[1] Ice cores from temperate regions have long been expected to be useful for understanding local climate trends, but a reliable dating method has proved difficult. Here we show that measurements of pollen using samples with only 10 mL of water can give an accurate measure of the annual ice accumulation. In addition, two major types of pollen allow us to estimate the summer ice accumulation as well as the annual accumulation.

The East Asian monsoon is responsible for transferring huge amounts of heat and moisture between the land and the adjacent ocean. Signifi cant changes in its capacity to do this will have direct impacts on regional climatic gradients and global atmospheric circulation. Determining the mechanisms that force long-term variation in monsoon behavior is therefore important for understanding global climate change. Competing theories vary in the degree of importance attached to glacial forcing, other orbital rhythms, and internal feedback mechanisms as primary drivers of change. There is, however, no convincing explanation as to why different proxy records from closely neighboring regions are tuned to different orbital rhythms. Here we present quantitative climatic reconstructions for the past 450 k.y. based on a long pollen record from Lake Biwa in Japan. The data suggest that continental and oceanic air mass temperatures respond predominantly to the 100 k.y. orbital rhythm, whereas the land-ocean temperature gradient and monsoon vigor oscillate mainly at the 23 k.y. insolation cycle. We suggest that the mechanisms for this behavior lie in the differential response of land and ocean to solar forcing, and conclude that the 100 k.y. signal dominates monsoon intensity only when the amplitude of solar forcing falls below a threshold level.

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Reliable chronologies in ice cores and snow pits from many alpine glaciers in latitudes between 608 N and 608 S are often difficult to establish owing to problems with annual-layer counting. Problems arise from melting, wind erosion and the negligible amount of precipitation in some seasons, all of which tend to obscure the seasonal variations in d 18 O and chemical concentrations that are typically used to date ice cores. However, alpine glaciers contain many species of pollen grains that peak at particular times of the year. We used the peaks in Betulaceae, Pinus, Artemisia and a combination of Abies and Picea pollen species to determine the four seasonal layers of a snow pit on Belukha glacier in Russia's Altai Mountains. Comparing the pollen-dated profiles with wind and precipitation records allows us to determine where a seasonal layer is missing. Thus, the pollen-dating method described here may be a useful tool to measure the annual snow deposition on alpine glaciers, even when some seasonal layers are eroded by wind or missing due to negligible precipitation.

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The glutathione S-transferase (GST) superfamily is involved in detoxification of various xenobiotics. Using real-time PCR, mRNA encoding an omega-class GST of Bombyx mori (bmGSTO) was shown to be induced after exposure to various environmental stresses. A soluble form of recombinant protein (rbmGSTO) was functionally overexpressed in Escherichia coli cells and purified to homogeneity. Cys 38 and Pro 39 were found to be highly conserved in omega-class GSTs, and their roles were investigated by site-directed mutagenesis/kinetic analysis. Mutations of Cys 38 and Pro 39 residues affected the catalytic efficiency of enzymes, indicating that the presence of Cys 38 and Pro 39 residues is important for bmGSTO activity. Thus, bmGSTO could contribute to increasing the environmental stress resistance of lepidopteran insects.

Eriobotrya japonica leaf is a traditional herbal medicine that contains numerous triterpenes, which have various pharmacological properties. In this study, we investigated the anti-proliferative activity of four triterpenes derived from E. japonica, including corosolic acid (CA), ursolic acid (UA), maslinic acid (MA) and oleanolic acid (OA), in human leukemia cell lines. CA showed the strongest anti-proliferative activity in all of the leukemia cell lines tested, but not in normal human skin fibroblast cell lines. To determine the mechanism underlying the anti-proliferative effect of CA, we examined the effect of CA on molecular events known as apoptosis induction. CA induced chromatin condensation, DNA fragmentation, sub-G1 phase DNA, activation of caspase-3, -8 and -9 and the cleavage of PARP in HL-60. CA also activated Bid and Bax, leading to the loss of mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψm) and cytochrome c release into the cytosol, whereas Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL were unaffected by CA. These results suggest that CA has an anti-proliferative effect on leukemia cells via the induction of apoptosis mediated by mitochondrial dysfunction and caspase activation. CA may be a potential chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of human leukemia.