Application of high-resolution melting for variant scanning in chloroplast gene atpB and atpB-rbcL intergenic spacer region of Crucifer species

High-resolution melting (HRM) analysis is a rapid and sensitive method for single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis. In this study, a novel HRM assay was carried out to detect SNPs in the chloroplast gene atpB which encodes the beta subunit of the ATP synthase and atpB upstream intergenic region. The polymorphisms of the two fragments in intertribal samples from the Cruciferae family and within the species of Brassica napus were detected. Based on this results, we found that HRM were able to determine over 90% of the variants which included single or multiple variants and insertion-deletion polymorphisms (INDELs) and rendered possible genotyping of more closely spaced polymorphisms, although there were several false positives (FPs) and misclassification. Six haplotypes were identified in the intertribal materials. The analysis of 90 B. napus found five variation types and the variations were all located in the intergenic region. In conclusion, HRM analysis is a closed tube assay that is easy to perform and is a more effective approach to identify variant of chloroplast genes. This study will facilitate further functional investigations into the role of chloroplast genes in photosynthesis, phylogeny and molecular evolution.Key words: atpB gene, chloroplast genome, crucifer, high-resolution melt curve analysis, SNP, INDEL

Effective Chemical Constituent’s Identification Of Extracting Solution From Herbs – A Review

Background and Objective: The aim of this article, was the definition, and targets of possible mechanisms of Yin lai Decoction by retrieving the herbals in the decoction and integrating information from multi-databases, which can be guidance for the followed experimental study.Matherials and Methods: The information from multi-databases was integrated. Results: In the study, we discovered 92 possible gene targets of Yin lai Decoction, 87% of which appeared in the targets of Flos Lonicerae, Fructus Forsythiae and Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi. The function of these targets focuses on the anti-infection and regulating immune system, and metabolism of the body.Conclusion: Yin lai Decoction may affect the process of metabolism, immune response and infection by impact on the 92 possible gene targets, then it can mitigate the damage caused by infection and promote the body to health. But the definite mechanisms must be explored by furtherexperimental study.Keywords: Yin lai Decoction, Metabolism, Immune response, Infection, Gene targets

3D Multi-Objective Deployment of an Industrial Wireless Sensor Network for Maritime Applications Utilizing a Distributed Parallel Algorithm

Effective monitoring marine environment has become a vital problem in the marine applications. Traditionally, marine application mostly utilizes oceanographic research vessel methods to monitor the environment and human parameters. But these methods are usually expensive and time-consuming, also limited resolution in time and space. Due to easy deployment and cost-effective, WSNs have recently been considered as a promising alternative for next generation IMGs. This paper focuses on solving the issue of 3D WSN deployment in a 3D engine room space of a very large crude-oil carrier (VLCC), in which many power devices are also considered. To address this 3D WSN deployment problem for maritime applications, a 3D uncertain coverage model is proposed with a new 3D sensing model and an uncertain fusion operator, is presented. The deployment problem is converted into a multi-objective problems (MOP) in which three objectives are simultaneously considered: Coverage, Lifetime and Reliability. Our aim is to achieve extensive Coverage, long Lifetime and high Reliability. We also propose a distributed parallel cooperative co-evolutionary multi-objective large-scale evolutionary algorithm (DPCCMOLSEA) for maritime applications. In the simulation experiments, the effectiveness of this algorithm is verified in comparing with five state-of-the-art algorithms. The numerical outputs demonstrate that the proposed method performs the best with respect to both optimization performance and computation time

Narrowing the Agronomic Yield Gaps of Maize by Improved Soil, Cultivar, and Agricultural Management Practices in Different Climate Zones of Northeast China

Citation: Liu, Z. J., Yang, X. G., Lin, X. M., Hubbard, K. G., Lv, S., & Wang, J. (2016). Narrowing the Agronomic Yield Gaps of Maize by Improved Soil, Cultivar, and Agricultural Management Practices in Different Climate Zones of Northeast China. Earth Interactions, 20, 18. doi:10.1175/ei-d-15-0032.1Northeast China (NEC) is one of the major agricultural production areas in China, producing about 30% of China's total maize output. In the past five decades, maize yields in NEC increased rapidly. However, farmer yields still have potential to be increased. Therefore, it is important to quantify the impacts of agronomic factors, including soil physical properties, cultivar selections, and management practices on yield gaps of maize under the changing climate in NEC in order to provide reliable recommendations to narrow down the yield gaps. In this study, the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM)-Maize model was used to separate the contributions of soil physical properties, cultivar selections, and management practices to maize yield gaps. The results indicate that approximately 5%, 12%, and 18% of potential yield loss of maize is attributable to soil physical properties, cultivar selection, and management practices. Simulation analyses showed that potential ascensions of yield of maize by improving soil physical properties PAY(s), changing to cultivar with longer maturity PAY(c), and improving management practices PAY(m) for the entire region were 0.6, 1.5, and 2.2 ton ha(-1) or 9%, 23%, and 34% increases, respectively, in NEC. In addition, PAY(c) and PAY(m) varied considerably from location to location (0.4 to 2.2 and 0.9 to 4.5 ton ha(-1) respectively), which may be associated with the spatial variation of growing season temperature and precipitation among climate zones in NEC. Therefore, changing to cultivars with longer growing season requirement and improving management practices are the top strategies for improving yield of maize in NEC, especially for the north and west areas

Study on insulation effect of hollow riser

According to the air insulation, the use of riser hollow way to reduce the riser heat transfer, improve the riser insulation effect. In the experimental simulation, the corundum brick inner and outer wall and the air gap temperature were measured. The optimal air gap is 25 mm from the heat transfer theory and the outer wall temperature, but the insula- tion effect is not obvious. To further explore, proposed in the inner and outer walls to 25 mm as a unit into the insula- tion board improvement measures. The results show that the insertion of the insulation board can greatly reduce the temperature of the outer wall and improve the insulation effect. When inserting a heat shield, the heat flow can be reduced by about 50 %. With the increase in the number of inserts inserted, the insulation effect is gradually increased

Determination of chromosomal ploidy in Agave ssp.

Chromosome observation is necessary to elucidate the structure, function and organization of Agave plants’ genes and genomes. However, few researches about chromosome observation of Agave ssp. were done, not only because their chromosome numbers are large, but also because their ploidies are complicated. The root tips of 19 Agave ssp. germplasms were used as materials for determining their chromosomal ploidies. Through normal pre-treatment, fixation, digesting and Giemsa staining, the glass slides with expelled cells on them were obtained. Observed with a light microscope, the results showed that 10 germplasms are diploids, including 4 wild species and a local variety which are good parents for cross-breeding. The main cultivar in China A.hybrid cv NO 11648 is also a diploid. A. cantala Roxb used as parent for disease-resistant breeding is a triploid. A. hybrid cv nanya NO.1 and A. hybrid cv nanya NO.2 are tetraploids. The other germplasms belong to polyploids. Although three germplasms’ ploidies were reported before, the other 16 germplasms’ were first reported in this paper. These results will provide theoretical basis for cross-breeding

Observation of Weyl nodes in TaAs

In 1929, H. Weyl proposed that the massless solution of Dirac equation represents a pair of new type particles, the so-called Weyl fermions [1]. However the existence of them in particle physics remains elusive for more than eight decades. Recently, significant advances in both topological insulators and topological semimetals have provided an alternative way to realize Weyl fermions in condensed matter as an emergent phenomenon: when two non-degenerate bands in the three-dimensional momentum space cross in the vicinity of Fermi energy (called as Weyl nodes), the low energy excitation behaves exactly the same as Weyl fermions. Here, by performing soft x-ray angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements which mainly probe bulk band structure, we directly observe the long-sought-after Weyl nodes for the first time in TaAs, whose projected locations on the (001) surface match well to the Fermi arcs, providing undisputable experimental evidence of existence of Weyl fermion quasiparticles in TaAs.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, see also related papers on TaAs arXiv:1501.00060, arXiv:1502.0468