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“We identified the soldier-specific compounds in the Japanese subterranean termite, Reticulitermes speratus, to clarify their ethological roles. Silica gel column chromatography separated one major soldier-specific compound in the hexane fraction accounting for 70-80% of the total amount of the fraction, while cuticular hydrocarbons constituted the rest. We identified the compound NVP-AUY922 Cytoskeletal Signaling inhibitor as beta-selinene by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and nuclear

magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Comparative GC analyses of the major exocrine glands detected the compound in the soldier’s frontal gland. Both soldiers and workers made aggregation to the hexane fraction, as well as to the crushed heads and head extract of the soldiers. They did not aggregate to cuticular hydrocarbons, making it likely that beta-selinene was the aggregation pheromone in this species. The opportunistic predator of this

termite, Lasius japonicus, was also attracted to the compounds. The ant workers, therefore, would use the termite aggregation pheromone as a kairomone for hunting them.”
“Photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) has achieved submicron lateral resolution in showing subcellular structures; however, relatively few endogenous subcellular contrasts have so far been imaged. Given that the hemeprotein, mostly cytochromes in general cells, is optically absorbing around the Soret selleck compound peak (similar to 420 nm), we implemented label-free PAM of cytochromes in cytoplasm for the first time. By measuring the photoacoustic spectra of the oxidized and reduced states of fibroblast lysate and fitting the difference spectrum with three types of cytochromes, we found that the three cytochromes account for more than half the optical absorption in the cell lysate at 420 nm wavelength. Fixed fibroblasts on slides

were imaged by PAM at 422 and 250 nm compound inhibitor wavelengths to reveal cytoplasms and nuclei, respectively, as confirmed by standard staining histology. PAM was also applied to label-free histology of mouse ear sections by showing cytoplasms and nuclei of various cells. PAM of cytochromes in cytoplasm is expected to be a high-throughput, label-free technique for studying live cell functions, which cannot be accomplished by conventional histology. (C) 2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) [DOI: 10.1117/1.JBO.18.2.020504]“
“Motivation: Systematic identification of microRNA ( miRNA) targets remains a challenge. The miRNA overexpression coupled with genome-wide expression profiling is a promising new approach and calls for a new method that integrates expression and sequence information.\n\nResults: We developed a probabilistic scoring method called targetScore. TargetScore infers miRNA targets as the transformed fold-changes weighted by the Bayesian posteriors given observed target features. To this end, we compiled 84 datasets from Gene Expression Omnibus corresponding to 77 human tissue or cells and 113 distinct transfected miRNAs.