Autocrine regulation of root hair size by the RALF-FERONIA-RSL4 signaling pathway

Root hair (RH) size has vital physiological implications, since it influences the surface area of the root and thus the ability of the plant to absorb water and nutrients from the soil. Arabidopsis ROOT HAIR DEFECTIVE 6-LIKE 4 (RSL4), a bHLH transcription factor, controls the expression of hundreds of RH genes, and RSL4 expression itself can trigger ectopic RH growth. Recent studies reveal an autocrine mechanism governing plant RH cell growth in which the extracellular peptide RAPID ALKALINIZATION FACTOR 1 (RALF1) and receptor FERONIA (FER) act as a central hub between the cell surface and downstream signaling events. RALF1-FER promotes the phosphorylation of eIF4E1. Then, phosphorylated eIF4E1 further regulates the synthesis of RH proteins, including RSL4, to promote RH growth. High levels of RSL4 exert a negative feedback on RALF1 expression via directly binding to the RALF1 gene promoter, slowing RH growth and determining final RH cell size.Fil: Zhu, Sirui. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Martinez Pacheco, Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Estevez, Jose Manuel. Universidad Andrés Bello; Chile. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Yu, Feng. State Key Laboratory Of Hybrid Rice; China. Hunan University; Chin

Learning non-Markovian Decision-Making from State-only Sequences

Conventional imitation learning assumes access to the actions of demonstrators, but these motor signals are often non-observable in naturalistic settings. Additionally, sequential decision-making behaviors in these settings can deviate from the assumptions of a standard Markov Decision Process (MDP). To address these challenges, we explore deep generative modeling of state-only sequences with non-Markov Decision Process (nMDP), where the policy is an energy-based prior in the latent space of the state transition generator. We develop maximum likelihood estimation to achieve model-based imitation, which involves short-run MCMC sampling from the prior and importance sampling for the posterior. The learned model enables \textit{decision-making as inference}: model-free policy execution is equivalent to prior sampling, model-based planning is posterior sampling initialized from the policy. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method in a prototypical path planning task with non-Markovian constraints and show that the learned model exhibits strong performances in challenging domains from the MuJoCo suite

Microstructure Characterization and Battery Performance Comparison of MOF-235 and TiO 2 -P25 Materials

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).The growing interest in energy storage has led to the urgent need for the development of high-performance cathode electrodes. The commercialized materials MOF-235 and TiO2-P25 exhibit characteristics that may be suitable as electrodes but there are inherent challenges that have yet to be addressed in the literature. In this study, a high-pressure hydrothermal synthesized MOF-235 and sol-gel-made TiO2-P25 were tested for battery performance. The results indicate that MOF-235 does not possess the desired performance due to uncontrollable agglomeration. On the other hand, TiO2-P25 showed good cycling life, and the performance can be further optimized by doping and minimizing the particle size. Additionally, SEM and TEM were applied for surface characterization, providing evidence that mesoporous TiO2-25 inhibits photo-generated carrier recombination. The mesoporous energy storage mechanism of those two materials is also discussed. This research will provide technical support for the industrialization of those two mesoporous materials.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Direct-Current Generator Based on Dynamic Water-Semiconductor Junction with Polarized Water as Moving Dielectric Medium

There is a rising prospective in harvesting energy from water droplets, as microscale energy is required for the distributed sensors in the interconnected human society. However, achieving a sustainable direct-current generating device from water flow is rarely reported, and the quantum polarization principle of the water molecular remains uncovered. Herein, we propose a dynamic water-semiconductor junction with moving water sandwiched between two semiconductors as a moving dielectric medium, which outputs a sustainable direct-current voltage of 0.3 V and current of 0.64 uA with low internal resistance of 390 kilohm. The sustainable direct-current electricity is originating from the dynamic water polarization process in water-semiconductor junction, in which water molecules are continuously polarized and depolarized driven by the mechanical force and Fermi level difference, during the movement of the water on silicon. We further demonstrated an encapsulated portable power-generating device with simple structure and continuous direct-current voltage, which exhibits its promising potential application in the field of wearable electronic generators

Cell surface receptor kinase FERONIA linked to nutrient sensor TORC1 signaling controls root hair growth at low temperature in Arabidopsis thaliana

Root hairs (RH) are excellent model systems for studying cell size regulation since they elongate several hundred-fold their original size. Their growth is determined both by intrinsic and environmental signals. Although nutrients availability in the soil are key factors for a sustained plant growth, the molecular mechanisms underlying their perception and downstream signaling pathways remains unclear. Here, we identified that a low temperature triggers a strong RH cell elongation response involving the cell surface receptor kinase FERONIA (FER) and nutrient sensor TORC1 pathway. We found that FER is required to perceive limited nutrients availability caused by low temperature, to interacts with and activate TORC1-downstream components to trigger RH growth. Nitrates perceived and transported by NRT1.1 were found to mimic this growth response at low temperature. Our findings reveal a new molecular mechanism by which a central hub composed by FER-TORC1 controls RH cell elongation under low temperature.Fil: Martinez Pacheco, Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Song, Limei. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Berdion Gabarain, Victoria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Peralta, Juan Manuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Urzúa Lehuedé, Tomás. Universidad Andrés Bello; ChileFil: Ibeas, Miguel Ángel. Universidad Andrés Bello; ChileFil: Zhu, Sirui. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Shen, Yanan. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Yu, Feng. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Estevez, Jose Manuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Andrés Bello; Chil

The RALF1–FERONIA Complex Phosphorylates eIF4E1 to Promote Protein Synthesis and Polar Root Hair Growth

The molecular links between extracellular signals and the regulation of localized protein synthesis in plant cells are poorly understood. Here, we show that in Arabidopsis thaliana, the extracellular peptide RALF1 and its receptor, the FERONIA receptor kinase, promote root hair (RH) tip growth by modulating protein synthesis. We found that RALF1 promotes FERONIA-mediated phosphorylation of eIF4E1, a eukaryotic translation initiation factor that plays a crucial role in the control of mRNA translation rate. Phosphorylated eIF4E1 increases mRNA affinity and modulates mRNA translation and, thus, protein synthesis. The mRNAs targeted by the RALF1–FERONIA–eIF4E1 module include ROP2 and RSL4, which are important regulators of RH cell polarity and growth. RALF1 and FERONIA are expressed in a polar manner in RHs, which facilitate eIF4E1 polar localization and thus may control local ROP2 translation. Moreover, we demonstrated that high-level accumulation of RSL4 exerts negative-feedback regulation of RALF1 expression by directly binding the RALF1 gene promoter, determining the final RH size. Our study reveals that the link between RALF1–FERONIA signaling and protein synthesis constitutes a novel component regulating cell expansion in these polar growing cells.Fil: Zhu, Sirui. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Estevez, Jose Manuel. Universidad Andrés Bello; Chile. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Liao, Hongdong. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Zhu, Yonghua. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Yang, Tao. Central South University of Forestry and Technology; ChinaFil: Li, Chiyu. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Wang, Yichuan. Southern University of Science and Technology; ChinaFil: Li, Lan. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Liu, Xuanming. Hunan University; ChinaFil: Martinez Pacheco, Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Guo, Hongwei. Southern University of Science and Technology; ChinaFil: Yu, Feng. Hunan University; Chin

FERONIA interacts with ABI2-type phosphatases to facilitate signaling cross-talk between abscisic acid and RALF peptide in Arabidopsis

[EN] Receptor-like kinase FERONIA (FER) plays a crucial role in plant response to small molecule hormones [e.g., auxin and abscisic acid (ABA)] and peptide signals [e.g., rapid alkalinization factor (RALF)]. It remains unknown how FER integrates these different signaling events in the control of cell growth and stress responses. Under stress conditions, increased levels of ABA will inhibit cell elongation in the roots. In our previous work, we have shown that FER, through activation of the guanine nucleotide exchange factor 1 (GEF1)/4/10-Rho of Plant 11 (ROP11) pathway, enhances the activity of the phosphatase ABA Insensitive 2 (ABI2), a negative regulator of ABA signaling, thereby inhibiting ABA response. In this study, we found that both RALF and ABA activated FER by increasing the phosphorylation level of FER. The FER loss-of-function mutant displayed strong hypersensitivity to both ABA and abiotic stresses such as salt and cold conditions, indicating that FER plays a key role in ABA and stress responses. We further showed that ABI2 directly interacted with and dephosphorylated FER, leading to inhibition of FER activity. Several other ABI2-like phosphatases also function in this pathway, and ABA-dependent FER activation required PYRABACTIN RESISTANCE (PYR)/PYR1-LIKE (PYL)/REGULATORY COMPONENTS OF ABA RECEPTORS (RCAR)-A-type protein phosphatase type 2C (PP2CA) modules. Furthermore, suppression of RALF1 gene expression, similar to disruption of the FER gene, rendered plants hypersensitive to ABA. These results formulated a mechanism for ABA activation of FER and for cross-talk between ABA and peptide hormone RALF in the control of plant growth and responses to stress signals.We thank Dr. Alice Cheung, Dr. Daniel Moura, Grossniklaus Ueli, Dr. Jigang Li, and Dr. Nieng Yan for providing plant, ABI1 antibody, or plasmid materials, and Dr. Legong Li for assistance in laser confocal microscopy. This work was supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC-31400232, 31571444), the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Developmental Biology (2015-MDB-KF-12), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China, and a grant from the National Science Foundation.Chen, J.; Yu, F.; Liu, Y.; Du, C.; Li, X.; Zhu, S.; Wang, X.... (2016). FERONIA interacts with ABI2-type phosphatases to facilitate signaling cross-talk between abscisic acid and RALF peptide in Arabidopsis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113(37):E5519-E5527. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1608449113SE5519E55271133

A Molecular-Based <i>Q</i>-Tensor Hydrodynamic Theory of Smectic Liquid Crystals

The Doi–Onsager molecular theory is capable of providing a rather accurate description of the local behavior of molecules; however, its computation is extremely time-consuming, since some higher-dimensional variables are typically involved. Therefore, establishing a computable reduced model that can capture essential physical properties is an important issue. In this work, we derived a reduced Q-tensor hydrodynamic theory that described smectic phases with density variations from the Doi–Onsager molecular theory using the Bingham closure approximation. The coefficients in the tensor model were derived from those in the molecular model. The energy dissipation law was inherited from the tensor model. Some special cases for the model were also discussed