The major thylakoid protein kinases STN7 and STN8 revisited: effects of altered STN8 levels and regulatory specificities of the STN kinases

Thylakoid phosphorylation is predominantly mediated by the protein kinases STN7 and STN8. While STN7 primarily catalyzes LHCII phosphorylation, which enables LHCII to migrate from photosystem (PS) II to PSI, STN8 mainly phosphorylates PSII core proteins. The reversible phosphorylation of PSII core proteins is thought to regulate the PSII repair cycle and PSII supercomplex stability, and play a role in modulating the folding of thylakoid membranes. Earlier studies clearly demonstrated a considerable substrate overlap between the two STN kinases, raising the possibility of a balanced interdependence between them at either the protein or activity level. Here, we show that such an interdependence of the STN kinases on protein level does not seem to exist as neither knock-out nor overexpression of STN7 or STN8 affects accumulation of the other. STN7 and STN8 are both shown to be integral thylakoid proteins that form part of molecular supercomplexes, but exhibit different spatial distributions and are subject to different modes of regulation. Evidence is presented for the existence of a second redox-sensitive motif in STN7, which seems to be targeted by thioredoxin f. Effects of altered STN8 levels on PSII core phosphorylation, supercomplex formation, photosynthetic performance and thylakoid ultrastructure were analyzed in Arabidopsis thaliana using STN8-overexpressing plants (oeSTN8). In general, oeSTN8 plants were less sensitive to intense light and exhibited changes in thylakoid ultrastructure, with grana stacks containing more layers and reduced amounts of PSII supercomplexes. Hence, we conclude that STN8 acts in an amount-dependent manner similar to what was shown for STN7 in previous studies. However, the modes of regulation of the STN kinases appear to differ significantly

SAR-to-Optical Image Translation via Thermodynamics-inspired Network

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is prevalent in the remote sensing field but is difficult to interpret in human visual perception. Recently, SAR-to-optical (S2O) image conversion methods have provided a prospective solution for interpretation. However, since there is a huge domain difference between optical and SAR images, they suffer from low image quality and geometric distortion in the produced optical images. Motivated by the analogy between pixels during the S2O image translation and molecules in a heat field, Thermodynamics-inspired Network for SAR-to-Optical Image Translation (S2O-TDN) is proposed in this paper. Specifically, we design a Third-order Finite Difference (TFD) residual structure in light of the TFD equation of thermodynamics, which allows us to efficiently extract inter-domain invariant features and facilitate the learning of the nonlinear translation mapping. In addition, we exploit the first law of thermodynamics (FLT) to devise an FLT-guided branch that promotes the state transition of the feature values from the unstable diffusion state to the stable one, aiming to regularize the feature diffusion and preserve image structures during S2O image translation. S2O-TDN follows an explicit design principle derived from thermodynamic theory and enjoys the advantage of explainability. Experiments on the public SEN1-2 dataset show the advantages of the proposed S2O-TDN over the current methods with more delicate textures and higher quantitative results

Clinical symptoms and chemotherapy completion in elderly patients with newly diagnosed acute leukemia: a retrospective comparison study with a younger cohort

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cancer affects older adults disproportionately. The disease is often difficult to diagnose and treat due to co-morbidities and performance status, and patients tend to discontinue chemotherapy prematurely. There are no systemic studies of the reasons and factors that create a higher withdrawal rate in older acute leukemia patients. This study tried to understand the initial characteristics, blood counts and bone marrow measurements in older acute leukemia patients by comparing them with a younger group to provide information and assistance in early clinical diagnosis, treatment and reasons for treatment withdrawal.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using retrospective medical record reviews, we examined clinical characteristics and chemotherapy completion status in the patients of two groups (age ≥ 60, n = 183 and age <60, n = 183) who were diagnosed with acute leukemia for the first time and were hospitalized in Union Hospital Affiliated with Fujian Medical University from 2004 to 2008.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were no statistical differences in initial presenting symptoms of fatigue (67.2% vs. 57.9%, <it>P</it>>0.05) and pallor (53% vs. 59.6%, <it>P</it>>0.05) between the two groups, but older patients demonstrated more underlying diseases including lung infections (25.7%, <it>P </it>= <0.001), cardiovascular disease (4.4%, <it>P </it>= 0.007), and hypertension (20.8%, <it>P </it>=< 0.001). The complete remission rate after chemotherapy (1 to 2 courses) was 49.5% in the older group and 66.7% in the younger group (χ²= 6.202, <it>P </it>= 0.013). The percentage of patients age 60 and older who prematurely discontinued chemotherapy (50.3%), mainly due to the influences of traditional Chinese concept of critical illness, financial difficulties, and intolerance to adverse reactions to chemotherapy, was significantly higher than that of younger patients (37.7%) (χ²= 5.866, <it>P </it>= 0.015).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>A comprehensive approach to diagnosis, treatment selection, and toxicity management, and implementing strategies to enhance treatment compliance may improve outcomes in older adults with acute leukemia.</p

The genome and transcriptome of Japanese flounder provide insights into flatfish asymmetry

Flatfish have the most extreme asymmetric body morphology of vertebrates. During metamorphosis, one eye migrates to the contralateral side of the skull, and this migration is accompanied by extensive craniofacial transformations and simultaneous development of lopsided body pigmentation(1-5). The evolution of this developmental and physiological innovation remains enigmatic. Comparative genomics of two flatfish and transcriptomic analyses during metamorphosis point to a role for thyroid hormone and retinoic acid signaling, as well as phototransduction pathways. We demonstrate that retinoic acid is critical in establishing asymmetric pigmentation and, via cross-talk with thyroid hormones, in modulating eye migration. The unexpected expression of the visual opsins from the phototransduction pathway in the skin translates illumination differences and generates retinoic acid gradients that underlie the generation of asymmetry. Identifying the genetic underpinning of this unique developmental process answers long-standing questions about the evolutionary origin of asymmetry, but it also provides insight into the mechanisms that control body shape in vertebrates.National Natural Science Foundation of China [31130057, 31461163005, 31530078, 31472269, 31472262, 31472273]; State 863 High Technology R&D Project of China [2012AA092203, 2012AA10A408, 2012AA10A403-2]; Education and Research of Guangdong Province [2013B090800017]; Taishan Scholar Climb Project Fund of Shandong of China; Taishan Scholar Project Fund of Shandong of China for Young Scientists; Shanghai Universities First-class Disciplines Project of Fisheries; Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at the Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning; Shanghai Municipal Science, Special Project on the Integration of Industryinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Genomics and genetic breeding in aquatic animals: progress and prospects

Genomics focuses on dissection of genome structure and function to provide a molecular basis for understanding the genetic background. In a pivotal step, the expense of whole genome sequencing has been largely eliminated by the rapid updating of sequencing technology, leading to increasing numbers of decoded genomes of aquatic organisms, driving the aquaculture industry into the genomic era. Multiple aquatic areas have been influenced by these findings, such as accelerated generation shift in the seed industry and the process of breeding improved lines. In this article, we have summarized the latest domestic and international progress of aquatic animals in nine aspects, including WGS and fine mapping, construction of high density genetic/physical maps, trait-related marker/genes screening, as well as sex control, genome editing, and other molecular breeding technologies. Finally, the existing problems in this field have been discussed and five future counter measures have been proposed accordingly

Your Knock Is My Command: Binary Hand Gesture Recognition on Smartphone with Accelerometer

Motion-based hand gesture is an important scheme to allow users to invoke commands on their smartphones in an eyes-free manner. However, the existing scheme is facing some problems. On the one hand, the expression ability of one single gesture is limited. As a result, a gesture set consisting of multiple gestures is typically adopted to represent different commands. Users must memorize all gestures in order to make interaction successfully. On the other hand, the design of gestures needs to be complicated to express diverse intensions. However, complex gestures are difficult to learn and remember. In addition, complex gestures set a high recognition barrier to smart APPs. This leads to an imbalance problem. Different gestures have different recognition accuracy levels, which may result in instability of recognition precision in practical applications. To address these problems, this paper proposes a novel scheme using binary motion gestures. Only two simple gestures are required to express bit “0” and “1,” and rich information can be expressed through the permutation and combination of the two binary gestures. Firstly, four kinds of candidate binary gestures are evaluated for eyes-free interactions. Then, an online signal cutting and merging algorithm is designed to split accelerometer signals sequence into multiple separate gesture signal segments. Next, five algorithms, including Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM) Network, are adopted to recognize these segments of knock gestures. The BLSTM achieves the top performance in terms of both recognition accuracy and recognition imbalance. Finally, an Android application is developed to illustrate the usability of the proposed binary gestures. As binary gestures are much simpler than traditional hand gestures, they are more efficient and user-friendly. Our scheme eliminates the imbalance problem and achieves high recognition accuracy

Sustainable use of CRISPR/Cas in fish aquaculture: the biosafety perspective

Aquaculture is becoming the primary source of seafood for human diets, and farmed fish aquaculture is one of its fastest growing sectors. The industry currently faces several challenges including infectious and parasitic diseases, reduced viability, fertility reduction, slow growth, escapee fish and environmental pollution. The commercialization of the growth-enhanced AquAdvantage salmon and the CRISPR/Cas9-developed tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) proffers genetic engineering and genome editing tools, e.g. CRISPR/Cas, as potential solutions to these challenges. Future traits being developed in different fish species include disease resistance, sterility, and enhanced growth. Despite these notable advances, off-target effect and non-clarification of trait-related genes among other technical challenges hinder full realization of CRISPR/Cas potentials in fish breeding. In addition, current regulatory and risk assessment frameworks are not fit-for purpose regarding the challenges of CRISPR/Cas notwithstanding that public and regulatory acceptance are key to commercialization of products of the new technology. In this study, we discuss how CRISPR/Cas can be used to overcome some of these limitations focusing on diseases and environmental release in farmed fish aquaculture. We further present technical limitations, regulatory and risk assessment challenges of the use of CRISPR/Cas, and proffer research strategies that will provide much-needed data for regulatory decisions, risk assessments, increased public awareness and sustainable applications of CRISPR/Cas in fish aquaculture with emphasis on Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) breeding

Cloning and Expression of irf7 Gene in Spotted Knifejaw (Oplegnathus punctatus) Under Virus Infection

Interferon regulatory factor (irf7) is an immune regulatory factor that plays an important role in the antiviral process. To explore the role of irf7 in Oplegnathus punctatus (Temminck & Schlegel, 1844) under viral infection, we cloned the coding DNA sequence (CDS) region of irf7 through PCR and analyzed the expression patterns at both tissue and cell levels. The results showed that the CDS region of Opirf7 was 1 332 bp and encoded a peptide with 443 amino acids. The predicted molecular weight was 50.5 kDa and the theoretical isoelectric point was 5.546. Protein structure analysis showed that Opirf7 has three conserved domains: the DNA binding domain (DBD), IRF-associated domain (IAD), and serine-rich domain (SRD). Amino acid similarity analysis showed that OpIRF7 had the highest similarity to the IRF7 of Lates calcarifer, which was 82.92%. The similarity of Opirf7 with the IRF7 of Larimichthys crocea, Paralichthys olivaceus, and Cynoglossus semilaevis were 81.99%, 79.95%, and 73.74%, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Opirf7 and other fish irf7 genes were clustered into one branch, and irf7s from Gallus gallus, Mus musculus, Macaca mulatta, and Homo sapiens were clustered into another. Tissues from healthy O. punctatus were collected, including the liver, spleen, kidney, head kidney, intestine, gill, skin, muscle, brain, heart, and blood. After RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis, real-time PCR (qPCR) was performed to detect the expression level of Opirf7 using the comparative CT method (2−ΔΔCT method). The results of qPCR showed that Opirf7 was expressed in different tissues of healthy individuals and its expression was highest in the liver, followed by the skin and intestines. The lowest expression was observed in the head kidney. In this study, the expression profiles of Opirf7 before and after viral infection were determined at the tissue and cell levels. For the in vivo challenge study, fish were intraperitoneally injected with spotted knifejaw iridovirus, and the expression level of Opirf7 was tested in the spleen, kidney, and liver. Compared with the control group at 0 h, the expression level of Opirf7 was 15-fold in the spleen and 3-fold in the kidney 4 days after infection, and the expression peak was at 7 days after infection. However, the expression of Opirf7 was not significantly altered in the liver. A poly I: C-infected O. punctatus brain cell model was established, and the expression profiles of Opirf7 mRNA were detected before and after infection. The expression of Opirf7 mRNA in the low and medium concentration groups (50 μg/mL and 100 μg/mL, respectively) increased by 13 to 17 times, and the expression level of Opirf7 mRNA in the high concentration group (200 μg/mL) increased by approximately 8 times. It was speculated that the high concentration of 200 μg/mL caused some damage to the cells and that the expression level in the high concentration group was lower than that in the low and medium groups. In this study, the full-length open reading frame sequence of Opirf7 was cloned and characterized for the first time. The deduced amino acid sequence displayed a structure similar to those of other vertebrates. Further functional analysis showed that Opirf7 has a significant response to viral infection at both tissue and cell levels. This study demonstrated that the Opirf7 gene might play an important role in the antiviral response of O. punctatus and provide a potential molecular marker for antivirus breeding of O. punctatus