Plants are vulnerable to a number of abiotic and biotic stresses that cause a substantial decrease in the production of plants. Plants respond to different environmental stresses by experiencing a ...series of molecular and physiological changes coordinated by various phytohormones. The use of phytohormones to alleviate stresses has recently achieved increasing interest. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a group of polyhydroxylated steroidal phytohormones that are required for the development, growth, and productivity of plants. These hormones are involved in regulating the division, elongation, and differentiation of numerous cell types throughout the entire plant life cycle. BR studies have drawn the interest of plant scientists over the last few decades due to their flexible ability to mitigate different environmental stresses. BRs have been shown in numerous studies to have a positive impact on plant responses to various biotic and abiotic stresses. BR receptors detect the BR at the cell surface, triggering a series of phosphorylation events that activate the central transcription factor (TF) Brassinazole-resistant 1 (BZR1), which regulates the transcription of BR-responsive genes in the nucleus. This review discusses the discovery, occurrence, and chemical structure of BRs in plants. Furthermore, their role in the growth and development of plants, and against various stresses, is discussed. Finally, BR signaling in plants is discussed.
Herein, we report an effectual method for designing a novel form of nanozyme laccase mimic namely Cu/H3BTC, using copper ions and 1,3,5-benzene tricarboxylic acid (1,3,5-H3BTC). This Cu-based ...metal–organic framework (MOF) was synthesized through a simple procedure of mixing of two usual reagents at room temperature. Amido Black 10B (AB-10B) was chosen as a model dye for degradation consequences. Results showed that Cu/H3BTC MOF revealed significantly higher catalytic efficacy under certain conditions like high pH, extreme temperature and high salt conditions and it has long-term storage stability, which can lead to a significant decline in catalytic activity of laccase. In addition, the degradation of AB-10B was up to 60% after ten cycles, showing good recyclability of Cu/H3BTC MOF. The UV-visible spectral changes clearly showed that Cu/H3BTC MOF is an effective laccase mimic for the degradation of azo dye AB-10B, which was degraded more easily within the time duration of 60 min. The Cu/H3BTC MOF also possessed fundamental activities like laccase with regard to oxidation of the phenolic compounds. Moreover, a technique for the quantitative detection of epinephrine by Cu/H3BTC MOF was established. These findings help to understand the laccase-like reactivity and provide a basis for the future design and application of metal-based catalysts.
A symmetric block cipher employing a substitution-permutation duo is an effective technique for the provision of information security. For substitution, modern block ciphers use one or more ...substitution boxes (S-Boxes). Certain criteria and design principles are fulfilled and followed for the construction of a good S-Box. In this paper, an innovative technique to construct substitution-boxes using our cubic fractional transformation (CFT) is presented. The cryptographic strength of the proposed S-box is critically evaluated against the state of the art performance criteria of strong S-boxes, including bijection, nonlinearity, bit independence criterion, strict avalanche effect, and linear and differential approximation probabilities. The performance results of the proposed S-Box are compared with recently investigated S-Boxes to prove its cryptographic strength. The simulation and comparison analyses validate that the proposed S-Box construction method has adequate efficacy to generate efficient candidate S-Boxes for usage in block ciphers.
Life sciences have been revolutionized by genome editing (GE) tools, including zinc finger nucleases, transcription activator‐Like effector nucleases, and CRISPR (clustered regulatory interspaced ...short palindromic repeats)/Cas (CRISPR‐associated) systems, which make the targeted modification of genomic DNA of all organisms possible. CRISPR/Cas systems are being widely used because of their accuracy, efficiency, and cost‐effectiveness. Various classes of CRISPR/Cas systems have been developed, but their extensive use may be hindered by off‐target effects. Efforts are being made to reduce the off‐target effects of CRISPR/Cas9 by generating various CRISPR/Cas systems with high fidelity and accuracy. Several approaches have been applied to detect and evaluate the off‐target effects. Here, the current GE tools, the off‐target effects generated by GE technology, types of off‐target effects, mechanisms of off‐target effects, major concerns, and outcomes of off‐target effects in plants and animals are summarized. The methods to detect off‐target effects, tools for single‐guide RNA (sgRNA) design, evaluation and prediction of off‐target effects, and strategies to increase the on‐target efficiency and mitigate the off‐target impact on intended genome‐editing outcomes are summarized.
Herein, the off‐target effects, types, mechanism, major concerns, and outcomes of off‐target effects in plants and animals are summarized. Moreover, methods to detect off‐target effects, tools for sgRNA design, evaluation and prediction of off‐target effects, and strategies to increase the on‐target efficiency and mitigate the off‐target impact on intended genome‐editing outcomes are summarized.
Inflammation is involved in initiation and progression of aortic stenosis (AS). However, the role of the complement system, a crucial component of innate immunity in AS, is unclear. We hypothesized ...that circulating levels of complement factor B (FB), an important component of the alternative pathway, are upregulated and could predict outcome in patients with severe symptomatic AS. Therefore, plasma levels of FB, Bb, and terminal complement complex were analyzed in three cohorts of patients with severe symptomatic AS and mild-to-moderate or severe asymptomatic AS (population 1,
= 123; population 2,
= 436; population 3,
= 61) and in healthy controls by enzyme immunoassays. Compared with controls, symptomatic AS patients had significantly elevated levels of FB (2.9- and 2.8-fold increase in population 1 and 2, respectively). FB levels in symptomatic and asymptomatic AS patients were comparable (population 2 and 3), and in asymptomatic patients FB correlated inversely with valve area. FB levels in population 1 and 2 correlated with terminal complement complex levels and measures of systemic inflammation (i.e., CRP), cardiac function (i.e., NT-proBNP), and cardiac necrosis (i.e., Troponin T). High FB levels were significantly associated with mortality also after adjusting for clinical and biochemical covariates (hazard ratio 1.37;
= 0.028, population 2). Plasma levels of the Bb fragment showed a similar pattern in relation to mortality. We concluded that elevated levels of FB and Bb are associated with adverse outcome in patients with symptomatic AS. Increased levels of FB in asymptomatic patients suggest the involvement of FB from the early phase of the disease.
In this paper, we investigate the optical solitons of the fractional complex Ginzburg–Landau equation (CGLE) with Kerr law nonlinearity which shows various phenomena in physics like nonlinear waves, ...second-order phase transition, superconductivity, superfluidity, liquid crystals, and strings in field theory. A comparative approach is practised between the three suggested definitions of derivative viz. conformable, beta, and M-truncated. We have constructed the optical solitons of the considered model with a new extended direct algebraic scheme. By utilization of this technique, obtained solutions carry a variety of new families including dark-bright, dark, dark-singular, and singular solutions of Type 1 and 2,
and sufficient conditions for the existence of these structures are given.
Further, graphical representations of the obtained solutions are depicted. A detailed comparison of solutions to the considered problem, obtained by using different definitions of derivatives, is reported as well.
In this paper, we propose to present a novel technique for designing cryptographically strong substitution-boxes using cubic polynomial mapping. The proposed cubic polynomial mapping is proficient to ...map the input sequence to a strong 8 × 8 S-box meeting the requirements of a bijective function. The use of cubic polynomial maintains the simplicity of S-box construction method and found consistent when compared with other existing S-box techniques used to construct S-boxes. An example proposed S-box is obtained which is analytically evaluated using standard performance criteria including nonlinearity, bijection, bit independence, strict avalanche effect, linear approximation probability, and differential uniformity. The performance results are equated with some recently scrutinized S-boxes to ascertain its cryptographic forte. The critical analyses endorse that the proposed S-box construction technique is considerably innovative and effective to generate cryptographic strong substitution-boxes.
Wireless communication refers to data transfer in an unguided propagation medium through wireless carriers such as visible light (VL) and radio frequency (RF). The rapidly growing demand for high ...data rates overloads conventional RF wireless communication. Therefore, technologies such as cognitive radios and millimeter waves (mmWaves) have been utilized to overcome capacity limitation and spectrum scarcity of RF systems. In parallel, optical wireless communication (OWC) is a promising alternative solution to its radio frequency (RF) compeer. OWC has been revolutionized to support fifth generation (5G) wireless communication and Internet-of-Things (IoT) terminals. In addition, OWC has no health hazard, low power consumption, unlicensed spectrum and shows immunity to interferences from electromagnetic sources. As RF and OWC are compatible, so a joint application scenario is referred as an excellent solution to support 5G and beyond systems. Hybrid optical/optical and RF/optical system is a promising approach to remove the limitations of each system as well as to enable supporting features of each technology. An optical/optical hybrid system is based on two or more OWC technologies while RF/optical hybrid system contains both RF and OWC technologies. The hybrid systems can enhance system performance in terms of energy efficiency, reliability and throughput of each system. Thus, hybrid RF/optical systems are envisioned as a key enabler to enhance user mobility and data rate on the one hand and to optimize power consumption, network load, interference and network capacity on the other hand. This survey seeks to provide the state-of-the-art and future research directions regarding optical wireless hybrid networks. This paper represents a technological overview of existing optical wireless hybrid networks. We have discussed optical-based free-space optics (FSO), optical camera communication (OCC), light fidelity (LiFi) which extends the concept of visible light communication (VLC) to attain bi-directional and fully networked wireless communication, as well as RF-based Bluetooth, wireless fidelity (WiFi), small cell, macrocell, mmWave and microwave. In addition, we have also considered underwater acoustic communication for acoustic/optical and acoustic/RF hybrid networks. An extensive range of applications such as indoor, vehicular communication, eHealth, backhaul connectivity solution and underwater communication is considered. We have addressed potential challenges and open research issues for design and successful deployment of hybrid wireless networks.
In modern-day block ciphers, the role of substitution-boxes is to transform the plaintext data nonlinearly to generate ciphertext data with sufficient confusion. It has been well-confirmed that the ...robustness and security of such block ciphers heavily based on the cryptographic strength of the underlying substitution-boxes. Reason being, they are the only components that are held responsible to bring required nonlinearity and complexity into the security system which can frustrate the attackers. Accordingly, a number of different concepts have been explored to construct strong S-boxes. To move forward with the same aim, a novel simple modular approach, the very first time, is investigated to construct nonlinear S-box in this paper. The proposed new modular approach consists of three operations such as new transformation, modular inverses, and permutation. A number of highly nonlinear S-boxes can be easily constructed with slight changes in the novel transformation parameters. An example S-box is presented whose critical performance assessment against some benchmarking criterions such as high nonlinearity, absence of fixed points, fulfillment of SAC and BIC properties, low differential uniformity and linear approximation probability and comparison with recent S-boxes demonstrate its upright cryptographic potentiality. In addition, an image encryption algorithm is also proposed wherein the generated S-box is applied to perform the pixels shuffling and substitution for strong statistical and differential encryption performance.
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