Expanding Medical Education for Local Health Promoters Among Remote Communities of the Peruvian Amazon: An Exploratory Study of an Innovative Program Model.

PURPOSE: Community health workers (CHWs) play integral roles in primary health care provision in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This is particularly true in underdeveloped areas where there are acute shortages of health workers. In this study, we evaluated the development and community utilization of a CHW training program in the Loreto province of Peru. Additionally, a community-oriented training model was designed to augment access to basic health information in underserved and isolated areas of the Amazon. METHODS: Health resource utilization was compared in each community by surveying community members before and after implementation of the CHW training program, which utilized a community participatory program development (CPPD) model. RESULTS: All communities demonstrated significantly increased CHW utilization (p = 0.026) as their initial point of contact for immediate health concerns following CHW training implementation. This increase in CHW utilization was accompanied by trends toward decreased preferences for local shamans or traveling to the closest health post as the initial health resource. CONCLUSION: The community-focused, technology-oriented model utilized in this study proved an effective way to promote the use of CHWs in the Amazon region of Loreto, and could prove valuable to CHW capacitation efforts within other Peruvian provinces and in other LMICs around the world.

Floral Reversion in Arabidopsis suecica Is Correlated with the Onset of Flowering and Meristem Transitioning.

Angiosperm flowers are usually determinate structures that may produce seeds. In some species, flowers can revert from committed flower development back to an earlier developmental phase in a process called floral reversion. The allopolyploid Arabidopsis suecica displays photoperiod-dependent floral reversion in a subset of its flowers, yet little is known about the environmental conditions enhancing this phenotype, or the morphological processes leading to reversion. We have used light and electron microscopy to further describe this phenomenon. Additionally, we have further studied the phenology of flowering and floral reversion in A. suecica. In this study we confirm and expand upon our previous findings that floral reversion in the allopolyploid A. suecica is photoperiod-dependent, and show that its frequency is correlated with the timing for the onset of flowering. Our results also suggest that floral reversion in A. suecica displays natural variation in its penetrance between geographic populations of A. suecica.

Allopolyploidization lays the foundation for evolution of distinct populations: evidence from analysis of synthetic Arabidopsis allohexaploids.

Polyploidization is an important mechanism for introducing diversity into a population and promoting evolutionary change. It is believed that most, if not all, angiosperms have undergone whole genome duplication events in their evolutionary history, which has led to changes in genome structure, gene regulation, and chromosome maintenance. Previous studies have shown that polyploidy can coincide with meiotic abnormalities and somatic cytogenetic mosaics in Arabidopsis allotetraploids, but it is unclear whether this phenomenon can contribute to novel diversity or act as a mechanism for speciation. In this study we tested the hypothesis that mosaic aneuploidy contributes to the formation of incipient diversity in neoallopolyploids. We generated a population of synthesized Arabidopsis allohexaploids and monitored karyotypic and phenotypic variation in this population over the first seven generations. We found evidence of sibling line-specific chromosome number variations and rapidly diverging phenotypes between lines, including flowering time, leaf shape, and pollen viability. Karyotypes varied between sibling lines and between cells within the same tissues. Cytotypic variation correlates with phenotypic novelty, and, unlike in allotetraploids, remains a major genomic destabilizing factor for at least the first seven generations. While it is still unclear whether new stable aneuploid lines will arise from these populations, our data are consistent with the notion that somatic aneuploidy, especially in higher level allopolyploids, can act as an evolutionary relevant mechanism to induce rapid variation not only during the initial allopolyploidization process but also for several subsequent generations. This process may lay the genetic foundation for multiple, rather than just a single, new species.