Genome-wide identification and characterization of HSP gene superfamily in whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) and expression profiling analysis under temperature stress

Heat shock proteins (HSP) are essential molecular chaperones that play important roles in the stress stimulation of insects. Bemisia tabaci, a phloem feeder and invasive species, can cause extensive crop damage through direct feeding and transmission of plant viruses. Here we employed comprehensive genomics approaches to identity HSP superfamily members in the Middle East Asia Minor 1 whitefly genome. In total, we identified 26 Hsp genes, including three Hsp90, 17 Hsp70, one Hsp60 and five sHSP (small heat shock protein) genes. The HSP gene superfamily of whitefly is expanded compared with the other five insects surveyed here. The gene structures among the same families are relatively conserved. Meanwhile, the motif compositions and secondary structures of BtHsp proteins were predicted. In addition, quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis showed that the expression patterns of BtHsp gene superfamily were diverse across different tissues of whiteflies. Most Hsp genes were induced or repressed by thermal stress (40°C) and cold treatment (4°C) in whitefly. Silencing the expression of BtHsp70-6 significantly decreased the survival rate of whitefly under 45°C. All the results showed the Hsps conferred thermo-tolerance or cold-tolerance to whiteflies that protect them from being affected by detrimental temperature conditions. Our observations highlighted the molecular evolutionary properties and the response mechanism to temperature assaults of Hsp genes in whitefly

Text-Only Domain Adaptation for End-to-End Speech Recognition through Down-Sampling Acoustic Representation

Mapping two modalities, speech and text, into a shared representation space, is a research topic of using text-only data to improve end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR) performance in new domains. However, the length of speech representation and text representation is inconsistent. Although the previous method up-samples the text representation to align with acoustic modality, it may not match the expected actual duration. In this paper, we proposed novel representations match strategy through down-sampling acoustic representation to align with text modality. By introducing a continuous integrate-and-fire (CIF) module generating acoustic representations consistent with token length, our ASR model can learn unified representations from both modalities better, allowing for domain adaptation using text-only data of the target domain. Experiment results of new domain data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.Comment: Accepted by INTERSPEECH 2023. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2309.0143

Impacts of climate change on future air quality and human health in China.

In recent years, air pollution has caused more than 1 million deaths per year in China, making it a major focus of public health efforts. However, future climate change may exacerbate such human health impacts by increasing the frequency and duration of weather conditions that enhance air pollution exposure. Here, we use a combination of climate, air quality, and epidemiological models to assess future air pollution deaths in a changing climate under Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5). We find that, assuming pollution emissions and population are held constant at current levels, climate change would adversely affect future air quality for >85% of China's population (∼55% of land area) by the middle of the century, and would increase by 3% and 4% the population-weighted average concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, respectively. As a result, we estimate an additional 12,100 and 8,900 Chinese (95% confidence interval: 10,300 to 13,800 and 2,300 to 14,700, respectively) will die per year from PM2.5 and ozone exposure, respectively. The important underlying climate mechanisms are changes in extreme conditions such as atmospheric stagnation and heat waves (contributing 39% and 6%, respectively, to the increase in mortality). Additionally, greater vulnerability of China's aging population will further increase the estimated deaths from PM2.5 and ozone in 2050 by factors of 1 and 3, respectively. Our results indicate that climate change and more intense extremes are likely to increase the risk of severe pollution events in China. Managing air quality in China in a changing climate will thus become more challenging

Evaluation of a novel saliva-based epidermal growth factor receptor mutation detection for lung cancer: A pilot study.

BackgroundThis article describes a pilot study evaluating a novel liquid biopsy system for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. The electric field-induced release and measurement (EFIRM) method utilizes an electrochemical biosensor for detecting oncogenic mutations in biofluids.MethodsSaliva and plasma of 17 patients were collected from three cancer centers prior to and after surgical resection. The EFIRM method was then applied to the collected samples to assay for exon 19 deletion and p.L858 mutations. EFIRM results were compared with cobas results of exon 19 deletion and p.L858 mutation detection in cancer tissues.ResultsThe EFIRM method was found to detect exon 19 deletion with an area under the curve (AUC) of 1.0 in both saliva and plasma samples in lung cancer patients. For L858R mutation detection, the AUC of saliva was 1.0, while the AUC of plasma was 0.98. Strong correlations were also found between presurgery and post-surgery samples for both saliva (0.86 for exon 19 and 0.98 for L858R) and plasma (0.73 for exon 19 and 0.94 for L858R).ConclusionOur study demonstrates the feasibility of utilizing EFIRM to rapidly, non-invasively, and conveniently detect epidermal growth factor receptor mutations in the saliva of patients with NSCLC, with results corresponding perfectly with the results of cobas tissue genotyping

ORP4L Extracts and Presents PIP2 from Plasma Membrane for PLC beta 3 Catalysis : Targeting It Eradicates Leukemia Stem Cells

Leukemia stem cells (LSCs) are a rare subpopulation of abnormal hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that propagates leukemia and are responsible for the high frequency of relapse in therapies. Detailed insights into LSCs' survival will facilitate the identification of targets for therapeutic approaches. Here, we develop an inhibitor, LYZ-81, which targets ORP4L with high affinity and specificity and selectively eradicates LCSs in vitro and in vivo. ORP4L is expressed in LSCs but not in normal HSCs and is essential for LSC bioenergetics and survival. It extracts PIP2 from the plasma membrane and presents it to PLC beta 3, enabling IP3 generation and subsequentCa(2+)-dependent bioenergetics. LYZ-81 binds ORP4L competitively with PIP2 and blocks PIP2 hydrolysis, resulting in defective Ca2+ signaling. The results provide evidence that LSCs can be eradicated through the inhibition of ORP4L by LYZ-81, which may serve as a starting point of drug development for the elimination of LSCs to eventually cure leukemia.Peer reviewe

The LAMOST Complete Spectroscopic Survey of Pointing Area (LaCoSSPAr) in the Southern Galactic Cap I. The Spectroscopic Redshift Catalog

We present a spectroscopic redshift catalog from the LAMOST Complete Spectroscopic Survey of Pointing Area (LaCoSSPAr) in the Southern Galactic Cap (SGC), which is designed to observe all sources (Galactic and extra-galactic) by using repeating observations with a limiting magnitude of $r=18.1~mag$ in two $20~deg^2$ fields. The project is mainly focusing on the completeness of LAMOST ExtraGAlactic Surveys (LEGAS) in the SGC, the deficiencies of source selection methods and the basic performance parameters of LAMOST telescope. In both fields, more than 95% of galaxies have been observed. A post-processing has been applied to LAMOST 1D spectrum to remove the majority of remaining sky background residuals. More than 10,000 spectra have been visually inspected to measure the redshift by using combinations of different emission/absorption features with uncertainty of $\sigma_{z}/(1+z)<0.001$. In total, there are 1528 redshifts (623 absorption and 905 emission line galaxies) in Field A and 1570 redshifts (569 absorption and 1001 emission line galaxies) in Field B have been measured. The results show that it is possible to derive redshift from low SNR galaxies with our post-processing and visual inspection. Our analysis also indicates that up to 1/4 of the input targets for a typical extra-galactic spectroscopic survey might be unreliable. The multi-wavelength data analysis shows that the majority of mid-infrared-detected absorption (91.3%) and emission line galaxies (93.3%) can be well separated by an empirical criterion of $W2-W3=2.4$. Meanwhile, a fainter sequence paralleled to the main population of galaxies has been witnessed both in $M_r$/$W2-W3$ and $M_*$/$W2-W3$ diagrams, which could be the population of luminous dwarf galaxies but contaminated by the edge-on/highly inclined galaxies ($\sim30\%$).Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures, 2 MRT, accepted by ApJ

Transposable elements cause the loss of self-incompatibility in citrus

Self-incompatibility (SI) is a widespread prezygotic mechanism for flowering plants to avoid inbreeding depression and promote genetic diversity. Citrus has an S-RNase-based SI system, which was frequently lost during evolution. We previously identified a single nucleotide mutation in Sm-RNase, which is responsible for the loss of SI in mandarin and its hybrids. However, little is known about other mechanisms responsible for conversion of SI to self-compatibility (SC) and we identify a completely different mechanism widely utilized by citrus. Here, we found a 786-bp miniature inverted-repeat transposable element (MITE) insertion in the promoter region of the FhiS2-RNase in Fortunella hindsii Swingle (a model plant for citrus gene function), which does not contain the Sm-RNase allele but are still SC. We demonstrate that this MITE plays a pivotal role in the loss of SI in citrus, providing evidence that this MITE insertion prevents expression of the S-RNase; moreover, transgenic experiments show that deletion of this 786-bp MITE insertion recovers the expression of FhiS2-RNase and restores SI. This study identifies the first evidence for a role for MITEs at the S-locus affecting the SI phenotype. A family-wide survey of the S-locus revealed that MITE insertions occur frequently adjacent to S-RNase alleles in different citrus genera, but only certain MITEs appear to be responsible for the loss of SI. Our study provides evidence that insertion of MITEs into a promoter region can alter a breeding strategy and suggests that this phenomenon may be broadly responsible for SC in species with the S-RNase system

Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin on Pup Deprivation-Evoked Aberrant Maternal Behavior and Hypogalactia in Rat Dams and the Underlying Mechanisms

Oxytocin (OT), a hypothalamic neuropeptide, applied through nasal approach (IAO), could improve maternal health during lactation that is disrupted by mother–baby separation; however, the regulation of IAO effects on maternal behaviors and lactation as well as the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Using lactating rats, we observed effects of intermittent pup deprivation (PD) with and without IAO on maternal behaviors and lactation as well as the activity of OT neurons in the supraoptic nucleus (SON) and the activity of hypothalamic pituitary-adrenal axis, key factors determining the milk-letdown reflex during lactation and maternal behaviors. The results showed that PD reduced maternal behaviors and lactation efficiency of rat dams as indicated by significantly longer latency to retrieve their pups and low litter’s body weight gains during the observation, respectively. In addition, PD caused early involution of the mammary glands. IAO partially improved these changes in rat dams, which was not as significant as IAO effects on control dams. In the SON, PD decreased c-Fos and increased glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) filaments significantly; IAO made PD-evoked c-Fos reduction insignificant while reduced GFAP filament significantly in PD dams. IAO tended to increase the levels of phosphorylated extracellular signal-regulated kinases (pERK) 1/2 in PD dams. Moreover, PD+IAO significantly increased plasma levels of dam adrenocorticotropic hormone and corticosterone but not OT levels. Lastly, PD+IAO tended to increase the level of corticotropin-releasing hormone in the SON. These results indicate that PD disrupts maternal behaviors and lactation by suppressing the activity of hypothalamic OT-secreting system through expansion of astrocytic processes, which are partially reversed by IAO through removing astrocytic inhibition of OT neuronal activity. However, the improving effect of IAO on the maternal health could be compromised by simultaneous activation of hypothalamic pituitary-adrenocortical axis