Ice sheet-free West Antarctica during peak early Oligocene glaciation.

One of Earth's most fundamental climate shifts, the greenhouse-icehouse transition 34 million years ago, initiated Antarctic ice sheet buildup, influencing global climate until today. However, the extent of the ice sheet during the Early Oligocene Glacial Maximum (~33.7 to 33.2 million years ago) that immediately followed this transition-a critical knowledge gap for assessing feedbacks between permanently glaciated areas and early Cenozoic global climate reorganization-is uncertain. In this work, we present shallow-marine drilling data constraining earliest Oligocene environmental conditions on West Antarctica's Pacific margin-a key region for understanding Antarctic ice sheet evolution. These data indicate a cool-temperate environment with mild ocean and air temperatures that prevented West Antarctic Ice Sheet formation. Climate-ice sheet modeling corroborates a highly asymmetric Antarctic ice sheet, thereby revealing its differential regional response to past and future climatic change.

Comment on "Intensifying weathering and land use in Iron Age Central Africa".

Bayon et al. (Reports, 9 March 2012, p. 1219) interpreted unusually high aluminum-potassium ratio values in an Atlantic sediment core as indicating anthropogenic deforestation around 2500 years before the present (B.P.). We argue that there is no terrestrial evidence for forest destruction by humans and that the third millennium B.P. rainforest crisis can be clearly attributed mostly to climatic change.

The past is a guide to the future? Comparing Middle Pliocene vegetation with predicted biome distributions for the twenty-first century.

During the Middle Pliocene, the Earth experienced greater global warmth compared with today, coupled with higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations. To determine the extent to which the Middle Pliocene can be used as a 'test bed' for future warming, we compare data and model-based Middle Pliocene vegetation with simulated global biome distributions for the mid- and late twenty-first century. The best agreement is found when a Middle Pliocene biome reconstruction is compared with a future scenario using 560 ppmv atmospheric CO2. In accordance with palaeobotanical data, all model simulations indicate a generally warmer and wetter climate, resulting in a northward shift of the taiga-tundra boundary and a spread of tropical savannah and woodland in Africa and Australia at the expense of deserts. Our data-model comparison reveals differences in the distribution of polar vegetation, which indicate that the high latitudes during the Middle Pliocene were still warmer than its predicted modern analogue by several degrees. However, our future scenarios do not consider multipliers associated with 'long-term' climate sensitivity. Changes in global temperature, and thus biome distributions, at higher atmospheric CO2 levels will not have reached an equilibrium state (as is the case for the Middle Pliocene) by the end of this century.

Kinetic evidences for facilitation of peptide channelling by the proteasome activator PA28.

The activation kinetics of constitutive and IFNgamma-stimulated 20S proteasomes obtained with homomeric (recPA28alpha, recPA28beta) and heteromeric (recPA28alphabeta) forms of recombinant 11S regulator PA28 was analysed by means of kinetic modelling. The activation curves obtained with increasing concentrations of the individual PA28 subunits (RecP28alpha/RecP28beta/RecP28alpha + RecP28beta) exhibit biphasic characteristics which can be attributed to a low-level activation by PA28 monomers and full proteasome activation by assembled activator complexes. The dissociation constants do not reveal significant differences between the constitutive and the immunoproteasome. Intriguingly, the affinity of the proteasome towards the recPA28alphabeta complex is about two orders of magnitude higher than towards the homomeric PA28alpha and PA28beta complexes. Striking similarities can been revealed in the way how PA28 mediates the kinetics of latent proteasomes with respect to three different fluorogenic peptides probing the chymotrypsin-like, trypsin-like and peptidylglutamyl-peptide hydrolyzing like activity: (a) positive cooperativity disappears as indicated by a lack of sigmoid initial parts of the kinetic curves, (b) substrate affinity is increased, whereby (c), the maximal activity remains virtually constant. As these kinetic features are independent of the peptide substrates, we conclude that PA28 exerts its activating influence on the proteasome by enhancing the uptake (and release) of shorter peptides.

Mutational analysis of subunit i beta2 (MECL-1) demonstrates conservation of cleavage specificity between yeast and mammalian proteasomes.

Proteasomes are the major protein-degrading complexes in the cytosol and regulate many cellular processes. To examine the functional importance of the MC14/MECL-1 proteasome active site subunits, cell lines expressing a catalytically inactive form of MECL-1 were established. Whereas mutant MECL-1 was readily incorporated into cytosolic proteasomes, replacing the constitutive MC14 subunit, removal of the prosequence was incomplete indicating that its processing required autocatalytic cleavage. Functional analyses showed that the absence of the MC14/MECL-1 active sites abrogated proteasomal trypsin-like activity, but did not affect other catalytic activities. Our data demonstrate a conservation of cleavage specificity between mammalian and yeast proteasomes.

The share of lipoxygenase in the antimycin-resistant oxygen uptake of intact rabbit reticulocytes.

The endogenous oxygen uptake of rabbit reticulocyte-rich red cell suspensions obtained by bleeding anaemia of rabbits amounted to 7.85 +/- 0.87 mumoles/h . ml of packed cells and was inhibited by antimycin A to 77.2 +/- 1.1%. The antimycin A-resistant oxygen uptake was further inhibited by the lipoxygenase inhibitors salicylhydroxamic acid, 5,8,11,14-eicosatetraynoic acid, nordihydroguaiaretic acid, 4-nitrocatechol or propylgallate by about 20-30% corresponding to 5-7% of the total oxygen uptake. The effects of the lipoxygenase inhibitors were most pronounced during the first period of bleeding anaemia (5th-9th day). 3-amino-1,2,4-triazole inhibited another part of the non-respiratory oxygen uptake and acted additively to 5,8,11,14-eicosatetraynoic acid; the two inhibitors together caused inhibition by one-half. Influx of calcium ions mediated by the ionophore A 23187 led to a two-fold increase in the non-respiratory oxygen uptake which was mainly due to stimulation of the lipoxygenase reaction. The rate of the lipoxygenase-mediated oxygen uptake was sufficient for a complete dioxygenation of the polyenoic fatty acids present in mitochondrial phospholipids during the maturational degradation of mitochondria in reticulocytes.

Pentane formation during the anaerobic reactions of reticulocyte lipoxygenase. Comparison with lipoxygenases from soybeans and green pea seeds.

The lipoxygenases from reticulocytes, soybeans and green pea seeds produce pentane in an anaerobic assay containing 13Ls-hydroperoxy-9-cis, 11-trans-octadecadienoic acid and 9,12-all-cis-octadecadienoic acid. The presence of oxygen strongly inhibits pentane formation by the three enzymes. Relative to the lipoxygenase activity with linoleic acid as substrate, soybean lipoxygenase is 4-times as effective in pentane formation as the lipoxygenases from reticulocytes or green pea seeds. Pentane formation by the reticulocyte lipoxygenase is completely inhibited by lipoxygenase inhibitors (5,8,11,14-eicosatetraynoic acid, 3-t-butyl-4-hydroxyanisol) but only partially by radical scavengers which do not influence the oxygenase activity (2,6-di-t-butyl-4-hydroxytoluene). From the temperature dependence below 20 degrees C an activation energy of the pentane production by the reticulocyte lipoxygenase of about 28 kJ/mol was calculated, which is somewhat higher than that for the oxygenase activity. During the anaerobic reaction of both reticulocyte and soybean lipoxygenase C18-oxodienes, C13-oxodienes, linoleic acid dimers and a polar compound proposed to be epoxy-hydroxyoctadecenoic acid are produced in a similar pattern. Reticulocyte lipoxygenase produces pentane with submitochondrial particles only under anaerobic conditions after an aerobic preincubation. During the incubation of intact reticulocytes with the calcium ionophore A23187 or arachidonic acid, pentane is released. Preincubation of the cells with lipoxygenase inhibitors completely abolishes the pentane formation. Erythrocytes do not form any pentane under the same experimental conditions.