Relationship between bruchid resistance and seed mass in mungbean based on QTL analysis

Bruchids (Coleoptera: Bruchidae) can cause serious damage to mungbean and several other leguminous crops and there is a strong association between small seed size and bruchid resistance. In investigating the feasibility of breeding large-seeded cultivars with high levels of bruchid resistance, we studied the relationship between these two traits by QTL analysis. A major locus conferring resistance to Callosobruchus chinensis was identified from a wild mungbean genotype, ‘ACC41’ (belonging to Vigna radiata var. sublobata), collected in Australia. The proportion of the C. chinensis resistance response that could be attributed to this single QTL varied among four different resistance assays. The highest value reached was 98.5%, suggesting that bruchid resistance in this genotype is likely conditioned by this single locus. The QTL was robust and its detection was not affected by the use of different sources of the insect, different lengths and conditions of seed storage, or different bruchid resistance assay methods. This bruchid resistance QTL was coincident with one of the loci conferring seed mass detected from the three seed sources produced in Australia. However, such a co-location was not detected for the seed source produced in China. Covariance analysis revealed a complex relationship between seed mass and bruchid resistance. Nevertheless, the effect of the bruchid resistance QTL remained highly significant for all four assays after the effect of seed mass was accounted for. These results, together with the relationship between the bruchid resistance QTL identified in this study and a second one detected previously in a wild mungbean genotype from Madagascar, are discussed.

Analytical solution to transport in Brownian ratchets via the gambler's ruin model

We present an analogy between the classic gambler's ruin problem and the thermally activated dynamics in periodic Brownian ratchets. By considering each periodic unit of the ratchet as a site chain, we calculated the transition probabilities and mean first passage time for transitions between energy minima of adjacent units. We consider the specific case of Brownian ratchets driven by Markov dichotomous noise. The explicit solution for the current is derived for any arbitrary temperature, and is verified numerically by Langevin simulations. The conditions for current reversal in the ratchet are obtained and discussed.

Advanced modeling techniques for micromagnetic systems

We present a review of micromagnetic and magnetotransport modeling methods which go beyond the standard model. We first give a brief overview of the standard micromagnetic model, which for (i) the steady-state (equilibrium) solution is based on the minimization of the free energy functional, and for (ii) the dynamical solution, relies on the numerical solution of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation. We present three complements to the standard model, i.e., (i) magnetotransport calculations based on ohmic conduction in the presence of the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) effect, (ii) magnetotransport calculations based on spin-dependent tunneling in the presence of single charge tunneling (Coulomb blockade) effect, and (iii) stochastic micromagnetics, which incorporates the effects of thermal fluctuations via a white-noise thermal field in the LLG equation. All three complements are of practical importance: (i) magnetotransport model either in the ohmic or tunneling transport regimes, enables the conversion of the micromagnetic results to the measurable quantity of magnetoresistance ratio, while (ii) stochastic modeling is essential as the dimensions of the micromagnetic system reduces to the deep submicron regime and approaches the superparamagnetic limit.

Mapping the Monte Carlo scheme to Langevin dynamics: a Fokker-Planck approach

We propose a general method of using the Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) to link the Monte Carlo (MC) and the Langevin micromagnetic schemes. We derive the drift and diffusion FPE terms corresponding to the MC method and show that it is analytically equivalent to the stochastic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation of Langevin-based micromagnetics. Subsequent results such as the time-quantification factor for the Metropolis MC method can be rigorously derived from this mapping equivalence. The validity of the mapping is shown by the close numerical convergence between the MC method and the LLG equation for the case of a single magnetic particle as well as interacting arrays of particles. We also find that our Metropolis MC method is accurate for a large range of damping factors alpha, unlike previous time-quantified MC methods which break down at low alpha, where precessional motion dominates.

[Study on the forensic application of ABO genotyping by PCR-RFLP]

OBJECTIVE

The study was carried out on the application of ABO genotyping by PCR-RFLP to forensic purpose.

METHODS

The DNA of samples were extracted by Chelex--100 and phenol/chloroform, the PCR products were separated by Native Horizontal PAGE, and detected by silver staining.

RESULTS

The PCR amplified fragment length of ABO loci is from 175 to 210 bp, the frequency distribution of six genotypes ranges from 0.0250 to 0.4300, heterozygosity(H) and discriminating power(Dp) is 0.5162 and 0.7111.

CONCLUSION

This technique has a good application to the forensic samples such as blood, blood stain, semen stain, hair root, bone tissue and semen from vaginal swabs.

Coordination of copper with aspirin enhances its anti-platelet aggregation activity

Anti-platelet aggregation of copper aspirinate, a copper complex of aspirin, has been studied in vitro and in vivo. The result shows that copper aspirinate is much more effective than aspirin against AA-, ADP- and PAF-induced platelet aggregation. Its mechanism is related to the inhibition of platelet cyclooxygenase and release of active substances from platelets, and to the promotion of PGI(2) level in plasma.

[Measurement of the single muscle fiber action potentials and jitter value in tibialis anterior muscles of rabbits in situ]

With a home-made jitter data processing board and microcomputer for recording extracellular single fiber action potential (SF-AP), variations of the time intervals of the SF-AP pairs, or the jitters, from two adjacent muscle fibers in the unique motor unit in tibialis' anterior in response to repeated stimuli were measured. The jitter distribution of 936 recorded from 7 rabbits was positively showed with a percentile value of P75-P25 of 54.99-14.61 microseconds. The data suggested that the lower limit was smaller than that of skeletal muscles in normal human and that there exists also some differences in the jitter values of SFEMG between human and rabbit muscles.