortisol metabolism may affect maternal cortisol concentration and hence physiology in healthy pregnant women.
The Brassicaceae, including Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica crops, is unmatched among plants in its wealth of genomic and functional molecular data and has long served as a model for understanding gene, genome, and trait evolution. However, genome information from a phylogenetic outgroup that is essential for inferring directionality of evolutionary change has been lacking. We therefore sequenced the genome of the spider flower (Tarenaya hassleriana) from the Brassicaceae sister family, the Cleomaceae. By comparative analysis of the two lineages, we show that genome evolution following ancient polyploidy and gene duplication events affect reproductively important traits. We found an ancient genome triplication in Tarenaya (Th-alpha) that is independent of the Brassicaceae-specific duplication (At-alpha) and nested Brassica (Br-a) triplication. To showcase the potential of sister lineage genome analysis, we investigated the state of floral developmental genes and show Brassica retains twice as many floral MADS (for MINICHROMOSOME MAINTENANCE1, AGAMOUS, DEFICIENS and SERUM RESPONSE FACTOR) genes as Tarenaya that likely contribute to morphological diversity in Brassica. We also performed synteny analysis of gene families that confer self-incompatibility in Brassicaceae and found that the critical SERINE RECEPTOR KINASE receptor gene is derived from a lineage-specific tandem duplication. The T. hassleriana genome will facilitate future research toward elucidating the evolutionary history of Brassicaceae genomes.
A general fact about language is that subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses. Recently, several self-paced reading studies have presented surprising evidence that object relatives in Chinese are easier to process than subject relatives. We carried out three self-paced reading experiments that attempted to replicate these results. Two of our three studies found a subject-relative preference, and the third study found an object-relative advantage. Using a random effects bayesian meta-analysis of fifteen studies (including our own), we show that the overall current evidence for the subject-relative advantage is quite strong (approximate posterior probability of a subject-relative advantage given the data: 78-80%). We argue that retrieval/integration based accounts would have difficulty explaining all three experimental results. These findings are important because they narrow the theoretical space by limiting the role of an important class of explanation-retrieval/integration cost-at least for relative clause processing in Chinese.
Multitalker situations confront listeners with a plethora of competing auditory inputs, and hence require selective attention to relevant information, especially when the perceptual saliency of distracting inputs is high. This study augmented the classical forced-attention dichotic listening paradigm by adding an interaural intensity manipulation to investigate developmental differences in the interplay between perceptual saliency and attentional control during auditory processing between early and middle childhood. We found that older children were able to flexibly focus on instructed auditory inputs from either the right or the left ear, overcoming the effects of perceptual saliency. In contrast, younger children implemented their attentional focus less efficiently. Direct comparisons of the present data with data from a recently published study of younger and older adults from our group suggest that younger children and older adults show similar levels of performance. Critically, follow-up comparisons revealed that younger children's performance restrictions reflect difficulties in attentional control only, whereas older adults' performance deficits also reflect an exaggerated reliance on perceptual saliency. We conclude that auditory attentional control improves considerably from middle to late childhood and that auditory attention deficits in healthy aging cannot be reduced to a simple reversal of child developmental improvements.