Wearable sensing technology is an essential link to future personalized medicine. However, to obtain a complete picture of human health, it is necessary but challenging to track multiple analytes ...inside the body simultaneously. Here, we present a wearable plasmonic-electronic sensor with "universal" molecular recognition ability. Flexible plasmonic metasurface with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-activity is introduced as the fundamental sensing component in a wearable sensor since we solved the technical challenge of maintaining the plasmonic activities of their brittle nanostructures under various deformations. Together with a flexible electronic sweat extraction system, our sensor can noninvasively extract and "fingerprint" analytes inside the body based on their unique SERS spectra. As a proof-of-concept example, we successfully monitored the variation of trace-amounts drugs inside the body and obtained an individual's drug metabolic profile. Our sensor bridges the existing gap in wearable sensing technology by providing a universal, sensitive molecular tracking means to assess human health.
Key message
qGSN5
, a novel quantitative trait locus coordinating grain size and grain number in rice, was fine-mapped to an 85.60-kb region.
GS3
may be a suppressor of
qGSN5
.
Grain size and grain ...number are two factors that directly determine rice grain yield; however, the underlying genetic mechanisms are complicated and remain largely unclear. In this study, a chromosome segment substitution line (CSSL), CSSL28, which showed increased grain size and decreased grain number per panicle, was identified in a set of CSSLs derived from a cross between 93-11 (recipient) and Nipponbare (donor). Four substitution segments were identified in CSSL28, and the substitution segment located on chromosome 5 was responsible for the phenotypes of CSSL28. Thus, we defined this quantitative trait locus (QTL) as
grain size and grain number 5
(
qGSN5
). Cytological and quantitative PCR analysis showed that
qGSN5
regulates the development of the spikelet hull by affecting cell proliferation. Genetic analysis showed that
qGSN5
is a semi-dominant locus regulating grain size and grain number. Through map-based cloning and overlapping substitution segment analysis,
qGSN5
was finally delimited to an 85.60-kb region. Based on sequence and quantitative PCR analysis,
Os05g47510
, which encodes a P-type pentatricopeptide repeat protein, is the most likely candidate gene for
qGSN5
. Pyramiding analysis showed that the effect of
qGSN5
was significantly lower in the presence of a functional
GS3
gene, indicating that
GS3
may be a suppressor of
qGSN5
. In addition, we found that
qGSN5
could improve the grain shape of hybrid rice. Together, our results lay the foundation for cloning a novel QTL coordinating grain size and grain number in rice and provide a good genetic material for long-grain hybrid rice breeding.
The boom of plant phenotype highlights the need to measure the physiological characteristics of an individual plant. However, continuous real‐time monitoring of a plant's internal physiological ...status remains challenging using traditional silicon‐based sensor technology, due to the fundamental mismatch between rigid sensors and soft and curved plant surfaces. Here, the first flexible electronic sensing device is reported that can harmlessly cohabitate with the plant and continuously monitor its stem sap flow, a critical plant physiological characteristic for analyzing plant health, water consumption, and nutrient distribution. Due to a special design and the materials chosen, the realized plant‐wearable sensor is thin, soft, lightweight, air/water/light‐permeable, and shows excellent biocompatibility, therefore enabling the sap flow detection in a continuous and non‐destructive manner. The sensor can serve as a noninvasive, high‐throughput, low‐cost toolbox, and holds excellent potentials in phenotyping. Furthermore, the real‐time investigation on stem flow insides watermelon reveals a previously unknown day/night shift pattern of water allocation between fruit and its adjacent branch, which has not been reported before.
A plant‐wearable sensor in situ reveals water transport inside a plant. Due to a special design and the materials chosen, the realized plant‐wearable sensor is thin, soft, lightweight, air/water/light‐permeable, and shows excellent biocompatibility, therefore enabling detection in a continuous and non‐destructive manner.
Grain weight and grain number are two important traits directly determining grain yield in rice. To date, a lot of genes related to grain weight and grain number have been identified; however, the ...regulatory mechanism underlying these genes remains largely unknown. In this study, we studied the biological function of OsSPL18 during grain and panicle development in rice. Knockout (KO) mutants of OsSPL18 exhibited reduced grain width and thickness, panicle length and grain number, but increased tiller number. Cytological analysis showed that OsSPL18 regulates the development of spikelet hulls by affecting cell proliferation. qRT-PCR and GUS staining analyses showed that OsSPL18 was highly expressed in developing young panicles and young spikelet hulls, in agreement with its function in regulating grain and panicle development. Transcriptional activation experiments indicated that OsSPL18 is a functional transcription factor with activation domains in both the N-terminus and C-terminus, and both activation domains are indispensable for its biological functions. Quantitative expression analysis showed that DEP1, a major grain number regulator, was significantly down-regulated in OsSPL18 KO lines. Both yeast one-hybrid and dual-luciferase (LUC) assays showed that OsSPL18 could bind to the DEP1 promoter, suggesting that OsSPL18 regulates panicle development by positively regulating the expression of DEP1. Sequence analysis showed that OsSPL18 contains the OsmiR156k complementary sequence in the third exon; 5ʹ RLM-RACE experiments indicated that OsSPL18 could be cleaved by OsmiR156k. Taken together, our results uncovered a new OsmiR156k-OsSPL18-DEP1 pathway regulating grain number in rice.
Solar energy is potentially the largest source of renewable energy for providing electrical power for human society. However, significant advances are required to make photovoltaic technologies have ...a low-carbon footprint in manufacture, be environmentally friendly at the end of their lives through recyclability, and be biodegradable. Here we report dissolvable organic photovoltaic devices based on poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate), which show equal power conversion efficiency to their glass substrate-based counterparts. We use a novel method of including smectic liquid crystal (7-dioctyl1benzothieno3,2- b1benzothiophene, C8-BTBT) as a crystal phase regulator in the heterojunction donor:acceptor polymer system to maintain the disposable organic solar cell efficiency without pre- or post-thermal annealing. The results show strong promise not only for more sustainable solar-cell fabrication but also as disposable and biocompatible solar cells for self-powered (energy harvesting) wearable and biomedical devices.
Indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) thin‐film transistors (TFTs) are primary components in active integrated electronics, such as displays and sensor arrays, which heavily involve high‐throughput ...passivation techniques during multilayer fabrication processes. Though oxide compound semiconductors are commonly used for providing uniform and robust passivation, it usually causes performance degradation on IGZO TFTs during passivation process. Herein, a parylene‐C and aluminum oxide (AlOx) hybrid passivation approach are introduced to reduce the damage during AlOx atomic layer deposition (ALD), which results in high‐performance depletion‐mode IGZO TFT to be fabricated on polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrate with enhanced bias stability. Compared with parylene‐C passivation, the hybrid‐passivated IGZO TFTs exhibit excellent saturation mobility (7.9 cm2 (V s)−1), ON/OFF ratio (107), hysteresis window (0.73 V), and bias stability (1.44 and −0.27 V threshold voltage shift, Vds = 20 V). Based on systematic Mott–Schottky and X‐ray diffraction characterizations, it is found that TFT performance enhancement is originated from their doping density variation that resulted from a parylene‐C/ALD‐AlOx microstructural hybridization. Finally, this method is implemented to wafer‐scale integrated circuits with high uniformity and a flexible 10 × 10 IGZO TFT backplane matrix on a PEN substrate (2.5 cm × 2.5 cm).
A parylene‐C and aluminum oxide (AlOx) hybrid passivation approach are introduced to reduce the damage during AlOx atomic layer deposition. Based on Mott–Schottky and X‐ray diffraction characterizations, the thin‐film transistor (TFT) performance enhancement is attributed to doping density variation that results in high‐performance depletion‐mode indium–zinc–gallium–oxide TFT matrix to be operated on polyethylene naphthalate substrate with enhanced bias stability.
Ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal gynecological cancers worldwide. The poor prognosis of this malignancy is substantially attributed to the inadequate symptomatic biomarkers for early ...diagnosis and effective remedies to cure the disease against chemoresistance and metastasis. Ovarian cancer metastasis is often relatively passive, and the single clusters of ovarian cancer cells detached from the primary ovarian tumor are transcoelomic spread by the peritoneal fluid throughout the peritoneum cavity and omentum. Our earlier studies revealed that lipid-enriched ascitic/omental microenvironment enforced metastatic ovarian cancer cells to undertake metabolic reprogramming and utilize free fatty acids as the main energy source for tumor progression and aggression. Intriguingly, cell susceptibility to ferroptosis has been tightly correlated with the dysregulated fatty acid metabolism (FAM), and enhanced iron uptake as the prominent features of ferroptosis are attributed to the strengthened lipid peroxidation and aberrant iron accumulation, suggesting that ferroptosis induction is a targetable vulnerability to prevent cancer metastasis. Therefore, the standpoints about tackling altered FAM in combination with ferroptosis initiation as a dual-targeted therapy against advanced ovarian cancer were highlighted herein. Furthermore, a discussion on the prospect and challenge of inducing ferroptosis as an innovative therapeutic approach for reversing remedial resistance in cancer interventions was included. It is hoped this proof-of-concept review will indicate appropriate directions for speeding up the translational application of ferroptosis-inducing compounds (FINs) to improve the efficacy of ovarian cancer treatment.
Abstracts
Quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QD-LEDs) are considered as competitive candidate for next-generation displays or lightings. Recent advances in the synthesis of core/shell quantum dots ...(QDs) and tailoring procedures for achieving their high quantum yield have facilitated the emergence of high-performance QD-LEDs. Meanwhile, the charge-carrier dynamics in QD-LED devices, which constitutes the remaining core research area for further improvement of QD-LEDs, is, however, poorly understood yet. Here, we propose a charge transport model in which the charge-carrier dynamics in QD-LEDs are comprehensively described by computer simulations. The charge-carrier injection is modelled by the carrier-capturing process, while the effect of electric fields at their interfaces is considered. The simulated electro-optical characteristics of QD-LEDs, such as the luminance, current density and external quantum efficiency (EQE) curves with varying voltages, show excellent agreement with experiments. Therefore, our computational method proposed here provides a useful means for designing and optimising high-performance QD-LED devices.
Background
Both grain size and grain number are significant for rice yield. In the past decade, a number of genes related to grain size and grain number have been documented, however, the regulatory ...mechanisms underlying them remains ambiguous.
Results
We identified a rice
small grain
(
sg2
) mutant in an EMS mutant library generated from an
indica
variety,
Shuhui498
. Using the MutMap gene mapping strategy, we identified two linkage regions on chromosome 7 and 8, respectively, consistent with the segregation ratios in the F
2
population. We focused on the linkage region on chromosome 8, and named this locus as
08sg2
. One of three SNPs identified in the linkage region was located in an exon of
OsBAK1
, leading to a nonsynonymous mutation in the kinase domain. The plant harboring the mutant version
08sg2
locus exhibited a decreased grain size, grain number and plant height. Cytological analysis indicated that
08SG2
regulated spikelet hull development by affecting cell proliferation. The grain size and number of knockout mutants of
OsBAK1
in the
japonica
background were significantly decreased, but less so than in
08sg2
, supporting the idea that the SNP in
OsBAK1
was responsible for the
08sg2
phenotype, but that
08SG2/OsBAK
1 function differently in
indica
and
japonica
backgrounds.
08sg2
was insensitive to 24-epiBL, and the expression of BR-related genes was obviously altered in
08sg2
. The proportionally decreased grain length when
08sg2
and
GS3
were combined indicate that
08SG2
and
GS3
regulate grain length independently.
Conclusions
Our work shows that
08SG2/OsBAK1
is important for rice yield in both
indica
and
japonica
backgrounds, by regulating grain size and grain number, and the function of
08SG2/OsBAK1
is obviously affected by genetic background. The amino acid substituted in
08sg2
is highly conserved among different species, supporting the idea that it is important for the molecular function of
08SG2/OsBAK1
. Together, our work is helpful for fully understanding the function of
08SG2/OsBAK1
.
Ovarian cancer is an intra-abdominal tumor in which the presence of ascites facilitates metastatic dissemination, and associated with poor prognosis. However, the significance of metabolic ...alterations in ovarian cancer cells in the ascites microenvironment remains unclear. Here we show ovarian cancer cells exhibited increased aggressiveness in ascites microenvironment via reprogramming of lipid metabolism. High lipid metabolic activities are found in ovarian cancer cells when cultured in the ascites microenvironment, indicating a metabolic shift from aerobic glycolysis to β-oxidation and lipogenesis. The reduced AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activity due to the feedback effect of high energy production led to the activation of its downstream signaling, which in turn, enhanced the cancer growth. The combined treatment of low toxic AMPK activators, the transforming growth factor beta-activated kinase 1 (TAK1) and fatty acid synthase (FASN) inhibitors synergistically impair oncogenic augmentation of ovarian cancer. Collectively, targeting lipid metabolism signaling axis impede ovarian cancer peritoneal metastases.
PDF
