Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is a high-quality legume forage crop worldwide, and alfalfa production is often threatened by abiotic environmental stresses. GRAS proteins are important transcription ...factors that play a vital role in plant development, as well as in response to environmental stress. In this study, the availability of alfalfa genome “Zhongmu No.1” allowed us to identify 51 GRAS family members, i.e., MsGRAS. MsGRAS proteins could be classified into nine subgroups with distinct conserved domains, and tandem and segmental duplications were observed as an expansion strategy of this gene family. In RNA-Seq analysis, 14 MsGRAS genes were not expressed in the leaf or root, 6 GRAS genes in 3 differentially expressed gene clusters were involved in the salinity stress response in the leaf. Moreover, qRT-PCR results confirmed that MsGRAS51 expression was induced under drought stress and hormone treatments (ABA, GA and IAA) but down-regulated in salinity stress. Collectively, our genome-wide characterization, evolutionary, and expression analysis suggested that the MsGRAS proteins might play crucial roles in response to abiotic stresses and hormonal cues in alfalfa. For the breeding of alfalfa, it provided important information on stress resistance and functional studies on MsGRAS and hormone signaling.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Seed aging detection and viable seed prediction are of great significance in alfalfa seed production, but traditional methods are disposable and destructive. Therefore, the establishment of a rapid ...and non-destructive seed screening method is necessary in seed industry and research. In this study, we used multispectral imaging technology to collect morphological features and spectral traits of aging alfalfa seeds with different storage years. Then, we employed five multivariate analysis methods, i.e., principal component analysis (PCA), linear discrimination analysis (LDA), support vector machines (SVM), random forest (RF) and normalized canonical discriminant analysis (nCDA) to predict aged and viable seeds. The results revealed that the mean light reflectance was significantly different at 450~690 nm between non-aged and aged seeds. LDA model held high accuracy (99.8~100.0%) in distinguishing aged seeds from non-aged seeds, higher than those of SVM (87.4~99.3%) and RF (84.6~99.3%). Furthermore, dead seeds could be distinguished from the aged seeds, with accuracies of 69.7%, 72.0% and 97.6% in RF, SVM and LDA, respectively. The accuracy of nCDA in predicting the germination of aged seeds ranged from 75.0% to 100.0%. In summary, we described a nondestructive, rapid and high-throughput approach to screen aged seeds with various viabilities in alfalfa.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Increasing evidence suggests that the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is closely related to the gut microbiota. Polyphenols have been shown to alleviate T2DM, but the effects of
L. ...caerulea
L. polyphenols (LPs) on the gut microbiota and metabolites remain elusive. In this study, the inhibitory effects of fermented
L. caerulea
L. polyphenols (FLPs) and unfermented
L. caerulea
L. polyphenols (ULPs) on α-amylase and α-glucosidase and the impact of LP on the gut microbiota and metabolites were investigated. Furthermore, the relationship between the two was revealed through correlation analysis. The results showed that ULP and FLP had the highest inhibitory rates against α-amylase and α-glucosidase at 4 mg ml
−1
, indicating a strong inhibitory ability. In addition, LP plays a regulatory role in the concentration of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and tends to restore them to their normal levels. LP reversed the dysbiosis of the gut microbiota caused by T2DM, as evidenced by an increase in the abundance of bacterial genera such as
Lactobacillus
,
Blautia
, and
Bacteroides
and a decrease in the abundance of bacterial genera such as
Escherichia-Shigella
and
Streptococcus
. Similarly, after LP intervention, the relationships among microbial species became more complex and interconnected. In addition, the correlation between the gut microbiota and metabolites was established through correlation analysis. These further findings clarify the mechanism of action of LP against T2DM and provide a new target for T2DM interventions.
In this paper, an optimized method on the basis of polynomial fitting and Lambert
W function is presented to extract parameters from the current–voltage (
I–V) characteristics of commercial silicon ...solar cells. Since the experimental outcomes have significant impact on the precision of extracted parameters, polynomial fitting serves to overcome the obstacles of measurement noise in this method. The Lambert
W function is employed to translate the transcendental equation into explicit analytical solution. Comparing with the as-reported parameters of a silicon cell and a plastic cell in the previous literature, the interesting outcomes demonstrate that the proposed approach is helpful for obtaining precise extracted data. This is further showed by the good agreements between the fitted
I–V curve and the experimental results of a commercial monocrystalline silicon solar cell. Moreover, full extracted parameters of a badly shunted multicrystalline silicon solar cells before and after laser isolation process are conducted and investigated, the good fitting results finally show the validity of this attempt again.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Highly efficient approach to obtain CF2PO(OEt)2-containing oxindoles has been realized through visible-light-promoted aryldifluoromethylenephosphonation of N-arylacrylamides with BrCF2PO(OEt)2.
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•Visible-light-induced difluoromethylenephosphonation of N-arylacrylamides.•Two new CC bonds were formed via a sequential radcial addition and cyclization process.•The reaction afforded difluoromethylenephosphonated oxindoles with good functional group tolerance.
A general and efficient method for the synthesis of oxindole derivatives through visible-light-induced difluoromethylenephosphonation of N-arylacrylamides has been developed. The phosphonodifluoromethyl radicals, which is generated in situ from the corresponding BrCF2PO(OEt)2 under visible-light irradiation, in combination with N-arylacrylamides furnished difluoromethylenephosphonated oxindoles via a proposed tandem radical cyclization process. Notable advantages of this method include its simplicity and mild conditions, avoidance of toxic reagents, and compatibility with a variety of functional groups.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
The mortality rate associated with acute lung injury (ALI) and its severe form, acute respiratory distress syndrome, is high. Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) therapy is a potential treatment ...method for ALI, but its therapeutic efficacy is limited in injured lungs. Nitric oxide (NO) has various physiological actions. The current study investigated the effect of iPSCs pretreated with NO donors in paraquat (PQ)-induced ALI mouse model. Male C57BL/6 mice were intraperitoneally injected with PQ, followed by infusion of phosphate-buffered saline, iPSCs, L-arginine pretreated iPSCs, or Nitro-L-arginine methylester (L-NAME) pretreated iPSCs through the tail veins. Histopathological changes, pulmonary microvascular permeability, and inflammatory cytokine levels were analyzed after 3 or 28 d. The effects on iPSC proliferation, migration, and adhesion were evaluated
. More L-arginine-pretreated iPSCs were selectively trafficked into the injured pulmonary tissue of mice with LPS-induced ALI, drastically diminishing the histopathologic changes and inflammatory cytokine levels (IL-1β and IL-6). There was also markedly improved pulmonary microvascular permeability and pulmonary function. The NO inhibitor abolished the protective effects of iPSCs. In addition, the ability of L-arginine to promote the proliferation and migration of iPSCs was decreased by L-NAME pretreatment, suggesting that NO might mediate the therapeutic benefits of iPSC. The improvement of the iPSC physiological changes by the endogenous gaseous molecule NO reduces lung injury severity. L-Arginine represents a pharmacologically important strategy for enhancing the therapeutic potential of iPSCs.
Biological mutagens (such as transposon) with sequences inserted, play a crucial role to link observed phenotype and genotype in reverse genetic studies. For this reason, accurate and efficient ...software tools for identifying insertion sites based on the analysis of sequencing reads are desired.
We developed a bioinformatics tool, a Finder, to identify genome-wide Insertions in Mutagenesis (named as "InMut-Finder"), based on target sequences and flanking sequences from long reads, such as Oxford Nanopore Sequencing. InMut-Finder succeeded in identify > 100 insertion sites in Medicago truncatula and soybean mutants based on sequencing reads of whole-genome DNA or enriched insertion-site DNA fragments. Insertion sites discovered by InMut-Finder were validated by PCR experiments.
InMut-Finder is a comprehensive and powerful tool for automated insertion detection from Nanopore long reads. The simplicity, efficiency, and flexibility of InMut-Finder make it a valuable tool for functional genomics and forward and reverse genetics. InMut-Finder was implemented with Perl, R, and Shell scripts, which are independent of the OS. The source code and instructions can be accessed at https://github.com/jsg200830/InMut-Finder .
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Exacerbated attack behavior has a profound socioeconomic impact and devastating social consequences; however, there is no satisfactory clinical management available for an escalated attack behavior. ...Social isolation (SI) is widespread during this pandemic and may exert detrimental effects on mental health, such as causing heightened attack behavior. To explore the therapeutic approaches that alleviate the SI-induced heightened attack behavior, we utilized pharmacological methods targeting the GluN2B/NO signaling pathway during the attack behavior. Ifenprodil and TAT-9C peptide targeting GluN2B showed that the inhibition of GluN2B mitigated the SI-induced escalated attack behavior and the SI-induced aberrant nitric oxide (NO) level in the brain. Additionally, the potentiation of the NO level by L-arginine reversed the effects of the inhibition of GluN2B. Moreover, we showed that high doses of L-NAME and 7-NI and subeffective doses of L-NAME in combination with ifenprodil or TAT-9C or subeffective doses of 7-NI plus ifenprodil or TAT-9C all decreased the SI-induced escalated attack behavior and reduced the NO level, further supporting the idea that GluN2B/NO signaling is a crucial modulator of the escalated attack behavior.
Physical dormancy (PY) commonly present in the seeds of higher plants is believed to be responsible for the germination failure by impermeable seed coat in hard seeds of legume species, instead of ...physiological dormancy (PD). In this study, a non-destructive approach involving multispectral imaging was used to successfully identify hard seeds from non-hard seeds in Medicago sativa, with accuracy as high as 96.8%–99.0%. We further adopted multiple-omics strategies to investigate the differences of physiology, metabolomics, methylomics, and transcriptomics in alfalfa hard seeds, with non-hard seeds as control. The hard seeds showed dramatically increased antioxidants and 125 metabolites of significant differences in non-targeted metabolomics analysis, which are enriched in the biosynthesis pathways of flavonoids, lipids and hormones, especially with significantly higher ABA, a hormone known to induce dormancy. In our transcriptomics results, the enrichment pathway of “response to abscisic acid” of differential expressed genes (DEG) supported the key role of ABA in metabolomics results. The methylome analysis identified 54,899, 46,216 and 54,452 differential methylation regions for contexts of CpG, CHG and CHH, and 344 DEGs might be regulated by hypermethylation and hypomethylation of promoter and exon regions, including four ABA- and JA-responsive genes. Among 8% hard seeds in seed lots, 24.5% still did not germinate after scarifying seed coat, and were named as non-PY hard seeds. Compared to hard seeds, significantly higher contents of ABA/IAA and ABA/JA were identified in non-PY hard seeds, which indicated the potential presence of PD. In summary, the significantly changed metabolites, gene expressions, and methylations all suggested involvement of ABA responses in hard seeds, and germination failure of alfalfa hard seeds was caused by combinational dormancy (PY + PD), rather than PY alone.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The grounding electrodes are buried in a harsh soil environment, which will cause corrosion. Corroded grounding electrodes directly affect the safe and stable operation of the power system. ...Therefore, it is particularly important to detect the corrosion degree of the grounding electrodes accurately. The existing methods have the following problems: 1) Power-frequency grounding resistance is used as a single criterion, and lack of considering the impulse characteristics, which is difficult to accurately judge the corrosion degree and could cause a potential safety hazard. 2) Lacking considering the environmental PH value, water content, salt content, and other factors of the buried soil, which is easy to lead to misjudgment of corrosion degree. To solve the problems, this paper studies a comprehensive evaluation of corroded grounding electrodes considering impulse characteristics. Based on thermal stability, impulse characteristics, and power frequency characteristics, the minimum safety diameter of grounding electrodes and the factors that affect the corrosion of the soil environment are studied. According to the relationship between each evaluation factors and corrosivity, the membership is calculated and combined with the comprehensive weight determined by the sum of the squares of deviation. The fuzzy evaluation method is adopted to obtain the corrosive evaluation matrix
Y
, and the corrosive index C is proposed to quantify the corrosive strength. Combined with the minimum safety diameter, the residual life range of the grounding electrodes is predicted and the corrosion degree is divided. Finally, a comprehensive corrosion evaluation algorithm considering impulse characteristics is proposed. The results show that this method not only considers the soil environmental factors but also considers the grounding characteristics of the grounding electrodes, especially the impulse characteristics. This method is more comprehensive than other evaluation methods which only consider the soil environment and can realize trenchless corrosion detection of grounding electrodes. Therefore, the contribution of this work is of great significance to the operation and maintenance of tower grounding electrodes.
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