| 1. |
- Corrales Duque, Carolina
(författare)
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Population Genetic Structure of Black Grouse (Tetrao tetrix) : From a Large to a Fine Scale Perspective
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) is a bird species with a lek mating system found in the Palearctic boreal taiga. It is assumed that it has a continuous distribution along Scandinavia and Siberia, whereas in Central Europe it has declined during the last decades. The primary objective of this thesis was to obtain a deeper understanding of the history, systematic classification and the genetic structure of black grouse on different geographical scales using microsatellites and control region mtDNA sequences (CR). I determined how much the mating system, habitat fragmentation and historical population processes have influenced the partitioning of genetic diversity in this species. Phylogeographical results are consistent with a demographic population expansion, and the patterns of postglacial dispersal suggest that a glacial refugium was located somewhere in central Asia, and from there black grouse spread out to Europe following the retreat of glacial ice sheets. I suggest that the two European black grouse subspecies, T. t. Tetrix and T. t. britannicus correspond to only one subspecies: T. t. tetrix, and that this lineage has diverged from T.t. viridanus, a subspecies found in Kazakhstan. The British population is significantly divergent from the remaining Eurasian samples for microsatellites but it is not for mtDNA. Therefore, they should regard as a separate Management Unit and not as a subspecies. Furthermore, British black grouse occur in three independent genetic units, corresponding to Wales, northern England/southern Scotland and northern Scotland. There was also genetic structure within Sweden. Habitat fragmentation is the main cause of population genetic structure in southern Swedish black grouse. In contrast, low levels of genetic differentiation and high connectivity were found in northern Sweden due to female-biased dispersal. On a finer geographical scale, I found genetic differences between leks due to a mixture of related and unrelated individuals within leks. However, mean relatedness values hardly differed from zero. Some leks were similar to one another and I interpret this as a result of variation in local reproductive success and philopatry. These factors would cause genetic structuring but this by itself would not reveal that kin selection is operating within black grouse leks.
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| 2. |
- Dash-Wagh, Suvarna, et al.
(författare)
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Intracellular Delivery of Short Interfering RNA in Rat Organ of Corti Using a Cell-penetrating Peptide PepFect6
- 2012
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Ingår i: Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids. - : Elsevier BV. - 2162-2531. ; 1:e61
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- RNA interference (RNAi) using short interfering RNA (siRNA) is an attractive therapeutic approach for treatment of dominant-negative mutations. Some rare missense dominant-negative mutations lead to congenital-hearing impairments. A variety of viral vectors have been tested with variable efficacy for modulating gene expression in inner ear. However, there is concern regarding their safety for clinical use. Here, we report a novel cell-penetrating peptide (CPP)-based nonviral approach for delivering siRNA into inner ear tissue using organotypic cultures as model system. PepFect6 (PF6), a variant of stearyl-TP10, was specially designed for improved delivery of siRNA by facilitating endosomal release. We show that PF6 was internalized by all cells without inducing cytotoxicity in cochlear cultures. PF6/siRNA nanoparticles lead to knockdown of target genes, a housekeeping gene and supporting cell-specific connexin 26. Interestingly, application of PF6/connexin 26 siRNA exhibited knockdown of both connexin 26 and 30 mRNA and their absence led to impaired intercellular communication as demonstrated by reduced transfer of calcein among the PF6/connexin 26-siRNA-treated cells. Thus, we conclude that PF6 is an efficient nonviral vector for delivery of siRNA, which can be applied as a tool for the development of siRNA-based therapeutic applications for hearing impairments.
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| 3. |
- Halvarsson, Peter, 1976-
(författare)
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On the Effects of Blood Parasites in Wild Birds
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Coccidian and haemoatozoan parasites are commonly occurring endo-parasites in wild birds and prevalence can vary among species and populations. In addition to prevalence studies, parasites are often used to investigate effects on life history traits. Findings from these studies are not unambiguous, as correlations with many life history traits are absent, although common findings include negative effects on survival and body condition. In this thesis, coccidian and blood parasite prevalence and their effect on survival were investigated using a PCR approach in eleven popu-lations of great snipes (Gallinago media) and in two populations of tree sparrows (Passer montanus). In great snipes and tree sparrows we investigated the parasites Plasmodium/Haemoproteus (P/H) and Leucocytozoon and in tree sparrows also Atoxoplasma.In Great snipes the overall adult prevalence was 29.9%. At the main study site, Gåvålia, Norway, a decrease in P/H prevalence with age was found and infected birds had a lower mean age. Two not mutually exclusive alternative explanations are that infected young birds may have a higher mortality and/or that individual birds can purge the infection. There was a variation in prevalence among the sample years in Gåvålia and a difference among populations. Finding fluctuations among year demonstrates the need of long term data to study parasite prevalence variation. In tree sparrows the Haematozoan prevalence was 5.9% in adults and 56.5% in Atoxoplasma. By using recapture models to estimate apparent survival rates with the software MARK 4.2, it was suggested that parasite infections may have an impact on the apparent survival rate in one of the populations. Since condition and breeding performance appeared unaffected, it can be hypothesised that this pattern may indicate that chronic infections generally do not appear to impair birds, although subclinical infections may occasionally develop into disease with fatal outcome.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Li, Zhilun, et al.
(författare)
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Integrin-mediated cell attachment induces a PAK4-dependent feedback loop regulating cell adhesion through modified integrin alpha v beta 5 clustering and turnover
- 2010
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Ingår i: Molecular Biology of the Cell. - 1059-1524 .- 1939-4586. ; 21:19, s. 3317-3329
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cell-to-extracellular matrix adhesion is regulated by a multitude of pathways initiated distally to the core cell-matrix adhesion machinery, such as via growth factor signaling. In contrast to these extrinsically sourced pathways, we now identify a regulatory pathway that is intrinsic to the core adhesion machinery, providing an internal regulatory feedback loop to fine tune adhesion levels. This autoinhibitory negative feedback loop is initiated by cell adhesion to vitronectin, leading to PAK4 activation, which in turn limits total cell-vitronectin adhesion strength. Specifically, we show that PAK4 is activated by cell attachment to vitronectin as mediated by PAK4 binding partner integrin alpha v beta 5, and that active PAK4 induces accelerated integrin alpha v beta 5 turnover within adhesion complexes. Accelerated integrin turnover is associated with additional PAK4-mediated effects, including inhibited integrin alpha v beta 5 clustering, reduced integrin to F-actin connectivity and perturbed adhesion complex maturation. These specific outcomes are ultimately associated with reduced cell adhesion strength and increased cell motility. We thus demonstrate a novel mechanism deployed by cells to tune cell adhesion levels through the autoinhibitory regulation of integrin adhesion.
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| 6. |
- Michelsen, Jacob, 1985, et al.
(författare)
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The Rooms - Creating immersive experiences through projected augmented reality
- 2014
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Ingår i: Foundations of Digital Games 2014.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper, we describe The Rooms – a horror game that uses projected augmented reality to enable a new type of immersive gaming experience. Interviews and questionnaires from 20 players of the game showed that projected augmented reality games can support immersion and can avoid the problem of nausea that VR experiences can invoke. However, since players experienced different types of immersion the study suggests that a model that allows different and parallel types of immersion may provide more informative results when used in play tests. The Rooms also suggested that a new type of immersion, spatial immersion, might be a relevant addition to such models.
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| 7. |
- Moller, Anders Pape, et al.
(författare)
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Clutch-size variation in Western Palaearctic secondary hole-nesting passerine birds in relation to nest box design
- 2014
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Ingår i: Methods in Ecology and Evolution. - 2041-210X. ; 5:4, s. 353-362
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Secondary hole-nesting birds that do not construct nest holes themselves and hence regularly breed in nest boxes constitute important model systems for field studies in many biological disciplines with hundreds of scientists and amateurs involved. Those research groups are spread over wide geographic areas that experience considerable variation in environmental conditions, and researchers provide nest boxes of varying designs that may inadvertently introduce spatial and temporal variation in reproductive parameters. We quantified the relationship between mean clutch size and nest box size and material after controlling for a range of environmental variables in four of the most widely used model species in the Western Palaearctic: great tit Parus major, blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus, pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca and collared flycatcher F.albicollis from 365 populations and 79610 clutches. Nest floor area and nest box material varied non-randomly across latitudes and longitudes, showing that scientists did not adopt a random box design. Clutch size increased with nest floor area in great tits, but not in blue tits and flycatchers. Clutch size of blue tits was larger in wooden than in concrete nest boxes. These findings demonstrate that the size of nest boxes and material used to construct nest boxes can differentially affect clutch size in different species. The findings also suggest that the nest box design may affect not only focal species, but also indirectly other species through the effects of nest box design on productivity and therefore potentially population density and hence interspecific competition.
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| 8. |
- Moller, Anders P., et al.
(författare)
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Variation in clutch size in relation to nest size in birds
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ecology and Evolution. - : Wiley. - 2045-7758. ; 4:18, s. 3583-3595
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nests are structures built to support and protect eggs and/or offspring from predators, parasites, and adverse weather conditions. Nests are mainly constructed prior to egg laying, meaning that parent birds must make decisions about nest site choice and nest building behavior before the start of egg-laying. Parent birds should be selected to choose nest sites and to build optimally sized nests, yet our current understanding of clutch size-nest size relationships is limited to small-scale studies performed over short time periods. Here, we quantified the relationship between clutch size and nest size, using an exhaustive database of 116 slope estimates based on 17,472 nests of 21 species of hole and non-hole-nesting birds. There was a significant, positive relationship between clutch size and the base area of the nest box or the nest, and this relationship did not differ significantly between open nesting and hole-nesting species. The slope of the relationship showed significant intraspecific and interspecific heterogeneity among four species of secondary hole-nesting species, but also among all 116 slope estimates. The estimated relationship between clutch size and nest box base area in study sites with more than a single size of nest box was not significantly different from the relationship using studies with only a single size of nest box. The slope of the relationship between clutch size and nest base area in different species of birds was significantly negatively related to minimum base area, and less so to maximum base area in a given study. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that bird species have a general reaction norm reflecting the relationship between nest size and clutch size. Further, they suggest that scientists may influence the clutch size decisions of hole-nesting birds through the provisioning of nest boxes of varying sizes.
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| 9. |
- Perez Vico, Eugenia, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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Bredda synen på nyttiggörande!
- 2013
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Ingår i: Forskning. ; 3, s. 12-
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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