The similar and different evolutionary trends of MATE family occurred between rice and Arabidopsis thaliana

Expression profiles of Arabidopsis MATE genes under various stress. (TIFF 5235 kb

Molecular Characterization of the 14-3-3 Gene Family in Brachypodium distachyon L. Reveals High Evolutionary Conservation and Diverse Responses to Abiotic Stresses

The 14-3-3 gene family identified in all eukaryotic organisms is involved in a wide range of biological processes, particularly in resistance to various abiotic stresses. Here, we performed the first comprehensive study on the molecular characterisation, phylogenetics and responses to various abiotic stresses of the 14-3-3 gene family in Brachypodium distachyon L.. A total of seven 14-3-3 genes from B. distachyon and 120 from five main lineages among 12 species were identified, which were divided into five well-conserved subfamilies. The molecular structure analysis showed that the plant 14-3-3 gene family is highly evolutionarily conserved, although certain divergence had occurred in different subfamilies. The duplication event investigation revealed that segmental duplication seemed to be the predominant form by which the 14-3-3 gene family had expanded. Moreover, seven critical amino acids were detected, which may contribute to functional divergence. Expression profiling analysis showed that BdGF14 genes were abundantly expressed in the roots, but showed low expression in the meristems. All seven BdGF14 genes showed significant expression changes under various abiotic stresses, including heavy metal, phytohormone, osmotic, and temperature stresses, which might play important roles in responses to multiple abiotic stresses mainly through participating in ABA-dependent signalling and reactive oxygen species-mediated MAPK cascade signalling pathways. In particular, BdGF14 genes generally showed upregulated expression in response to multiple stresses of high temperature, heavy metal, abscisic acid (ABA), and salicylic acid (SA), but downregulated expression under H2O2, NaCl, and polyethylene glycol (PEG) stresses. Meanwhile, dynamic transcriptional expression analysis of BdGF14 genes under longer treatments with heavy metals (Cd2+, Cr3+, Cu2+, and Zn2+) and phytohormone (ABA) and recovery revealed two main expression trends in both roots and leaves: up-down and up-down-up expression from stress treatments to recovery. This study provides new insights into the structures and functions of plant 14-3-3 genes

Measuring and Advancing Commercial Courts\u27 Internationality

The rise of international commercial courts (“ICCs”) intensified discussions about their “internationality.” However, what “internationality” truly means—whether as a normative matter or its practical manifestation—remains unarticulated in the literature. Our Article addresses this gap by examining the concept of internationality in ICCs both theoretically and empirically, which has further prompted a reevaluation of global dispute resolution paradigms. This Article delivers three key contributions. First, it introduces a nuanced framework to assess an ICC’s internationality. Moving beyond seemingly obvious but ultimately superficial indicators of internationality (e.g., inclusion of foreign judges, use of English as the court language), this new framework is premised on the core objectives which internationalization processes are meant to achieve. This framework draws insights from comparisons with other established dispute resolution mechanisms and integrates foundational values of dispute resolution, such as impartiality, efficiency, diversity, and flexibility. Second, applying this framework, we identify significant discrepancies—both jurisdictional and procedural—between conceptual expectations and actual implementations in ICC judgments from China, Singapore, and the Netherlands. One notable example is the frequent involvement of international judges in cases unrelated to their home country’s legal systems. Third, the Article suggests targeted reforms inspired by these findings, proposing effective strategies for China and the Netherlands to enhance their ICCs’ standing without extensive legislative changes. More broadly, this study highlights the mismatch between normative assumptions and practical outcomes in dispute resolution, emphasizing the need to align theoretical benchmarks with intrinsic values and real-world dynamics of the field. Universit

Area Query Processing Based on Gray Code in Wireless Sensor Networks

Area query processing is significant for various applications of wireless sensor networks since it can request information of particular areas in the monitored environment. Existing query processing techniques cannot solve area queries. Intuitively centralized processing on Base Station can accomplish area queries via collecting information from all sensor nodes. However, this method is not suitable for wireless sensor networks with limited energy since a large amount of energy is wasted for reporting useless data. This motivates us to propose an energy-efficient in-network area query processing scheme. In our scheme, the monitored area is partitioned into grids, and a unique gray code number is used to represent a Grid ID (GID), which is also an effective way to describe an area. Furthermore, a reporting tree is constructed to process area merging and data aggregations. Based on the properties of GIDs, subareas can be merged easily and useless data can be discarded as early as possible to reduce energy consumption. For energy-efficiently answering continuous queries, we also design an incremental update method to continuously generate query results. In essence, all of these strategies are pivots to conserve energy consumption. With a thorough simulation study, it is shown that our scheme is effective and energy-efficient

Proteome characterization of developing grains in bread wheat cultivars (Triticum aestivum L.)

Abstract Background The analyses of protein synthesis, accumulation and regulation during grain development in wheat are more complex because of its larger genome size compared to model plants such as Arabidopsis and rice. In this study, grains from two wheat cultivars Jimai 20 and Zhoumai 16 with different gluten quality properties were harvested at five development stages, and were used to displayed variable expression patterns of grain proteins. Results Proteome characterization during grain development in Chinese bread wheat cultivars Jimai 20 and Zhoumai 16 with different quality properties was investigated by 2-DE and tandem MALDI-TOF/TOF-MS. Identification of 117 differentially accumulated protein spots representing 82 unique proteins and five main expression patterns enabled a chronological description of wheat grain formation. Significant proteome expression differences between the two cultivars were found; these included 14 protein spots that accumulated in both cultivars but with different patterns and 27 cultivar-different spots. Among the cultivar-different protein spots, 14 accumulated in higher abundance in Jimai 20 than in Zhoumai 16, and included NAD-dependent isocitrate dehydrogenase, triticin precursor, LMW-s glutenin subunit and replication factor C-like protein. These proteins are likely to be associated with superior gluten quality. In addition, some proteins such as class II chitinase and peroxidase 1 with isoforms in developing grains were shown to be phosphorylated by Pro-Q Diamond staining and phosphorprotein site prediction. Phosphorylation could have important roles in wheat grain development. qRT-PCR analysis demonstrated that transcriptional and translational expression patterns of many genes were significantly different. Conclusions Wheat grain proteins displayed variable expression patterns at different developmental stages and a considerable number of protein spots showed differential accumulation between two cultivars. Differences in seed storage proteins were considered to be related to different quality performance of the flour from these wheat cultivars. Some proteins with isoforms were phosphorylated, and this may reflect their importance in grain development. Our results provide new insights into proteome characterization during grain development in different wheat genotypes. </jats:sec

CC2Vec: Combining Typed Tokens with Contrastive Learning for Effective Code Clone Detection

With the development of the open source community, the code is often copied, spread, and evolved in multiple software systems, which brings uncertainty and risk to the software system (e.g., bug propagation and copyright infringement). Therefore, it is important to conduct code clone detection to discover similar code pairs. Many approaches have been proposed to detect code clones where token-based tools can scale to big code. However, due to the lack of program details, they cannot handle more complicated code clones, i.e., semantic code clones. In this paper, we introduce CC2Vec, a novel code encoding method designed to swiftly identify simple code clones while also enhancing the capability for semantic code clone detection. To retain the program details between tokens, CC2Vec divides them into different categories (i.e., typed tokens) according to the syntactic types and then applies two self-attention mechanism layers to encode them. To resist changes in the code structure of semantic code clones, CC2Vec performs contrastive learning to reduce the differences introduced by different code implementations. We evaluate CC2Vec on two widely used datasets (i.e., BigCloneBench and Google Code Jam) and the results report that our method can effectively detect simple code clones. In addition, CC2Vec not only attains comparable performance to widely used semantic code clone detection systems such as ASTNN, SCDetector, and FCCA by simply fine-tuning, but also significantly surpasses these methods in both detection efficiency.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure

Characterization of the fertilization independent endosperm (FIE) gene from soybean

Reproduction of angiosperm plants initiates from two fertilization events: an egg fusing with a sperm to form an embryo and a second sperm fusing with the central cell to generate an endosperm. The tryptophan-aspartate (WD) domain polycomb protein encoded by fertilization independent endosperm (FIE) gene, has been known as a repressor of hemeotic genes by interacting with other polycomb proteins, and suppresses endosperm development until fertilization. In this study, one Glycine max FIE (GmFIE) gene was cloned and its expression in different tissues, under cold and drought treatments, was analyzed using both bioinformatics and experimental methods. GmFIE showed high expression in reproductive tissues and was responsive to stress treatments, especially induced by cold. GmFIE overexpression lines of transgenic Arabidopsis were generated and analyzed. Delayed flowering was observed from most transgenic lines compared to that of wild type. Overexpression of GmFIE in Arabidopsis also leads to semi-fertile of the plants.Keywords: Polycomb proteins, fertilization independent endosperm (FIE), Glycine max, Arabidopsis thalian

Molecular characterization and phylogenetic analysis of unusual x-type hmw glutenin subunits from 1s(l) genome of aegilops longissima

Wheat related diploid species Ae. longissima (2n=2x=14, (SSl)-S-l) has extensive storage protein variations that may provide useful gene resources for wheat quality improvement. In this work, five novel 1S(l)-encoded x-type high molecular glutenin subunits (HMW-GS) were identified and designated as 1S(l)x-123, 1S(l)x-129, 1S(l)x1-136, 1S(l)x2-136 and 1S(l)x2.2, respectively. Their complete open reading frames (ORFs) were cloned and sequenced by AS-PCR, which contained 2874 bp (956 aa) for 1S(l)x-123, 2946 bp (979 aa) for 1S(l)x-129, 2901 bp (965 aa) for 1S(l)x1-136, 2982bp (991 aa) for 1S(l)x2-136 and 2928 bp (974 aa) for 1S(l)x2.2. Molecular characterization demonstrated that five unusual subunits had greater repetitive domains resulted from a larger fragment insertion (74-113 aa). Particularly, 1S(l)x-129 had an extra cysteine residue at the position 109 due to a TAT -> TGT dot mutation, which may improve the formation of superior gluten macropolymer. Our results suggest that these unusual HMW-GS could be served as potential superior gene resources for improving wheat gluten quality. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that HMW-GS genes from Glu-1Sx genomes had close evolutionary relationships with those of Glu-1Dx genome while sequences from Ae. speltoides aligned with those of B genome