Gene Variant of Barrier to Autointegration Factor 2 (Banf2w) Is Concordant with Female Determination in Cichlids

Oreochromis fishes exhibit variability of sex-determination (SD) genes whose characterization contributes to understanding of the sex differentiation network, and to effective tilapia farming, which requires all-male culture. However, O. niloticus (On) amh is the only master-key regulator (MKR) of SD that has been mapped (XY/XX SD-system on LG23). In O. aureus (Oa), LG3 controls a WZ/ZZ SD-system that has recently been delimited to 9.2 Mbp, with an embedded interval rich with female-specific variation, harboring two paics genes and banf2. Developing genetic markers within this interval and using a hybrid Oa stock that demonstrates no recombination repression in LG3, we mapped the critical SD region to 235 Kbp on the orthologous On physical map (p < 1.5 × 10⁻²⁶). DNA-seq assembly and peak-proportion analysis of variation based on Sanger chromatograms allowed the characterization of copy-number variation (CNV) of banf2. Oa males had three exons capable of encoding 90-amino-acid polypeptides, yet in Oa females, we found an extra copy with an 89-amino-acid polypeptide and three non-conservative amino acid substitutions, designated as banf2w. CNV analysis suggested the existence of two to five copies of banf2 in diploidic Cichlidae. Disrupting the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (p < 4.2 × 10⁻³), banf2w was concordant with female determination in Oa and in three cichlids with LG3 WZ/ZZ SD-systems (O. tanganicae, O. hornorum and Pelmatolapia mariae). Furthermore, exclusive RNA-seq expression in Oa females strengthened the candidacy of banf2w as the long-sought LG3 SD MKR. As banf genes mediate nuclear assembly, chromatin organization, gene expression and gonad development, banf2w may play a fundamental role inducing female nucleus formation that is essential for WZ/ZZ SD.     

Numerical Solution of the Flow of Power‐Law Gel Propellants in Converging Injectors

The governing equations of the steady, incompressible, isothermal, laminar flow of a power‐law, shear‐thinning gel propellant in a converging injector were formulated. The equations were transformed to a ψ–ω system, then discretized and solved. A numerical algorithm was developed for the solution of the flowfield. A parametric investigation was conducted to evaluate the effect of the injector geometry and the flow rate on the velocity and viscosity fields, for various gel propellants. In comparison to a straight injector, a convergent one can produce additional decrease in the mean apparent viscosity of the fluid. The mean apparent viscosity decreases significantly with increasing the convergence angle of the injector. In general, increasing the gel flow rate results in a decrease of the mean apparent viscosity of the fluid. Increasing the gellant content of gel propellants results in an increase of the fluid viscosity that decreases when the gel flows through the injector. Gels of different gellant content that flow through the same geometry injector exhibit similar relative reduction in viscosity.     

The MPE toolkit for supporting distributed applications

This paper presents a toolkit for supporting the execution of coarse-grain, parallel (distributed) applications under the MOSIX multicomputer operating system. These tools use standard UNIX System V process control and message-passing facilities, as well as the dynamic process migration mechanisms of MOSIX. The MPE tools can be used to modify sequential applications that were originally written for execution in a uniprocessor environment, to run efficiently in a distributed environment, consisting of several loosely coupled independent computers that communicate by messages. After presenting the MPE tools, the paper gives examples of several sequential algorithms that have been modified for execution in such a distributed multicomputer, as well as the resulting execution speed-ups that were obtained.