Reduced glutamine synthetase activity alters the fecundity of female Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel)

Glutamine synthetase (GS) is a key enzyme in glutamine synthesis and is associated with multiple physiological processes in insects, such as embryonic development, heat shock response, and fecundity regulation. However, little is known about the influence of GS on female fecundity in the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis. Based on the cloning of BdGSs, mitochondrial BdGSm and cytoplasmic BdGSc, we determined their expressions in the tissues of adult B. dorsalis. BdGSm was highly expressed in the fat body, while BdGSc was highly expressed in the head and midgut. Gene silencing by RNA interference against two BdGSs isoforms suppressed target gene expression at the transcriptional level, leading to a reduced ovarian size and lower egg production. The specific inhibitor L-methionine S-sulfoximine suppressed enzyme activity, but only the gene expression of BdGSm was suppressed. A similar phenotype of delayed ovarian development occurred in the inhibitor bioassay. Significantly lower expression of vitellogenin and vitellogenin receptor was observed when GS enzyme activity was suppressed. These data illustrate the effects of two GS genes on adult fecundity by regulating vitellogenin synthesis in different ways

Quantum Robot: Structure, Algorithms and Applications

A kind of brand-new robot, quantum robot, is proposed through fusing quantum theory with robot technology. Quantum robot is essentially a complex quantum system and it is generally composed of three fundamental parts: MQCU (multi quantum computing units), quantum controller/actuator, and information acquisition units. Corresponding to the system structure, several learning control algorithms including quantum searching algorithm and quantum reinforcement learning are presented for quantum robot. The theoretic results show that quantum robot can reduce the complexity of O(N^2) in traditional robot to O(N^(3/2)) using quantum searching algorithm, and the simulation results demonstrate that quantum robot is also superior to traditional robot in efficient learning by novel quantum reinforcement learning algorithm. Considering the advantages of quantum robot, its some potential important applications are also analyzed and prospected.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, 2 table