Methods and compositions for enhanced resistance to abiotic stress in plants

The present invention provides transgenic plants having increased tolerance to abiotic stress comprising a recombinant nucleic acid molecule, said recombinant nucleic acid molecule comprising a nucleotide sequence encoding miR319 operatively associated with a promoter, a nucleotide sequence that is antisense to a portion of consecutive nucleotides of a nucleotide sequence encoding PCF5, and/or a nucleotide sequence that encodes a portion of consecutive nucleotides of a nucleotide sequence encoding PCF5, which when expressed produces an antisense nucleotide sequence, wherein expression of the nucleotide sequence confers increased tolerance to abiotic stress. Also provided are methods and compositions for making said transgenic plants

Heterologous expression of a rice \u3ci\u3emiR395\u3c/i\u3e gene in \u3ci\u3eNicotiana tabacum\u3c/i\u3e impairs sulfate homeostasis

Sulfur participates in many important mechanisms and pathways of plant development. The most common source of sulfur in soil –SO42−– is absorbed into root tissue and distributed into aerial part through vasculature system, where it is reduced into sulfite and finally sulfide within the subcellular organs such as chloroplasts and mitochondria and used for cysteine and methionine biosynthesis. MicroRNAs are involved in many regulation pathways by repressing the expression of their target genes. MiR395 family in Arabidopsis thaliana has been reported to be an important regulator involved in sulfate transport and assimilation, and a high-affinity sulphate transporter and three ATP sulfurylases (ATPS) were the target genes of AthmiR395 (Arabidopsis thaliana miR395). We have cloned a miR395 gene from rice (Oryza sativa) and studied its function in plant nutritional response. Our results indicated that in rice, transcript level of OsamiR395 (Oryza sativa miR395) increased under sulfate deficiency conditions, and the two predicted target genes of miR395 were down-regulated under the same conditions. Overexpression of OsamiR395h in tobacco impaired its sulfate homeostasis, and sulfate distribution was also slightly impacted among leaves of different ages. One sulfate transporter (SULTR) gene NtaSULTR2 was identified to be the target of miR395 in Nicotiana tobacum, which belongs to low affinity sulfate transporter group. Both miR395 and NtaSULTR2 respond to sulfate starvation in tobacco

Heterologous expression of a rice miR395 gene in Nicotiana tabacum impairs sulfate homeostasis

Sulfur participates in many important mechanisms and pathways of plant development. The most common source of sulfur in soil –SO42−– is absorbed into root tissue and distributed into aerial part through vasculature system, where it is reduced into sulfite and finally sulfide within the subcellular organs such as chloroplasts and mitochondria and used for cysteine and methionine biosynthesis. MicroRNAs are involved in many regulation pathways by repressing the expression of their target genes. MiR395 family in Arabidopsis thaliana has been reported to be an important regulator involved in sulfate transport and assimilation, and a high-affinity sulphate transporter and three ATP sulfurylases (ATPS) were the target genes of AthmiR395 (Arabidopsis thaliana miR395). We have cloned a miR395 gene from rice (Oryza sativa) and studied its function in plant nutritional response. Our results indicated that in rice, transcript level of OsamiR395 (Oryza sativa miR395) increased under sulfate deficiency conditions, and the two predicted target genes of miR395 were down-regulated under the same conditions. Overexpression of OsamiR395h in tobacco impaired its sulfate homeostasis, and sulfate distribution was also slightly impacted among leaves of different ages. One sulfate transporter (SULTR) gene NtaSULTR2 was identified to be the target of miR395 in Nicotiana tobacum, which belongs to low affinity sulfate transporter group. Both miR395 and NtaSULTR2 respond to sulfate starvation in tobacco

A Mode-Sum Prescription for Vacuum Polarization in Even Dimensions

We present a mode-sum regularization prescription for computing the vacuum polarization of a scalar field in static spherically-symmetric black hole spacetimes in even dimensions. This is the first general and systematic approach to regularized vacuum polarization in higher even dimensions, building upon a previous scheme we developed for odd dimensions. Things are more complicated here since the even-dimensional propagator possesses logarithmic singularities which must be regularized. However, in spite of this complication, the regularization parameters can be computed in closed form in arbitrary even dimensions and for arbitrary metric function $f(r)$. As an explicit example of our method, we show plots for vacuum polarization of a massless scalar field in the Schwarzschild-Tangherlini spacetime for even $d=4,...,10$. However, the method presented applies straightforwardly to massive fields or to nonvacuum spacetimes.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1609.0816

Comprehensive analysis of REST corepressors (RCORs) in pan-cancer

REST corepressors (RCORs) are the core component of the LSD1/CoREST/HDACs transcriptional repressor complex, which have been revealed differently expressed in various cancers, but the therapeutic and prognostic mechanisms in cancer are still poorly understood. In this study, we analyzed expression, prognostic value, molecular subtypes, genetic alteration, immunotherapy response and drug sensitivity of RCORs in pan-cancer. Clinical correlation, stemness index, immune infiltration and regulatory networks of RCORs in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were detected through TCGA and GSCA database. In-vitro experiments were conducted to explore the role of RCOR1 in HCC cells. The expression of RCORs varied among different cancers, and have prognostic values in several cancers. Cancer subtypes were categorized according to the expression of RCORs with clinical information. RCORs were significantly correlated with immunotherapy response, MSI, drug sensitivity and genetic alteration in pan-cancer. In HCC, RCORs were considered as potential predictor of stemness and also had association with immune infiltration. The ceRNA-TF-kinase regulatory networks of RCORs were constructed. Besides, RCOR1 acts as an oncogene in HCC and promotes the proliferation of HCC cells by inhibiting cell cycle arrest and cell apoptosis. Taken together, our study revealed the potential molecular mechanisms of RCORs in pan-cancer, offering a benchmark for disease-related research

Retrieval-based face annotation by weak label regularized local coordinate coding

Ministry of Education, Singapore under its Academic Research Funding Tier

An AT-hook gene is required for palea formation and floral organ number control in rice

AbstractGrasses have highly specialized flowers and their outer floral organ identity remains unclear. In this study, we identified and characterized rice mutants that specifically disrupted the development of palea, one of the outer whorl floral organs. The depressed palea1 (dp1) mutants show a primary defect in the main structure of palea, implying that palea is a fusion between the main structure and marginal tissues on both sides. The sterile lemma at the palea side is occasionally elongated in dp1 mutants. In addition, we found a floral organ number increase in dp1 mutants at low penetration. Both the sterile lemma elongation and the floral organ number increase phenotype are enhanced by the mutation of an independent gene SMALL DEGENERATIVE PALEA1 (SDP1), whose single mutation causes reduced palea size. E function and presumable A function floral homeotic genes were found suppressed in the dp1–2 mutant. We identified the DP1 gene by map-based cloning and found it encodes a nuclear-localized AT-hook DNA binding protein, suggesting a grass-specific role of chromatin architecture modification in flower development. The DP1 enhancer SDP1 was also positional cloned, and was found identical to the recently reported RETARDED PALEA1 (REP1) gene encoding a TCP family transcription factor. We further found that SDP1/REP1 is downstreamly regulated by DP1

Global Infectious Diseases in August of 2022: Monthly Analysis

Infectious diseases have greatly affected the development of human history, owing to their unpredictable zoonotic characteristics. The recording of infectious diseases epidemic data provides information on disease transmission trends, and enables research on the risk of penitential epidemics and the mechanisms of transmission of infectious diseases. Recent years have seen a significant increase in the number of confirmed and fatal cases of COVID-19 since it became a pandemic in late 2019. Monkeypox also has potential for global transmission, because the World Health Organization (WHO) [ 1 ] reported cases of MPXV in at least 12 Countries that are not endemic for monkeypox virus. Africa and Southeast Asia appear to be the main regions where mosquito-borne diseases are epidemic, possibly because of the rainy weather in these regions in the past month. Tracking disease incidence and epidemic tendency remains imperative in these areas, although most infectious diseases appear to be dispersed and transmitted in only several areas at the moment

A novel method for objectively, rapidly and accurately evaluating burn depth via near infrared spectroscopy

The accurate and objective evaluation of burn depth is a significant challenge in burn wound care. Herein, we used near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technology to measure the different depth of thermal burns in ex vivo porcine models. Based on the intensity of the spectral signals and the diffuse reflection theory, we extracted the optical parameters involved in functional (total hemoglobin and water content) and structural (tissue scattered size and scattered particles) features that reflect the changes in burn depth. Next, we applied support vector regression to construct a model including the optical property parameters and the burn depth. Finally, we histologically verified the burn depth data collected via NIRS. The results showed that our inversion model could achieve an average relative error of about 7.63%, while the NIRS technology diagnostic accuracy was in the range of 50 μm. For the first time, this novel technique provides physicians with real-time burn depth information objectively and accurately