Genome-wide association analysis of time to heading and maturity in bread wheat using 55K microarrays

To investigate the genetic mechanisms underlying the reproductive traits (time to flowering and maturity) in wheat and identify candidate genes associated, a phenotypic analysis was conducted on 239 wheat accessions (lines) from around the world. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) of wheat heading and maturity phases was performed using the MLM (Q+K) model in the TASSLE software, combined with the Wheat 55K SNP array. The results revealed significant phenotypic variation in heading and maturity among the wheat accessions across different years, with coefficients of variation ranging from 0.96% to 1.97%. The phenotypic data from different years exhibited excellent correlation, with a genome-wide linkage disequilibrium (LD) attenuation distance of 3 Mb. Population structure analysis, evolutionary tree analysis, and principal component analysis indicated that the 239 wheat accessions formed a relatively homogeneous natural population, which could be divided into three subgroups. The GWAS results identified a total of 293 SNP marker loci that were significantly associated with wheat heading and maturity stages (P ≤ 0.001) in different environments. Among them, nine stable SNP marker loci were consistently detected in multiple environments. These marker loci were distributed on wheat chromosomes 1A、1B、2D、3A、5B、6D and 7A. Each individual locus explained 4.03%-16.06% of the phenotypic variation. Furthermore, through careful analysis of the associated loci with large phenotypic effect values and stable inheritance, a total of nine candidate genes related to wheat heading and maturity stages were identified. These findings have implications for molecular marker-assisted selection breeding programs targeting specific wheat traits at the heading and maturity stages. In summary, this study conducted a comprehensive GWAS of wheat heading and maturity phases, revealing significant associations between genetic markers and key developmental stages in wheat. The identification of candidate genes and marker loci provides valuable information for further studies on wheat breeding and genetic improvement targeted at enhancing heading and maturity traits

Herding towards carbon neutrality: The role of investor attention

International audienceThis paper explores the herding towards carbon neutrality in the Chinese stock market. We find that herding towards carbon neutrality does dynamically exist in the Chinese stock market. Specifically, herding is pronounced during the bear markets and market stress periods such as the post-COVID-19 period. There is a size effect for the herding behavior. Investor attention could significantly decrease the magnitude of herding. Our results hold in various robustness tests. This paper provides some important implications on the style investing, fads, and carbon neutrality

A Novel SERS Substrate Platform: Spatially Stacking Plasmonic Hotspots Films

Abstract Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique has presented great potential in medical diagnosis, environment monitoring, and food detection due to its high sensitivity, rapid response, and fingerprint effect. Many efforts have been concentrated on all kinds of strategies to produce efficient SERS platforms. Here, we report a simple and controllable method to produce large-area efficient SERS platforms with spatially stacked plasmonic hotspots. The SERS platforms consist of double-layer metal porous films and are easily fabricated by magnetron sputtering and annealing, assisted by the evaporation of hydrofluoric acid. The stacked dual-layer metal porous films show prominent Raman enhancement and ultrasensitive SERS sensing capability for different target molecules. The detection limit is demonstrated down to 10−13 M by detecting rhodamine 6G molecules. These superior Raman properties can be mainly ascribed to the highly dense spatially stacked plasmonic hotspots formed in the dual-layer metal porous films. The simple, controllable, and scalable fabrication strategy and superior Raman performance make these platforms promising candidates for the development of inexpensive, efficient, and mass-produced SERS substrates

Superior CO2 uptake of N-doped activated carbon through hydrogen-bonding interaction

Here we show that the introduction of N into a carbon surface facilitates the hydrogen-bonding interactions between the carbon surface and CO2 molecules, which accounts for the superior CO2 uptake of the N-doped activated carbons. This new finding challenges the long-held viewpoint that acid-base interactions between N-containing basic functional groups and acidic CO2 gas are responsible for the enhanced CO2 capture capacity of N-doped carbons. This journal i

Correlation study on firing temperature and color of plain pottery excavated from the Tang Dynasty tomb of Liu Jing in Shaanxi, China

Abstract Plain pottery excavated from the Tang Dynasty tomb of Liu Jing was taken as the research object. The color, chemical composition, microstructure, and phase were tested to investigate the influencing factors of color for plain pottery fragments. The results indicated that the contents of Fe2O3 and TiO2 in all fragments varied little, and the influence of humic acids in clay as well as the firing atmosphere on the appearance color of plain pottery was excluded. Therefore, the main factor affecting color saturation (C*) was identified as the firing temperature (T). More importantly, the correlation between C* and firing temperature was established by replicas fired at different temperatures. Before the appearance of the glass phase, iron-containing minerals played a major role in coloring, and after that, iron ions in the glass phase and iron crystallization rose the important function of coloring. Consequently, with the increase of firing temperature, C* value increased firstly and then decreased. The inflection point of the fitted C* − T curve corresponded to the glass phase formation temperature. By comparing the estimated firing temperatures obtained by the fitted C* − T correlation curve with the known firing temperature of replicas, it was demonstrated that the color measurement is an ideal method for deducing the firing temperatures of ancient plain pottery

Genome-Wide Association Study of Rice Grain Shape and Chalkiness in a Worldwide Collection of Xian Accessions

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) appearance quality, which is mainly defined by grain shape and chalkiness, is an important target in rice breeding. In this study, we first re-sequenced 137 indica accessions and then conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for six agronomic traits with the 2,998,034 derived single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) by using the best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) values for each trait. The results revealed that 195 SNPs had significant associations with the six agronomic traits. Based on the genome-wide linkage disequilibrium (LD) blocks, candidate genes for the target traits were detected within 100 kb upstream and downstream of the relevant SNP loci. Results indicate that six quantitative trait loci (QTLs) significantly associated with six traits (qTGW4.1, qTGW4.2, qGL4.1, qGL12.1, qGL12.2, qGW2.1, qGW4.1, qGW6.1, qGW8.1, qGW8.2, qGW9.1, qGW11.1, qGLWR2.1, qGLWR2.2, qGLWR4.2, qPGWC5.1 and qDEC6.1) were identified for haplotype analysis. Among these QTLs, two (qTGW4.2 and qGW6.1), were overlapped with FLO19 and OsbZIP47, respectively, and the remaining four were novel QTLs. These candidate genes were further validated by haplotype block construction

Additional file 1 of Correlation study on firing temperature and color of plain pottery excavated from the Tang Dynasty tomb of Liu Jing in Shaanxi, China

Additional file 1: Table S1. Chroma values on the surfaces of thirty-two plain pottery fragments. Table S2. Chemical compositions obtained by XRF on the surfaces of thirty-two plain pottery fragments (wt%). Table S3. Color saturation values on the surfaces of replicas. Table S4. The standard deviation and error of the estimated firing temperatures of the samples fired by the loess from Yaozhou kiln site. Table S5. The standard deviation and error of the estimated firing temperatures of the samples fired by the eastern mausoleum of Qin Dynasty in Shaanxi Province. Fig S1. Porosity and average pore size of MS-07, TMS-08 and, TMS-09. Fig S2. Thermal expansion curves and the first order derivative curves of replicas fired at 600 °C with 3, 5, and 10 °C/min, respectively. Fig S3. The C*−T correlation curve of the samples fired by the loess near the eastern mausoleum of Qin Dynasty in Shaanxi Province