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► A golden conversion coating has been prepared by adding tannic acid in the treatment solution. ► The conversion coating owns a double-layer structure. ► The outer layer consists of ...metal–organic complex and the inner layer is mainly made up of Na3AlF6. ► The mechanism of the formation of the golden conversion coating can be deemed as nucleation, growth of Na3AlF6 crystal and formation of metal–organic complex.
A golden conversion coating on the surface of aluminum alloy was prepared by adding tannic acid and coating–forming accelerator in the treatment solution containing titanium and zirconium ions. The growth process, main component and corrosion resistance of the conversion coating were characterized by EDS, SEM, XRD, XPS, FIIR and electrochemical workstation. The results showed that the main components of the conversion coating were Na3AlF6 and the conversion coating owns a double-layer structure. The outer layer consists of metal–organic complex and the inner layer is mainly made up of Na3AlF6. The mechanism of the formation of the golden conversion coating can be deemed as nucleation, growth of Na3AlF6 crystal and formation of metal–organic complex. In potentiodynamic polarization test, the corrosion current density decreases to 0.283μAcm−2 from 5.894μAcm−2, which indicates an obvious improvement of corrosion resistance.
Skin color is an important trait that is mainly determined by the content and composition of anthocyanins in apples. In this study, a new bud mutant (RM) from 'Oregon Spur II' (OS) of Red Delicious ...apple was obtained to reveal the mechanism underlying red color formation. Results showed that the total anthocyanin content in RM was significantly higher than that in OS with the development of fruit. Through widely-targeted metabolomics, we found that cyanidin-3-O-galactoside was significantly accumulated in the fruit skin of RM. Transcriptome analysis revealed that the structural gene
and
transcription factor were significantly up-regulated in the mutant. Overexpression of
in apple fruit and apple callus significantly promoted anthocyanin accumulation and significantly increased the expression level of
and structural genes related to anthocyanin synthesis. Y1H and LUC analysis verified that
could specifically bind to the promoter of
. The results of the double luciferase activity test showed that
activated
3.8 times, which led to increased anthocyanin contents. This might explain the phenotype of red color in RM at the early stage. Taken together, these results suggested that
was involved in regulating the anthocyanin metabolic pathways through precise regulation of gene expression. The functional characterization of
provides insight into the biosynthesis and regulation of anthocyanins.
Q-type C2H2 zinc finger proteins (ZFPs), the largest family of transcription factors, have been extensively studied in plant genomes. However, the genes encoding this transcription factor family have ...not been explored in grapevine genomes. Therefore, in this study, we conducted a genome-wide identification of ZFP genes in three species of grapevine, namely Vitis vinifera, Vitis riparia, and Vitis amurensis, based on the sequence databases and phylogenetic and their conserved domains. We identified 52, 54, and 55 members of Q-type C2H2 ZFPs in V. vinifera, V. riparia, and V. amurensis, respectively. The physical and chemical properties of VvZFPs, VrZFPs, and VaZFPs were examined. The results showed that these proteins exhibited differences in the physical and chemical properties and that they all were hydrophobic proteins; the instability index showed that the four proteins were stable. The subcellular location of the ZFPs in the grapevine was predicted mainly in the nucleus. The phylogenetic tree analysis of the amino acid sequences of VvZFP, VaZFP, VrZFP, and AtZFP proteins showed that they were closely related and were divided into six subgroups. Chromosome mapping analysis showed that VvZFPs, VrZFPs, and VaZFPs were unevenly distributed on different chromosomes. The clustered gene analysis showed that the motif distribution was similar and the sequence of genes was highly conserved. Exon and intron structure analysis showed that 118 genes of ZFPs were intron deletion types, and the remaining genes had variable numbers of introns, ranging from 2 to 15. Cis-element analysis showed that the promoter of VvZFPs contained multiple cis-elements related to plant hormone response, stress resistance, and growth, among which the stress resistance elements were the predominant elements. Finally, the expression of VvZFP genes was determined using real-time quantitative PCR, which confirmed that the identified genes were involved in response to methyl jasmonate (MeJA), abscisic acid (ABA), salicylic acid (SA), and low-temperature (4 °C) stress. VvZFP10-GFP and VvZFP46-GFP fusion proteins were localized in the nucleus of tobacco cells, and VvZFP10 is the most responsive gene among all VvZFPs with the highest relative expression level to MeJA, ABA, SA and low-temperature (4 °C) stress. The present study provides a theoretical basis for exploring the mechanism of response to exogenous hormones and low-temperature tolerance in grapes and its molecular breeding in the future.
To investigate the expression and significance of long noncoding RNA NORAD (lncRNA-NORAD) in breast cancer.
Q-PCR was adopted to detect the mRNA expression of lncRNA-NORAD in breast cancer and ...adjacent tissues, survival analysis to compare the low-expression groups with the Kaplan-Meier method. Knockout of lncRNA-NORAD was adopted to observe the effects on the cell proliferation, migration and invasion of breast cancer in vitro and in vivo. The TGF-β/RUNX2 signaling pathway was observed by Western blot after the knockout of lncRNA-NORAD.
Increased expression of lncRNA-NORAD in breast cancer tissues promotes proliferation, invasion and migration of breast cancer cells and correlated with worse prognosis. LncRNA-NORAD activated TGF-β/RUNX2 signaling pathway in breast cancer cells.
These results strongly suggested that lncRNA-NORAD might play an important role in breast cancer progression and potentially be a new therapeutic target.
To elucidate the structural characteristics, phylogeny and biological function of anthocyanin synthase (ANS) and its role in anthocyanin synthesis, members of the strawberry ANS gene family were ...obtained by whole genome retrieval, and their bioinformatic analysis and expression analysis at different developmental stages of fruit were performed. The results showed that the strawberry ANS family consisted of 141 members distributed on 7 chromosomes and could be divided into 4 subfamilies. Secondary structure prediction showed that the members of this family were mainly composed of random curls and α-helices, and were mainly located in chloroplasts, cytoplasm, nuclei and cytoskeletons. The promoter region of the FvANS gene family contains light-responsive elements, abiotic stress responsive elements and hormone responsive elements, etc. Intraspecific collinearity analysis revealed 10 pairs of FvANS genes, and interspecific collinearity analysis revealed more relationships between strawberries and apples, grapes and Arabidopsis, but fewer between strawberries and rice. Chip data analysis showed that FvANS15, FvANS41, FvANS47, FvANS48, FvANS49, FvANS67, FvANS114 and FvANS132 were higher in seed coat tissues and endosperm. FvANS16, FvANS85, FvANS90 and FvANS102 were higher in internal and fleshy tissues. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) showed that the ANS gene was expressed throughout the fruit coloring process. The expression levels of most genes were highest in the 50% coloring stage (S3), such as FvANS16, FvANS19, FvANS31, FvANS43, FvANS73, FvANS78 and FvANS91. The expression levels of FvANS52 were the highest in the green fruit stage (S1), and FvANS39 and FvANS109 were the highest in the 20% coloring stage (S2). These results indicate that different members of the FvANS gene family play a role in different pigmentation stages, with most genes playing a role in the expression level of the rapid accumulation of fruit coloring. This study lays a foundation for further study on the function of ANS gene family.
Co-condensation of mixed SiGe nanoclusters and impingement of SiGe nanoclusters on a Si substrate were applied using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation in this study to mimic the fast epitaxial ...growth of SiGe/Si heterostructures under mesoplasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) conditions. The condensation dynamics and properties of the SiGe nanoclusters during the simulations were investigated first, and then the impingement of transient SiGe nanoclusters on both Si smooth and trench substrate surfaces under varying conditions was studied theoretically. The results show that the mixed nanoclusters as precursors demonstrate potential for enhancing epitaxial SiGe film growth at a high growth rate, owing to their loosely bound atomic structures and high mobility on the substrate surface. By varying cluster sizes and substrate temperatures, this study also reveals that smaller clusters and higher substrate temperatures contribute to faster structural ordering and smoother surface morphologies. Furthermore, the formed layers display a consistent SiGe composition, closely aligning with nominal values, and the cluster-assisted deposition method achieves the epitaxial bridging of heterostructures during cluster impingement, highlighting its additional distinctive characteristics. The implications of this work make it clear that the mechanism of fast alloyed epitaxial film growth by cluster-assisted mesoplasma CVD is critical for extending it as a versatile platform for synthesizing various epitaxial films.
This research aims to conduct a numerical investigation into the impact of incorporating phase change material on the thermal management of a building-integrated solar photovoltaic panel. The study ...compares the outcomes with those of a photovoltaic panel without the phase change material layer, utilizing sunlight intensity and ambient temperature data from the Meteorological Organization of Jiangsu, China on October 15, 2022. The remarkable effectiveness of phase change material in reducing the temperature of the photovoltaic panel is evident, with the system incorporating phase change material showing a temperature 1.28–29.15 °C lower compared to the system without phase change material. This observation results in a 0.10–2.17% increase in solar panel efficiency. Subsequently, artificial neural network and group method of data handling techniques were employed to establish an accurate relationship for predicting the hourly photovoltaic panel temperature in the photovoltaic-phase change material system. The performance evaluation of this model indicated R2, RMSE, and MSE values of 0.97602, 1.483, and 2.22, respectively.
Nitrogen nutrition participates in many physiological processes and understanding the physiological and molecular mechanisms of apple responses to nitrogen is very significant for improving apple ...quality. This study excavated crucial genes that regulates sugar metabolism in response to nitrogen in apples through physiology and transcriptome analysis, so as to lay a theoretical foundation for improving fruit quality. In this paper, the content of sugar and organic acid in apple fruit at different developmental periods under different nitrogen levels (0, 150, 300, and 600 kg·hm
) were determined. Then, the transcriptomic analysis was performed in 120 days after bloom (DAB) and 150 DAB. The results showed that the fructose and glucose content were the highest at 120 DAB under 600 kg·hm
nitrogen level. Meanwhile, different nitrogen treatments decreased malate content in 30 and 60 DAB. RNA-seq analysis revealed a total of 4537 UniGenes were identified as differentially expressed genes (DEGs) under nitrogen treatments. Among these DEGs, 2362 (52.06%) were up-regulated and 2175 (47.94%) were down-regulated. The gene co-expression clusters revealed that most DEGs were significantly annotated in the photosynthesis, glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, pyruvate metabolism, carbon metabolism, carbon fixation in photosynthetic organisms and plant hormone signal transduction pathways. The key transcription factor genes (
,
,
, and
genes) were differentially expressed in apple fruit. Sugar and acid metabolism-related genes (e.g.,
,
,
,
and
genes) exhibited significantly up-regulated expression at 120 DAB, whereas they were down-regulated at 150 DAB. Furthermore, the
gene overexpression positively promoted sucrose accumulation in apple callus and fruit. In conclusion, the combinational analysis of transcriptome and the functional validation of the
gene provides new insights into apple responses to different nitrogen levels.
A golden-yellow Ti/Zr conversion coating on AZ91D substrate was successfully prepared in the solution containing titanium and zirconium ions with the addition of tannic acid. The growth process, ...microstructure, composition and corrosion resistance of this conversion coating were characterized by EDS, SEM, XRD, XPS, FTIR and electrochemical workstation. The application of H2ZrF6 and tannic acid was the key to the coating color. The coating possessed a double-layer structure, in which the inner layer was made up of Mg(OH)2, MgO, TiO2, ZrO2, and MgF2, and the outer layer was metal–organic complex. The π electronic chromophore in the metal–organic complex produced the conversion coating color. The coating was uniform and compact, leading to improved corrosion resistance and significantly reduced corrosion current density (from 93.72μA·cm−2 to 1.047μA·cm−2).
•A novel colored Ti/Zr conversion coating was obtained on the surface of AZ91D alloy.•The co-existence of H2TiF6 and tannic acid is the key factor to color the coating.•The coating mainly consists of coating Mg(OH)2, MgF2, MgO, TiO2, ZrO2 and metal–organic complex.•The metal–organic complex located in the superficial layer makes the coating golden-yellow.•The colored Ti/Zr coating exhibits excellent corrosion resistance.