Characterization of the plasma membrane proteins and receptor-like kinases associated with secondary vascular differentiation in poplar

The constituents of plasma membrane proteins, particularly the integral membrane proteins, are closely associated with the differentiation of plant cells. Secondary vascular differentiation, which gives rise to the increase in plant stem diameter, is the key process by which the volume of the plant body grows. However, little is known about the plasma membrane proteins that specifically function in the vascular differentiation process. Proteomic analysis of the membrane proteins in poplar differentiating secondary vascular tissues led to the identification 226 integral proteins in differentiating xylem and phloem tissues. A majority of the integral proteins identified were receptors (55 proteins), transporters (34 proteins), cell wall formation related (27 proteins) or intracellular trafficking (17 proteins) proteins. Gene expression analysis in developing vascular cells further demonstrated that cambium differentiation involves the expression of a group of receptor kinases which mediate an array of signaling pathways during secondary vascular differentiation. This paper provides an outline of the protein composition of the plasma membrane in differentiating secondary vascular tissues and sheds light on the role of receptor kinases during secondary vascular development

rac-(S)-2-(1H-Imidazol-1-yl)-3-methyl­butan-1-ol

In the crystal structure of the title compound, C8H14N2O, inter­molecular O—H⋯N hydrogen bonds link mol­ecules related by translation along the a axis into chains. Weak inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds and C—H⋯π inter­actions enhance the crystal packing stability

Your "Flamingo" is My "Bird": Fine-Grained, or Not

Whether what you see in Figure 1 is a "flamingo" or a "bird", is the question we ask in this paper. While fine-grained visual classification (FGVC) strives to arrive at the former, for the majority of us non-experts just "bird" would probably suffice. The real question is therefore -- how can we tailor for different fine-grained definitions under divergent levels of expertise. For that, we re-envisage the traditional setting of FGVC, from single-label classification, to that of top-down traversal of a pre-defined coarse-to-fine label hierarchy -- so that our answer becomes "bird"-->"Phoenicopteriformes"-->"Phoenicopteridae"-->"flamingo". To approach this new problem, we first conduct a comprehensive human study where we confirm that most participants prefer multi-granularity labels, regardless whether they consider themselves experts. We then discover the key intuition that: coarse-level label prediction exacerbates fine-grained feature learning, yet fine-level feature betters the learning of coarse-level classifier. This discovery enables us to design a very simple albeit surprisingly effective solution to our new problem, where we (i) leverage level-specific classification heads to disentangle coarse-level features with fine-grained ones, and (ii) allow finer-grained features to participate in coarser-grained label predictions, which in turn helps with better disentanglement. Experiments show that our method achieves superior performance in the new FGVC setting, and performs better than state-of-the-art on traditional single-label FGVC problem as well. Thanks to its simplicity, our method can be easily implemented on top of any existing FGVC frameworks and is parameter-free.Comment: Accepted as an oral of CVPR2021. Code: https://github.com/PRIS-CV/Fine-Grained-or-No

Structural basis for DNMT3A-mediated de novo DNA methylation.

DNA methylation by de novo DNA methyltransferases 3A (DNMT3A) and 3B (DNMT3B) at cytosines is essential for genome regulation and development. Dysregulation of this process is implicated in various diseases, notably cancer. However, the mechanisms underlying DNMT3 substrate recognition and enzymatic specificity remain elusive. Here we report a 2.65-ångström crystal structure of the DNMT3A-DNMT3L-DNA complex in which two DNMT3A monomers simultaneously attack two cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) dinucleotides, with the target sites separated by 14 base pairs within the same DNA duplex. The DNMT3A-DNA interaction involves a target recognition domain, a catalytic loop, and DNMT3A homodimeric interface. Arg836 of the target recognition domain makes crucial contacts with CpG, ensuring DNMT3A enzymatic preference towards CpG sites in cells. Haematological cancer-associated somatic mutations of the substrate-binding residues decrease DNMT3A activity, induce CpG hypomethylation, and promote transformation of haematopoietic cells. Together, our study reveals the mechanistic basis for DNMT3A-mediated DNA methylation and establishes its aetiological link to human disease

Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio as predictive markers in hepatoblastoma

BackgroundThe neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) have been presented to be a prognostic indicator in several cancers. We were supposed to evaluate the prognostic role of such inflammatory markers in hepatoblastoma (HB).MethodsTotal of 101 children, diagnosed with hepatoblastoma between January 2010 and January 2018, were enrolled before treatment in the study. The clinicopathological parameters, and outcomes were collected through laboratory analyses and patient follow-up. The association between NLR, PLR, and clinicopathological characters were analyzed with Wilcoxon test, Chi-Squared test, Kaplan-Meier, Log-rank and Cox regression analyses.ResultsNLR and PLR were significantly elevated in HB patients (P < 0.001), and related to age (P < 0.001), risk stratification system (P < 0.001), and pretreatment extent of disease (P < 0.0001). NLR was significantly related to alpha-fetoprotein (P = 0.034) and lactate dehydrogenase (P = 0.026). The 3-year overall survival (OS) and event-free survival (EFS) were poor in the high-NLR group (OS: 44.3% vs. 90.3%, P < 0.0001, EFS: 38.6% vs. 80.6%, P = 0.0001). The 3-year OS and EFS were poor in the high-PLR group (OS: 49.1% vs. 68.8%, P = 0.016, EFS: 39.6% vs. 64.6%, P = 0.0117). The multivariate analysis suggested that NLR (HR: 11.359, 95% CI: 1.218–105.947; P = 0.033) and risk stratification (HR: 44.905, 95% CI: 2.458–820.36; P = 0.01), were independent predictors of OS.ConclusionOur research showed that elevated NLR and PLR were the poor prognostic factors in HB patients before treatment. The NLR was an independent prognostic factor for OS