Identification and Functional Characterization of Squamosa Promoter Binding Protein-Like Gene TaSPL16 in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important crops in the world. Squamosa promoter binding protein-like (SPL) proteins are plant-specific transcript factors and play critical roles in plant growth and development. The functions of many SPL gene family members were well characterized in Arabidopsis and rice, in contrast, research on wheat SPL genes is lagging behind. In this study, we cloned and characterized TaSPL16, an orthologous gene of rice OsSPL16, in wheat. Three TaSPL16 homoeologs are located on the short arms of chromosome 7A, 7B, and 7D, and share more than 96% sequence identity with each other. All the TaSPL16 homoeologs have three exons and two introns, with a miR156 binding site in their last exons. They encode putative proteins of 407, 409, and 414 amino acid residues, respectively. Subcellular localization showed TaSPL16 distribution in the cell nucleus, and transcription activity of TaSPL16 was validated in yeast. Analysis of the spatiotemporal expression profile showed that TaSPL16 is highly expressed in young developing panicles, lowly expressed in developing seeds and almost undetectable in vegetative tissues. Ectopic expression of TaSPL16 in Arabidopsis causes a delay in the emergence of vegetative leaves (3–4 days late), promotes early flowering (5–7 days early), increases organ size, and affects yield-related traits. These results demonstrated the regulatory roles of TaSPL16 in plant growth and development as well as seed yield. Our findings enrich the existing knowledge on SPL genes in wheat and provide valuable information for further investigating the effects of TaSPL16 on plant architecture and yield-related traits of wheat

How does birth endowment affect individual resilience to an adolescent adversity?

Studies on heterogeneous effects of adversities usually explore one exogenous variation in adversity. We explore two exogenous variations to examine how birth endowment changes individual resilience to an adolescent adversity. While China's send-down campaign offers a social experiment that exposes people to an adversity in adolescence, we use twins’ difference in birthweight as a natural experiment on birth endowment. The use of exogenous variations in both endowment and adversity enables us to clearly identify the interaction effect of endowment and adversity. We find that effects of send-down experience on income, education, and health differ by birthweight. For brothers with a 10% difference in birthweight, if the higher-endowed male was sent down, then he would earn approximately 12% more than his co-twin. For sisters with a 10% difference in birthweight, if the higher-endowed female was sent down, she is 8% more likely to upgrade her education after the send-down movement, and 9.8 percentage points less likely to be overweight or have chronic diseases. Long-term consequences of an adolescent adversity differ substantially by birth endowment

Comparison of Composites Properties Manufactured by Vacuum Process and Autoclave Process

Two kinds of prepregs ZT7G/LT-03A(unidirectional carbon fiber prepreg) and ZT7G3198P/LT-03A(plain carbon fabric prepreg) were used to manufacture three Bateches of composites by vacuum process and autoclave process respectively. The physical properties of the prepregs and mechanical properties of composite were tested. The performance, fiber volume content and porosity of composites manufactured by vacuum cure and autoclave process show that the physical property retention rates of vacuum cured composites are all over 75%, some even more than 100%. Interlaminar shear strength keeps the lowest retention rate and warp tensile strength keeps the highest retention in unidirectional carbon fiber composites. For fabric composite material, compression strength keeps the lowest and warp tensile strength keeps the highest retention. Vacuum cured composites perform lower fiber volume content and higher porosity, which are the main reasons of the lower performance

A Recurrent Adaptive Network: Balanced Learning for Road Crack Segmentation with High-Resolution Images

Road crack segmentation based on high-resolution images is an important task in road service maintenance. The undamaged road surface area is much larger than the damaged area on a highway. This imbalanced situation yields poor road crack segmentation performance for convolutional neural networks. In this paper, we first evaluate the mainstream convolutional neural network structure in the road crack segmentation task. Second, inspired by the second law of thermodynamics, an improved method called a recurrent adaptive network for a pixelwise road crack segmentation task is proposed to solve the extreme imbalance between positive and negative samples. We achieved a flow between precision and recall, similar to the conduction of temperature repetition. During the training process, the recurrent adaptive network (1) dynamically evaluates the degree of imbalance, (2) determines the positive and negative sampling rates, and (3) adjusts the loss weights of positive and negative features. By following these steps, we established a channel between precision and recall and kept them balanced as they flow to each other. A dataset of high-resolution road crack images with annotations (named HRRC) was built from a real road inspection scene. The images in HRRC were collected on a mobile vehicle measurement platform by high-resolution industrial cameras and were carefully labeled at the pixel level. Therefore, this dataset has sufficient data complexity to objectively evaluate the real performance of convolutional neural networks in highway patrol scenes. Our main contribution is a new method of solving the data imbalance problem, and the method of guiding model training by analyzing precision and recall is experimentally demonstrated to be effective. The recurrent adaptive network achieves state-of-the-art performance on this dataset

Plasma Asprosin Levels Are Associated with Glucose Metabolism, Lipid, and Sex Hormone Profiles in Females with Metabolic-Related Diseases

Asprosin is a white adipose tissue-derived hormone that increases abnormally in mammals with insulin resistance. However, the role of asprosin in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a disease partly characterized by insulin resistance, and its potential connection with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and PCOS has not been thoroughly elucidated to date. To investigate the association of asprosin with metabolic profiles, sex-related hormones, or inflammation in females with T2DM or PCOS, plasma asprosin and metabolic indicators were measured in 66 healthy females, 53 female patients with T2DM, and 41 patients with PCOS. Spearman’s correlation analysis and binary logistic regression analysis models were used. Plasma asprosin was significantly higher in T2DM females than in healthy subjects (P<0.001) and was positively correlated with fasting blood glucose (FBG), hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), and HOMA-IR (P<0.05). Asprosin in PCOS subjects was also higher than in healthy subjects (P<0.001) but lower than in T2DM subjects (P<0.05), and it was positively correlated with FBG, HbA1c, HOMA-IR, LDL-c, APOB, APOE, and testosterone (P<0.05). The BMI-categorized subgroups of PCOS subjects also showed correlations of asprosin with metabolic profiles and sex-related hormones. Binary logistic regression analysis revealed that plasma asprosin level acted as an independent risk factor for T2DM or PCOS. These findings suggest the correlation of plasma asprosin level with glucose metabolism, lipid metabolism, sex-related hormones, and inflammation in females, supporting asprosin as a potential predictive factor for females with metabolic-related diseases. This trial is registered with ChiCTR-ROC-17010719

CMHX008, a novel peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ partial agonist, enhances insulin sensitivity in vitro and in vivo.

The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) plays an important role in adipocyte differentiation and insulin sensitivity. Its ligand rosiglitazone has anti-diabetic effect but is frequently accompanied with some severe unwanted effects. The aim of the current study was to compare the anti-diabetic effect of CMHX008, a novel thiazolidinedione-derivative, with rosiglitazone. A luciferase assay was used to evaluate in vitro PPARγ activation. 3T3-L1 cells were used to examine adipocyte differentiation. High fat diet (HFD) mice were used to examine in vivo insulin sensitivity. The mRNA levels were evaluated by real-time RT-PCR. Serum biochemical and hormonal variables were assessed using a clinical chemistry analyser. CMHX008 displayed a moderate PPARγ agonist activity, and promoted 3T3-L1 preadipocyte differentiation with lower activity than rosiglitazone. CMHX008 regulated the expression of PPARγ target genes in a different manner from rosiglitazone. CMHX008 increased the expression and secretion of adiponectin with the similar efficacy as rosiglitazone, but only 25% as potent as rosiglitazone for the induction of adipocyte fatty acid binding protein. Treatment of CMHX008 and rosiglitazone protected mice from high fat diet (HFD)-induced glucose intolerance, hyperinsulinemia and inflammation. CMHX008 reduced the mRNA expression of M1 macrophage markers, and significantly increased the expressions of M2 markers. In conclusion, CMHX008 shared the comparable insulin-sensitizing effects as rosiglitazone with lower adipogenic capacity and might potentially be developed into an effective agent for the treatment of diabetes and metabolic disorders

CMHX008 protects HFD induced dyslipidaemia.

<p>C57BL/6 mice were fed with HFD or LFD for 16 weeks. Then HFD fed C57BL/6 mice were treated with CMHX008 (3 and 10 mg/kg, HFD-C3 and HFD-C10), rosiglitazone (3 mg/kg, HFD-Rosi) or vehicle (HFD-Veh or LFD-Veh) only, for additional 5 weeks. Trunk blood was collected at the end of the experiment. Serum was used for the measurement of cholesterol (A), triglyceride (B), low-density lipoproteins (LDL, C) and high-density lipoproteins (HDL, D). Data are the means ± S.E.M., n = 4–5; ^#<i>P<</i>0.05 <i>vs</i> LFD-Veh and *<i>P<</i>0.05 <i>vs</i> HFD-Veh.</p

CMHX008 improves HFD induced systemic inflammation.

<p>C57BL/6 mice were fed with HFD or LFD for 16 weeks. Then HFD fed C57BL/6 mice were treated with CMHX008 (3 and 10 mg/kg, HFD-C3 and HFD-C10), rosiglitazone (3 mg/kg, HFD-Rosi) or vehicle (HFD-Veh or LFD-Veh) only, for additional 5 weeks. Trunk blood was collected at the end of the experiment. Serum was used for the measurement of TNF-α (A, IL-6 (B), IL-10 (C), and adiponectin (D). Data are the means ± S.E.M., n = 4–5; ^#<i>P<</i>0.05 <i>vs</i> LFD-Veh and *<i>P<</i>0.05 <i>vs</i> HFD-Veh.</p