PHYTOCHROME IN ETIOPLASTS IN RELATION TO CHLOROPHYLL ACCUMULATION*

Abstract— De-etiolation of maize seedlings reduces their sensitivity for red light potentiation of rapid chlorophyll accumulation in white light. An earlier proposal (Raven and Spruit, 1973) attributes this to migration of the far-red absorbing form of phytochrome (P_fr) to receptors essential for chlorophyll synthesis, thereby increasing the local P_fr/total phytochrome (P_tot)ratio. We have studied etioplasts as possible loci for such P_(r receptors. The level of spectrophotometric phytochrome in purified etioplasts isolated from red preirradiated maize seedlings was higher than that of dark grown plants. The difference was marginally significant, however. We argue that migration of a fraction of cytoplasmic P_fr to the etioplasts, too small to be spectrophotometically demonstrable, could still meet the requirements of the model. Dark destruction of bulk spectrophotometric P_fr following saturating red irradiation of seedlings is not paralleled by a decrease of etioplast phytochrome. the latter remaining essentially constant over long periods. On the other hand, the potentiating effect of red light in intact seedlings is still partially reversible by far red light even after 24 h of darkness when destruction of bulk P_fr is complete. Since this demonstrates persistent presence of P_fr active in potentiation, we propose that at least part of this P_fr is associated with the etioplasts.     

Phase Systems and Post-Column Dithizone Reaction Detection for the Analysis of Organo-Mercurials by HPLC

Abstract

The suitability of HPLC (normal and reversed phase adsorption) with UV or post-column reaction detection for the analysis of organomercurials was investigated systematically. The separation of organomercurials is best carried out on a reversed phase system with a C-8 bonded phase material as the stationary phase and acetonitrile-aqueous sodium bromide mixtures as the mobile phase.

The precision and detection limit of the method and the efficiency of the extraction procedure were established. For the alkylmercury compounds the lowest limit of detection (80ppb) was obtained with the dithizone reaction detection and for the phenylmercury compounds with UV detection (60ppb). A chromatogram of a spiked fish (2ppmHg) and a river water sample (50ppbHg) is shown.     

Thermally activated negative photoconductivity below 6 K in <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-GaAs/Al<Subscript>0.5</Subscript>Ga<Subscript>0.5</Subscript>As heterostructures and the effect of uniaxial compression

Thermally activated negative photoconductivity is observed in p-GaAs/Al_0.5Ga_0.5As:Be heterostructures under illumination with red light at temperatures below 6 K. As the temperature decreases, the concentration and mobility of 2D holes in the quantum well drop sharply, particularly under uniaxial compression. The phenomenon is quantitatively described under the assumption that a layer of deep donor-like traps with a low thermal activation barrier E_B = 3.0 ± 0.5 meV exists at a distance of about 7 nm from the heterojunction and that this barrier does not change with strain. Presumably, the traps may be the p-type dopant Be atoms diffusing from the active layer and occupying interstitial positions.     

Heritability of Stroop and flanker performance in 12-year old children

Background  

There is great interest in appropriate phenotypes that serve as indicator of genetically transmitted frontal (dys)function, such as ADHD. Here we investigate the ability to deal with response conflict, and we ask to what extent performance variation on response interference tasks is caused by genetic variation. We tested a large sample of 12-year old monozygotic and dizygotic twins on two well-known and closely related response interference tasks; the color Stroop task and the Eriksen flanker task. Using structural equation modelling we assessed the heritability of several performance indices derived from those tasks.     

The contribution of high frequencies to human brain activity underlying horizontal localization of natural spatial sounds

Background  

In the field of auditory neuroscience, much research has focused on the neural processes underlying human sound localization. A recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigated localization-related brain activity by measuring the N1m event-related response originating in the auditory cortex. It was found that the dynamic range of the right-hemispheric N1m response, defined as the mean difference in response magnitude between contralateral and ipsilateral stimulation, reflects cortical activity related to the discrimination of horizontal sound direction. Interestingly, the results also suggested that the presence of realistic spectral information within horizontally located spatial sounds resulted in a larger right-hemispheric N1m dynamic range. Spectral cues being predominant at high frequencies, the present study further investigated the issue by removing frequencies from the spatial stimuli with low-pass filtering. This resulted in a stepwise elimination of direction-specific spectral information. Interaural time and level differences were kept constant. The original, unfiltered stimuli were broadband noise signals presented from five frontal horizontal directions and binaurally recorded for eight human subjects with miniature microphones placed in each subject's ear canals. Stimuli were presented to the subjects during MEG registration and in a behavioral listening experiment.