OPT3 is a component of the iron-signaling network between leaves and roots and misregulation of OPT3 leads to an over-accumulation of cadmium in seeds.

Plants and seeds are the main dietary sources of zinc, iron, manganese, and copper, but are also the main entry point for toxic elements such as cadmium into the food chain. We report here that an Arabidopsis oligopeptide transporter mutant, opt3-2, over-accumulates cadmium (Cd) in seeds and roots but, unexpectedly, under-accumulates Cd in leaves. The cadmium distribution in opt3-2 differs from iron, zinc, and manganese, suggesting a metal-specific mechanism for metal partitioning within the plant. The opt3-2 mutant constitutively up-regulates the Fe/Zn/Cd transporter IRT1 and FRO2 in roots, indicative of an iron-deficiency response. No genetic mutants that impair the shoot-to-root signaling of iron status in leaves have been identified. Interestingly, shoot-specific expression of OPT3 rescues the Cd sensitivity and complements the aberrant expression of IRT1 in opt3-2 roots, suggesting that OPT3 is required to relay the iron status from leaves to roots. OPT3 expression was found in the vasculature with preferential expression in the phloem at the plasma membrane. Using radioisotope experiments, we found that mobilization of Fe from leaves is severely affected in opt3-2, suggesting that Fe mobilization out of leaves is required for proper trace-metal homeostasis. When expressed in yeast, OPT3 does not localize to the plasma membrane, precluding the identification of the OPT3 substrate. Our in planta results show that OPT3 is important for leaf phloem-loading of iron and plays a key role regulating Fe, Zn, and Cd distribution within the plant. Furthermore, ferric chelate reductase activity analyses provide evidence that iron is not the sole signal transferred from leaves to roots in leaf iron status signaling

Near-Infrared Super Resolution Imaging with Metallic Nanoshell Particle Chain Array

We propose a near-infrared super resolution imaging system without a lens or a mirror but with an array of metallic nanoshell particle chain. The imaging array can plasmonically transfer the near-field components of dipole sources in the incoherent and coherent manners and the super resolution images can be reconstructed in the output plane. By tunning the parameters of the metallic nanoshell particle, the plasmon resonance band of the isolate nanoshell particle red-shifts to the near-infrared region. The near-infrared super resolution images are obtained subsequently. We calculate the field intensity distribution at the different planes of imaging process using the finite element method and find that the array has super resolution imaging capability at near-infrared wavelengths. We also show that the image formation highly depends on the coherence of the dipole sources and the image-array distance.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

A MicroRNA-7 Binding Site Polymorphism in HOXB5 Leads to Differential Gene Expression in Bladder Cancer

PURPOSE: To investigate the biological function of HOXB5 in human bladder cancer and explore whether the HOXB5 3'-UTR SNP (1010A/G), which is located within the microRNA-7 binding site, was correlated with clinical features of bladder cancer. METHODS: Expression of HOXB5 in 35 human bladder cancer tissues and 8 cell lines were examined using real-time PCR and immunohistochemistry. Next, we explored the biological function of HOXB5 in vitro using cell proliferation, migration and colony formation assays. Using bioinformatics, a SNP (1010A/G) was found located within the microRNA-7 binding site in the 3'-UTR of HOXB5. Real-time PCR was used to test HOXB5 expression affected by different alleles. Finally, multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between SNP (1010A/G) frequency and clinical features in 391 cases. RESULTS: HOXB5 was frequently over-expressed both in bladder cancer tissues and cell lines. Inhibition of HOXB5 suppressed the oncogenic function of cancer cells. Next, we demonstrated that a SNP (1010A/G), located within the microRNA-7 binding site in the 3'-UTR of HOXB5, could affect HOXB5 expression in bladder cancer mainly by differential binding activity of microRNA-7 and SNP-related mRNA stability. Finally, we also showed the frequency of 1010G genotype was higher in cancer group compared to normal controls and correlated with the risk of high grade and high stage. CONCLUSION: HOXB5 is overexpressed in bladder cancer. A miRNA-binding SNP (1010A/G) located within 3'-UTR of HOXB5 is associated with gene expression and may be a promising prognostic factor for bladder cancer

Microfluidic Chip for Molecular Amplification of Influenza A RNA in Human Respiratory Specimens

A rapid, low cost, accurate point-of-care (POC) device to detect influenza virus is needed for effective treatment and control of both seasonal and pandemic strains. We developed a single-use microfluidic chip that integrates solid phase extraction (SPE) and molecular amplification via a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to amplify influenza virus type A RNA. We demonstrated the ability of the chip to amplify influenza A RNA in human nasopharyngeal aspirate (NPA) and nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) specimens collected at two clinical sites from 2008–2010. The microfluidic test was dramatically more sensitive than two currently used rapid immunoassays and had high specificity that was essentially equivalent to the rapid assays and direct fluorescent antigen (DFA) testing. We report 96% (CI 89%,99%) sensitivity and 100% (CI 95%,100%) specificity compared to conventional (bench top) RT-PCR based on the testing of n = 146 specimens (positive predictive value = 100%(CI 94%,100%) and negative predictive value = 96%(CI 88%,98%)). These results compare well with DFA performed on samples taken during the same time period (98% (CI 91%,100%) sensitivity and 96%(CI 86%,99%) specificity compared to our gold standard testing). Rapid immunoassay tests on samples taken during the enrollment period were less reliable (49%(CI 38%,61%) sensitivity and 98%(CI 98%,100%) specificity). The microfluidic test extracted and amplified influenza A RNA directly from clinical specimens with viral loads down to 103 copies/ml in 3 h or less. The new test represents a major improvement over viral culture in terms of turn around time, over rapid immunoassay tests in terms of sensitivity, and over bench top RT-PCR and DFA in terms of ease of use and portability

2019 Twelfth International Conference on Mobile Computing and Ubiquitous Network (ICMU)

A recent trend in the IoT is to shift from traditional cloud-centric applications towards more distributed approaches embracing the fog and edge computing paradigms. In autonomous robots and vehicles, much research has been put into the potential of offloading computationally intensive tasks to cloud computing. Visual odometry is a common example, as real-time analysis of one or multiple video feeds requires significant on-board computation. If this operations are offloaded, then the on-board hardware can be simplified, and the battery life extended. In the case of self-driving cars, efficient offloading can significantly decrease the price of the hardware. Nonetheless, offloading to cloud computing compromises the system's latency and poses serious reliability issues. Visual odometry offloading requires streaming of video-feeds in real-time. In a multi-vehicle scenario, enabling efficient data compression without compromising performance can help save bandwidth and increase reliability.</p

2019 Twelfth International Conference on Mobile Computing and Ubiquitous Network (ICMU)

Offloading computationally intensive tasks such as lidar or visual odometry from mobile robots has multiple benefits. Resource constrained robots can make use of their network capabilities to reduce the data processing load and be able to perform a larger number tasks in a more efficient manner. However, previous works have mostly focused on cloud offloading, which increases latency and reduces reliability, or high-end edge devices. Instead, we explore the utilization of FPGAs at the edge for computational offloading with minimal latency and high parallelism. We present the potential for modelling feature-based odometry in VHDL and utilizing FPGA implementations.</p