In contrast, GCV-preloading of TK-modified human and mouse mesothelioma cells and ovarian tumour cells abolished their in vivo ability to induce bystander killing of unmodified tumour cells, although there was some tumour regression compared to control groups but this was not statistically significant. These results suggest that preloading TK modified tumour cells with GCV needs further study to define the most effective strategy for an in vivo application to retain their bystander killing potential after exposure to lethal doses of GCV in vitro. Conclusions This study highlights the promising possibility of improving the efficacy of pro-drug system to prevent any damage to the immune system and enhancing this type of suicide gene therapy of cancer, as well as the need for further studies to explore the discrepancies between in vitro and in vivo results. © The Author(s) 2020.Background This work provides a preliminary inventory of West African Coccinellidae.This was based on the West African Coccinellidae (WAC) specimens in the holdings of insect collections at the Laboratoire de Zoologie des Invertébrés Terrestres at the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop (IFAN), Senegal and the Biodiversity Center at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITAB), Benin. New information A total of 129 species representing 11 tribes and 40 genera is reported, including one species of the subfamily Microweiseinae and 128 species of the subfamily Coccinellinae. The geographic distribution of collection localities is presented for these species. Cheilomenes lunata (Fabricius, 1775), Cheilomenes propinqua (Mulsant, 1850), Cheilomenes sulphurea (Olivier, 1791), Chnootriba elaterii (Rossi, 1794), Chnootriba similis (Thunberg, 1781), Exochomus laeviusculus Weise, 1909, Hyperaspis delicatula (Mulsant, 1850) and Hyperaspis pumila Mulsant, 1850 are the best represented species in these collections. Kwevitoukoui Hounkpati, Joseph V. McHugh, Abdoul Aziz Niang, Georg Goergen.The adventive arrival of biological control agents circumvents the regulatory process by introducing exotic species to control invasive pests and is generally followed by post hoc risk evaluation. The bean plataspid, Megacopta cribraria (Fabricius) (Hemiptera Plataspidae), is an invasive pest of leguminous crops in the south-eastern United States that was eventually followed by two parasitoid wasps from its range in the eastern hemisphere, Paratelenomus saccharalis (Dodd) (Scelionidae) and Ooencyrtus nezarae Ishii (Encyrtidae). In North Central Florida, sentinel egg masses, intended to capture Paratelenomus saccharalis, instead yielded Ooencyrtus nezarae, which was previously known only from Alabama (Ademokoya et al. 2018). Two generations of O. nezarae were subsequently reared in the laboratory. COI sequences from the Florida population of O. nezarae differed by 1.3% from the Alabama population and the presence of a different haplotype suggests the possibility of a separate introduction. Laboratory parasitism rates, sex ratios, morphology, molecular diagnosis and implications for agriculture are discussed. Nicholas C Goltz, Jessica Awad, Matthew R Moore, Elijah J Talamas.A new species of the genus Diplolepis Geoffroy, Diplolepis abei Pujade-Villar & Wang sp. nov. is described on host plant Rosa sertata Rolfe × R. rugosa Thunb. from China with an integrative approach based on molecular and morphological data. Diagnosis, distribution and biology of the new species are included and illustrated. This species is the first known rose gall-inducer of economic importance. A review of Eastern Palearctic species of Diplolepis is given and a key to the Chinese fauna is presented. Juli Pujade-Villar, Yiping Wang, Wenli Zhang, Noel Mata-Casanova, Irene Lobato-Vila, Avar-Lehel Dénes, Zoltán László.Background Cognitive impairment is a very frequent and severe nonmotor symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD).  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/BIBF1120.html  Early intervention in this at-risk group for cognitive decline may be crucial for long-term preservation of cognitive functions. Computerized working memory training (WMT) has been proven beneficial in non-PD patient populations, but such evidence is still needed for patients with PD. Objective This study aimed to evaluate the effect of WMT on visuo-spatial working memory (WM) in cognitively unimpaired patients with PD. Methods A single-blind randomized controlled trial encompassing 76 patients with PD but no cognitive impairment according to level II diagnostic criteria was conducted. Thirty-seven patients engaged in home-based adaptive WMT 5 times per week for a period of 5 weeks, whereas the remaining patients were in the waiting list arm of the study (control group [CG]). Working memory performance was evaluated using a computerized task before and after intervention and at 14-week follow-up, allowing to quantify the precision of WM on a continuous scale, ie, to test not only if an item was remembered but also how well the location of this item was retained. Results Coincidently, the WMT group showed slightly worse WM performance compared with the CG at baseline, which was ameliorated after WMT. This training-induced effect remained stable until follow-up. Conclusion Patients showing relatively low WM performance, despite not formally diagnosable as Parkinson's disease with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI), seem to benefit from home-based WMT. Thus, WMT could potentially be implemented in future trials as a time- and cost-efficient route to counteract subtle cognitive changes in early disease stages. Trial registration German Clinical Trial Register (drks.de, DRKS00009379). © The Author(s) 2020.Extracting structural information from sequence co-variation has become a common computational biology practice in the recent years, mainly due to the availability of large sequence alignments of protein families. However, identifying features that are specific to sub-classes and not shared by all members of the family using sequence-based approaches has remained an elusive problem. We here present a coevolutionary-based method to differentially analyze subfamily specific structural features by a continuous sequence reweighting (SR) approach. We introduce the underlying principles and test its predictive capabilities on the Response Regulator family, whose subfamilies have been previously shown to display distinct, specific homo-dimerization patterns. Our results show that this reweighting scheme is effective in assigning structural features known a priori to subfamilies, even when sequence data is relatively scarce. Furthermore, sequence reweighting allows assessing if individual structural contacts pertain to specific subfamilies and it thus paves the way for the identification specificity-determining contacts from sequence variation data.