The authors polygraphically studied the nocturnal sleep of 20 neurologically normal children with typical centrotemporal spikes. The children were divided into two groups: (A) 10 children with centrotemporal spikes and benign epilepsy; and (B) 10 children with centrotemporal spikes without epilepsy. The mean age when the average period of sleep record was performed was the same for the two groups, 8.5 years. The cyclic organization of sleep and the percentages of the different stages were normal in all 20 subjects. The number of spikes was counted in all the subjects during wakefulness and during different stages of sleep. All subjects of both groups showed an important increase in the frequency of spikes going from drowsiness until slow sleep; on the other hand, the activity remained high during REM sleep only for subjects of Group A. Other differences between the two groups concerned the appearnce during sleep of generalized spike waves and independent Rolandic spikes. The authors conclude with the affirmation that the polygraphic study of nocturnal sleep in children with Rolandic spikes can be an additional parameter for differential diagnosis between children with and those without epilepsy.

Microalgae are unicellular photosynthetic organisms considered as potential alternative sources for biomass, biofuels or high value products. However, their limited biomass productivity represents a bottleneck that needs to be overcome to meet the applicative potential of these organisms. One of the domestication targets for improving their productivity is the proper balance between photoprotection and light conversion for carbon fixation. In the model organism for green algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a photoprotective mechanism inducing thermal dissipation of absorbed light energy, called Non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), is activated even at relatively low irradiances, resulting in reduced photosynthetic efficiency. Two pigment binding proteins, LHCSR1 and LHCSR3, were previously reported as the main actors during NPQ induction in C. reinhardtii. While previous work characterized in detail the functional properties of LHCSR3, few information is available for the LHCSR1 subunit. Here, we investigated in vitro the functional properties of LHCSR1 and LHCSR3 subunits: despite high sequence identity, the latter resulted as a stronger quencher compared to the former, explaining its predominant role observed in vivo. Pigment analysis, deconvolution of absorption spectra and structural models of LHCSR1 and LHCR3 suggest that different quenching efficiency is related to a different occupancy of L2 carotenoid binding site.

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