Anti-REL Monoclonal antibody, clone 2SFMBI6 [PE]

Turkish red pine (Pinus brutia Ten.), is the most important tree species for afforestation in the Mediterranean basin due to its drought tolerance and fast growth rate. Cold damage to trees caused by harsh winter conditions is common on many sites in Turkey. Adaptation to climate change has been investigated primarily through the movement of species from warmer and drier climates, such as the Mediterranean P. brutia, to higher latitudes and cooler sites in central-north Turkey. In order to better guide species and provenances movement to new (and often harsh) environments for afforestation, the limits of tolerance to cold and drought should be better known. Thus, we designed an experiment to quantify the cold hardiness of nine P. brutia provenances originating from two different provenance trials in Turkey (Ankara, cold inner site; Antalya, warm Mediterranean site). Branches sampled at the end of January were exposed to cold temperatures between - 5 and - 40 degrees C. Visual damage observation, relative electric leakage and chlorophyll fluorometry (CF) screening methods were used to assess variation in cold hardiness among populations. Overall, P. brutia can tolerate winter temperatures up to - 16 degrees C. Even though there were significant differences on cold hardiness among populations, the operational application is limited due to the reduced magnitude of those differences. Measuring CF was the fastest and most easily replicated method to estimate cold hardiness and was as reliable as REL. We recommend that P. brutia should not be planted in cold areas where minimum annual temperatures are under - 16 degrees C. We also conclude that even though phenotypic plasticity exists for cold hardiness among the tested populations of P. brutia, the observed differences resulted from acclimation to the conditions of the provenance trial sites rather than from adaptation through natural selection.

Background: Scarce research has focused on Visual Memory (VM) deficits as a possible neurocognitive endophenotype of bipolar disorder (BD). The main aim of this longitudinal, family study with healthy controls was to explore whether VM dysfunction represents a neurocognitive endophenotype of BD. Methods: Assessment of VM by Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCF) was carried out on a sample of 317 subjects, including 140 patients with BD, 60 unaffected first-degree relatives (BD-Rel), and 117 geneticallyunrelated healthy controls (HC), on three occasions over a 5-year period (T1, T2, and T3). BD-Rel group scores were analyzed only at T1 and T2. Results: Performance of BD patients was significantly worse than the HC group (p < 0.01). Performance of BDRel was also significantly different from HC scores at T1 (p < 0.01) and T2 (p = 0.05), and showed an intermediate profile between the BD and HC groups. Only among BD patients, there were significant differences according to sex, with females performing worse than males (p = 0.03). Regarding other variables, education represented significant differences only in average scores of BD-Rel group (p = 0.01). Limitations: Important attrition in BD-Rel group over time was detected, which precluded analysis at T3. Conclusions: BD patients show significant deficits in VM that remain stable over time, even after controlling sociodemographic and clinical variables. Unaffected relatives also show stable deficits in VM. Accordingly, the deficit in VM could be considered a potential endophenotype of BD, which in turn may be useful as a predictor of the evolution of the disease. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings.