Axon outgrowth during development and neurotransmitter release depends on exocytotic mechanisms, although what protein machinery is common to or differentiates these processes remains unclear. Here we show that the neural t-SNARE (target-membrane-associated-soluble N-ethylmaleimide fusion protein attachment protein (SNAP) receptor) SNAP-25 is not required for nerve growth or stimulus-independent neurotransmitter release, but is essential for evoked synaptic transmission at neuromuscular junctions and central synapses. These results demonstrate that the development of neurotransmission requires the recruitment of a specialized SNARE core complex to meet the demands of regulated exocytosis.

Many plant species of great economic value (e.g., potato, wheat, cotton, and sugarcane) are polyploids. Despite the essential roles of autopolyploid plants in human activities, our genetic understanding of these species is still poor. Recent progress in instrumentation and biochemical manipulation has led to the accumulation of an incredible amount of genomic data. In this study, we demonstrate for the first time a successful genetic analysis in a highly polyploid genome (sugarcane) by the quantitative analysis of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) allelic dosage and the application of a new data analysis framework. This study provides a better understanding of autopolyploid genomic structure and is a sound basis for genetic studies. The proposed methods can be employed to analyse the genome of any autopolyploid and will permit the future development of high-quality genetic maps to assist in the assembly of reference genome sequences for polyploid species.

Sugarcane is an important crop and a major source of sugar and alcohol. In this study, we performed de novo assembly and transcriptome annotation for six sugarcane genotypes involved in bi-parental crosses. The de novo assembly of the sugarcane transcriptome was performed using short reads generated using the Illumina RNA-Seq platform. We produced more than 400 million reads, which were assembled into 72,269 unigenes. Based on a similarity search, the unigenes showed significant similarity to more than 28,788 sorghum proteins, including a set of 5,272 unigenes that are not present in the public sugarcane EST databases; many of these unigenes are likely putative undescribed sugarcane genes. From this collection of unigenes, a large number of molecular markers were identified, including 5,106 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and 708,125 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). This new dataset will be a useful resource for future genetic and genomic studies in this species.

The hearing in noise test (HINT) is currently available in several languages (Nilsson et al., 1994). The similarity of the procedures and the resulting similarity of the test materials makes the measures obtained with the HINT comparable across languages. Individuals from both genders, in the age range of 18Á50 years, with hearing thresholds 20 dB HL or better at the octave frequencies from 250 to 8000 Hz, for both ears, who were native speakers of the Portuguese spoken in Brazil participated in this study. Method and Results Preparation of test materialsInitially, 1700 sentences were compiled via three different methods: (1) A survey of the corpus of Brazilian Portuguese available in the CHILDES (child language data exchange system) database was completed (Murari, 2004). The 50 000-word list was assessed by speech pathologists from various states of Brazil, and the words agreed upon by all participants were considered*regional vocabulary that might have a confusing meaning in some regions was excluded (Costa, 1997). (2) The Latin American Spanish HINT materials were analysed. (3) Spontaneous dialogue with daily phrases and vocabulary for subjects whose native language is Brazilian Portuguese, regardless of their background or education level, was recorded.After the sentences were selected, 10 subjects were asked to assess the familiarity of the sentences, grading them on a scale of 0 to 7, scoring the most familiar and natural as 7 and the most artificial as 0. Finally, of the 1700 sentences, the sentences with scores of 6 and 7 were further evaluated, and 800 were selected for use in the study. Two centers participated in the research: Universidade de Sao Paulo, Bauru (USP) and Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas (UNICAMP). The selected sentences were recorded at House Ear Institute, Los Angeles by a professional Brazilian voice actor. Estimation of the performance-intensity functionTwelve subjects were evaluated (six at USP and six at UNI-CAMP) in order to estimate the performance-intensity (PI) function. From the existing speech material, six lists of 50 sentences, totaling 300 sentences (three lists for each center), and a masking noise with the same sentence frequency spectrum were produced. Noise intensity was constant at 65 dBA, with the following variations of signal to noise ratios (S/N ratios):(7 dB, (4 dB, and (2 dB, for all lists tested. The correct words were counted, and this number resulted in an intelligibility percentage, for each list, at every S/N ratio. The average slope of the PI function for the two centers was 11.4% per dB change in S/N ratio. Equalization of sentence difficultySentence equalization from the S/N ratio corresponding to 70% of speech intelligibility was subdivided into three rounds with 20 subjects for each round (10 from USP and 10 from UNICAMP). For each round, 16 lists containing 50 sentences each, totaling 800 sentences (eight lists for each center), were used. On the first round, the noise intensity was fixed at 65 dBA, and the S/N ratio for all sentences presen...