No abstract

No abstract

SUMMARYThe African fig fly, Zaprionus indianus Gupta, is a widely distributed polyphagous drosophilid fly of tropical origin. Its occurrence in Jordan was first reported on date palms from the Central Jordan Valley in June 2012. Studies on biological aspects of a fly population collected from Northern Jordan Valley were carried out under laboratory conditions at 25±1˚C, 75±10% RH, and 14 h photoperiod. Mashed banana fruits with dry active yeast of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used for the first time as a diet for larval and adult stages. The data obtained showed that the average mating period was 2.5 days, the preoviposition period 2.7 days, the oviposition period 42. 7 days, incubation period 24.5 h, hatching of eggs was 91.7%, duration of larval stage 7.4 days, pupal stage 6.8 days, adult male life span 42.2 days, adult female life span was 37.7 days. The larval stage had the highest mortality followed by the pupal stage and then the egg stage. The life cycle lasted 13.9 to 23.2 days with an average of 17.9 days. Emerged adult flies showed a sex ratio of 1.0. The obtained results provided basic data that may help in the management of this pest in Jordan.

Reactive sulfur species, or persulfides and polysulfides, such as cysteine hydropersulfide and glutathione persulfide, are endogenously produced in abundance in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, including mammals. Various forms of reactive persulfides occur in both low-molecular-weight and protein-bound thiols. The chemical properties and great supply of these molecular species suggest a pivotal role for reactive persulfides/polysulfides in different cellular regulatory processes (e.g., energy metabolism and redox signaling). We demonstrated earlier that cysteinyl-tRNA synthetase (CARS) is a new cysteine persulfide synthase (CPERS) and is responsible for the in vivo production of most reactive persulfides (polysulfides). Some researchers continue to suggest that 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase (3-MST), cystathionine β-synthase (CBS), and cystathionine γ-lyase (CSE) may also produce hydrogen sulfide and persulfides that may be generated during the transfer of sulfur from 3-mercaptopyruvate to the cysteine residues of 3-MST or direct synthesis from cysteine by CBS/CSE, respectively. We thus used integrated sulfur metabolome analysis, which we recently developed, with 3-MST knockout (KO) mice and CBS/CSE/3-MST triple-KO mice, to elucidate the possible contribution of 3-MST, CBS, and CSE to the production of reactive persulfides in vivo. We therefore quantified various sulfide metabolites in organs derived from these mutant mice and their wild-type littermates via this sulfur metabolome, which clearly revealed no significant difference between mutant mice and wild-type mice in terms of reactive persulfide production. This result indicates that 3-MST, CBS, and CSE are not major sources of endogenous reactive persulfide production; rather, CARS/CPERS is the principal enzyme that is actually involved in and even primarily responsible for the biosynthesis of reactive persulfides and polysulfides in vivo in mammals.

In our previous study, a novel genome engineering technology, PCR-mediated chromosome duplication (PCDup), was developed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that enabled the duplication of any desired chromosomal region, resulting in a segmental aneuploid. From one round of transformation, PCDup can duplicate a single chromosomal region efficiently. However, simultaneous duplication of multiple chromosomal regions is not possible using PCDup technology, which is a serious drawback. Sequential duplication is possible, but this approach requires significantly more time and effort. Because PCDup depends upon homologous recombination, we reasoned that it might be possible to simultaneously create duplications of multiple chromosomal regions if we could increase the frequency of these events. Double-strand breaks have been shown to increase the frequency of homologous recombination around the break point. Thus, we aimed to integrate the genome editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 system, which induces double-strand breaks, with our conventional PCDup. The new method, which we named CRISPR-PCDup increased the efficiency of a single duplication by up to 30 fold. CRISPR-PCDup enabled the simultaneous duplication of long chromosomal segments (160 kb and 200 kb regions). Moreover, we were also able to increase the length of the duplicated chromosome by up to at least 400 kb, whereas conventional PCDup can duplicate up to a maximum of 300 kb. Given the enhanced efficiency of chromosomal segmental duplication and the saving in both labor and time, we propose that CRISPR-PCDup will be an invaluable technology for generating novel yeast strains with desirable traits for specific industrial applications and for investigating genome function in segmental aneuploid.