Anti-PGR monoclonal antibody, clone QS602

The bulbaceous herb Ledebouria revoluta (family Asparagaceae) is an important cardioprotective plant. Two different pathways of in vitro direct regeneration system consisting of somatic embryogenesis and shoot organogenesis have been established for high-frequency micropropagation. A rectangular piece (6 x 10 mm(2)) of leaf lamina was used as an explant to study the morphogenetic regulation by exogenously supplied auxins, cytokinins, and polyamine within controlled in vitro environment. The explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 3.0 % sucrose and various concentrations and combinations of plant growth regulators (PGRs), as per experimental needs. Both p-naphthoxyacetic acid and a-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) auxins individually induce somatic embryogenesis. Combined application of auxins and cytokinins further improves the embryonic response. The synergistic effect of NAA (2.0 mg L-1) kinetin (1.0 mg L-1)and spermidine (SDN, 217.88 mg L-1) provided the best result with 96.7 +/- 1.8 % response and highest 63.4 + 0.8 embryos per explant. The highest (94.5 +/- 2.5 %) conversion of embryos to complete plantlets was noted in presence of 1.0 mg L-1 kinetin. The morphogenic path altered from embryogenic to organogenic when auxin was totally withdrawn, and a higher concentration of cytokinin was applied. The synergism between 6-benzylaminopurine (3.0 mg L-1) and SDN (217.88 mg L-1) proved the best PGR combination for the direct shoot (or bulblet) organogenesis with maximum 96.6 +/- 2.2 % response and highest 48.6 +/- 0.5 bulblets per explant. Total withdrawal of auxin was essential for direct bulblet organogenesis because the presence of any auxin always shifts the morphogenic path from organogenic to embryogenic. Histological study confirms the bipolar structure of somatic embryo and unipolar bulblets. Highest 12.7 +/- 0.54 roots per bulblet were induced on V strength MS medium containing 2.0 mg L-1 indole-3-butyric acid. Finally, the plantlets were acclimatized with 96.7 % survival rate and all of the survived plants produced bulbs and 92.5 % of them flowered normally in field conditions. This in vitro system permits a high-frequency regeneration through embryogenic and organogenic paths, which can be used for large-scale commercial micropropagation for round-the-year supply of this important cardioprotective medicinal plant.

Joint lensing and dynamical mass profile determinations of galaxy clusters are an excellent tool to constrain modification of gravity at cosmological scales. However, search for tiny departures from General Relativity (GR) calls for an accurate control of the systematics affecting the method. In this analysis we concentrate on the systematics in the reconstruction of mass profiles from the dynamics of cluster member galaxies, while assuming that lensing provides unbiased mass profile reconstructions. In particular, in the case study of linear f (R) gravity, we aim at verifying whether in realistic simulations of cluster formation a spurious detection of departure from GR can be detected due to violation of the main assumptions (e.g. dynamical equilibrium and spherical symmetry) on which the method is based. We aim at identifying and calibrating the impact of those systematics by analyzing a set of Dark Matter halos taken from ACDM N-body cosmological simulations performed with the GADGET-3 code. We evaluate how the constraints on the additional degree of freedom mf(R) suffer the lack of dynamical relaxation and departures from spherical symmetry. If no selection criteria are applied, similar to 60% of clusters in a ACDM Universe (where GR is assumed) produce a spurious detection of modified gravity. We find that the probability of finding cluster in agreement with GR predictions P-GR mainly depends on the properties of the halo's projected phase-space and on shape orientation of the cluster along the line-of-sight projection. We further define two observational criteria which correlate with PGR and which can be used to select, among a generic population of galaxy clusters in the local Universe, those objects that are more suitable for the application of the proposed method. In particular, we find that according to these criteria the percentage of spurious detection can be lowered down to similar to 20% in the best case. We discuss how P-GR changes when a simplified treatment of the chameleon screening mechanism is considered. Our results are relevant in view of the availability of precise measurements of lensing mass profiles from imaging data and dynamics mass profiles from spectroscopic data that will be available with the next generation surveys.