Salt Stress Tolerance in Rice and Wheat: Physiological and Molecular Mechanism

Salinity is a major obstacle to global grain crop production, especially rice and wheat. The identification and improvement of salt-tolerant rice and wheat depending upon the genetic diversity and salt stress response could be a promising solution to deal with soil salinity and the increasing food demands. Plant responses to salt stress occur at the organismic, cellular, and molecular levels and the salt stress tolerance in those crop plant involving (1) regulation of ionic homeostasis, (2) maintenance of osmotic potential, (3) ROS scavenging and antioxidant enzymes activity, and (4) plant hormonal regulation. In this chapter, we summarize the recent research progress on these four aspects of plant morpho-physiological and molecular response, with particular attention to ionic, osmolytic, enzymatic, hormonal and gene expression regulation in rice and wheat plants. Moreover, epigenetic diversity could emerge as novel of phenotypic variations to enhance plant adaptation to an adverse environmental conditions and develop stable stress-resilient crops. The information summarized here will be useful for accelerating the breeding of salt-tolerant rice. This information may help in studies to reveal the mechanism of plant salt tolerance, screen high efficiency and quality salt tolerance in crops

The superoxide scavenger TEMPOL induces urokinase receptor (uPAR) expression in human prostate cancer cells

There is little understanding of the effect that reactive oxygen metabolites have on cellular behavior during the processes of invasion and metastasis. These oxygen metabolites could interact with a number of targets modulating their function such as enzymes involved in basement membrane dissolution, adhesion molecules involved in motility or receptors involved in proliferation. We investigated the effect of increased scavenging of superoxide anions on the expression of the urokinase receptor (uPAR) in PC-3M human prostate cancer cells. Urokinase receptor is a GPI-linked cell surface molecule which mediates multiple functions including adhesion, proliferation and pericellular proteolysis. Addition of the superoxide scavenger 4-hydroxy-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyloxy (TEMPOL) to PC-3M cultures stimulated expression of uPAR protein peaking between 48 and 72 hours. Cell surface expression of the uPAR was also increased. Surprisingly, uPAR transcript levels increased only slightly and this mild increase did not coincide with the striking degree of protein increase. This disparity indicates that the TEMPOL effect on uPAR occurs through a post-transcriptional mechanism. TEMPOL presence in PC-3M cultures reduced intracellular superoxide-type species by 75% as assayed by NBT dye conversion; however this reduction significantly diminished within hours following TEMPOL removal. The time gap between TEMPOL treatment and peak uPAR protein expression suggests that reduction of reactive oxygen metabolites in prostate cancer cells initiates a multistep pathway which requires several hours to culminate in uPAR induction. These findings reveal a novel pathway for uPAR regulation involving reactive oxygens such as superoxide anion

ADAPT at IJCNLP-2017 Task 4: a multinomial naive Bayes classification approach for customer feedback analysis task

In this age of the digital economy, promoting organisations attempt their best to engage the customers in the feedback provisioning process. With the assistance of customer insights, an organisation can develop a better product and provide a better service to its customer. In this paper, we analyse the real world samples of customer feedback from Microsoft Office customers in four languages, i.e., English, French, Spanish and Japanese and conclude a five-plus-one-classes categorisation (comment, request, bug, complaint, meaningless and undetermined) for meaning classification. The task is to determine what class(es) the customer feedback sentences should be annotated as in four languages. We propose following approaches to accomplish this task: (i) a multinomial naive bayes (MNB) approach for multilabel classification, (ii) MNB with one-vsrest classifier approach, and (iii) the combination of the multilabel classification based and the sentiment classification based approach. Our best system produces F-scores of 0.67, 0.83, 0.72 and 0.7 for English, Spanish, French and Japanese, respectively. The results are competitive to the best ones for all languages and secure 3 rd and 5 the position for Japanese and French, respectively, among all submitted systems

A doxycycline-inducible urokinase receptor (uPAR) upregulates uPAR activities including resistance to anoikis in human prostate cancer cell lines

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The urokinase receptor (uPAR) mediates a diverse array of cellular processes including several events involved in prostate cancer metastasis. Many of these activities are initiated or enhanced by uPAR binding to its proteolytic ligand, urokinase (uPA). Our objective in this study was to generate and test an inducible lentiviral system capable of expressing uPAR and DsRed fluorescent protein in human prostate cancer cell lines.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A DsRed-uPAR fusion construct was inserted into a lentiviral vector. Transduction of human prostate cancer cell lines with this virus and with a virus containing a reverse-tetracycline transactivator (rt-TA) resulted in a stable transgene which induced both uPAR and DsRed proteins in a dose-responsive fashion upon stimulation with doxycycline. Immunoblots and immunofluorescence studies indicated no detectable uPAR expression in non-induced prostate cancer cell lines. Cells with induced-uPAR demonstrated increased cellular adhesion to the matrix substrate vitronectin and increased net cell proliferation compared to uninduced cells. Finally, induced uPAR-expressing prostate cancer cells were resistant to anoikis over an extended time period when grown in suspension.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This doxycycline-inducible lentivirus system produces titerable levels of biologically active uPAR <it>in vitro</it>. This tool can be used to dissect cellular events following induction of uPAR in prostate cancer cells.</p

Seed Priming with Phytohormones: An Effective Approach for the Mitigation of Abiotic Stress

Plants are often exposed to abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, heat, cold, and heavy metals that induce complex responses, which result in reduced growth as well as crop yield. Phytohormones are well known for their regulatory role in plant growth and development, and they serve as important chemical messengers, allowing plants to function during exposure to various stresses. Seed priming is a physiological technique involving seed hydration and drying to improve metabolic processes prior to germination, thereby increasing the percentage and rate of germination and improving seedling growth and crop yield under normal and various biotic and abiotic stresses. Seed priming allows plants to obtain an enhanced capacity for rapidly and effectively combating different stresses. Thus, seed priming with phytohormones has emerged as an important tool for mitigating the effects of abiotic stress. Therefore, this review discusses the potential role of priming with phytohormones to mitigate the harmful effects of abiotic stresses, possible mechanisms for how mitigation is accomplished, and roles of priming on the enhancement of crop production

Sub-clinical mastitis prevalent in dairy cows in Chittagong district of Bangladesh: detection by different screening tests

Aim: Mastitis is recognized as one of the most costly health disorder affecting dairy cows. An epidemiological study was carried out at some selected farms in Chittagong district of Bangladesh to determine the prevalence and risk factors of sub-clinical mastitis (SCM) in dairy cows. Materials and Methods: For conducting the study, some dairy farms of Chittagong were selected from urban and periurban areas by stratified random sampling. A total of 444 quarter samples of 111 (56 from commercial dairy farms and 55 from backyards) lactating dairy cows were considered. Sub-clinical mastitis (SCM) was determined using three different indirect screening tests: California Mastitis Test (CMT), White Slide Test (WST) and Surf Field Mastitis Test (SFMT). Sensitivity and specificity were also determined to measure the accuracy of those tests. Results: The prevalence of SCM by CMT, WST and SFMT were 32.43% (n=144), 33.56% (n=149) and 31.53% (n=140), respectively. Distribution of SCM in relation to different variables at quarter level and animal level was also recorded. The prevalence of SCM was significantly (P<0.05) higher in aged, high yielding cows in addition with history of periparturient diseases, without dry cow therapy both at quarter and animal level. A significantly (p<0.01) higher prevalence (48.98%) of SCM was observed in higher parity number (>4) than others at quarter level. No significant difference (P>0.05) was found in relation to breed. Using CMT as a gold standard, sensitivity and specificity of WST and SFMT were also calculated at 95% confidence interval. The sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and disease prevalence by WST and SFMT were comparable. Conclusion: This study recommends that regular screening of sub-clinical mastitis will reduce the prevalence of sub-clinical mastitis. The most effective way to control sub-clinical mastitis is to take preventive measures such as regular cleaning of the floor, keeping the udder clean, milkman's cleanliness, dry cow therapy specially in high yielding dairy cows

Petroleum Ether and Chloroform Soluble Fractions of Whole Plant Extract of Acanthus ilicifolis Linn. Possesses Potential Analgesic and Antioxidant Activities.

Background: Medicinal plants are the major sources of traditional treatment of disease and new drug discovery due to major side effects of synthetic drug. Objectives: The aim of study was to evaluate analgesic and antioxidant activities of petroleum ether and chloroform soluble fractions of whole plant extract of Acanthus ilicifoius. Materials and Methods: The plant extract, standard diclofenac, and distilled water as control was administered post orally in Swiss albino mice and observe the analgesic activity by acetic acid (0.6%) induced writhing method. The plant extract was also subjected to perform reducing power assay, DPPH free radical scavenging activity, and FRAP assay to evaluate antioxidant activity. Results: The pet ether, and chloroform soluble fraction of plant extract revealed significant analgesic activity on mice model. Notably, the pet ether and chloroform fraction showed (40.14 ± 2.32) % and (40.12 ± 0.9) % analgesic inhibition, whereas standard diclofenac revealed (52.79 ± 2.62) % analgesic inhibition. In antioxidant activity assay, the plant extract showed mild to moderate antioxidant activities compare to standard ascorbic acid. Conclusion: From the results, it could be concluded that, the pet ether and chloroform fractions of whole plant extract of A. ilicifolius possesses potential analgesic and antioxidant properties

Small signal stability analysis of doubly fed induction generator including SDBR

This paper presents small signal stability analysis of a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) based wind farm including series dynamic braking resistor (SDBR) connected at the stator side. A detailed mathematical model of wind turbine, DFIG machine and converters and SDBR is presented in this paper to derive the complete dynamic equations of the studied system. Small signal stability of this system is carried out by modal and sensitivity analysis, participation factors and eigenvalue analysis. Finally, this paper presents an analysis of the dynamic behavior of DFIG based wind farm under voltage dip condition with and without SDBR.peer-reviewe

Genome sequence of a dengue virus serotype 2 strain identified during the 2019 outbreak in Bangladesh

A nearly complete genome sequence of a dengue virus serotype 2 strain detected in the serum of a patient in 2019 during the largest outbreak of dengue fever in Bangladesh is reported