A Homeodomain-Containing Transcriptional Factor PoHtf1 Regulated the Development and Cellulase Expression in Penicillium oxalicum

Homeodomain-containing transcription factors (Htfs) play important roles in animals, fungi, and plants during some developmental processes. Here, a homeodomain-containing transcription factor PoHtf1 was functionally characterized in the cellulase-producing fungi Penicillium oxalicum 114-2. PoHtf1 was shown to participate in colony growth and conidiation through regulating the expression of its downstream transcription factor BrlA, the key regulator of conidiation in P. oxalicum 114-2. Additionally, PoHtf1 inhibited the expression of the major cellulase genes by coordinated regulation of cellulolytic regulators CreA, AmyR, ClrB, and XlnR. Furthermore, transcriptome analysis showed that PoHtf1 participated in the secondary metabolism including the pathway synthesizing conidial yellow pigment. These data show that PoHtf1 mediates the complex transcriptional-regulatory network cascade between developmental processes and cellulolytic gene expression in P. oxalicum 114-2. Our results should assist the development of strategies for the metabolic engineering of mutants for applications in the enzymatic hydrolysis for biochemical production

Associations of B Vitamin-Related Dietary Pattern during Pregnancy with Birth Outcomes: A Population-Based Study in Northwest China

This study aimed to derive a maternal dietary pattern to explain the variation in B vitamins during pregnancy and to investigate this pattern in relation to birth outcomes. A total of 7347 women who gave birth to live newborns less than one year were included. Their dietary pattern during pregnancy was derived using the reduced-rank regression method with six B vitamins as response variables. Associations between dietary pattern score and birth weight, gestational age at delivery, birth weight Z score, low birth weight, preterm, and small-for-gestational-age (SGA) were estimated using generalised linear mixed models. We identified a high B-vitamin dietary pattern characterised by high intakes of animal foods, vegetables, fungi and algae, legumes, and low intakes of oils and cereals. Women in the highest quartile of this pattern score had newborns with a 44.5 g (95% CI: 13.8, 75.2 g) higher birth weight, 0.101 (95% CI: 0.029, 0.172) higher birth weight Z score, and 27.2% (OR: 0.728; 95% CI: 0.582, 0.910) lower risk of SGA than those in the lowest quartile. Our study suggested that adherence to the high B-vitamin dietary pattern during pregnancy was associated with a higher birth weight and a lower risk of SGA

Genetic Drivers of Kidney Defects in the DiGeorge Syndrome

Background The DiGeorge syndrome, the most common of the microdeletion syndromes, affects multiple organs, including the heart, the nervous system, and the kidney. It is caused by deletions on chromosome 22q11.2; the genetic driver of the kidney defects is unknown. Methods We conducted a genomewide search for structural variants in two cohorts: 2080 patients with congenital kidney and urinary tract anomalies and 22,094 controls. We performed exome and targeted resequencing in samples obtained from 586 additional patients with congenital kidney anomalies. We also carried out functional studies using zebrafish and mice. Results We identified heterozygous deletions of 22q11.2 in 1.1% of the patients with congenital kidney anomalies and in 0.01% of population controls (odds ratio, 81.5; P=4.5×10(-14)). We localized the main drivers of renal disease in the DiGeorge syndrome to a 370-kb region containing nine genes. In zebrafish embryos, an induced loss of function in snap29, aifm3, and crkl resulted in renal defects; the loss of crkl alone was sufficient to induce defects. Five of 586 patients with congenital urinary anomalies had newly identified, heterozygous protein-altering variants, including a premature termination codon, in CRKL. The inactivation of Crkl in the mouse model induced developmental defects similar to those observed in patients with congenital urinary anomalies. Conclusions We identified a recurrent 370-kb deletion at the 22q11.2 locus as a driver of kidney defects in the DiGeorge syndrome and in sporadic congenital kidney and urinary tract anomalies. Of the nine genes at this locus, SNAP29, AIFM3, and CRKL appear to be critical to the phenotype, with haploinsufficiency of CRKL emerging as the main genetic driver. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health and others.)

ICDP workshop on scientific drilling of Nam Co on the Tibetan Plateau: 1 million years of paleoenvironmental history, geomicrobiology, tectonics and paleomagnetism derived from sediments of a high-altitude lake

The Tibetan Plateau is of peculiar societal relevance as it provides freshwater from the so-called “Water Tower of Asia” to a large portion of the Asian population. However, future climate change will affect the hydrological cycle in this area. To define parameters for future climate change scenarios it is necessary to improve the knowledge about thresholds, timing, pace and intensity of past climatic changes and associated environmental impacts. Sedimentary archives reaching far back in time and spanning several glacial–interglacial cycles such as Nam Co provide the unique possibility to extract such information. In order to explore the scientific opportunities that an ICDP drilling effort at Nam Co would provide, 40 scientists from 13 countries representing various scientific disciplines met in Beijing from 22 to 24 May 2018. Besides paleoclimatic investigations, opportunities for paleomagnetic, deep biosphere, tectonic and paleobiological studies were discussed. After having explored the technical and logistical challenges and the scientific opportunities all participants agreed on the great value and need to drill this extraordinary archive, which has a sediment thickness of more than 1 km, likely covering more than 1 Ma

An overview of St14: A type II transmembrane serine protease

Abstract: St14 is a type II transmembrane serine protease that contains a cytoplasm N-terminal domain, a stem domain, and a serine protease catalytic domain. It is primarily synthesized as an inactive zymogen and co-expressed with the cognate inhibitor hepatocyte growth factor inhibitor (HAI) in epithelial cells. Accumulating evidence suggests that it plays critical roles in pre-implant embryonic compaction, placental development, as well as epidermal barrier formation after activation. The homologous ablation of St14 in mouse underlies the neonatal death at 48h for severe deficiency of the epidermal barrier. It has also been considered as a prognostic marker of epithelial cancers as it is involved in cancer metastasis and invasion in multiple ways by activating several kinds of substrates, such as hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), urokinase-type Plasminogen activator (uPA). Notably, the strict regulation of St14 by HAIs is found to play a profound role in all of these activities. However, very little is currently understood about the mechanisms that downregulate St14 gene expression in early neonatal mortality. Herein we summarize the current knowledge of the regulation network and the understanding of the biological functions of St14

Functional Perspective and Implications of Gene Expression by Noncoding RNAs

Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) have gained widespread attention in recent years as a potentially new and crucial tool in biological regulation. Although they have been associated with a range of developmental processes and diseases, knowledge of the mechanisms by which they act is still surprisingly limited. To claim that almost entire mammalian genome is transcribed into functional noncoding transcripts remain controversial. Nevertheless, a small number of well executed studies on ncRNAs have given us important clues concerning the biological function of these molecules, and have successfully uncovered a few of their key functional and mechanistic themes, although the robustness of these models and classification schemes remains to be elucidated. Here, we summarize the new insights into ncRNAs field, discussing what is known about the genomic contexts, biological functions in human cancer, neural system disorders, stem cell (SC) self-renewal, and mechanisms of action of ncRNAs. Meanwhile, we have also tried to shed light on how the recent interest in ncRNAs is deeply rooted in biology′s longstanding concern of the evolution and function of genomes

Analysis on the Characteristics and Cause of a Compound Pollution Process in Changsha in 2017

Using the conventional meteorological observations, the air Air quality monitoring data, the L-band wind-profiling radar data, the NECP reanalysis data, and the simulation results of the HYSPLIT4 model, the compound pollution process from November 2 to 5, 2017 in Changsha is comprehensively analyzed in this study, including the sources and transport paths of pollutions, the Meteorological conditions and atmospheric boundary layer characteristics. The results showed that the process of air pollution in Changsha is a compound pollution process with high concentration of O3 and fine PM2.5 coexisting. It reached serious pollution from 08:00 to 11 : 00 on 4, PM2.5 was 269.3 ug·m−3 at 09:00 on 4 November. The characteristics of the two phases of this pollution process were clearly different. The first phase was mainly result of accumulation of local pollutants, and the second one was mainly result of outside resource. The maximum wind were light breezein on this pollution process, gentle breeze mainly occurred in the second stage of pollution, and the maximum wind velocity was 4.4m/s. It appearred multi-layer inversion usually, temperature stratification was stabled, and the inversion layer thickness reached the maximum value 909m at 20:00 on 3 November. The boundary layer convergenced and ascented movement, horizontal transport, vertical wind field distribution and atmospheric layer provided the favorable conditions for the air pollution process. The results showed that short-range transport of pollutants is the maily reason based on the HYSPLIT4 model, the northeast airflow was dominant at 100-1000m height. The vary of wind profile data and CO and SO2 emission ratio showed that the different pollution characteristics of two phases, the maximum ratio was more than 100. It has an important indicator for weather forecast in Changsha

Bolt Loosening Detection of Rocket Connection Structure Based on Variational Modal Decomposition and Support Vector Machines

This paper designed a bolt-loosening Support Vector Machines’ conduct detection method with feature vectors comprising eigenvalue decomposition based on Variational Modal Decomposition (VMD) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), combined with permutation entropy. Particle Swarm Optimization-Support Vector Machines (PSO-SVMs) are used for small-sample machine learning and can effectively identify and judge the state of bolt preload. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified in a typical example of a connection structure under random-amplitude impulse loads and Gaussian white noise with different signal-to-noise ratios. The effect of other bolt numbers being arranged is also discussed in the results. This method’s bolt-loosening identification rate is close to 90% under both equal-amplitude and variable-amplitude loads. Following the interference, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 20 dB, the method also has a recognition rate higher than 70% under various working conditions and bolt equipment schemes. The effectiveness of the method was verified by experiments