Molecular identification of original plants of Fritillariae cirrhosae bulbus, a Tradtional Chinese Cedicine (TCM) using plant DNA barcoding

Background: DNA barcoding is a widely used tool that enables rapid and accurate identification of species based on standardized DNA regions.Materials and Methods: In this study, potential DNA barcodes, namely three plastid regions (rbcL, trnH-psbA and matK) and one nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) were adopted for species identification of original plants of Fritillariae Cirrhosae Bulbus.Results: The rbcL and trnH-psbA regions showed better success rate of PCR amplification and DNA sequencing, as well as superior discriminatory ability. On the contrary, ITS region did not possess effective genetic variation and matK was faced with low success rate of sequencing. Combination of multi-loci sequences could improve identification ability of DNA barcoding. The trnH-psbA + rbcL could discriminate 25% - 100% species based on the Blast, Tree-Building and Distance methods.Conclusion: The potential DNA barcodes could not completely solving species identification of botanic origins of Fritillariae Cirrhosae Bulbus. In future, we should pay more attention to super-barcoding or specific barcode that enhance ability to discriminate the closely related plants.Keywords: Fritillariae Cirrhosae Bulbus, species identification, DNA barcoding, internal transcribed spacer (ITS), traditional Chinese medicine (TCM

MOLECULAR IDENTIFICATION OF ORIGINAL PLANTS OF FRITILLARIAE CIRRHOSAE BULBUS, ATRADTIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE (TCM) USING PLANT DNA BARCODING

Background: DNA barcoding is a widely used tool that enables rapid and accurate identification of species based on standardized DNA regions. Materials and Methods: In this study, potential DNA barcodes, namely three plastid regions (rbcL, trnH-psbA and matK) and one nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) were adopted for species identification of original plants of Fritillariae Cirrhosae Bulbus. Results: The rbcL and trnH-psbA regions showed better success rate of PCR amplification and DNA sequencing, as well as superior discriminatory ability. On the contrary, ITS region did not possess effective genetic variation and matK was faced with low success rate of sequencing. Combination of multi-loci sequences could improve identification ability of DNA barcoding. The trnH-psbA + rbcL could discriminate 25% - 100% species based on the Blast, Tree-Building and Distance methods. Conclusion: The potential DNA barcodes could not completely solving species identification of botanic origins of Fritillariae Cirrhosae Bulbus. In future, we should pay more attention to super-barcoding or specific barcode that enhance ability to discriminate the closely related plants

A generic framework for three-factor authentication: preserving security and privacy in distributed systems

As part of the security within distributed systems, various services and resources need protection from unauthorized use. Remote authentication is the most commonly used method to determine the identity of a remote client. This paper investigates a systematic approach for authenticating clients by three factors, namely password, smart card, and biometrics. A generic and secure framework is proposed to upgrade two-factor authentication to three-factor authentication. The conversion not only significantly improves the information assurance at low cost but also protects client privacy in distributed systems. In addition, our framework retains several practice-friendly properties of the underlying two-factor authentication, which we believe is of independent interest

Assemblathon 2: evaluating de novo methods of genome assembly in three vertebrate species

Background: The process of generating raw genome sequence data continues to become cheaper, faster, and more accurate. However, assembly of such data into high-quality, finished genome sequences remains challenging. Many genome assembly tools are available, but they differ greatly in terms of their performance (speed, scalability, hardware requirements, acceptance of newer read technologies) and in their final output (composition of assembled sequence). More importantly, it remains largely unclear how to best assess the quality of assembled genome sequences. The Assemblathon competitions are intended to assess current state-of-the-art methods in genome assembly. Results: In Assemblathon 2, we provided a variety of sequence data to be assembled for three vertebrate species (a bird, a fish, and snake). This resulted in a total of 43 submitted assemblies from 21 participating teams. We evaluated these assemblies using a combination of optical map data, Fosmid sequences, and several statistical methods. From over 100 different metrics, we chose ten key measures by which to assess the overall quality of the assemblies. Conclusions: Many current genome assemblers produced useful assemblies, containing a significant representation of their genes and overall genome structure. However, the high degree of variability between the entries suggests that there is still much room for improvement in the field of genome assembly and that approaches which work well in assembling the genome of one species may not necessarily work well for another

Heavy collecting induces smaller and deeper Fritillariae Cirrhosae Bulbus in the wild

Fritillariae Cirrhosae Bulbus is a well-known traditional Chine medicinal herb. However, the demand for this herb is leading to over-collection and its decline in the wild. This study aims to investigate the ecological conditions of Fritillaria cirrhosa under the influence of human disturbance, biotic species interactions and climatic conditions. We established a total of 78 plots at 14 sites of F. cirrhosa in its distribution center, the Hengduan Mountains area. At each site, we estimated the abundance of F. cirrhosa at different distances from roads. The diameter and height of F. cirrhosa fruit and bulbs were measured and compared to underground bulb depth. We then analyzed the effects of environmental conditions and human disturbance on the abundance of F. cirrhosa using variance partitioning. We found that (1) abundance of F. cirrhosa and their underground bulb depth showed a significant linear increase with the distance from the main road; (2) the diameter/height of fruits and the diameter/height of fruits/bulbs showed significantly different responses to the human disturbance; (3) the community associates, climate and spatial conditions can explain 58%, 22% and 27%, respectively, of the variance in the F. cirrhosa abundance. These results highlight the fact that human disturbance and biotic factors have a great influence on the survival of F. cirrhosa, even more than climate conditions

Influence of wind barrier on aerodynamic characteristics of vehicle on railway–highway combined bridge

Wind barriers with different parameters will change the aerodynamic force of the car on the bridge as well as the stability of the vehicle–bridge system, affecting the vehicle’s safety and comfort. A numerical simulation test was conducted on the bridge-deck with three different air permeability wind barriers under three distinct vehicles of varying sizes and wind directions, with a large-span road–rail asymmetric cable-stayed bridge serving as the engineering foundation. The results show that the roll force of the bridge is proportional to the width of the body and inversely related to the height of the train. The roll force of a vehicle is inversely proportional to its height and width. The type of vehicle and the properties of the bridge deck exert minimal influence on the stability of the bridge when a single vehicle is positioned upstream. When a single vehicle is situated downstream, the tri-component force coefficient of the bridge undergoes significant changes, and the vehicle’s impact on the bridge’s stability becomes more pronounced. When the bridge deck’s ventilation rate is at 50%, the drag coefficient of the bridge deck doubles compared to that of a bare bridge deck, and the wind pressure coefficient of the vehicle surface on the bridge approaches zero. In scenarios involving two vehicles, the shielding effect caused by the vehicles positioned upstream and downstream results in a substantial shift in the aerodynamic forces acting on the two vehicles. This increases the wake width of the bridge and generates a visible vortex in the wake

HMACCE: Establishing authenticated and confidential channel from historical data for Industrial Internet of Things

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a new paradigm for building intelligent industrial control systems, and how to establish a secure channel in IIoT for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is a critical problem because the devices in IIoT suffer from various attacks and may leak confidential information. Traditional authenticated and confidential channel establishment (ACCE) protocols neither apply for resource-constrained IIoT devices nor satisfy leakage resilience. In this paper, we introduce a new security notion: historical data based multi-factor ACCE (HMACCE) to address this issue and propose two HMACCE protocols. Our HMACCE protocols use three authentication factors, i.e., a symmetric secret key, historical data, and a set of secret tags associated with the historical data, to establish a secure communication channel between the client and the server. The key idea is to use the secret key managed by an IIoT edge device to quickly verify the relationship between the historical data and its associated tags stored on the server. Our HMACCE has the following remarkable features. First, it is lightweight and tailored for resource-constrained IIoT devices. Second, it is bounded historical tag leakage resilience , which means that if a small portion of the secret tags is leaked to an adversary, it will not affect its security with an overwhelming probability. Moreover, as a security enhancement service, our HMACCE can be easily integrated with legacy IIoT devices by running simple authenticated key exchange protocols

The complete chloroplast genome of Platycerium wallichii (Polypodiaceae), an endangered and ornamental fern species

The complete chloroplast genome of a staghorn fern species (Platycerium wallichii) was sequenced. The total genome was 158,286 bp in length, containing four regions: large single-copy (LSC) region (79,087 bp), small single-copy (SSC) region (21,397 bp), and two inverted repeat regions (IRs; 28,901 bp per each). In total 129 genes were annotated including 88 coding genes, 33 tRNAs, and 8 rRNAs. The overall GC content of the genome is 40.5%. Phylogenetic analysis supported the monophyly of both the subfamily Platycerioideae and the genus Platycerium. The genome data provides crucial information to support the future conservation and horticulture research