Researchers are pushing non-invasive brain imaging to new limits. CENTRE FOR ADVANCED IMAGING, UNIV. QUEENSLAND Cerebral blood vessels glow orange in this picture, generated by a 7-tesla magnetic resonance imaging scanner at The University of Queensland in Australia.

No abstract

The genomics era brought unprecedented opportunities for genetic analysis of host resistance, but it came with the challenge that accurate and reproducible phenotypes are needed so that genomic results appropriately reflect biology. Phenotyping host resistance by natural infection in the field can produce variable results due to the uncontrolled environment, uneven distribution and genetics of the pathogen, and developmentally regulated resistance among other factors. To address these challenges, we developed highly controlled, standardized methodologies for phenotyping powdery mildew resistance in the context of a phenotyping center, receiving samples of up to 140 grapevine progeny per F family. We applied these methodologies to F families segregating for REN1- or REN2-mediated resistance and validated that some but not all bioassays identified the REN1 or REN2 locus. A point-intercept method (hyphal transects) to quantify colony density objectively at 8 or 9 days postinoculation proved to be the phenotypic response most reproducibly predicted by these resistance loci. Quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping with genotyping-by-sequencing maps defined the REN1 and REN2 loci at relatively high resolution. In the reference PN40024 genome under each QTL, nucleotide-binding site-leucine-rich repeat candidate resistance genes were identified-one gene for REN1 and two genes for REN2. The methods described here for centralized resistance phenotyping and high-resolution genetic mapping can inform strategies for breeding resistance to powdery mildews and other pathogens on diverse, highly heterozygous hosts.

A ll drugs pose some risk to everyone who takes them. But women face more danger than men and have a lower likelihood that a therapy will work. Between 2004 and 2013, for instance, women in the United States suffered more than 2 million drugrelated adverse events, compared with just 1.3 million for men, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A special report from the US General Accounting Office found that, of the ten drugs removed from the US market between 1997 and 2000, eight were withdrawn because of side effects that occurred only, or mainly, in women. Four of them were drugs that are prescribed more to women than men, but they also included the antihistamine Seldane and the anti-heartburn drug Propulsid. "They were withdrawn from the market because they caused heart disturbances, many of them fatal, " and mostly in women, says Cara Tannenbaum, scientific director of the Institute of Gender and Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), who is based in Montreal. One of the main reasons women fare worse is that they are underrepresented in studies of disease mechanisms and treatment.