Auxin plays crucial roles in multiple developmental processes, such as embryogenesis, organogenesis, cell determination and division, as well as tropic responses. These processes are finely ...coordinated by the auxin, which requires the polar distribution of auxin within tissues and cells. The intercellular directionality of auxin flow is closely related to the asymmetric subcellular location of PIN-FORMED (PIN) auxin efflux transporters. All PIN proteins have a conserved structure with a central hydrophilic loop domain, which harbors several phosphosites targeted by a set of protein kinases. The activities of PIN proteins are finely regulated by diverse endogenous and exogenous stimuli at multiple layers-including transcriptional and epigenetic levels, post-transcriptional modifications, subcellular trafficking, as well as PINs' recycling and turnover-to facilitate the developmental processes in an auxin gradient-dependent manner. Here, the recent advances in the structure, evolution, regulation and functions of PIN proteins in plants will be discussed. The information provided by this review will shed new light on the asymmetric auxin-distribution-dependent development processes mediated by PIN transporters in plants.
Auxin plays a crucial role in the diverse cellular and developmental responses of plants across their lifespan. Plants can quickly sense and respond to changes in auxin levels, and these responses ...involve several major classes of auxin-responsive genes, including the
(
) family, the
(
) family,
(
), and the
(
) family. Aux/IAA proteins are short-lived nuclear proteins comprising several highly conserved domains that are encoded by the auxin early response gene family. These proteins have specific domains that interact with ARFs and inhibit the transcription of genes activated by ARFs. Molecular studies have revealed that Aux/IAA family members can form diverse dimers with
to regulate genes in various ways. Functional analyses of Aux/IAA family members have indicated that they have various roles in plant development, such as root development, shoot growth, and fruit ripening. In this review, recently discovered details regarding the molecular characteristics, regulation, and protein-protein interactions of the Aux/IAA proteins are discussed. These details provide new insights into the molecular basis of the Aux/IAA protein functions in plant developmental processes.
Polycystins are a family of eight-transmembrane proteins united by sequence homology. The name stems from the identification of mutations in genes encoding polycystin-1 and -2 in polycystic kidney ...diseases. This review discusses recent topics in polycystin research, with a focus on the role of polycystin-1 and polycystin-2 in primary cilia and the cell cycle. Polycystins appear to play key roles during development, but a major question is their function in mature organs. Their roles in primary cilia, shear stress sensation, alteration of intracellular calcium, and planar cell polarity are examined. The third-hit hypothesis of polycystic kidney disease is discussed.
In this paper, a decentralized adaptive control scheme is proposed to address output tracking of a class of interconnected time-delay subsystems with the input of each loop preceded by an unknown ...dead-zone. Each local controller is designed using the backstepping technique and consists of a new robust control law and new updating laws. Unknown time-varying delays are compensated by using appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals. Furthermore, by introducing a new smooth dead-zone inverse, the proposed backstepping design is able to eliminate the effects resulting from dead-zone nonlinearities in the input. It is shown that the proposed controller can guarantee not only stability, but also good transient performance.
Featuring the simultaneous generation of a library of compounds from a certain intermediate, divergent synthesis has found increasing applications in the construction of natural products and ...potential medicines. Inspired by this approach, presented herein is a general strategy to introduce functionality, in a divergent manner, into covalent organic frameworks (COFs). This modular protocol includes two stages of covalent assembly, through which functional COFs can be constructed by a three‐step transformation of a key platform molecule, such as 4,7‐dibromo‐2‐chloro‐1H‐benzodimidazole (DBCBI). Constructed herein are four types of chiral COFs (CCOFs) from DBCBI by nucleophilic substitution, Suzuki coupling, and imine formation. The unique array of eight isoframework CCOFs allowed investigation of their catalytic performance and structure–activity relationship in an asymmetric amination reaction.
COF it up: A divergent strategy has been used to construct a combinatorial library of functional covalent organic frameworks (COFs) from a platform molecule. An array of eight isoframework chiral COFs allowed investigation of their catalytic performance and structure–activity relationship in an asymmetric amination reaction.
This study investigated the association between syntactic awareness and L2 Chinese passage-level reading comprehension among 209 Chinese as a second language adult-learners. The participants were ...administered a character knowledge test, a vocabulary knowledge test, a morphological awareness test, a grammatical judgment and correction test, a word order test, and two reading comprehension tests (multiple-choice questions and cloze test). Partial correlation analyses showed that the participants' performance in two syntactic awareness tasks were significantly positively correlated with their passage-level reading comprehension. Multiple regression analyses revealed that syntactic awareness made a unique contribution to L2 Chinese reading even when the effects of age, major, gender, length of learning Chinese, character knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and morphological awareness were controlled for. In addition, the word order knowledge had a stronger predicting power to L2 Chinese reading comprehension compared to the grammatical judgment/correction ability.
ABSTRACT
Drought and low temperature are two key environmental factors that induce adult citrus flowering. However, the underlying regulation mechanism is poorly understood. The bZIP transcription ...factor FD is a key component of the florigen activation complex (FAC) which is composed of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), FD, and 14‐3‐3 proteins. In this study, isolation and characterization of CiFD in citrus found that there was alternative splicing (AS) of CiFD, forming two different proteins (CiFDα and CiFDβ). Further investigation found that their expression patterns were similar in different tissues of citrus, but the subcellular localization and transcriptional activity were different. Overexpression of the CiFD DNA sequence (CiFD‐DNA), CiFDα, or CiFDβ in tobacco and citrus showed early flowering, and CiFD‐DNA transgenic plants were the earliest, followed by CiFDβ and CiFDα. Interestingly, CiFDα and CiFDβ were induced by low temperature and drought, respectively. Further analysis showed that CiFDα can form a FAC complex with CiFT, Ci14‐3‐3, and then bind to the citrus APETALA1 (CiAP1) promoter and promote its expression. However, CiFDβ can directly bind to the CiAP1 promoter independently of CiFT and Ci14‐3‐3. These results showed that CiFDβ can form a more direct and simplified pathway that is independent of the FAC complex to regulate drought‐induced flowering through AS. In addition, a bHLH transcription factor (CibHLH96) binds to CiFD promoter and promotes the expression of CiFD under drought condition. Transgenic analysis found that CibHLH96 can promote flowering in transgenic tobacco. These results suggest that CiFD is involved in drought‐ and low‐temperature‐induced citrus flowering through different regulatory patterns.
In citrus, alternative splicing of the transcription factor gene CiFD produces two different proteins, CiFDα and CiFDβ At low temperature, CiFDα forms a complex with CiFLOWERING LOCUS T and Ci14‐3‐3 to activate the expression of CiAPETALA1. Under drought conditions, CiFDβ directly binds to the CiAPETALA1 promoter to induce flowering.
The rapid evolution of cell‐based theranostics has attracted extensive attention due to their unique advantages in biomedical applications. However, the inherent functions of cells alone cannot meet ...the needs of malignant tumor treatment. Thus endowing original cells with new characteristics to generate multifunctional living cells may hold a tremendous promise. Here, the nanoengineering method is used to combine customized liposomes with neutrophils, generating oxygen‐carrying sonosensitizer cells with acoustic functions, which are called Acouscyte/O2, for the visual diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Specifically, oxygen‐carried perfluorocarbon and temoporfin are encapsulated into cRGD peptide modified multilayer liposomes (C‐ML/HPT/O2), which are then loaded into live neutrophils to obtain Acouscyte/O2. Acouscyte/O2 can not only carry a large amount of oxygen but also exhibits the ability of long circulation, inflammation‐triggered recruitment, and decomposition. Importantly, Acouscyte/O2 can be selectively accumulated in tumors, effectively enhancing tumor oxygen levels, and triggering anticancer sonodynamics in response to ultrasound stimulation, leading to complete obliteration of tumors and efficient extension of the survival time of tumor‐bearing mice with minimal systemic adverse effects. Meanwhile, the tumors can be monitored in real time by temoporfin‐mediated fluorescence imaging and perfluorocarbon (PFC)‐microbubble‐enhanced ultrasound imaging. Therefore, the nanoengineered neutrophils, i.e., Acouscyte/O2, are a new type of multifunctional cellular drug, which provides a new platform for the diagnosis and sonodynamic therapy of solid malignant tumors.
Nanoengineered neutrophil sonosensitizers are developed for visual sonodynamic therapy (SDT) of solid malignant tumors. Acouscyte/O2 not only has an enhanced multilevel active targeting but also provides oxygen to enhance SDT effects to eliminate tumors, maintain the appearance, and real‐time multimode imaging, which provides a promising theranostic strategy for solid malignant tumors.
Triangular fuzzy multiplicative preference relation (TFMPR) is a widely used preference representation framework in the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). In this article, we develop a ...triangular fuzzy multiplication-based equation to characterize transitivity among original fuzzy assessments in a consistent TFMPR. A geometric consistency index is then proposed to measure the inconsistency of TFMPRs. By capturing row fuzziness proportionalities and the difference between the row increasing and decreasing part fuzziness indices, this article establishes two logarithmic least square models to find normalized fuzzy weights from two kinds of TFMPRs. The two logarithmic least square models are further integrated into one whose analytic solution is found by the method of Lagrange multipliers. A novel method is put forward to check the acceptability of TFMPRs by both examining acceptable consistency and acceptable fuzziness. This article devises a parametric defuzzification approach to obtain the real-valued weights of criteria for aggregating the local normalized fuzzy weights into the global fuzzy weights in the triangular FAHP. A comparative analysis of the proposed model with existing fuzzy eigenvector methods and fuzzy average methods is carried out by a numerical example with four TFMPRs to clarify its validity and merits. An outstanding teacher award selection problem is provided to show the practicality of the proposed triangular FAHP.
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