Long nanopore reads are advantageous in de novo genome assembly. However, nanopore reads usually have broad error distribution and high-error-rate subsequences. Existing error correction tools cannot ...correct nanopore reads efficiently and effectively. Most methods trim high-error-rate subsequences during error correction, which reduces both the length of the reads and contiguity of the final assembly. Here, we develop an error correction, and de novo assembly tool designed to overcome complex errors in nanopore reads. We propose an adaptive read selection and two-step progressive method to quickly correct nanopore reads to high accuracy. We introduce a two-stage assembler to utilize the full length of nanopore reads. Our tool achieves superior performance in both error correction and de novo assembling nanopore reads. It requires only 8122 hours to assemble a 35X coverage human genome and achieves a 2.47-fold improvement in NG50. Furthermore, our assembly of the human WERI cell line shows an NG50 of 22 Mbp. The high-quality assembly of nanopore reads can significantly reduce false positives in structure variation detection.
Abstract
Motivation
The Oxford Nanopore sequencing enables to directly detect methylation states of bases in DNA from reads without extra laboratory techniques. Novel computational methods are ...required to improve the accuracy and robustness of DNA methylation state prediction using Nanopore reads.
Results
In this study, we develop DeepSignal, a deep learning method to detect DNA methylation states from Nanopore sequencing reads. Testing on Nanopore reads of Homo sapiens (H. sapiens), Escherichia coli (E. coli) and pUC19 shows that DeepSignal can achieve higher performance at both read level and genome level on detecting 6 mA and 5mC methylation states comparing to previous hidden Markov model (HMM) based methods. DeepSignal achieves similar performance cross different DNA methylation bases, different DNA methylation motifs and both singleton and mixed DNA CpG. Moreover, DeepSignal requires much lower coverage than those required by HMM and statistics based methods. DeepSignal can achieve 90% above accuracy for detecting 5mC and 6 mA using only 2× coverage of reads. Furthermore, for DNA CpG methylation state prediction, DeepSignal achieves 90% correlation with bisulfite sequencing using just 20× coverage of reads, which is much better than HMM based methods. Especially, DeepSignal can predict methylation states of 5% more DNA CpGs that previously cannot be predicted by bisulfite sequencing. DeepSignal can be a robust and accurate method for detecting methylation states of DNA bases.
Availability and implementation
DeepSignal is publicly available at https://github.com/bioinfomaticsCSU/deepsignal.
Supplementary information
Supplementary data are available at bioinformatics online.
The earthworm is particularly fascinating to biologists because of its strong regenerative capacity. However, many aspects of its regeneration in nature remain elusive. Here we report ...chromosome-level genome, large-scale transcriptome and single-cell RNA-sequencing data during earthworm (Eisenia andrei) regeneration. We observe expansion of LINE2 transposable elements and gene families functionally related to regeneration (for example, EGFR, epidermal growth factor receptor) particularly for genes exhibiting differential expression during earthworm regeneration. Temporal gene expression trajectories identify transcriptional regulatory factors that are potentially crucial for initiating cell proliferation and differentiation during regeneration. Furthermore, early growth response genes related to regeneration are transcriptionally activated in both the earthworm and planarian. Meanwhile, single-cell RNA-sequencing provides insight into the regenerative process at a cellular level and finds that the largest proportion of cells present during regeneration are stem cells.
RAV transcription factors (TFs) are unique to higher plants and contain both B3 and APETALA2 (AP2) DNA binding domains. Although sets of RAV genes have been identified from several species, little is ...known about this family in wheat. In this study, 26 RAV genes were identified in the wheat genome. These wheat RAV TFs were phylogenetically clustered into three classes based on their amino acid sequences. A TaRAV gene located on chromosome 1D was cloned and named TaRAV1. TaRAV1 was expressed in roots, stems, leaves, and inflorescences, and its expression was up-regulated by heat while down-regulated by salt, ABA, and GA. Subcellular localization analysis revealed that the TaRAV1 protein was localized in the nucleus. The TaRAV1 protein showed DNA binding activity in the EMSA assay and transcriptional activation activity in yeast cells. Overexpressing TaRAV1 enhanced the salt tolerance of Arabidopsis and upregulated the expression of SOS genes and other stress response genes. Collectively, our data suggest that TaRAV1 functions as a transcription factor and is involved in the salt stress response by regulating gene expression in the SOS pathway.
SUMMARY
Plants have developed various protective mechanisms to survive drought stress. Previously, it was shown that a wheat bZIP transcription factor gene TaFD‐Like2‐1A (TaFDL2‐1A) can confer ...drought tolerance in Arabidopsis. However, the biological functions related to drought stress tolerance of TaFDL2‐1A in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) remain unclear. In the present study, overexpression of TaFDL2‐1A in the wheat cultivar Fielder improved drought resistance and conferred abscisic acid (ABA) hypersensitivity. Further analysis showed that overexpression of TaFDL2‐1A increased the hypersensitivity of stomata to drought stress and endogenous ABA content under drought conditions. Genetic analysis and transcriptional regulation analysis indicated that TaFDL2‐1A binds directly to the promoter fragments of TaRAB21s and TaNCED2s via ACGT core cis‐elements, thereby activating their expression, leading to enhanced ABA responses and endogenous ABA accumulation. In addition, our results demonstrate that overexpression of TaFDL2‐1A results in higher SOD and GPX activities in wheat under drought conditions by promoting the expression of TaSOD1 and TaGPx1‐D, indicating enhanced reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging. These results imply that TaFDL2‐1A positively regulates ABA biosynthesis, ABA responses, and ROS scavenging to improve drought stress tolerance in transgenic wheat. Our findings improve our understanding of the mechanisms that allow the wheat bZIP transcription factor to improve drought resistance and provide a useful reference gene for breeding programs to enhance drought resistance.
Significance Statement
TaFDL2‐1A promotes abscisic acid biosynthesis by targeting three TaNCED2 homologs and increases the antioxidant capacity by enhancing TaSOD1 and TaGPx1‐D expression, thereby increasing drought resistance in transgenic wheat (Triticum aestivum L.).
The surface energies and work functions for ten kinds of Miller-indices surfaces of hexagonal metals, Be, Mg, Tc, Re, Ru, and Os are calculated by means of the density functional theory (DFT) method. ...The results show that the metals belonging to the same group have a very similar rule in work functions and surface energies. The work functions of (0001), 011-1, and 101-0 surfaces are generally larger than the work functions of 112-1, 112-2, 112-3, and 314-0 surfaces. In contrast to work functions, there is more regularity in the crystallographic orientation dependence of surface energies. However, for the metals belonging to different groups, there are always some differences in the exact order of orientation dependence. It is also shown that the work functions and surface energies of the main group metals decrease as they go from top to the bottom in the same group of periodic table, while for the transition metals, they do not always obey this rule.
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•Slab models of hexagonal metals with many crystallographic orientations are built.•Data of surface energies and work functions of six hexagonal metals with ten kinds of Miller-index surfaces are given.•Correlation of hexagonal metals' surface energy and work function is discussed.
Since December 2019, over 80,000 patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been confirmed in China. With the increasing number of recovered patients, more attention should be paid to the ...follow-up of these patients.
In the study, 576 patients with COVID-19 discharged from hospital in Chongqing, China from January 24, 2020, to March 10, 2020 were evaluated by viral nucleic acid tests for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2) to determine if they could be released from quarantine. Among the 576 patients, 61 patients (10.6%) had positive RT-PCR test results of SARS-CoV-2. We aimed to analyze the demographics, clinical characteristics and treatment of 61 patients.
These positive patients were characterized by older age, chronic medical illness and mild conditions. 38 (62.3%) patients who were asymptomatic without abnormalities on chest radiographs were found in the positive with COVID-19. Also, they showed positive results of stool or sputum specimens with negative results of nasal and pharyngeal swab specimens. The median duration of positive result of SARS-CoV-2 was varied from 3 days to 35 days in the patients discharged from hospital with no family member infection.
Multi-site screening of SARS-CoV-2 including nasal and pharyngeal swabs, stool and sputum specimens could be considered to improve the diagnosis, treatment and infection control in patients with COVID-19. Our findings provide the important information and clinical evidence for the improved management of patients recovered from COVID-19.
The root-knot nematode (RKN) is one of the most damaging agricultural pests.Effective biological control is need for controlling this destructive pathogen in organic farming system. During October ...2010 to 2011, the nematicidal effects of the Syncephalastrum racemosum fungus and the nematicide, avermectin, alone or combined were tested against the RKN (Meloidogyne incognita) on cucumber under pot and field condition in China. Under pot conditions, the application of S. racemosum alone or combined with avermectin significantly increased the plant vigor index by 31.4% and 10.9%, respectively compared to the M. incognita-inoculated control. However, treatment with avermectin alone did not significantly affect the plant vigor index. All treatments reduced the number of root galls and juvenile nematodes compared to the untreated control. Under greenhouse conditions, all treatments reduced the disease severity and enhanced fruit yield compared to the untreated control. Fewer nematodes infecting plant roots were observed after treatment with avermectin alone, S. racemosum alone or their combination compared to the M. incognita-inoculated control. Among all the treatments, application of avermectin or S. racemosum combined with avermectin was more effective than the S. racemosum treatment. Our results showed that application of S. racemosum combined with avermectin not only reduced the nematode number and plant disease severity but also enhanced plant vigor and yield. The results indicated that the combination of S. racemosum with avermectin could be an effective biological component in integrated management of RKN on cucumber.
Scrophulariae Radix (Xuanshen XS) has been used for several years to treat hyperthyroidism. However, its effective substances and pharmacological mechanisms in the treatment of hyperthyroidism and ...thyroid hormone-induced liver and kidney injuries have not yet been elucidated.
This study aimed to explore the pharmacological material basis and potential mechanism of XS therapy for hyperthyroidism and thyroid hormone-induced liver and kidney injuries based on network pharmacology prediction and experimental validation.
Based on 31 in vivo XS compounds identified using ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem quadruple exactive orbitrap high-resolution accurate-mass spectrometry (UPLC-QE-HRMS), a network pharmacology approach was used for mechanism prediction. Systematic networks were constructed to identify the potential molecular targets, biological processes (BP), and signaling pathways. A component-target-pathway network was established. Mice were administered levothyroxine sodium through gavage for 30 d and then treated with different doses of XS extract with or without propylthiouracil (PTU) for 30 d. Blood, liver, and kidney samples were analyzed using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and western blotting.
A total of 31 prototypes, 60 Phase I metabolites, and 23 Phase II metabolites were tentatively identified in the plasma of rats following the oral administration of XS extract. Ninety-six potential common targets between the 31 in vivo compounds and the diseases were identified. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis revealed that Bcl-2, BAD, JNK, p38, and ERK1/2 were the top targets. XS extract with or without PTU had the following effects: inhibition of T3/T4/fT3/fT4 caused by levothyroxine; increase of TSH levels in serum; restoration of thyroid structure; improvement of liver and kidney structure and function by elevating the activities of anti-oxidant enzymes catalase (CAT),superoxide dismutase (SOD), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px); activation anti-apoptotic proteins Bcl-2; inhibition the apoptotic protein p-BAD; downregulation inflammation-related proteins p-ERK1/2, p-JNK, and p-p38; and inhibition of the aggregation of pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6, as well as immune cells in the liver.
XS can be used to treat hyperthyroidism and liver and kidney injuries caused by thyroid hormones through its anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-apoptotic properties. In addition, serum pharmacochemical analysis revealed that five active compounds, namely 4-methylcatechol, sugiol, eugenol, acetovanillone, and oleic acid, have diverse metabolic pathways in vivo and exhibit potential as effective therapeutic agents.
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•Five active ingridents (4-methylcatechol, et al) may play important role in Scrophulariae Radix (XS) treating hyperthyroidism.•XS inhibit thyroid hormone-induced liver and kidney injuries via anti-oxidant, apoptotic, and inflammatory pathways.•XS is a candidate drug for hyperthyroidism and thyroid hormone-induced liver and kidney injuries.
The expression of Cry proteins in genetically modified rice varieties safeguards the crop from lepidopteran pests. These proteins have the potential to be transferred through the food chain to ...arthropods like planthoppers and predatory spiders, triggering defensive responses in these unintended organisms. Hence, we hypothesized that Cry protein might influence the growth and development of spiders by altering protective enzyme activities. The results showed that Cry1Ab protein could accumulate in tissues and subcellular organelles of Pardosa pseudoannulata from Nilaparvata lugens. Cry1Ab protein exposure prolonged the developmental duration in the 5th and 7th instar spiderlings but induced no alterations of other growth indicators, such as body length, median ocular area, and survival rate. In addition, Cry1Ab protein exerted no adverse impacts on several detoxifying enzymes (i.e., superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, and acetylcholine esterase) in muscle, midgut, ganglia, and hemolymph at subcellular components (i.e., microsome and cytoplasm). To further explore the effects of Cry1Ab protein on the spiderlings, we performed an integrated transcriptome analysis on spiderlings exposed to Cry1Ab protein. The results showed that Cry1Ab protein might prolong the development duration of P. pseudoannulata via the altered cuticle metabolism (e.g., chitin metabolic process and structural constituent of cuticle). In addition, the gene expression profile associated with detoxifying enzymes and three stress-responsive pathways (JAK/STAT, JNK/SAPK, and Hippo pathways) also displayed no significant alterations under Cry1Ab exposure. Collectively, this integrated analysis generates multidimensional insights to assess the effects of Cry1Ab protein on non-target spiders and demonstrates that Cry1Ab protein exerts no toxicity in P. pseudoannulata.
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