Coral bleaching events have become more frequent and widespread, largely due to elevated sea surface temperatures. Global climate change could lead to increased variability of sea surface temperatures, through influences on climate systems, e.g. El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Field observations in 1999, following a strong ENSO, revealed that corals bleached in winter after unusually cold ...

Cold exposure is an external stress factor that causes skin frostbite as well as a variety of diseases. Estrogen might participate in neuroprotection after cold exposure, but its precise mechanism remains unclear. In this study, mice were exposed to 10°C for 7 days and 0-4°C for 30 days to induce a model of chronic cold exposure. Results showed that oxidative stress-related c-fos and cyclooxyge...

Urinary output of water-soluble vitamins has been used as an indices for vitamin nutrition. It has been pointed out that the coefficient variance of these values is high, especially for niacin catabolites. Thus, we investigated what kinds of stress affect the catabolism using female subjects. The effects of cold exposure (as a typical physical stress), calculation exercise (a typical mental str...

Prenatal cold stress is one of the earliest factors affecting mammalian health, and is associated with neonatal growth retardation and immune dysfunction, thus increasing disease susceptibility. The mechanisms underlying these observations remain unclear; hence, the objective of this study was to elucidate placental responses to cold stress. 60 maternal rats were randomly allocated to either st...

The pineapple (Ananas comosus) is cold sensitive. Most cultivars are injured during winter periods, especially in sub-tropical regions. There is a lack of molecular information on the pineapple's response to cold stress. In this study, high-throughput transcriptome sequencing and gene expression analysis were performed on plantlets of a cold-tolerant genotype of the pineapple cultivar 'Shenwan'...

Raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFO) accumulating during seed development are thought to play a role in the desiccation tolerance of seeds. However, the functions of RFO in desiccation tolerance have not been elucidated. Here we examine the functions of RFO in Arabidopsis thaliana plants under drought- and cold-stress conditions, based on the analyses of function and expression of genes invo...

Salicylic acid (SA) plays an important role in the regulation of plant ripening and responses to abiotic stresses. In this study, the protective effect of SA on cold stress-caused oxidative damage in grape (Vitis vinifera L.) bunches was investigated during cold storage.  Grape bunches treated with 2 mM SA and  stored at 0°C with 85-90% RH for 30 days. Samples were selected from each treatment ...

Cold stress resulting from chilling and freezing temperatures substantially reduces crop production worldwide. To identify genes critical for cold tolerance in plants, we screened Arabidopsis thaliana mutants for deregulated expression of a firefly luciferase reporter gene under the control of the C-REPEAT BINDING FACTOR2 (CBF2) promoter (CBF2:LUC). A regulator of CBF gene expression1 (rcf1-1) ...

Objective(s): Hyperthermia is one of the most common environmental stressors that affect multi-biological systems in the body including the central nervous system as well as the hematopoietic organs. The objective of the present study was to investigate the protective role of ethanolic extract of propolis (EEP) on some selective stress markers, hematological, biochemical, and histopathological ...