Effects of Ultradry Storage on Fluidity of Plasma Membrane of Haloxylon persicum Seeds

Abstract: The DPH fluorescent probe (1, 6-diphenyi-1, 3, 5,-hexatriene) was used to study the effects of ultradry seed storage on the fluidity of plasma membrane. Results indicated that the micro-viscosity of plasma membrane of ultradried seeds had no significant changes compared with the Haloxylon persicum seeds which were stored under 4°C condition. However, there was a little adverse effect on the seeds with extreme dehydration. The results were consistent with higher vigor level of ultradried seed. It indicated that ultradry seed storage could maintain the physiological function of seed, protect the integrity of the membrane and improve the storability of seeds

Foundation Models in Smart Agriculture: Basics, Opportunities, and Challenges

The past decade has witnessed the rapid development of ML and DL methodologies in agricultural systems, showcased by great successes in variety of agricultural applications. However, these conventional ML/DL models have certain limitations: They heavily rely on large, costly-to-acquire labeled datasets for training, require specialized expertise for development and maintenance, and are mostly tailored for specific tasks, thus lacking generalizability. Recently, foundation models have demonstrated remarkable successes in language and vision tasks across various domains. These models are trained on a vast amount of data from multiple domains and modalities. Once trained, they can accomplish versatile tasks with just minor fine-tuning and minimal task-specific labeled data. Despite their proven effectiveness and huge potential, there has been little exploration of applying FMs to agriculture fields. Therefore, this study aims to explore the potential of FMs in the field of smart agriculture. In particular, we present conceptual tools and technical background to facilitate the understanding of the problem space and uncover new research directions in this field. To this end, we first review recent FMs in the general computer science domain and categorize them into four categories: language FMs, vision FMs, multimodal FMs, and reinforcement learning FMs. Subsequently, we outline the process of developing agriculture FMs and discuss their potential applications in smart agriculture. We also discuss the unique challenges associated with developing AFMs, including model training, validation, and deployment. Through this study, we contribute to the advancement of AI in agriculture by introducing AFMs as a promising paradigm that can significantly mitigate the reliance on extensive labeled datasets and enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and generalization of agricultural AI systems.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figure

Development of multiple real-time fluorescent pcr for detection of porcine parvovirus (ppv), porcine circovirus type 2 (pcv2) and haemophilus parasuis (hps)

Porcine Parvovirus (PPV) and porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) often have mixed infection in the process of clinical breeding, and PCV2 infection will cause immunosuppression in pigs, which is easy to stimulate or complicated with other infectious pathogens. Haemophilus parasuis (HPS) is a typical "opportunistic" pathogen, which often leads to mixed infection with PCV2 as a secondary pathogen. In order to establish a rapid and simultaneous detection of three pathogens of PPV, PCV2 and HPS, referring to the relevant genome sequence of GenBank, specific primers were designed according to the conserved region of VP2 gene of PPV, Cap gene of PCV2 and infB gene of HPS, and the amplified fragments were cloned into the vector to construct plasmid standard. Using standard samples with different dilutions as templates, adjusting primer concentration, annealing temperature and other conditions, a real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR method for PPV, PCV2 and HPS triple SYBR Green I was established. Three specific Tm peaks could be generated on the same melting curve without cross-reaction with other pathogens. The minimum detection limits of this method were 153 copies/μL, 128 copies/μL and 91 copies/μL, with good specificity and repeatability, which provided technical support for rapid diagnosis of these three diseases and could be used for clinical tissue material detection

Responses of yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco Richardson) exposed to dietary cyanobacteria and subsequent recovery

A 120-day toxicity experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary cyanobacteria on the growth and liver histopathology of yellow catfish, and subsequent recovery when the fish were free of cyanobacteria. Three experimental diets were formulated: the control (cyanobacteria-free diet), low-cyanobacteria diet (LCD, 32.3 mu g microsystins/g) and high-cyanobacteria diet (HCD, 71.96 mu g microsystins/g). Each diet was fed to fish for 60 days and then all fish were free of cyanobacteria for a further 60 days. The results showed that a significant decrease in the specific growth rate (SGR) was observed in both fish fed with the LCD and HCD after a 1st 30-day exposure period, however, no significant difference in the SGR between the LCD and control groups was observed after a 2nd 30-day exposure period. At the end of the 60 days exposure, all examined liver tissues in both doses exhibited what appeared as dose-dependent histopathological modifications. After a 60-day recovery, there were no significant differences in the SGR among groups, while no obvious histopathological alteration was observed in livers of fish previously fed with the LCD. The results indicate that the LCD-treated fish have a full recovery after a 60-day recovery, but the HCD-treated fish did not. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A 120-day toxicity experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary cyanobacteria on the growth and liver histopathology of yellow catfish, and subsequent recovery when the fish were free of cyanobacteria. Three experimental diets were formulated: the control (cyanobacteria-free diet), low-cyanobacteria diet (LCD, 32.3 mu g microsystins/g) and high-cyanobacteria diet (HCD, 71.96 mu g microsystins/g). Each diet was fed to fish for 60 days and then all fish were free of cyanobacteria for a further 60 days

Postnatal onset of retinal degeneration by loss of embryonic Ezh2 repression of Six1

Some adult-onset disorders may be linked to dysregulated embryonic development, yet the mechanisms underlying this association remain poorly understood. Congenital retinal degenerative diseases are blinding disorders characterized by postnatal degeneration of photoreceptors, and affect nearly 2 million individuals worldwide, but ∼50% do not have a known mutation, implicating contributions of epigenetic factors. We found that embryonic deletion of the histone methyltransferase (HMT) Ezh2 from all retinal progenitors resulted in progressive photoreceptor degeneration throughout postnatal life, via derepression of fetal expression of Six1 and its targets. Forced expression of Six1 in the postnatal retina was sufficient to induce photoreceptor degeneration. Ezh2, although enriched in the embryonic retina, was not present in the mature retina; these data reveal an Ezh2-mediated feed-forward pathway that is required for maintaining photoreceptor homeostasis in the adult and suggest novel targets for retinal degeneration therapy

Studies on the antidiabetic activities of cordyceps militaris extract in diet-streptozotocininduced diabetic sprague-dawley rats,”

Due to substantial morbidity and high complications, diabetes mellitus is considered as the third "killer" in the world. A search for alternative antidiabetic drugs from herbs or fungi is highly demanded. Our present study aims to investigate the antidiabetic activities of Cordyceps militaris on diet-streptozotocin-induced type 2 diabetes mellitus in rats. Diabetic rats were orally administered with water extract or alcohol extract at 0.05 g/kg and 2 g/kg for 3 weeks, and then, the factors levels related to blood glucose, lipid, free radicals, and even nephropathy were determined. Pathological alterations on liver and kidney were examined. Data showed that, similar to metformin, Cordyceps militaris extracts displayed a significant reduction in blood glucose levels by promoting glucose metabolism and strongly suppressed total cholesterol and triglycerides concentration in serum. Cordyceps militaris extracts exhibit antioxidative effects indicated by normalized superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase levels. The inhibitory effects on blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, uric acid, and protein revealed the protection of Cordyceps militaris extracts against diabetic nephropathy, which was confirmed by pathological morphology reversion. Collectively, Cordyceps militaris extract, a safe pharmaceutical agent, presents excellent antidiabetic and antinephropathic activities and thus has great potential as a new source for diabetes treatment

Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Maps in Follicular Lymphoma Cells Determined by Methylation-Enriched Bisulfite Sequencing

BACKGROUND: Follicular lymphoma (FL) is a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) that arises from germinal center (GC) B-cells. Despite the significant advances in immunotherapy, FL is still not curable. Beyond transcriptional profiling and genomics datasets, there currently is no epigenome-scale dataset or integrative biology approach that can adequately model this disease and therefore identify novel mechanisms and targets for successful prevention and treatment of FL. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We performed methylation-enriched genome-wide bisulfite sequencing of FL cells and normal CD19(+) B-cells using 454 sequencing technology. The methylated DNA fragments were enriched with methyl-binding proteins, treated with bisulfite, and sequenced using the Roche-454 GS FLX sequencer. The total number of bases covered in the human genome was 18.2 and 49.3 million including 726,003 and 1.3 million CpGs in FL and CD19(+) B-cells, respectively. 11,971 and 7,882 methylated regions of interest (MRIs) were identified respectively. The genome-wide distribution of these MRIs displayed significant differences between FL and normal B-cells. A reverse trend in the distribution of MRIs between the promoter and the gene body was observed in FL and CD19(+) B-cells. The MRIs identified in FL cells also correlated well with transcriptomic data and ChIP-on-Chip analyses of genome-wide histone modifications such as tri-methyl-H3K27, and tri-methyl-H3K4, indicating a concerted epigenetic alteration in FL cells. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study is the first to provide a large scale and comprehensive analysis of the DNA methylation sequence composition and distribution in the FL epigenome. These integrated approaches have led to the discovery of novel and frequent targets of aberrant epigenetic alterations. The genome-wide bisulfite sequencing approach developed here can be a useful tool for profiling DNA methylation in clinical samples

Targeted bisulfite sequencing by solution hybrid selection and massively parallel sequencing

We applied a solution hybrid selection approach to the enrichment of CpG islands (CGIs) and promoter sequences from the human genome for targeted high-throughput bisulfite sequencing. A single lane of Illumina sequences allowed accurate and quantitative analysis of ~1 million CpGs in more than 21 408 CGIs and more than 15 946 transcriptional regulatory regions. Of the CpGs analyzed, 77–84% fell on or near capture probe sequences; 69–75% fell within CGIs. More than 85% of capture probes successfully yielded quantitative DNA methylation information of targeted regions. Differentially methylated regions (DMRs) were identified in the 5′-end regulatory regions, as well as the intra- and intergenic regions, particularly in the X-chromosome among the three breast cancer cell lines analyzed. We chose 46 candidate loci (762 CpGs) for confirmation with PCR-based bisulfite sequencing and demonstrated excellent correlation between two data sets. Targeted bisulfite sequencing of three DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) knockout cell lines and the wild-type HCT116 colon cancer cell line revealed a significant decrease in CpG methylation for the DNMT1 knockout and DNMT1, 3B double knockout cell lines, but not in DNMT3B knockout cell line. We demonstrated the targeted bisulfite sequencing approach to be a powerful method to uncover novel aberrant methylation in the cancer epigenome. Since all targets were captured and sequenced as a pool through a series of single-tube reactions, this method can be easily scaled up to deal with a large number of samples

Biochemical and Structural Insights into the Mechanisms of SARS Coronavirus RNA Ribose 2′-O-Methylation by nsp16/nsp10 Protein Complex

The 5′-cap structure is a distinct feature of eukaryotic mRNAs, and eukaryotic viruses generally modify the 5′-end of viral RNAs to mimic cellular mRNA structure, which is important for RNA stability, protein translation and viral immune escape. SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) encodes two S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM)-dependent methyltransferases (MTase) which sequentially methylate the RNA cap at guanosine-N7 and ribose 2′-O positions, catalyzed by nsp14 N7-MTase and nsp16 2′-O-MTase, respectively. A unique feature for SARS-CoV is that nsp16 requires non-structural protein nsp10 as a stimulatory factor to execute its MTase activity. Here we report the biochemical characterization of SARS-CoV 2′-O-MTase and the crystal structure of nsp16/nsp10 complex bound with methyl donor SAM. We found that SARS-CoV nsp16 MTase methylated m7GpppA-RNA but not m7GpppG-RNA, which is in contrast with nsp14 MTase that functions in a sequence-independent manner. We demonstrated that nsp10 is required for nsp16 to bind both m7GpppA-RNA substrate and SAM cofactor. Structural analysis revealed that nsp16 possesses the canonical scaffold of MTase and associates with nsp10 at 1∶1 ratio. The structure of the nsp16/nsp10 interaction interface shows that nsp10 may stabilize the SAM-binding pocket and extend the substrate RNA-binding groove of nsp16, consistent with the findings in biochemical assays. These results suggest that nsp16/nsp10 interface may represent a better drug target than the viral MTase active site for developing highly specific anti-coronavirus drugs