Abiotic Stresses: General Defenses of Land Plants and Chances for Engineering Multistress Tolerance

Abiotic stresses, such as low or high temperature, deficient or excessive water, high salinity, heavy metals, and ultraviolet radiation, are hostile to plant growth and development, leading to great crop yield penalty worldwide. It is getting imperative to equip crops with multistress tolerance to relieve the pressure of environmental changes and to meet the demand of population growth, as different abiotic stresses usually arise together in the field. The feasibility is raised as land plants actually have established more generalized defenses against abiotic stresses, including the cuticle outside plants, together with unsaturated fatty acids, reactive species scavengers, molecular chaperones, and compatible solutes inside cells. In stress response, they are orchestrated by a complex regulatory network involving upstream signaling molecules including stress hormones, reactive oxygen species, gasotransmitters, polyamines, phytochromes, and calcium, as well as downstream gene regulation factors, particularly transcription factors. In this review, we aimed at presenting an overview of these defensive systems and the regulatory network, with an eye to their practical potential via genetic engineering and/or exogenous application

Yiqi Huayu Jiedu Decoction Inhibits the Invasion and Metastasis of Gastric Cancer Cells through TGF- β

Background. Yiqi Huayu Jiedu Decoction (YHJD) can obviously improve the quality of life of those patients with gastric cancer and prolong their survival. Methods. In vitro experiments, we observe YHJD’s effect on the cells’ proliferation by MTT assay. Cell adhesion assay, wound-healing assay, and Transwell invasion assay serve to detect its influence on cells’ adhesion, migration, and invasion, respectively. Inhibitor (10 μM/L of SB431542) and activator (10 ng/mL of TGF-β) of TGF-β/Smad pathway were used to estimate whether YHJD’s impact on the biological behavior of gastric cancer cells was related to TGF-β/Smad pathway. In in vivo studies, YHJD was administered to the nude mice transplanted with gastric cancer to observe its effect on the tumor. Western blotting and immunohistochemical assay were used to test relevant cytokines of TGF-β/Smad pathway and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in MGC-803 cells and the tumor bearing nude mice. Results. YHJD inhibited proliferation, adhesion, migration, and invasion of MGC-803 gastric cancer cells in vitro. In in vivo studies, YHJD reduced the volume of the transplanted tumors. It also enhanced the expression of E-cadherin and decreased the levels of N-cadherin, TGF-β, Snail, and Slug in both MGC-803 cells and the transplanted tumor by western blot assay. The immunohistochemical assay revealed that YHJD raised E-cadherin in the tumors of the mice; on the contrary, the expression of N-cadherin, Twist, vimentin, TGF-βR I, p-Smad2, p-Smad3, Snail, and Slug reduced. Conclusion. YHJD can effectively inhibit the invasion and metastasis of gastric cancer cells. The mechanism may be related to TGF-β/Smad pathway

CNN Deep Learning with Wavelet Image Fusion of CCD RGB-IR and Depth-Grayscale Sensor Data for Hand Gesture Intention Recognition

Pixel-based images captured by a charge-coupled device (CCD) with infrared (IR) LEDs around the image sensor are the well-known CCD Red–Green–Blue IR (the so-called CCD RGB-IR) data. The CCD RGB-IR data are generally acquired for video surveillance applications. Currently, CCD RGB-IR information has been further used to perform human gesture recognition on surveillance. Gesture recognition, including hand gesture intention recognition, is attracting great attention in the field of deep neural network (DNN) calculations. For further enhancing conventional CCD RGB-IR gesture recognition by DNN, this work proposes a deep learning framework for gesture recognition where a convolution neural network (CNN) incorporated with wavelet image fusion of CCD RGB-IR and additional depth-based depth-grayscale images (captured from depth sensors of the famous Microsoft Kinect device) is constructed for gesture intention recognition. In the proposed CNN with wavelet image fusion, a five-level discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) with three different wavelet decomposition merge strategies, namely, max-min, min-max and mean-mean, is employed; the visual geometry group (VGG)-16 CNN is used for deep learning and recognition of the wavelet fused gesture images. Experiments on the classifications of ten hand gesture intention actions (specified in a scenario of laboratory interactions) show that by additionally incorporating depth-grayscale data into CCD RGB-IR gesture recognition one will be able to further increase the averaged recognition accuracy to 83.88% for the VGG-16 CNN with min-max wavelet image fusion of the CCD RGB-IR and depth-grayscale data, which is obviously superior to the 75.33% of VGG-16 CNN with only CCD RGB-IR

Effect of Dynamic Composite Refinement and Modification on Microstructure of A356 Aluminum Alloy

To make up for the inadequacy of Sr modification,Al-5Ti-1B-1RE master alloy refiner was prepared,then were used together with Al-10Sr master alloy for dynamic composite refinement and modification of A356 alloy.The A356 alloy microstructure of modification was studied and compared with the theoretical calculating results.The results show that the melt is fiercely stirred and vibrated by the JJ-1 laboratory electric stirrer;the refining effect of α-Al phase is excellent;the coarse and needle-like eutectic Si phase transforms into tiny,widely dispersed spherical particles and well-distributed at the grain boundaries.And mechanical property of the A356 alloy increases obviously.The grain size control study results are consistent with Johnson-Mehl equation theory.At the same time,the contents of gases of the A356 alloy are significantly reduced,which can not be achieved by Sr alone.Quantitative calculating results of degassing mechanism are consistent with the approximate calculating equations of thermodynamics and Stokes Law

Advances in the Study of the Potential Hepatotoxic Components and Mechanism of Polygonum multiflorum

The roots of Polygonum multiflorum (PM) (He Shou Wu in Chinese) are one of the most commonly used tonic traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) in China. PM is traditionally valued for its antiaging, liver- and kidney-tonifying, and hair-blackening effects. However, an increasing number of hepatotoxicity cases induced by PM attract the attention of scholars worldwide. Thus far, the potential liver injury compounds and the mechanism are still uncertain. The aim of this review is to provide comprehensive information on the potential hepatotoxic components and mechanism of PM based on the scientific literature. Moreover, perspectives for future investigations of hepatotoxic components are discussed. This study will build a new foundation for further study on the hepatotoxic components and mechanism of PM

Intragenic Recombination as a Mechanism of Genetic Diversity in Bluetongue Virus▿

Bluetongue (BT), caused by Bluetongue virus (BTV), is an economically important disease affecting sheep, deer, cattle, and goats. Since 1998, a series of BT outbreaks have spread across much of southern and central Europe. To study why the epidemiology of the virus happens to change, it is important to fully know the mechanisms resulting in its genetic diversity. Gene mutation and segment reassortment have been considered as the key forces driving the evolution of BTV. However, it is still unknown whether intragenic recombination can occur and contribute to the process in the virus. We present here several BTV groups containing mosaic genes to reveal that intragenic recombination can take place between the virus strains and play a potential role in bringing novel BTV lineages