Czech Society of Experimental Plant Biology was established in the early 90s in the last century. It followed-up to an activity of the Physiological Section of Czech Botanical Society. Gaining the independence of the Physiological Society, a new professional society was established. In 2008, it was transformed to the Czech Society of Experimental Plant Biology. Thanks to the great development of methods in the last 20 years, especially of molecular biology used to investigate plants on different levels, the term “physiology” became limited, therefore it is nowadays often replaced by a more exact “experimental plant biology”. Naturally, this worldwide trend asserts oneself also in our countries. The research fields included are not restricted to the pure laboratory or theoretical ones. and Lubomír Nátr, Jana Albrechtová.
The Czech Society for Histo- and Cytochemistry is a successor of The Czechoslovak Society for Histo- and Cytochemistry founded in 1966. The Society provides an interdisciplinary forum to support a study of the relationships among the structure, chemical composition and function in cells and tissues by histochemical, immunohistochemical and cytochemical methods. The Society encourages its members in the development and improvement of histochemical, immunohistochemical, and cytochemical methods used to discover the content and function of the tissue and cellular systems in situ and the application of the methods for diagnostics. and Jaroslav Mokrý.
Currently it remains difficult to obtain robust microsatellite markers for Lepidoptera. In an attempt to overcome the problems associated with developing microsatellite markers for this insect order we combined (i) biotin-enrichment protocol, (ii) next generation pyrosequencing (through 454 GS-FLX Titanium technology) and (iii) the use of individuals collected from eight geographically distant European populations representing three subspecies of Euphydryas aurinia. Out of 96 stringently designed primer pairs, 12 polymorphic microsatellite loci amplified without obvious evidence of null alleles in eight individuals from different subspecies. Between five and seven of these loci showed full within population applicability and three revealed to be robust and transferable between populations and sub-species, providing a first step towards the development of a valuable and robust tool for studying conservation issues and evolution in E. aurinia populations. Nevertheless, as in most studies dealing with Lepidoptera microsatellites, null alleles were detected in most of the developed markers. Our results emphasize the need for further research in order to better understand the complex evolution and organization of Lepidopteran genomes. and Melthide Sinama, Vincent Dubut, Caroline Costedoat, André Gilles, Marius Junker, Thibaut Malausa, Jean-François Martin, Gabriel Nève, Nicolas Pech, Thomas Schmitt, Marie Zimmermann, Emese Meglécz.