FashionSAP: Symbols and Attributes Prompt for Fine-grained Fashion Vision-Language Pre-training

Fashion vision-language pre-training models have shown efficacy for a wide range of downstream tasks. However, general vision-language pre-training models pay less attention to fine-grained domain features, while these features are important in distinguishing the specific domain tasks from general tasks. We propose a method for fine-grained fashion vision-language pre-training based on fashion Symbols and Attributes Prompt (FashionSAP) to model fine-grained multi-modalities fashion attributes and characteristics. Firstly, we propose the fashion symbols, a novel abstract fashion concept layer, to represent different fashion items and to generalize various kinds of fine-grained fashion features, making modelling fine-grained attributes more effective. Secondly, the attributes prompt method is proposed to make the model learn specific attributes of fashion items explicitly. We design proper prompt templates according to the format of fashion data. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on two public fashion benchmarks, i.e., FashionGen and FashionIQ, and FashionSAP gets SOTA performances for four popular fashion tasks. The ablation study also shows the proposed abstract fashion symbols, and the attribute prompt method enables the model to acquire fine-grained semantics in the fashion domain effectively. The obvious performance gains from FashionSAP provide a new baseline for future fashion task research

Mesenchymal stromal cells pretreated with pro‐inflammatory cytokines promote skin wound healing through VEGFC ‐mediated angiogenesis

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NOFA: NeRF-based One-shot Facial Avatar Reconstruction

3D facial avatar reconstruction has been a significant research topic in computer graphics and computer vision, where photo-realistic rendering and flexible controls over poses and expressions are necessary for many related applications. Recently, its performance has been greatly improved with the development of neural radiance fields (NeRF). However, most existing NeRF-based facial avatars focus on subject-specific reconstruction and reenactment, requiring multi-shot images containing different views of the specific subject for training, and the learned model cannot generalize to new identities, limiting its further applications. In this work, we propose a one-shot 3D facial avatar reconstruction framework that only requires a single source image to reconstruct a high-fidelity 3D facial avatar. For the challenges of lacking generalization ability and missing multi-view information, we leverage the generative prior of 3D GAN and develop an efficient encoder-decoder network to reconstruct the canonical neural volume of the source image, and further propose a compensation network to complement facial details. To enable fine-grained control over facial dynamics, we propose a deformation field to warp the canonical volume into driven expressions. Through extensive experimental comparisons, we achieve superior synthesis results compared to several state-of-the-art methods

In-depth analysis of genomes and functional genomics of orchid using cutting-edge high-throughput sequencing

High-throughput sequencing technology has been facilitated the development of new methodologies and approaches for studying the origin and evolution of plant genomes and subgenomes, population domestication, and functional genomics. Orchids have tens of thousands of members in nature. Many of them have promising application potential in the extension and conservation of the ecological chain, the horticultural use of ornamental blossoms, and the utilization of botanical medicines. However, a large-scale gene knockout mutant library and a sophisticated genetic transformation system are still lacking in the improvement of orchid germplasm resources. New gene editing tools, such as the favored CRISPR-Cas9 or some base editors, have not yet been widely applied in orchids. In addition to a large variety of orchid cultivars, the high-precision, high-throughput genome sequencing technology is also required for the mining of trait-related functional genes. Nowadays, the focus of orchid genomics research has been directed to the origin and classification of species, genome evolution and deletion, gene duplication and chromosomal polyploidy, and flower morphogenesis-related regulation. Here, the progressing achieved in orchid molecular biology and genomics over the past few decades have been discussed, including the evolution of genome size and polyploidization. The frequent incorporation of LTR retrotransposons play important role in the expansion and structural variation of the orchid genome. The large-scale gene duplication event of the nuclear genome generated plenty of recently tandem duplicated genes, which drove the evolution and functional divergency of new genes. The evolution and loss of the plastid genome, which mostly affected genes related to photosynthesis and autotrophy, demonstrated that orchids have experienced more separate transitions to heterotrophy than any other terrestrial plant. Moreover, large-scale resequencing provide useful SNP markers for constructing genetic maps, which will facilitate the breeding of novel orchid varieties. The significance of high-throughput sequencing and gene editing technologies in the identification and molecular breeding of the trait-related genes in orchids provides us with a representative trait-improving gene as well as some mechanisms worthy of further investigation. In addition, gene editing has promise for the improvement of orchid genetic transformation and the investigation of gene function. This knowledge may provide a scientific reference and theoretical basis for orchid genome studies

Zinc Finger-Homeodomain Transcriptional Factors (ZHDs) in Upland Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum): Genome-Wide Identification and Expression Analysis in Fiber Development

Zinc finger-homeodomain (ZHD) genes encode a family of plant-specific transcription factors that not only participate in the regulation of plant growth and development but also play an important role in the response to abiotic stress. The ZHD gene family has been studied in several model plants, including Solanum lycopersicum, Zea mays, Oryza sativa, and Arabidopsis thaliana. However, a comprehensive study of the genes of the ZHD family and their roles in fiber development and pigmentation in upland cotton has not been completed. To address this gap, we selected a brown fiber cultivar for our study; brown color in cotton is one of the most desired colors in the textile industry. The natural colored fibers require less processing and little dying, thereby eliminating dye costs and chemical residues. Using bioinformatics approaches, we identified 37 GhZHD genes from Gossypium hirsutum and then divided these genes into seven groups based on their phylogeny. The GhZHD genes were mostly conserved in each subfamily with minor variations in motif distribution and gene structure. These genes were largely distributed on 19 of the 26 upland cotton chromosomes. Among the Gossypium genomes, the paralogs and orthologs of the GhZHD genes were identified and further characterized. Furthermore, among the paralogs, we observed that the ZHD family duplications in Gossypium genomes (G. hirsutum, G. arboreum, and G. raimondii) were probably derived from segmental duplication or genome-wide duplication (GWD) events. Through a combination of qRT-PCR and proanthocyanidins (PA) accumulation analyses in brown cotton fibers, we concluded that the candidate genes involved in early fiber development and fiber pigment synthesis include the following: GhZHD29, GhZHD35, GhZHD30, GhZHD31, GhZHD11, GhZHD27, GhZHD18, GhZHD15, GhZHD16, GhZHD22, GhZHD6, GhZHD33, GhZHD13, GhZHD5, and GhZHD23. This study delivers insights into the evolution of the GhZHD genes in brown cotton, serves as a valuable resource for further studies, and identifies the conditions necessary for improving the quality of brown cotton fiber

Chemical Synthesis of Homogeneous Human E-Cadherin N-Linked Glycopeptides: Stereoselective Convergent Glycosylation and Chemoselective Solid-Phase Aspartylation

We report herein an efficient chemical synthesis of homogeneous human E-cadherin N-linked glycopeptides consisting of a heptapeptide sequence adjacent to the Asn-633 N-glycosylation site with representative N-glycan structures, including a conserved trisaccharide, a core-fucosylated tetrasaccharide, and a complex-type biantennary octasaccharide. The key steps are a chemoselective on-resin aspartylation using a pseudoproline-containing peptide and stereoselective glycosylation using glycosyl fluororide as a donor. This synthetic strategy demonstrates potential utility in accessing a wide range of homogeneous N-linked glycopeptides for the examination of their biological function

Genome-Wide Analysis Suggests the Relaxed Purifying Selection Affect the Evolution of WOX Genes in Pyrus bretschneideri, Prunus persica, Prunus mume, and Fragaria vesca

WUSCHEL-related homeobox (WOX) family is one of the largest group of transcription factors (TFs) specifically found in plant kingdom. WOX TFs play an important role in plant development processes and evolutionary novelties. Although the roles of WOXs in Arabidopsis and rice have been well-studied, however, little are known about the relationships among the main clades in the molecular evolution of these genes in Rosaceae. Here, we carried out a genome-wide analysis and identified 14, 10, 10, and 9 of WOX genes from four Rosaceae species (Fragaria vesca, Prunus persica, Prunus mume, and Pyrus bretschneideri, respectively). According to evolutionary analysis, as well as amino acid sequences of their homodomains, these genes were divided into three clades with nine subgroups. Furthermore, due to the conserved structural patterns among these WOX genes, it was proposed that there should exist some highly conserved regions of microsynteny in the four Rosaceae species. Moreover, most of WOX gene pairs were presented with the conserved orientation among syntenic genome regions. In addition, according to substitution models analysis using PMAL software, no significant positive selection was detected, but type I functional divergence was identified among certain amino acids in WOX protein. These results revealed that the relaxed purifying selection might be the main driving force during the evolution of WOX genes in the tested Rosaceae species. Our result will be useful for further precise research on evolution of the WOX genes in family Rosaceae