The Leicestershire local guideline adaptation and implementation programme: a model for clinical effectiveness?
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Genetic differentiation among nine populations of the endemic lizard Lacerta dugesii Milne-Edwards 1829 (Lacertidae) from four groups of islands constituting the Archipelago of Madeira, was investigated by protein electrophoresis at 23 enzyme loci. Among twenty polymorphic loci, the total genetic diversity was due primarily to intra-population variation. The allele and genotypic frequencies among populations showed some heterogeneity, allowing the species to present a structuring pattern compatible with their geographical clustering. Some evidence suggests that selection acting on some loci in different ecological conditions may be responsible for the clustering of the populations studied. There was no apparent isolation effect expected under an "island" model of population divergence, and no correlation was found between genetic and geographic distances among populations. Morphological variation of the proposed three L. dugesii subspecies is not congruent with the allozyme analysis. This most probably suggests a rapid colonization of the islands followed by a strong effect of selection operating over the morphological characters used to define the subspecies.
PURPOSE: Studies investigating vascular adaptations in non-exercised areas during whole body exercise training show conflicting results. Individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) provide a unique model to examine vascular adaptations in active tissue vs adjacent inactive areas. The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of 4 wk of voluntary arm and electrically stimulated leg exercise (8-12 sessions) on vascular adaptations in active areas (thigh and arms) and inactive areas (calf). METHODS: Vascular characteristics were measured by plethysmography (blood flow and vascular resistance) and echo Doppler (diameter and flow-mediated dilation (FMD) after 13 min of ischemia). RESULTS: After training, increased thigh baseline and peak blood flow, decreased thigh baseline vascular resistance, and increased diameter of the common femoral artery were found in the stimulated thigh tissue. Forearm and calf arterial parameters and FMD, in both superficial femoral artery and brachial artery, did not change. The lack of activity in the calf and concomitant insufficient elevation of blood flow during training, and the high initial training status of the arms are suggested to explain the absence of vascular adaptations in these areas. CONCLUSION: The presence of vascular adaptations after only 4 wk of FES cycling indicates that adaptations occur in an early phase. In addition, 4 wk of whole body exercise training in SCI individuals leads to vascular adaptations in the exercised tissues (thigh) but not in nonstimulated passive tissue (calf).
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Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
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The oxygen transporting capacity and the metabolic capacity of the vastus lateralis muscle were followed in parallel in 9 sedentary, overweighted men during a low intensity training program. Measurements were made at 0, 3, 6, 9, 12 and 30 weeks. Maximal oxygen uptake increased in an approximately linear fashion during the first 12 weeks (11%), but decreased a little (3%) during the following 18 weeks. Mean body weight decreased 8% (7.4 kg) during the training. The distribution of muscle fibre types, including the subgroups of type II fibres, did not change. Muscle enzyme activities remained essentially unchanged during the training. It was concluded that "central" och "local" adaptation need not occur in parallel, and that the leg oxygen utilization capacity probably does not limit the whole body's maximal oxygen uptake.
A series of experiments was performed in which subjects were trained to interpret auditory localization cues arising from locations different from their normal spatial positions. The exact pattern of mean response to these alterations (as a function of time) was examined in order to begin to develop a quantitative model of adaptation. Mean responses were roughly proportional to the normal position associated with the localization cues presented. As subjects adapted, the best-fit slope (relating mean response and normal position) changed roughly exponentially with time. The exponential rate and adaptation asymptote were found for each subject in each experiment, as well as the rate and asymptote of readaptation to normal cues. The rate of adaptation does not show any statistical dependence on experimental conditions; however, the asymptote of the best-fit slope varied with the strength of the transformation used in each experiment. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that subjects cannot adapt to a nonlinear transformation of auditory localization cues, but instead adapt to a linear approximation of the transformation. Over time, performance changes exponentially towards the best-fit linear approximation for the transformation used in a particular experiment, and the rate of this adaptation does not depend upon the transformation employed.
A classical view of speciation is that reproductive isolation arises as a by-product of genetic divergence. Here, individual-based simulations are used to evaluate whether the mechanisms implied by this view may result in rapid speciation if the only source of genetic divergence are mutation and random genetic drift. Distinctive features of the simulations are the consideration of the complete process of speciation (from initiation until completion), and of a large number of loci, which was only one order of magnitude smaller than that of bacteria. It is demonstrated that rapid speciation on the time-scale of hundreds of generations is plausible without the need for extreme founder events, complete geographic isolation, the existence of distinct adaptive peaks or selection for local adaptation. The plausibility of speciation is enhanced by population subdivision. Simultaneous emergence of more than two new species from a subdivided population is highly probable. Numerical examples relevant to the theory of centrifugal speciation and to the conjectures about the fate of 'ring species' and 'sexual continuums' are presented.
The initiation of growth cessation and dormancy represents a critical ecological and evolutionary trade-off between survival and growth in most forest trees. The most important environmental cue regulating the initiation of dormancy is a shortening of the photoperiod and phytochrome genes have been implicated in short-day-induced bud set and growth cessation in Populus. We characterized patterns of DNA sequence variation at the putative candidate gene phyB2 in 4 populations of European aspen (Populus tremula) and scored single-nucleotide polymorphisms in an additional 12 populations collected along a latitudinal gradient in Sweden. We also measured bud set from a subset of these trees in a growth chamber experiment. Buds set showed significant clinal variation with latitude, explaining approximately 90% of the population variation in bud set. A sliding-window scan of phyB2 identified six putative regions with enhanced population differentiation and four SNPs showed significant clinal variation. The clinal variation at individual SNPs is suggestive of an adaptive response in phyB2 to local photoperiodic conditions. Three of four SNPs showing clinal variation were located in regions with excessive genetic differentiation, demonstrating that searching for regions of high genetic differentiation can be useful for identifying sites putatively involved in local adaptation.
Accelerated global climate change and increased species introduction across international scales have raised concerns about the potential for trees to experience maladaptation or lagging adaptation in response to these environmental shifts. However, our knowledge regarding the relationship between the genomic metrics used to predict maladaptation and actual fitness proxies in trees remains limited. Here, we present a population genomic analysis of 295 families from 28 provenances of Eucalyptus pellita, a widely cultivated fast-growing tree species, and conducted two common garden experiments. Genomic susceptibility encompassing individual heterozygosity (H), genomic inbreeding (FROH), and genomic load (inferred from deleterious mutations) exhibited distinct geographic patterns, shedding light on the origin and evolutionary history of E. pellita. The genetic basis of local adaptation was elucidated through genotype-environment associations and genome-wide association studies, including 198 loci associated with climate and 2388 loci regulating different traits. Furthermore, Australian provenances have higher genomic vulnerability under prospective climate alterations than Papua New Guinea and Indonesia provenances. By integrating phenotypic data across two common gardens, the relationship between leaf functional traits and predicted metrics of maladaptation was closer than growth attributes. Notably, pronounced natural selection signals linked to leaf morphogenesis have been identified by comparing two lineages spanning the oceans. This study underscores the immense potential of leveraging genomic susceptibility and genomic vulnerability to decipher the local (mal)adaptation of forest trees.
A robust locally adaptive learning algorithm is developed via two enhancements of the Resilient Propagation (RPROP) method. Remaining drawbacks of the gradient-based approach are addressed by hybridization with gradient-independent Local Search. Finally, a global optimization method based on recursion of the hybrid is constructed, making use of tabu neighborhoods to accelerate the search for minima through diversification. Enhanced RPROP is shown to be faster and more accurate than the standard RPROP in solving classification tasks based on natural data sets taken from the UCI repository of machine learning databases. Furthermore, the use of Local Search is shown to improve Enhanced RPROP by solving the same classification tasks as part of the global optimization method.
Despite widespread biodiversity loss, our understanding of how species and populations will respond to accelerated climate change remains limited. In this study, we integrate population genomics, experimental evolution, and environmental modeling to elucidate the evolutionary responses to climate change in Populus lasiocarpa, a key alpine forest tree species primarily distributed in the mountainous regions of a global biodiversity hotspot. Over historical timescales, our findings demonstrate that demographic dynamics, divergent selection, and long-term balancing selection have shaped and maintained genetic variation within and between populations. In examining genomic signatures of contemporary climate adaptation, we found that haplotype blocks, potentially caused by inversion polymorphisms that suppress recombination, are linked to enriched combinations of locally adaptive environmental variations. We further assessed the relative contributions of environmentally induced plastic responses, constitutive expression divergence between genetic clusters, and their interactions in driving gene expression variation and divergence. Notably, we observed a strong correlation between sequence divergence and constitutive differential expression among genetic clusters. Finally, by incorporating genetic adaptation, migration, and genetic load into our predictions of population-level climate change risks, we identified western populations-primarily distributed in the Hengduan Mountains, a region known for its environmental heterogeneity and significant biodiversity-as the most vulnerable to climate change. These populations should be prioritized for conservation and management. Overall, our study advances the understanding of the relative roles of long-term natural selection, local environmental adaptation, and immediate plastic expression changes in shaping the responses of natural populations of keystone species to climate change.
Locally adaptive image binarization with a sliding-window threshold can be an effective tool for various image processing tasks. We have used the method for the detection of bone ridges in radiotherapy portal images. However, a straight-forward implementation of sliding-window processing is too time consuming for routine use. Therefore, we have developed a new thresholding criterion suitable for incremental update within the sliding window, and we show that our algorithm gives better results on difficult portal images than various publicly available adaptive thresholding routines. For small windows, the routine is also faster than an adaptive implementation of the Otsu algorithm that uses interpolation between fixed tiles, and the resulting images are equally good.
Darwin viewed species range limits as chiefly determined by an interplay between the abiotic environment and interspecific interactions. Haldane argued that species' ranges could be set intraspecifically when gene flow from a species' populous center overwhelms local adaptation at the periphery. Recently, Kirkpatrick and Barton have modeled Haldane's process with a quantitative genetic model that combines density-dependent local population growth with dispersal and gene flow across a linear environmental gradient in optimum phenotype. To address Darwin's ideas, we have extended the Kirkpatrick and Barton model to include interspecific competition and the frequency-dependent selection that it generates, as well as stabilizing selection on a quantitative character. Our model includes local population growth, movements over space, natural selection, and gene flow. It simultaneously addresses the evolution of character displacement and species borders. It reproduces the Kirkpatrick and Barton single-species result that limited ranges can be produced with sufficiently steep environmental gradients and strong dispersal. Further, in the absence of environmental gradients or barriers to dispersal, interspecific competition will not limit species ranges at evolutionary equilibrium. However, interspecific competition can interact with environmental gradients and gene flow to generate limited ranges with much less extreme gradient and dispersal parameters than in the single-species case. Species display character displacement in sympatry, yet the reduction in competition that results from this displacement does not necessarily allow the two species to become sympatric everywhere. When species meet, competition reduces population densities in the region of overlap, which, in turn, intensifies the asymmetry in gene flow from center to margin. This reduces the ability of each species to adapt to local physical conditions at their range limits. If environmental gradients are monotonic but not linear, the transition zone between species at coevolutionary equilibrium occurs where the environmental gradient is steepest. If productivity gradients are also introduced into the model, then patterns similar to Rapoport's rule emerge. Interacting species respond to climate change, as it affects the optimal phenotype over space, by a combination of range shifts and local evolution in mean phenotype, while solitary species respond solely by range shifts. Finally, we compare empirical estimates for intrinsic growth rates and diffusion coefficients for several species to those needed by the single-species model to produce a stable limited range. These empirical values are generally insufficient to produce limited ranges in the model suggesting a role for interspecific interactions.