Hormones are important signaling molecules regulating developmental processes and responses to environmental stimuli in higher plants. Rice endosperm, the portion of the seed surrounding the embryo, ...is the main determinant of rice grain shape and yield; however, the dynamics and exact functions of phytohormones in developing endosperm remain elusive. Through a systemic study including transcriptome analysis, hormone measurement, and transgene‐based endosperm‐specific expression of phytohormone biosynthetic enzymes, we demonstrated that dynamic phytohormone levels play crucial roles in the developing rice endosperm, particularly in regard to grain shape and quality. We detected diverse, differential, and dramatically changing expression patterns of genes related to hormone biosynthesis and signaling during endosperm development, especially at early developmental stages. Liquid chromatography measurements confirmed the dynamic accumulation of hormones in developing endosperm. Further transgenic analysis performed on plants expressing hormone biosynthesis genes driven by an endosperm‐specific promoter revealed differential effects of the hormones, especially auxin and brassinosteroids, in regulating grain shape and quality. Our studies help elucidate the distinct roles of hormones in developing endosperm and provide novel and useful tools for influencing crop seed shape and yield.
A systemic study including transcriptome analysis, hormone measurement, and transgene approach demonstrated the crucial role of dynamic phytohormone levels in the developing rice endosperm, particularly grain shape and quality, which helps to elucidate the distinct roles of hormones in developing endosperm.
Abnormal hemispheric specialization and inter-hemispheric interactions may contribute to the pathogenesis of general anxiety disorder (GAD). The current study investigated these abnormalities in GAD ...patients based on the two analytic approaches and examined whether such abnormalities are correlated with anxiety symptom severity. Seventy-three patients with GAD and 60 matched healthy controls were recruited. All participants completed anxiety symptoms assessment and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). The autonomy index (AI) and Connectivity between Functionally Homotopic voxels (CFH) were applied to measure and compared between groups. Compared to controls, patients showed stronger AI in the right middle temporal gyrus (MTG). Seed-based analysis revealed stronger functional connectivity (FC) of the right MTG with both right precuneus and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in patients. Patients also exhibited greater CFH in right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) but decreased CFH in bilateral postcentral gyrus (PCG) and superior occipital gyrus (SOG). Further there were significant correlations between these regional CFH and anxiety symptoms severity. GAD patients demonstrate right hemispheric specialization and aberrant inter-hemispheric functional cooperation, and abnormal inter-hemispheric coordination is associated with anxiety symptom severity. These findings provide a clue to understanding the neuropathological mechanisms of GAD.
•General anxiety disorder patients showed stronger autonomy index in the right middle temporal gyrus.•Patients showed aberrant inter-hemispheric cooperation in right anterior cingulate cortex, postcentral and occipital gyrus.•Abnormal inter-hemispheric coordination were associated with anxiety symptom severity.
In this paper, a three-dimensional quantitative structure–activity relationships study for 38 HIV-1 protease inhibitors was established using Topomer CoMFA. The multiple correlation coefficients of ...fitting, cross-validation, and external validation were 0.959, 0.867, and 0.964, respectively. The results indicated that the model obtained has both favorable estimation stability and good prediction capability. Topomer Search was used to search R-group from ZINC database. As the result, a series of R-groups with relatively high activity contribution was obtained. By No. 32 molecule filtering, 10 Ra and 6 Rb groups were selected. We employed the 10 Ra and 6 Rb groups to alternately substitutes for the Ra and Rb of sample 32. Finally, we designed 60 new compounds with higher activity than that of the template molecule. The results suggested the Topomer Search technology could be effectively used to screen and design new HIV-1 protease inhibitors and has good predictive capability to guide the design of new HIV/AIDS drugs. As the ligands, the training molecules and new designed compounds were used for molecular docking to study the interaction mode with the protein receptor. As the results, we found that the ligands would form the hydrogen-bonding interactions with Asp25, Asp29, Asp30, Gly48, and Ile50 of the protein receptor generally.
Background
Recently, functional homotopy (FH) architecture, defined as robust functional connectivity (FC) between homotopic regions, has been frequently reported to be altered in MDD patients (MDDs) ...but with divergent locations.
Methods
In this study, we obtained resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R‐fMRI) data from 1004 MDDs (mean age, 33.88 years; age range, 18–60 years) and 898 matched healthy controls (HCs) from an aggregated dataset from 20 centers in China. We focused on interhemispheric function integration in MDDs and its correlation with clinical characteristics using voxel‐mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) devised to inquire about FH patterns.
Results
As compared with HCs, MDDs showed decreased VMHC in visual, motor, somatosensory, limbic, angular gyrus, and cerebellum, particularly in posterior cingulate gyrus/precuneus (PCC/PCu) (false discovery rate FDR q < 0.002, z = −7.07). Further analysis observed that the reduction in SMG and insula was more prominent with age, of which SMG reflected such age‐related change in males instead of females. Besides, the reduction in MTG was found to be a male‐special abnormal pattern in MDDs. VMHC alterations were markedly related to episode type and illness severity. The higher Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score, the more apparent VMHC reduction in the primary visual cortex. First‐episode MDDs revealed stronger VMHC reduction in PCu relative to recurrent MDDs.
Conclusions
We confirmed a significant VMHC reduction in MDDs in broad areas, especially in PCC/PCu. This reduction was affected by gender, age, episode type, and illness severity. These findings suggest that the depressive brain tends to disconnect information exchange across hemispheres.
High rebound rate and low construction efficiency are outstanding problems for traditional shotcrete. To solve these problems, Nano-scale admixture (NSA) was used to prepare high performance wet-mix ...shotcrete. Tests of sidewall rebound rate and overall rebound rate were carried out to study the effect of NSA. A total of eight mixtures were measured to assess the effect of impact factors such as active admixture variety (silica fume and NSA), NSA content (7.5%, 10% and 12.5%) and NSA fineness (128nm, 137nm and 147nm) on rebound rate. The results indicated that the sidewall rebound rate and overall rebound rate of shotcrete were reduced by 17% and 25% respectively when NSA replaced silica fume at the same content, which was about 10% with respect to the total amount of cementing materials. Rebound rate decreased as NSA content increased from 7.5% to 12.5%. Rebound rate also could be reduced when particle size of NSA deceased from 147nm to 128nm. The results confirmed the role of NSA in reducing rebound rate of shotcrete. NSA could promote the adhesion between shotcrete and receiving surface, improve the cohesion in mixtures, which could keep such as coarse aggregate, synthetic fiber from being rebounded out of cementing paste. Therefore, the rebound rate was reduced.
Alkali-aggregate reaction is one of the most serious concrete durability problems threating the safety of dam. Some accelerated test methods with high temperature and high alkalinity are usually used ...in laboratory to evaluate the reactivity of aggregates or the effectiveness of suppression measures. In this paper, an outdoor field exposure station was built to objectively assess the damage risk of real dam concrete suffering alkali-silica reaction. 25 concrete blocks measuring 450 by 450 by 450 mm in size were tested at first stage, all immersed into water to simulate the environment of dam concrete. The influences of the size of aggregate and the amount of cementing materials were tested at the same time. After 7 years field exposure testing, the results showed that: the crack risk of blocks was not proportional to the expansion rates, but influenced by the maximum diameter of aggregate. The block with bigger aggregate had smaller expansion rate, but cracked more easily. If the sizes of aggregate were the same, less cementing materials would cause bigger expansion. The constraint effect is bigger than the effect of alkali content increasing caused by increasing the amount of cementing materials.
In this paper, a three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity
relationship (3D-QSAR) study for 62 HIV-1 integrase(IN) inhibitors was
established using Topomer CoMFA. The multiple correlation ...coefficient of
fitting, cross validation and external validation were 0.942, 0.670 and
0.748, respectively. The results indicated that the Topomer CoMFA model
obtained has both favorable estimation stability and good prediction
capability. Topomer Search was used to search R group from ZINC database. As
the result, a series of R groups with relatively high activity contribution
was obtained. By filtering with the most potent molecule in the set, 1 Ra
group and 21 Rb groups were selected. We employed the 1 Ra groups and 21 Rb
groups to alternately substitute the Ra and Rb of sample 42. Finally, we
designed 21 new compounds and further predicted their activities using the
Topomer CoMFA model and there were 10 new compounds with higher activity than
that of the template molecule. The results suggested the Topomer Search
technology could be effectively used to screen and design new HIV-1 IN
inhibitors and has good predictive capability to guide the design of new
HIV/AIDS drugs.
nema
The quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) approach is used for finding the relationships between molecular structures and the activity of peptide drugs. In this work, the stepwise ...multiple regression method was employed to select the optimal subset of descriptors that have significant contributions to the drug activity of 21 oxytocin analogues, 48 bitter tasting threshold activities and 58 angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors. A new set of descriptor, SVWGM, was used for the prediction of the activity of the peptide drugs and then were used to build a model by the partial least squares method, The stability and generalization ability of the model was strictly analyzed by both internal and external validations, by cross-validation and external validation correlations.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is common and disabling, but its neuropathophysiology remains unclear. Most studies of functional brain networks in MDD have had limited statistical power and data ...analysis approaches have varied widely. The REST-meta-MDD Project of resting-state fMRI (R-fMRI) addresses these issues. Twenty-five research groups in China established the REST-meta-MDD Consortium by contributing R-fMRI data from 1,300 patients with MDD and 1,128 normal controls (NCs). Data were preprocessed locally with a standardized protocol before aggregated group analyses. We focused on functional connectivity (FC) within the default mode network (DMN), frequently reported to be increased in MDD. Instead, we found decreased DMN FC when we compared 848 patients with MDD to 794 NCs from 17 sites after data exclusion. We found FC reduction only in recurrent MDD, not in first-episode drug-naïve MDD. Decreased DMN FC was associated with medication usage but not with MDD duration. DMN FC was also positively related to symptom severity but only in recurrent MDD. Exploratory analyses also revealed alterations in FC of visual, sensory-motor, and dorsal attention networks in MDD. We confirmed the key role of DMN in MDD but found reduced rather than increased FC within the DMN. Future studies should test whether decreased DMN FC mediates response to treatment. All R-fMRI indices of data contributed by the REST-meta-MDD consortium are being shared publicly via the R-fMRI Maps Project.
Retinal detachment (RD) secondary to macular hole (MH) is a common complication in highly myopic eyes, usually leading to a poor visual prognosis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ...surgical outcome of silicone oil (SO) tamponade and internal limiting membrane (ILM) peeling in the treatment of RD caused by MH (MHRD) in highly myopic eyes with chorioretinal atrophy, and to identify clinical factors associated with the anatomical outcomes.
We retrospectively reviewed 21 eyes of 21 highly myopic patients affected by RD secondary to MH and chorioretinal atrophy. All eyes were treated with pars plana vitrectomy (PPV) with ILM peeling and SO tamponade. Anatomical success was defined as reattachment of the retina with the closure of the MH, as assessed by optical coherence tomography (OCT), after SO removal. Logistic regression was performed to determine the clinical factors influencing anatomical success.
The mean patient age was 59.95 years standard deviation (SD), 10.39; range, 34-77 years and the mean axial length was 30.58 mm (SD, 1.52; range, 27.99-34.51 mm). After the first surgical procedure, the anatomical success rate was 61.9% (13 eyes in 21 eyes), with initial retinal attachment of 16 eyes (76.2%). A second surgical approach was performed for the five eyes with persistent or recurrent RD, and the final retinal reattachment rate was 100% (21/21). Logistic regression analysis showed that no specific factors were significantly associated with anatomical success.
Primary silicone oil tamponade and ILM peeling can be a practical treatment for repairing MHRD in highly myopic eyes with chorioretinal atrophy.
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