Ant colony mortality has not been sufficiently studied, even though it is crucial for understanding social insect population biology and can serve as an important model for general aging and mortality processes. Particularly, studies on proximate mechanisms on mortality and stress resistance of ant colonies are lacking. This study explores the long-term colony starvation resistance of the small...

We conducted a phenotypic, transcriptional, metabolic, and genetic analysis of quiescence in yeast induced by starvation of prototrophic cells for one of three essential nutrients (glucose, nitrogen, or phosphate) and compared those results with those obtained with cells growing slowly due to nutrient limitation. These studies address two related questions: (1) Is quiescence a state distinct fr...

Many laboratory speciation experiments have raised allopatric populations in different environments to determine whether reproductive isolation evolves as a byproduct of adaptation (a form of ecological speciation). Few, however, have addressed the evolution of both pre- and postmating isolation or investigated the conditions affecting the process. We present results of an evolution experiment ...

Serum starvation is a typical way for inducing tumor cell apoptosis and stress. Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) is an endogenous metabolite. Our previous study reveals the plasma ADMA level is elevated in colon cancer patients, which can attenuate serum starvation-induced apoptosis in LoVo cells. In current study, we evaluated the effects of ADMA on gene expression and metabolism in serum-st...

Survival and mortality of plants in response to severe drought may be related to carbon starvation, but little is known about how plasma membrane intrinsic proteins may help alleviate the drought-induced damage. Here, we determined the roles of plasmalemma aquaporin gene in improving plant water status, maintaining carbon accumulation, and thereby enhancing drought tolerance. Seven StPIP1 trans...

The response to oxidative stress involves numerous genes and mutations in these genes often manifest in pleiotropic ways that presumably reflect perturbations in ROS-mediated physiology. The Drosophila melanogaster SOD1-null allele (cSODn108) is proposed to result in oxidative stress by preventing superoxide breakdown. In SOD1-null flies, oxidative stress management is thought to be reliant on ...

PURPOSE Glutathione (GSH) plays a key role in protection against oxidative stress. L-cysteine is thought to be rate-limiting for the synthesis of glutathione (GSH) and therefore may be a critical component in protection against oxidative stress. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of L-cysteine in GSH metabolism and oxidative stress in human retinal pigment epithelial (hRPE) c...

Exploiting abnormal amino acid metabolism for cancer therapy dated back to more than four decades ago by the discovery that L-asparaginase was effective in treating childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). ALL lacks asparagine (Asn) because the key enzyme for the biosynthesis of Asn from aspartic acid, asparagine synthetase, is silenced, therefore, ALL requires Asn from the circulation for g...