We examined the relationship between acute stress and prefrontal-cortex (PFC) based working memory (WM) systems using behavioral (Experiment 1) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; Experiment 2) paradigms. Subjects performed a delayed-response item-recognition task, with alternating blocks of high and low WM demand trials. During scanning, participants performed this task under thre...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivars show impairment of growth in response to environmental stresses such as cold at the early seedling stage. Locally adapted weedy rice is able to survive under adverse environmental conditions, and can emerge in fields from greater soil depth. Cold-tolerant weedy rice can be a good genetic source for developing cold-tolerant, weed-competitive rice cultivars. An in...

BACKGROUND Exposure to cold weather is associated with infaust cardiovascular responses, including myocardial infarction and arrhythmias. However, the exact mechanisms of these adverse changes in the myocardium under cold stress are unknown. This study was designed to investigate the mechanisms of cardiac injury induced by cold stress in mice. METHODS The mice were randomly divided into three...

Previous reports about the rat ovary have shown that cold stress promotes ovarian morphological alterations related to a polycystic ovary (PCO) condition through activation of the ovarian sympathetic nerves. Because the noradrenergic nucleus locus coeruleus (LC) is activated by cold stress and synaptically connected to the preganglionic cell bodies of the ovarian sympathetic pathway, this study...

Raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFO) accumulating during seed development are thought to play a role in the desiccation tolerance of seeds. However, the functions of RFO in desiccation tolerance have not been elucidated. Here we examine the functions of RFO in Arabidopsis thaliana plants under drought- and cold-stress conditions, based on the analyses of function and expression of genes invo...

Cold stress resulting from chilling and freezing temperatures substantially reduces crop production worldwide. To identify genes critical for cold tolerance in plants, we screened Arabidopsis thaliana mutants for deregulated expression of a firefly luciferase reporter gene under the control of the C-REPEAT BINDING FACTOR2 (CBF2) promoter (CBF2:LUC). A regulator of CBF gene expression1 (rcf1-1) ...

Heat shock factors (Hsfs) are important regulators of stress-response in plants. However, our understanding of Hsf genes and their responses to temperature stresses in two Pooideae cool-season grasses, Festuca arundinacea, and Lolium perenne, is limited. Here we conducted comparative transcriptome analyses of plant leaves exposed to heat or cold stress for 10 h. Approximately, 30% and 25% of th...