Photosynthesis of leaf discs from transgenic tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum) that express a chimeric gene that encodes chloroplast-localized Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD+) was protected from oxidative stress caused by exposure to high light intensity and low temperature. Under the same conditions, leaf discs of plants that did not express the pea SOD isoform (SOD-) had substantially lower...

The ascorbate content declined rapidly in broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var. italica) florets, but not in the stem tissue, during post-harvest senescence. Ascorbate peroxidase (APX), ascorbate oxidase (AO), l-galactono-1,4-lactone dehydrogenase (GLDH), monodehydroascorbate reductase (MDAR), dehydroascorbate reductase (DHAR), and glutathione reductase (GR) were investigated in gene expression a...

Ligands of the Delta/Serrate/lag-2 (DSL) family and their receptors, members of the lin-12/Notch family, mediate cell-cell interactions that specify cell fate in invertebrates and vertebrates. In C. elegans, two DSL genes, lag-2 and apx-1, influence different cell fate decisions during development. Here we show that APX-1 can fully substitute for LAG-2 when expressed under the control of lag-2 ...

Chilling whole rice seedlings at 5 degrees C significantly increased the time needed to recover linear growth and reduced the subsequent linear rate of radicle growth. Subjecting nonchilled seedlings to a 45 degrees C heat shock for up to 20 min did not alter subsequent growth, whereas a 3 min heat shock was optimal in reducing growth inhibition caused by 2 days of chilling. The activity of fiv...

Siberian hamsters undergo torpor during the short days of winter and in response to glucoprivation or food restriction. We tested whether the area postrema and the adjacent nucleus of the solitary tract (hereafter the AP), which monitor metabolic fuel availability, also control the onset of torpor. Siberian hamsters that had manifested torpor spontaneously or had entered torpor in response to 2...

In the Minimum Label Spanning Tree problem, the input consists of an edge-colored undirected graph, and the goal is to find a spanning tree with the minimum number of different colors. We investigate the special case where every color appears at most r times in the input graph. This special case is polynomially solvable for r = 2, and NP-complete and APX-complete for any fixed r ≥ 3. We analyze...

We revisit the double digest problem, which occurs in sequencing of large DNA strings and consists of reconstructing the relative positions of cut sites from two different enzymes: we rst show that double digest is strongly NP-complete, improving previous results that only showed weak NP-completeness. Even the (experimentally more meaningful) variation in which we disallow coincident cut sites ...

Salinization usually plays a primary role in soil degradation, which consequently reduces agricultural productivity. In this study, the effects of salinity on growth parameters, ion, chlorophyll, and proline content, photosynthesis, antioxidant enzyme activities, and lipid peroxidation of two cotton cultivars, [CCRI-79 (salt tolerant) and Simian 3 (salt sensitive)], were evaluated. Salinity was...

Comparing genomic properties of multiple species at varying evolutionary distances is a powerful approach for studying biological and evolutionary principles. In the context of comparative analysis of protein-protein interaction graphs, we use a graph-based formalism to detect the preservation of a given protein complex G in the protein-protein interaction graph H of another species with respec...