Yokonolide B, a Novel Inhibitor of Auxin Action, Blocks Degradation of AUX/IAA Factors

Yokonolide B (YkB; also known as A82548A), a spiroketal-macrolide, was isolated from Streptomyces diastatochromogenes B59 in a screen for inhibitors of beta-glucoronidase expression under the control of an auxin-responsive promoter in Arabidopsis. YkB inhibits the expression of auxin-inducible genes as shown using native and synthetic auxin promoters as well as using expression profiling of 8300 Arabidopsis gene probes but does not affect expression of an abscisic acid- and a gibberellin A3-inducible gene. The mechanism of action of YkB is to block AUX/IAA protein degradation; however, YkB is not a general proteasome inhibitor. YkB blocks auxin-dependent cell division and auxin-regulated epinastic growth mediated by auxin-binding protein 1. Gain of function mutants such as shy2-2, slr1, and axr2-1 encoding AUX/IAA transcriptional repressors and loss of function mutants encoding components of the ubiquitin-proteolytic pathway such as axr1-3 and tir1-1, which display increased AUX/IAAs protein stability, are less sensitive to YkB, although axr1 and tir1 mutants were sensitive to MG132, a general proteasome inhibitor, consistent with a site of action downstream of AXR1 and TIR. YkB-treated seedlings displayed similar phenotypes as dominant AUX/IAA mutants. Taken together, these results indicate that YkB acts to block AUX/IAA protein degradation upstream of AXR and TIR, links a shared element upstream of AUX/IAA protein stability to auxin-induced cell division/elongation and to auxin-binding protein 1, and provides a new tool to dissect auxin signal transduction

Synthesizing Event-Centric Knowledge Graphs of Daily Activities Using Virtual Space

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to be embodied in software agents, robots, and cyber-physical systems that can understand the various contextual information of daily life in the home environment to support human behavior and decision making in various situations. Scene graph and knowledge graph (KG) construction technologies have attracted much attention for knowledge-based embodied question answering meeting this expectation. However, collecting and managing real data on daily activities under various experimental conditions in a physical space are quite costly, and developing AI that understands the intentions and contexts is difficult. In the future, data from both virtual spaces, where conditions can be easily modified, and physical spaces, where conditions are difficult to change, are expected to be combined to analyze daily living activities. However, studies on the KG construction of daily activities using virtual space and their application have yet to progress. The potential and challenges must still be clarified to facilitate AI development for human daily life. Thus, this study proposes the VirtualHome2KG framework to generate synthetic KGs of daily life activities in virtual space. This framework augments both the synthetic video data of daily activities and the contextual semantic data corresponding to the video contents based on the proposed event-centric schema and virtual space simulation results. Therefore, context-aware data can be analyzed, and various applications that have conventionally been difficult to develop due to the insufficient availability of relevant data and semantic information can be developed. We also demonstrate herein the utility and potential of the proposed VirtualHome2KG framework through several use cases, including the analysis of daily activities by querying, embedding, and clustering, and fall risk detection among older adults based on expert knowledge. As a result, we are able to develop a support tool that detects the fall risk with 1.0 precision, 0.6 recall, and 0.75 F1-score and visualize it with an explanation of its rationale. Using the cases explored in this work, we also clarify and classify the challenges that future research on synthetic KG generation systems should resolve in terms of simulation, schema, and human activity. Finally, we discuss the potential solutions for implementing advanced applications to support our daily life

Lysophosphatidic acid induced nuclear translocation of nuclear factor-κB in Panc-1 cells by mobilizing cytosolic free calcium

AIM: To clarify whether Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) activates the nuclear translocation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) in pancreatic cancer

Epsilon Launch Vehicle - First Flight and its Evolutions -

The first Epsilon launch vehicle was successfully launched from Uchinoura Space Center (USC) on September 14th, 2013. Epsilon has achieved full mission success by injecting SPRINT-A into planned orbit with high accuracy. Epsilon is now ready to offer launch opportunities for small payloads to the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO). The paper consists of three parts. At first, this paper describes the main features of Epsilon launch vehicle, its mission profile and the brief summary of actual flight data. Secondly, the short-term development plan is presented, as Epsilon has to become more cost effective in order to meet the growing needs for lower cost. Finally a further development plan including design evolutions under study is presented

Fertility risk factors in transferring Japanese Black embryos into dairy heifers: An epidemiological study

The aims of this study were 1) to summarize the current status of Japanese Black (JB) embryo transfer into Holstein heifers, which is carried out on a commercial basis in Japan, and 2) to reveal fertility risk factors, including those from the environment (year and season of transfer), recipient (age, number of transfers, clinical status of the ovaries) and embryo (quality, stage, state, genetic background). We used data from 4467 JB fresh or frozen embryo transfers into Holstein heifers conducted by Zen-noh Embryo Transfer Center during 2016–2018, and the differences in fertility risk due to factors related to the environment, recipient, and embryo were statistically evaluated. Differences in fertility risk due to each variable were observed, leading to significant differences in fertility with respect to year of transfer, embryo quality, embryo state, and embryo breed. These results suggest that the fertility of JB embryos might depend on differences in genetic background. There have been no previous reports of differences in embryo fertility due to the differences among JB\u27s bloodline combinations. In the future, overall reproductive efficiency must be monitored, including the effects of different bloodline combinations on the success of embryo recovery and transfer

p-Chlorophenoxyisobutyric Acid Impairs Auxin Response in Arabidopsis Root

p-Chlorophenoxyisobutyric acid (PCIB) is known as a putative antiauxin and is widely used to inhibit auxin action, although the mechanism of PCIB-mediated inhibition of auxin action is not characterized very well at the molecular level. In the present work, we showed that PCIB inhibited BA::β-glucuronidase (GUS) expression induced by indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, and 1-naphthaleneacetic acid. PCIB also inhibited auxin-dependent DR5::GUS expression. RNA hybridization and quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction analyses suggested that PCIB reduced auxin-induced accumulation of transcripts of Aux/IAA genes. In addition, PCIB relieved the reduction of GUS activity in HS::AXR3NT-GUS transgenic line in which auxin inhibits GUS activity by promoting degradation of the AXR3NT-GUS fusion protein. Physiological analysis revealed that PCIB inhibited lateral root production, gravitropic response of roots, and growth of primary roots. These results suggest that PCIB impairs auxin-signaling pathway by regulating Aux/IAA protein stability and thereby affects the auxin-regulated Arabidopsis root physiology

Fractalkine and TGF-β1 levels reflect the severity of chronic pancreatitis in humans

AIM: To clarify whether serum chemokine and cytokine levels can become useful biological and functional markers to assess the severity of chronic pancreatitis (CP). This study aimed at clarifying whether serum chemokine and cytokine levels can become useful biological and functional markers to assess the severity of CP