Identification and characterization of a POU transcription factor in the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The POU family genes containing the POU domain are common in vertebrates and invertebrates and play critical roles in cell-type-specific gene expression and cell fate determination.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Har-POU, a new member of the POU gene family, was cloned from the suboesophageal ganglion of <it>Helicoverpa armigera </it>(Har), and its potential functions in the development of the central nervous system (CNS) were analyzed. Southern blot analysis suggests that a single copy of this gene is present in the <it>H. armigera </it>haploid genome. Har-POU mRNA is distributed widely in various tissues and expressed highly in the CNS, salivary gland, and trachea. <it>In vitro</it>-translated Har-POU specifically bound canonical octamer motifs on the promoter of diapause hormone and pheromone biosynthesis activating neuropeptide (DH-PBAN) gene in <it>H. armigera</it>. Expression of the Har-POU gene is markedly higher in the CNS of nondiapause-destined pupae than in diapause-destined pupae. Expression of the Har-POU gene in diapausing pupae was upregulated quickly by injection of ecdysone.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Har-POU may respond to ecdysone and bind to the promoter of DH-PBAN gene to regulate pupal development in <it>H. armigera</it>.</p

Half Metallic Bilayer Graphene

Charge neutral bilayer graphene has a gapped ground state as transport experiments demonstrate. One of the plausible such ground states is layered antiferromagnetic spin density wave (LAF) state, where the spins in top and bottom layers have same magnitude with opposite directions. We propose that lightly charged bilayer graphene in an electric field perpendicular to the graphene plane may be a half metal as a consequence of the inversion and particle-hole symmetry broken in the LAF state. We show this explicitly by using a mean field theory on a 2-layer Hubbard model for the bilayer graphene.Comment: 4+ pages, 4 figure

Treatment of infants with congenital nasolacrimal duct obstruction

AIM: To explore the different ages of congenital nasolacrimal duct obstruction in infants, take different treatment methods at different times. <p>METHODS:The 87 cases of 102 children were divided into three different age groups: the first group of 25d-3mo of age 21 cases 26 eyes; The second group >3mo-7mo 31 cases 36 eyes; The third group >7-24mo of age 35 cases 40 eyes. For the first group of infants, the implementation of the lacrimal sac nasolacrimal duct massage + eye drops; for the second group of infants, carry lacrimal pressure washing treatment; for the third group of infants, the implementation of the nasolacrimal duct probing treatment. <p>RESULTS:The first group of children through the nasolacrimal duct sac massage + drops tobramycin eye drops treatment unobstructed 12, the cure rate was 46.2%; The second group of children through pressurized irrigation treatment lacrimal patency by 33, the cure rate was 91.7%; The third group of children through the nasolacrimal duct probing unobstructed 36 treatment, the cure rate was 90.0%. The second and third group were better than the first group(<i>χ</i>²=15.71, <i>P</i><0.01; <i>χ</i>²=15.27, <i>P</i><0.01); the treatment effect of the second and third groups was no significant difference(<i>χ</i>²=0.02, <i>P</i>>0.05).<p>CONCLUSION:Infants with congenital nasolacrimal duct obstruction should distinguish between ages, taking different treatments, in order to obtain a better therapeutic effect, and lacrimal pressure washing is the preferred way of treating infants with congenital nasolacrimal duct obstruction

Part-Whole Relational Few-Shot 3D Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation

The author wishes to extend sincere appreciation to Professor Lin Shi for the generous provision of equipment support, which significantly aided in the successful completion of this research. Furthermore, the author expresses gratitude to Associate Professor Ning Li and Teacher Wei Guan for their invaluable academic guidance and unwavering support. Their expertise and advice played a crucial role in shaping the direction and quality of this research.Peer reviewe

Leveraging syntactic and semantic graph kernels to extract pharmacokinetic drug drug interactions from biomedical literature

BACKGROUND: Information about drug-drug interactions (DDIs) supported by scientific evidence is crucial for establishing computational knowledge bases for applications like pharmacovigilance. Since new reports of DDIs are rapidly accumulating in the scientific literature, text-mining techniques for automatic DDI extraction are critical. We propose a novel approach for automated pharmacokinetic (PK) DDI detection that incorporates syntactic and semantic information into graph kernels, to address the problem of sparseness associated with syntactic-structural approaches. First, we used a novel all-path graph kernel using shallow semantic representation of sentences. Next, we statistically integrated fine-granular semantic classes into the dependency and shallow semantic graphs. RESULTS: When evaluated on the PK DDI corpus, our approach significantly outperformed the original all-path graph kernel that is based on dependency structure. Our system that combined dependency graph kernel with semantic classes achieved the best F-scores of 81.94 % for in vivo PK DDIs and 69.34 % for in vitro PK DDIs, respectively. Further, combining shallow semantic graph kernel with semantic classes achieved the highest precisions of 84.88 % for in vivo PK DDIs and 74.83 % for in vitro PK DDIs, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: We presented a graph kernel based approach to combine syntactic and semantic information for extracting pharmacokinetic DDIs from Biomedical Literature. Experimental results showed that our proposed approach could extract PK DDIs from literature effectively, which significantly enhanced the performance of the original all-path graph kernel based on dependency structure

A place to grow? Host choice and larval performance of Microplitis similis (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) in the host Spodoptera litura (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

Host selection is a key stage in the lifecycle of parasitoids, and is critical to both their function in control and to the maintenance of their population. The solitary endoparasitoid Microplitis similis (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) is a potential biological control agent of Spodoptera litura (F.) larvae (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). In this study, we examined the preference M. similis exhibits for different instars of the host, host instar effects on parasitoid development, and the weight gain and food consumption of different instars of parasitized larvae. In no-choice tests, parasitization rates were highest in second- and early third-instar larvae, and no fourth- or fifth-instar hosts were parasitized. When provided with a choice of first- to late third-instar host larvae, M. similis preferred to parasitize early third-instar host larvae (41%) with a selection coefficient of 0.37. All morphometric features of wasp offspring increased with increasing age of the host at parasitization. A lower proportion of females emerged from first-instar larvae than any other instar. Parasitized S. litura larvae showed a pronounced reduction in food consumption and weight gain. Microplitis similis may have the potential to significantly suppress population growth and the damage caused by S. litura