Comparative Mitogenomic Analysis of Damsel Bugs Representing Three Tribes in the Family Nabidae (Insecta: Hemiptera)

BACKGROUND: Nabidae, a family of predatory heteropterans, includes two subfamilies and five tribes. We previously reported the complete mitogenome of Alloeorhynchus bakeri, a representative of the tribe Prostemmatini in the subfamily Prostemmatinae. To gain a better understanding of architecture and evolution of mitogenome in Nabidae, mitogenomes of five species representing two tribes (Gorpini and Nabini) in the subfamily Nabinae were sequenced, and a comparative mitogenomic analysis of three nabid tribes in two subfamilies was carried out. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Nabid mitogenomes share a similar nucleotide composition and base bias, except for the control region, where differences are observed at the subfamily level. In addition, the pattern of codon usage is influenced by the GC content and consistent with the standard invertebrate mitochondrial genetic code and the preference for A+T-rich codons. The comparison among orthologous protein-coding genes shows that different genes have been subject to different rates of molecular evolution correlated with the GC content. The stems and anticodon loops of tRNAs are extremely conserved, and the nucleotide substitutions are largely restricted to TψC and DHU loops and extra arms, with insertion-deletion polymorphisms. Comparative analysis shows similar rates of substitution between the two rRNAs. Long non-coding regions are observed in most Gorpini and Nabini mtDNAs in-between trnI-trnQ and/or trnS2-nad1. The lone exception, Nabis apicalis, however, has lost three tRNAs. Overall, phylogenetic analysis using mitogenomic data is consistent with phylogenies constructed mainly form morphological traits. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This comparative mitogenomic analysis sheds light on the architecture and evolution of mitogenomes in the family Nabidae. Nucleotide diversity and mitogenomic traits are phylogenetically informative at subfamily level. Furthermore, inclusion of a broader range of samples representing various taxonomic levels is critical for the understanding of mitogenomic evolution in damsel bugs

Variational Relational Point Completion Network for Robust 3D Classification

Real-scanned point clouds are often incomplete due to viewpoint, occlusion, and noise, which hampers 3D geometric modeling and perception. Existing point cloud completion methods tend to generate global shape skeletons and hence lack fine local details. Furthermore, they mostly learn a deterministic partial-to-complete mapping, but overlook structural relations in man-made objects. To tackle these challenges, this paper proposes a variational framework, Variational Relational point Completion Network (VRCNet) with two appealing properties: 1) Probabilistic Modeling. In particular, we propose a dual-path architecture to enable principled probabilistic modeling across partial and complete clouds. One path consumes complete point clouds for reconstruction by learning a point VAE. The other path generates complete shapes for partial point clouds, whose embedded distribution is guided by distribution obtained from the reconstruction path during training. 2) Relational Enhancement. Specifically, we carefully design point self-attention kernel and point selective kernel module to exploit relational point features, which refines local shape details conditioned on the coarse completion. In addition, we contribute multi-view partial point cloud datasets (MVP and MVP-40 dataset) containing over 200,000 high-quality scans, which render partial 3D shapes from 26 uniformly distributed camera poses for each 3D CAD model. Extensive experiments demonstrate that VRCNet outperforms state-of-the-art methods on all standard point cloud completion benchmarks. Notably, VRCNet shows great generalizability and robustness on real-world point cloud scans. Moreover, we can achieve robust 3D classification for partial point clouds with the help of VRCNet, which can highly increase classification accuracy.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, accepted by PAMI. project webpage: https://mvp-dataset.github.io/. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2104.1015

Association analysis of polymorphisms in SLK, ARHGEF9, WWC2, GAB3, and FSHR genes with reproductive traits in different sheep breeds

The aim was to investigate the relationship between polymorphisms of gene mutation loci and reproductive traits in local sheep breeds (Duolang Sheep) and introduced sheep breeds (Suffolk, Hu Sheep) in Xinjiang to provide new molecular markers for the selection and breeding of high fecundity sheep. The expression pattern of typing successful genes in sheep tissues was investigated by RT-qPCR technology, providing primary data for subsequent verification of gene function. The 26 mutation loci of WWC2, ARHGEF9, SLK, GAB3, and FSHR genes were typed using KASP. Association analyses were performed using SPSS 25.0, and the typing results showed that five genes with six loci, WWC2 (g.14962207 C>T), ARHGEF9 (g.48271079 C>A), SLK (g.27107842 T>C, g.27108855 G>A), GAB3 (g.86134602 G>A), and FSHR (g.80789180 T>G) were successfully typed. The results of the association analyses showed that WWC2 (g.14962207 C>T), SLK (g.27108855 G>A), ARHGEF9 (g.48271079 C>A), and FSHR (g.80789180 T>G) caused significant or extremely significant effects on the litter size in Duolang, Suffolk and Hu Sheep populations. The expression distribution pattern of the five genes in 12 sheep reproduction-related tissues was examined by RT-qPCR. The results showed that the expression of the SLK gene in the uterus, the FSHR gene in the ovary, and the ARHGEF9 gene in hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis-related tissues were significantly higher than in the tissues of other parts of the sheep. WWC2 and GAB3 genes were highly expressed both in reproductive organs and visceral tissues. In summary, the WWC2 (g.14962207 C>T), SLK (g.27108855 G>A), ARHGEF9 (g.48271079 C>A), and FSHR (g.80789180 T>G) loci can be used as potential molecular markers for detecting differences in reproductive performance in sheep. Due to variations in typing results, the SLK (g.27107842 T>C) and GAB3 (g.86134602 G>A) loci need further validation

Fast and Secure Key Generation with Channel Obfuscation in Slowly Varying Environments

Physical-layer secret key generation has emerged as a promising solution for establishing cryptographic keys by leveraging reciprocal and time-varying wireless channels. However, existing approaches suffer from low key generation rates and vulnerabilities under various attacks in slowly varying environments. We propose a new physical-layer secret key generation approach with channel obfuscation, which improves the dynamic property of channel parameters based on random filtering and random antenna scheduling. Our approach makes one party obfuscate the channel to allow the legitimate party to obtain similar dynamic channel parameters, yet prevents a third party from inferring the obfuscation information. Our approach allows more random bits to be extracted from the obfuscated channel parameters by a joint design of the K-L transform and adaptive quantization. Results from a testbed implementation show that our approach, compared to the existing ones that we evaluate, performs the best in generating high entropy bits at a fast rate and is able to resist various attacks in slowly varying environments. Specifically, our approach can achieve a significantly faster secret bit generation rate at roughly 67 bit/pkt, and the key sequences can pass the randomness tests of the NIST test suite

Fast and Secure Key Generation with Channel Obfuscation in Slowly Varying Environments

Physical-layer secret key generation has emerged as a promising solution for establishing cryptographic keys by leveraging reciprocal and time-varying wireless channels. However, existing approaches suffer from low key generation rates and vulnerabilities under various attacks in slowly varying environments. We propose a new physical-layer secret key generation approach with channel obfuscation, which improves the dynamic property of channel parameters based on random filtering and random antenna scheduling. Our approach makes one party obfuscate the channel to allow the legitimate party to obtain similar dynamic channel parameters, yet prevents a third party from inferring the obfuscation information. Our approach allows more random bits to be extracted from the obfuscated channel parameters by a joint design of the K-L transform and adaptive quantization. Results from a testbed implementation show that our approach, compared to the existing ones that we evaluate, performs the best in generating high entropy bits at a fast rate and is able to resist various attacks in slowly varying environments. Specifically, our approach can achieve a significantly faster secret bit generation rate at roughly 67 bit/pkt, and the key sequences can pass the randomness tests of the NIST test suite

A Systems Biology-Based Investigation into the Pharmacological Mechanisms of Wu Tou Tang Acting on Rheumatoid Arthritis by Integrating Network Analysis

Aim. To investigate pharmacological mechanisms of Wu Tou Tang acting on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by integrating network analysis at a system level. Methods and Results. Drug similarity search tool in Therapeutic Targets Database was used to screen 153 drugs with similar structures to compositive compounds of each ingredient in Wu Tou Tang and to identify 56 known targets of these similar drugs as predicted molecules which Wu Tou Tang affects. The recall, precision, accuracy, and F1-score, which were calculated to evaluate the performance of this method, were, respectively, 0.98, 0.61, 59.67%, and 0.76. Then, the predicted effector molecules of Wu Tou Tang were significantly enriched in neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction and calcium signaling pathway. Next, the importance of these predicted effector molecules was evaluated by analyzing their network topological features, such as degree, betweenness, and k-coreness. We further elucidated the biological significance of nine major candidate effector molecules of Wu Tou Tang for RA therapy and validated their associations with compositive compounds in Wu Tou Tang by the molecular docking simulation. Conclusion. Our data suggest the potential pharmacological mechanisms of Wu Tou Tang acting on RA by combining the strategies of systems biology and network pharmacology