Cultivation Practice of Chinese Medicinal Herbs

An innovative cultivation technique for Chinese medicinal herbs had been practiced in China, which led a new road for medicinal herbs production without input of chemical fertilizer and chemical pesticides. The organic practice was based on the principle of biodiversity for pest control. An example of Panax notoginseng (Burk.) F. H. Chen was chosen for explaining cultivation technology under forest. The key technologies for P. notoginseng cultivation under forest include forest land selection, land tillage, seedling breeding and transplanting, and on-farm organic management. These technologies can standardize herbs production in large-scale under forest, and the quality and safety of P. notoginseng can be effectively improved without applying chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizer in the production process

Structural mechanism of heavy metal-associated integrated domain engineering of paired nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich repeat proteins in rice

Plant nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins are immune sensors that detect pathogen effectors and initiate a strong immune response. In many cases, single NLR proteins are sufficient for both effector recognition and signaling activation. These proteins possess a conserved architecture, including a C-terminal leucine-rich repeat (LRR) domain, a central nucleotide-binding (NB) domain, and a variable N-terminal domain. Nevertheless, many paired NLRs linked in a head-to-head configuration have now been identified. The ones carrying integrated domains (IDs) can recognize pathogen effector proteins by various modes; these are known as sensor NLR (sNLR) proteins. Structural and biochemical studies have provided insights into the molecular basis of heavy metal-associated IDs (HMA IDs) from paired NLRs in rice and revealed the co-evolution between pathogens and hosts by combining naturally occurring favorable interactions across diverse interfaces. Focusing on structural and molecular models, here we highlight advances in structure-guided engineering to expand and enhance the response profile of paired NLR-HMA IDs in rice to variants of the rice blast pathogen MAX-effectors (Magnaporthe oryzae AVRs and ToxB-like). These results demonstrate that the HMA IDs-based design of rice materials with broad and enhanced resistance profiles possesses great application potential but also face considerable challenges

Human B-cell Ontogeny in Humanized NOD/SCID γcnull^{null} Mice Generates a Diverse Yet Auto/Poly- and HIV-1 Reactive Antibody Repertoire

Characterization of the human antibody (Ab) repertoire in mouse models of the human immune system is essential to establish their relevance in translational studies. Single human B-cells were sorted from bone marrow and periphery of humanized NOD/SCID γc$^{null}$ mice at 8–10 months post-engraftment with human cord blood-derived CD34$^+$ stem cells. Human immunoglobulin variable heavy (V$_H$) and kappa (V$_κ$) genes were amplified, cognate V$_H$-V$_κ$ gene-pairs assembled as single-chain variable fragment-Fc antibodies (scFvFcs) and functional studies performed. Although overall distribution of V$_H$ genes approximated the normal human Ab repertoire, analysis of the V$_H$-third complementarity determining regions (H-CDR3) in the mature B-cell subset demonstrated an increase in length and positive charges suggesting autoimmune characteristics. Additionally, >70% of Vκ sequences utilized V$_κ$4-1, a germline gene associated with autoimmunity. The mature B-cell subset-derived scFvFcs displayed the highest frequency of autoreactivity and polyspecificity, suggesting defects in checkpoint control mechanisms. Furthermore, these scFvFcs demonstrated binding to recombinant HIV envelope corroborating previous observations of poly/autoreactivity in anti-HIVgp140 antibodies. These data lend support to the hypothesis that anti-HIV BnAbs may be derived from auto/polyspecific Abs that escaped immune elimination and that the hNSG mouse could provide a new experimental platform for studying the origin of anti-HIV neutralizing Ab responses

Exogenous leucine alleviates heat stress and improves saponin synthesis in Panax notoginseng by improving antioxidant capacity and maintaining metabolic homeostasis

Panax notoginseng saponins (PNSs) are used as industrial raw materials to produce many drugs to treat cardio-cerebrovascular diseases. However, it is a heat-sensitive plant, and its large-scale artificial cultivation is impeded by high temperature stress, leading to decreases in productivity and PNSs yield. Here, we examined exogenous foliar leucine to alleviate heat stress and explored the underlying mechanism using metabolomics. The results indicated that 3 and 5 mM exogenous foliar leucine significantly alleviated heat stress in one-year- and two-year-old P. notoginseng in pots and field trials. Exogenous foliar leucine enhanced the antioxidant capacity by increasing the activities of antioxidant enzymes (POD, SOD) and the contents of antioxidant metabolites (amino acids). Moreover, exogenous foliar leucine enhanced carbohydrate metabolism, including sugars (sucrose, maltose) and TCA cycle metabolites (citric acid, aconitic acid, succinic acid and fumaric acid), in P. notoginseng leaves, stems, and fibrous roots to improve the energy supply of plants and further alleviate heat stress. Field experiments further verified that exogenous foliar leucine increased the productivity and PNSs accumulation in P. notoginseng. These results suggest that leucine application is beneficial for improving the growth and quality of P. notoginseng under heat stress. It is therefore possible to develop plant growth regulators based on leucine to improve the heat resistance of P. notoginseng and other crops

Crop Diversity for Yield Increase

Traditional farming practices suggest that cultivation of a mixture of crop species in the same field through temporal and spatial management may be advantageous in boosting yields and preventing disease, but evidence from large-scale field testing is limited. Increasing crop diversity through intercropping addresses the problem of increasing land utilization and crop productivity. In collaboration with farmers and extension personnel, we tested intercropping of tobacco, maize, sugarcane, potato, wheat and broad bean – either by relay cropping or by mixing crop species based on differences in their heights, and practiced these patterns on 15,302 hectares in ten counties in Yunnan Province, China. The results of observation plots within these areas showed that some combinations increased crop yields for the same season between 33.2 and 84.7% and reached a land equivalent ratio (LER) of between 1.31 and 1.84. This approach can be easily applied in developing countries, which is crucial in face of dwindling arable land and increasing food demand

Whole-genome resequencing of 472 Vitis accessions for grapevine diversity and demographic history analyses

Despite the importance of grapevine cultivation in human history and the economic values of cultivar improvement, large-scale genomic variation data are lacking. Here the authors resequence 472 Vitis accessions and use the identified genetic variations for domestication history, demography, and GWAS analyses

Qwen Technical Report

Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the field of artificial intelligence, enabling natural language processing tasks that were previously thought to be exclusive to humans. In this work, we introduce Qwen, the first installment of our large language model series. Qwen is a comprehensive language model series that encompasses distinct models with varying parameter counts. It includes Qwen, the base pretrained language models, and Qwen-Chat, the chat models finetuned with human alignment techniques. The base language models consistently demonstrate superior performance across a multitude of downstream tasks, and the chat models, particularly those trained using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), are highly competitive. The chat models possess advanced tool-use and planning capabilities for creating agent applications, showcasing impressive performance even when compared to bigger models on complex tasks like utilizing a code interpreter. Furthermore, we have developed coding-specialized models, Code-Qwen and Code-Qwen-Chat, as well as mathematics-focused models, Math-Qwen-Chat, which are built upon base language models. These models demonstrate significantly improved performance in comparison with open-source models, and slightly fall behind the proprietary models.Comment: 59 pages, 5 figure