Defining the Plant Peroxisomal Proteome: From Arabidopsis to Rice

Peroxisomes are small subcellular organelles mediating a multitude of processes in plants. Proteomics studies over the last several years have yielded much needed information on the composition of plant peroxisomes. In this review, the status of peroxisome proteomics studies in Arabidopsis and other plant species and the cumulative advances made through these studies are summarized. A reference Arabidopsis peroxisome proteome is generated, and some unique aspects of Arabidopsis peroxisomes that were uncovered through proteomics studies and hint at unanticipated peroxisomal functions are also highlighted. Knowledge gained from Arabidopsis was utilized to compile a tentative list of peroxisome proteins for the model monocot plant, rice. Differences in the peroxisomal proteome between these two model plants were drawn, and novel facets in rice were expounded upon. Finally, we discuss about the current limitations of experimental proteomics in decoding the complete and dynamic makeup of peroxisomes, and complementary and integrated approaches that would be beneficial to defining the peroxisomal metabolic and regulatory roadmaps. The synteny of genomes in the grass family makes rice an ideal model to study peroxisomes in cereal crops, in which these organelles have received much less attention, with the ultimate goal to improve crop yield

Designs and Implementations of Low-Leakage Digital Standard Cells Based on Gate- Length Biasing

Abstract: In this study, a minimum set of low-power digital standard cells for low-leakage applications are developed and introduced into SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) 130 nm CMOS libraries, which include basic logic gates such as inverter, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR and flip-flop. The inverter, NAND, NOR and flip-flop standard cells based on the gate-length biasing technique are proposed to achieve low Energy Delay Product (EDP). The XOR and XNOR standard cells are optimized based on transistor-level. All circuits are simulated with HSPICE at a SMIC 130nm CMOS technology by a 1.2V supply voltage. The proposed several standard cells attain large leakage reductions. A mode-10 counter is verified with the proposed standard cells by using commercial EDA tools. The leakage and total dynamic power dissipations of the mode-10 counter using the proposed standard cells provide a reduction of 21.27 and 3.06%, respectively. The results indicate the proposed standard cells are a good choose in low leakage applications

Spectrum to distance mapping via nonlinear Airy pulses

We theoretically and experimentally study the phenomena related to self-phase modulation of Airy pulses in fibers. During nonlinear evolution, most spectral components of the Airy pulses concentrate into one or two peaks for normal and anomalous dispersion, respectively. The resulting peaks self-shift along the propagation, effectively mapping the longitudinal coordinate into the frequency domain. The frequency shift can be precisely controlled by simply acting on the spectral cubic phase structure without the need to alter the fiber length

Development of a doorframe-typed swinging seedling pick-up device for automatic field transplantation

A doorframe-typed swing seedling pick-up device for automatic field transplanters was developed and evaluated in a laboratory. The device, consisting of a path manipulator and two grippers, can move the pins slowly to extract seedlings from the tray cells and return quickly to the pick-up point for the next extraction. The path manipulator was constructed with the creative design of type-Ⅱ mechanism combination in series. It consists of an oscillating guide linkage mechanism and a grooved globoidal cam mechanism. The gripper is a pincette-type mechanism using the pick-up pins to penetrate into the root mass for seedling extraction. The dynamic analysis of the designed seedling pick-up device was simulated with ADAMS software. Being the first prototype, various performance tests under local production conditions were conducted to find out the optimal machine operation parameters and transplant production conditions. As the gripper with multiple fine pins was moved by the swing pick-up device, it can effectively complete the transplanting work cycle of extracting, transferring, and discharging a seedling. The laboratory evaluation showed that the pick-up device equipped with two grippers can extract 80 seedlings/min with a 90% success and a 3% failure in discharging seedlings, using 42-day-old tomato plantlets. The quality of extracting seedlings was satisfactory