@book{10811, abstract = {Auxin is an important signaling compound in plants and vital for plant development and growth. The present book, Auxin and its Role in Plant Development, provides the reader with detailed and comprehensive insight into the functioning of the molecule on the whole and specifically in plant development. In the first part, the functioning, metabolism and signaling pathways of auxin in plants are explained, the second part depicts the specific role of auxin in plant development and the third part describes the interaction and functioning of the signaling compound upon stimuli of the environment. Each chapter is written by international experts in the respective field and designed for scientists and researchers in plant biology, plant development and cell biology to summarize the recent progress in understanding the role of auxin and suggest future perspectives for auxin research.}, editor = {Zažímalová, Eva and Petrášek, Jan and Benková, Eva}, isbn = {9783709115251}, pages = {444}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, title = {{Auxin and Its Role in Plant Development}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-7091-1526-8}, year = {2014}, } @article{10814, abstract = {We review recent progress towards a rigorous understanding of the excitation spectrum of bosonic quantum many-body systems. In particular, we explain how one can rigorously establish the predictions resulting from the Bogoliubov approximation in the mean field limit. The latter predicts that the spectrum is made up of elementary excitations, whose energy behaves linearly in the momentum for small momentum. This property is crucial for the superfluid behavior of the system. We also discuss a list of open problems in this field.}, author = {Seiringer, Robert}, issn = {1869-7135}, journal = {Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung}, keywords = {General Medicine}, pages = {21--41}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, title = {{The excitation spectrum for Bose fluids with weak interactions}}, doi = {10.1365/s13291-014-0083-9}, volume = {116}, year = {2014}, } @article{10815, abstract = {In the last several decades, developmental biology has clarified the molecular mechanisms of embryogenesis and organogenesis. In particular, it has demonstrated that the “tool-kit genes” essential for regulating developmental processes are not only highly conserved among species, but are also used as systems at various times and places in an organism to control distinct developmental events. Therefore, mutations in many of these tool-kit genes may cause congenital diseases involving morphological abnormalities. This link between genes and abnormal morphological phenotypes underscores the importance of understanding how cells behave and contribute to morphogenesis as a result of gene function. Recent improvements in live imaging and in quantitative analyses of cellular dynamics will advance our understanding of the cellular pathogenesis of congenital diseases associated with aberrant morphologies. In these studies, it is critical to select an appropriate model organism for the particular phenomenon of interest.}, author = {Hashimoto, Masakazu and Morita, Hitoshi and Ueno, Naoto}, issn = {0914-3505}, journal = {Congenital Anomalies}, keywords = {Developmental Biology, Embryology, General Medicine, Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health}, number = {1}, pages = {1--7}, publisher = {Wiley}, title = {{Molecular and cellular mechanisms of development underlying congenital diseases}}, doi = {10.1111/cga.12039}, volume = {54}, year = {2014}, } @inproceedings{8044, abstract = {Many questions concerning models in quantum mechanics require a detailed analysis of the spectrum of the corresponding Hamiltonian, a linear operator on a suitable Hilbert space. Of particular relevance for an understanding of the low-temperature properties of a system is the structure of the excitation spectrum, which is the part of the spectrum close to the spectral bottom. We present recent progress on this question for bosonic many-body quantum systems with weak two-body interactions. Such system are currently of great interest, due to their experimental realization in ultra-cold atomic gases. We investigate the accuracy of the Bogoliubov approximations, which predicts that the low-energy spectrum is made up of sums of elementary excitations, with linear dispersion law at low momentum. The latter property is crucial for the superfluid behavior the system.}, author = {Seiringer, Robert}, booktitle = {Proceeding of the International Congress of Mathematicans}, isbn = {9788961058063}, location = {Seoul, South Korea}, pages = {1175--1194}, publisher = {International Congress of Mathematicians}, title = {{Structure of the excitation spectrum for many-body quantum systems}}, volume = {3}, year = {2014}, } @article{9458, abstract = {Dnmt1 epigenetically propagates symmetrical CG methylation in many eukaryotes. Their genomes are typically depleted of CG dinucleotides because of imperfect repair of deaminated methylcytosines. Here, we extensively survey diverse species lacking Dnmt1 and show that, surprisingly, symmetrical CG methylation is nonetheless frequently present and catalyzed by a different DNA methyltransferase family, Dnmt5. Numerous Dnmt5-containing organisms that diverged more than a billion years ago exhibit clustered methylation, specifically in nucleosome linkers. Clustered methylation occurs at unprecedented densities and directly disfavors nucleosomes, contributing to nucleosome positioning between clusters. Dense methylation is enabled by a regime of genomic sequence evolution that enriches CG dinucleotides and drives the highest CG frequencies known. Species with linker methylation have small, transcriptionally active nuclei that approach the physical limits of chromatin compaction. These features constitute a previously unappreciated genome architecture, in which dense methylation influences nucleosome positions, likely facilitating nuclear processes under extreme spatial constraints.}, author = {Huff, Jason T. and Zilberman, Daniel}, issn = {1097-4172}, journal = {Cell}, number = {6}, pages = {1286--1297}, publisher = {Elsevier}, title = {{Dnmt1-independent CG methylation contributes to nucleosome positioning in diverse eukaryotes}}, doi = {10.1016/j.cell.2014.01.029}, volume = {156}, year = {2014}, } @article{9479, abstract = {Centromeres mediate chromosome segregation and are defined by the centromere-specific histone H3 variant (CenH3)/centromere protein A (CENP-A). Removal of CenH3 from centromeres is a general property of terminally differentiated cells, and the persistence of CenH3 increases the risk of diseases such as cancer. However, active mechanisms of centromere disassembly are unknown. Nondividing Arabidopsis pollen vegetative cells, which transport engulfed sperm by extended tip growth, undergo loss of CenH3; centromeric heterochromatin decondensation; and bulk activation of silent rRNA genes, accompanied by their translocation into the nucleolus. Here, we show that these processes are blocked by mutations in the evolutionarily conserved AAA-ATPase molecular chaperone, CDC48A, homologous to yeast Cdc48 and human p97 proteins, both of which are implicated in ubiquitin/small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO)-targeted protein degradation. We demonstrate that CDC48A physically associates with its heterodimeric cofactor UFD1-NPL4, known to bind ubiquitin and SUMO, as well as with SUMO1-modified CenH3 and mutations in NPL4 phenocopy cdc48a mutations. In WT vegetative cell nuclei, genetically unlinked ribosomal DNA (rDNA) loci are uniquely clustered together within the nucleolus and all major rRNA gene variants, including those rDNA variants silenced in leaves, are transcribed. In cdc48a mutant vegetative cell nuclei, however, these rDNA loci frequently colocalized with condensed centromeric heterochromatin at the external periphery of the nucleolus. Our results indicate that the CDC48ANPL4 complex actively removes sumoylated CenH3 from centromeres and disrupts centromeric heterochromatin to release bulk rRNA genes into the nucleolus for ribosome production, which fuels single nucleus-driven pollen tube growth and is essential for plant reproduction.}, author = {Mérai, Zsuzsanna and Chumak, Nina and García-Aguilar, Marcelina and Hsieh, Tzung-Fu and Nishimura, Toshiro and Schoft, Vera K. and Bindics, János and Ślusarz, Lucyna and Arnoux, Stéphanie and Opravil, Susanne and Mechtler, Karl and Zilberman, Daniel and Fischer, Robert L. and Tamaru, Hisashi}, issn = {1091-6490}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, number = {45}, pages = {16166--16171}, publisher = {National Academy of Sciences}, title = {{The AAA-ATPase molecular chaperone Cdc48/p97 disassembles sumoylated centromeres, decondenses heterochromatin, and activates ribosomal RNA genes}}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.1418564111}, volume = {111}, year = {2014}, } @article{9519, abstract = {Transposons are selfish genetic sequences that can increase their copy number and inflict substantial damage on their hosts. To combat these genomic parasites, plants have evolved multiple pathways to identify and silence transposons by methylating their DNA. Plants have also evolved mechanisms to limit the collateral damage from the antitransposon machinery. In this review, we examine recent developments that have elucidated many of the molecular workings of these pathways. We also highlight the evidence that the methylation and demethylation pathways interact, indicating that plants have a highly sophisticated, integrated system of transposon defense that has an important role in the regulation of gene expression.}, author = {Kim, M. Yvonne and Zilberman, Daniel}, issn = {1878-4372}, journal = {Trends in Plant Science}, number = {5}, pages = {320--326}, publisher = {Elsevier}, title = {{DNA methylation as a system of plant genomic immunity}}, doi = {10.1016/j.tplants.2014.01.014}, volume = {19}, year = {2014}, } @misc{9722, author = {Lovrics, Anna and Gao, Yu and Juhász, Bianka and Bock, István and Byrne, Helen M. and Dinnyés, András and Kovács, Krisztián}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, title = {{Transition probability between TF expression states when Dbx2 inhibits Nkx2.2}}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0111430.s006}, year = {2014}, } @misc{9739, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Pavlogiannis, Andreas and Adlam, Ben and Novak, Martin}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, title = {{Detailed proofs for “The time scale of evolutionary innovation”}}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003818.s001}, year = {2014}, } @misc{9740, abstract = {The fitness effects of symbionts on their hosts can be context-dependent, with usually benign symbionts causing detrimental effects when their hosts are stressed, or typically parasitic symbionts providing protection towards their hosts (e.g. against pathogen infection). Here, we studied the novel association between the invasive garden ant Lasius neglectus and its fungal ectosymbiont Laboulbenia formicarum for potential costs and benefits. We tested ants with different Laboulbenia levels for their survival and immunity under resource limitation and exposure to the obligate killing entomopathogen Metarhizium brunneum. While survival of L. neglectus workers under starvation was significantly decreased with increasing Laboulbenia levels, host survival under Metarhizium exposure increased with higher levels of the ectosymbiont, suggesting a symbiont-mediated anti-pathogen protection, which seems to be driven mechanistically by both improved sanitary behaviours and an upregulated immune system. Ants with high Laboulbenia levels showed significantly longer self-grooming and elevated expression of immune genes relevant for wound repair and antifungal responses (β-1,3-glucan binding protein, Prophenoloxidase), compared with ants carrying low Laboulbenia levels. This suggests that the ectosymbiont Laboulbenia formicarum weakens its ant host by either direct resource exploitation or the costs of an upregulated behavioural and immunological response, which, however, provides a prophylactic protection upon later exposure to pathogens.}, author = {Konrad, Matthias and Grasse, Anna V and Tragust, Simon and Cremer, Sylvia}, publisher = {Dryad}, title = {{Data from: Anti-pathogen protection versus survival costs mediated by an ectosymbiont in an ant host}}, doi = {10.5061/dryad.vm0vc}, year = {2014}, } @misc{9747, abstract = {Understanding the effects of sex and migration on adaptation to novel environments remains a key problem in evolutionary biology. Using a single-cell alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, we investigated how sex and migration affected rates of evolutionary rescue in a sink environment, and subsequent changes in fitness following evolutionary rescue. We show that sex and migration affect both the rate of evolutionary rescue and subsequent adaptation. However, their combined effects change as the populations adapt to a sink habitat. Both sex and migration independently increased rates of evolutionary rescue, but the effect of sex on subsequent fitness improvements, following initial rescue, changed with migration, as sex was beneficial in the absence of migration but constraining adaptation when combined with migration. These results suggest that sex and migration are beneficial during the initial stages of adaptation, but can become detrimental as the population adapts to its environment.}, author = {Lagator, Mato and Morgan, Andrew and Neve, Paul and Colegrave, Nick}, publisher = {Dryad}, title = {{Data from: Role of sex and migration in adaptation to sink environments}}, doi = {10.5061/dryad.s42n1}, year = {2014}, } @misc{9752, abstract = {Redundancies and correlations in the responses of sensory neurons may seem to waste neural resources, but they can also carry cues about structured stimuli and may help the brain to correct for response errors. To investigate the effect of stimulus structure on redundancy in retina, we measured simultaneous responses from populations of retinal ganglion cells presented with natural and artificial stimuli that varied greatly in correlation structure; these stimuli and recordings are publicly available online. Responding to spatio-temporally structured stimuli such as natural movies, pairs of ganglion cells were modestly more correlated than in response to white noise checkerboards, but they were much less correlated than predicted by a non-adapting functional model of retinal response. Meanwhile, responding to stimuli with purely spatial correlations, pairs of ganglion cells showed increased correlations consistent with a static, non-adapting receptive field and nonlinearity. We found that in response to spatio-temporally correlated stimuli, ganglion cells had faster temporal kernels and tended to have stronger surrounds. These properties of individual cells, along with gain changes that opposed changes in effective contrast at the ganglion cell input, largely explained the pattern of pairwise correlations across stimuli where receptive field measurements were possible.}, author = {Simmons, Kristina and Prentice, Jason and Tkačik, Gašper and Homann, Jan and Yee, Heather and Palmer, Stephanie and Nelson, Philip and Balasubramanian, Vijay}, publisher = {Dryad}, title = {{Data from: Transformation of stimulus correlations by the retina}}, doi = {10.5061/dryad.246qg}, year = {2014}, } @book{6853, abstract = {This monograph presents a short course in computational geometry and topology. In the first part the book covers Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations, then it presents the theory of alpha complexes which play a crucial role in biology. The central part of the book is the homology theory and their computation, including the theory of persistence which is indispensable for applications, e.g. shape reconstruction. The target audience comprises researchers and practitioners in mathematics, biology, neuroscience and computer science, but the book may also be beneficial to graduate students of these fields.}, author = {Edelsbrunner, Herbert}, isbn = {9-783-3190-5956-3}, issn = {2191-5318}, pages = {IX, 110}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, title = {{A Short Course in Computational Geometry and Topology}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-05957-0}, year = {2014}, } @techreport{7038, author = {Huszár, Kristóf and Rolinek, Michal}, pages = {5}, publisher = {IST Austria}, title = {{Playful Math - An introduction to mathematical games}}, year = {2014}, } @misc{9888, abstract = {Detailed description of the experimental prodedures, data analyses and additional statistical analyses of the results.}, author = {Wolf, Stephan and Mcmahon, Dino and Lim, Ka and Pull, Christopher and Clark, Suzanne and Paxton, Robert and Osborne, Juliet}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, title = {{Supporting information}}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0103989.s003}, year = {2014}, } @article{9931, abstract = {Gene duplication is important in evolution, because it provides new raw material for evolutionary adaptations. Several existing hypotheses about the causes of duplicate retention and diversification differ in their emphasis on gene dosage, subfunctionalization, and neofunctionalization. Little experimental data exist on the relative importance of gene expression changes and changes in coding regions for the evolution of duplicate genes. Furthermore, we do not know how strongly the environment could affect this importance. To address these questions, we performed evolution experiments with the TEM-1 beta lactamase gene in Escherichia coli to study the initial stages of duplicate gene evolution in the laboratory. We mimicked tandem duplication by inserting two copies of the TEM-1 gene on the same plasmid. We then subjected these copies to repeated cycles of mutagenesis and selection in various environments that contained antibiotics in different combinations and concentrations. Our experiments showed that gene dosage is the most important factor in the initial stages of duplicate gene evolution, and overshadows the importance of point mutations in the coding region.}, author = {Dhar, Riddhiman and Bergmiller, Tobias and Wagner, Andreas}, issn = {1558-5646}, journal = {Evolution}, number = {6}, pages = {1775--1791}, publisher = {Wiley}, title = {{Increased gene dosage plays a predominant role in the initial stages of evolution of duplicate TEM-1 beta lactamase genes}}, doi = {10.1111/evo.12373}, volume = {68}, year = {2014}, } @misc{9932, abstract = {Gene duplication is important in evolution, because it provides new raw material for evolutionary adaptations. Several existing hypotheses about the causes of duplicate retention and diversification differ in their emphasis on gene dosage, sub-functionalization, and neo-functionalization. Little experimental data exists on the relative importance of gene expression changes and changes in coding regions for the evolution of duplicate genes. Furthermore, we do not know how strongly the environment could affect this importance. To address these questions, we performed evolution experiments with the TEM-1 beta lactamase gene in E. coli to study the initial stages of duplicate gene evolution in the laboratory. We mimicked tandem duplication by inserting two copies of the TEM-1 gene on the same plasmid. We then subjected these copies to repeated cycles of mutagenesis and selection in various environments that contained antibiotics in different combinations and concentrations. Our experiments showed that gene dosage is the most important factor in the initial stages of duplicate gene evolution, and overshadows the importance of point mutations in the coding region.}, author = {Dhar, Riddhiman and Bergmiller, Tobias and Wagner, Andreas}, publisher = {Dryad}, title = {{Data from: Increased gene dosage plays a predominant role in the initial stages of evolution of duplicate TEM-1 beta lactamase genes}}, doi = {10.5061/dryad.jc402}, year = {2014}, } @article{3263, abstract = {Adaptation in the retina is thought to optimize the encoding of natural light signals into sequences of spikes sent to the brain. While adaptive changes in retinal processing to the variations of the mean luminance level and second-order stimulus statistics have been documented before, no such measurements have been performed when higher-order moments of the light distribution change. We therefore measured the ganglion cell responses in the tiger salamander retina to controlled changes in the second (contrast), third (skew) and fourth (kurtosis) moments of the light intensity distribution of spatially uniform temporally independent stimuli. The skew and kurtosis of the stimuli were chosen to cover the range observed in natural scenes. We quantified adaptation in ganglion cells by studying linear-nonlinear models that capture well the retinal encoding properties across all stimuli. We found that the encoding properties of retinal ganglion cells change only marginally when higher-order statistics change, compared to the changes observed in response to the variation in contrast. By analyzing optimal coding in LN-type models, we showed that neurons can maintain a high information rate without large dynamic adaptation to changes in skew or kurtosis. This is because, for uncorrelated stimuli, spatio-temporal summation within the receptive field averages away non-gaussian aspects of the light intensity distribution.}, author = {Tkacik, Gasper and Ghosh, Anandamohan and Schneidman, Elad and Segev, Ronen}, journal = {PLoS One}, number = {1}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, title = {{Adaptation to changes in higher-order stimulus statistics in the salamander retina}}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0085841}, volume = {9}, year = {2014}, } @article{1733, abstract = {The classical (boolean) notion of refinement for behavioral interfaces of system components is the alternating refinement preorder. In this paper, we define a distance for interfaces, called interface simulation distance. It makes the alternating refinement preorder quantitative by, intuitively, tolerating errors (while counting them) in the alternating simulation game. We show that the interface simulation distance satisfies the triangle inequality, that the distance between two interfaces does not increase under parallel composition with a third interface, that the distance between two interfaces can be bounded from above and below by distances between abstractions of the two interfaces, and how to synthesize an interface from incompatible requirements. We illustrate the framework, and the properties of the distances under composition of interfaces, with two case studies.}, author = {Cerny, Pavol and Chmelik, Martin and Henzinger, Thomas A and Radhakrishna, Arjun}, journal = {Theoretical Computer Science}, number = {3}, pages = {348 -- 363}, publisher = {Elsevier}, title = {{Interface simulation distances}}, doi = {10.1016/j.tcs.2014.08.019}, volume = {560}, year = {2014}, } @inbook{1806, abstract = {The generation of asymmetry, at both cellular and tissue level, is one of the most essential capabilities of all eukaryotic organisms. It mediates basically all multicellular development ranging from embryogenesis and de novo organ formation till responses to various environmental stimuli. In plants, the awe-inspiring number of such processes is regulated by phytohormone auxin and its directional, cell-to-cell transport. The mediators of this transport, PIN auxin transporters, are asymmetrically localized at the plasma membrane, and this polar localization determines the directionality of intercellular auxin flow. Thus, auxin transport contributes crucially to the generation of local auxin gradients or maxima, which instruct given cell to change its developmental program. Here, we introduce and discuss the molecular components and cellular mechanisms regulating the generation and maintenance of cellular PIN polarity, as the general hallmarks of cell polarity in plants.}, author = {Baster, Pawel and Friml, Jiří}, booktitle = {Auxin and Its Role in Plant Development}, editor = {Zažímalová, Eva and Petrášek, Jan and Benková, Eva}, pages = {143 -- 170}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Auxin on the road navigated by cellular PIN polarity}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-7091-1526-8_8}, year = {2014}, }