Aims
We aim to construct a comprehensive global database of litter decomposition rate (k value) estimated by surface floor litterbags, and investigate the direct and indirect effects of impact ...factors such as geographic factors (latitude and altitude), climatic factors (mean annual tempePlrature, MAT; mean annual precipitation, MAP) and litter quality factors (the contents of N, P, K, Ca, Mg and C:N ratio, lignin:N ratio) on litter decomposition.
Methods
We compiled a large data set of litter decomposition rates (k values) from 110 research sites and conducted simple, multiple regression and path analyses to explore the relationship between the k values and impact factors at the global scale.
Important findings
The k values tended to decrease with latitude (LAT) and lignin content (LIGN) of litter but increased with temperature, precipitation and nutrient concentrations at the large spatial scale. Single factor such as climate, litter quality and geographic variable could not explain litter decomposition rates well. However, the combination of total nutrient (TN) elements and C:N accounted for 70.2% of the variation in the litter decomposition rates. The combination of LAT, MAT, C:N and TN accounted for 87.54% of the variation in the litter decomposition rates. These results indicate that litter quality is the most important direct regulator of litter decomposition at the global scale. This data synthesis revealed significant relationships between litter decomposition rates and the combination of climatic factor (MAT) and litter quality (C:N, TN). The global-scale empirical relationships developed here are useful for a better understanding and modeling of the effects of litter quality and climatic factors on litter decomposition rates.
Exploring the secrets of long noncoding RNAs Quan, Mingyang; Chen, Jinhui; Zhang, Deqiang
International Journal of Molecular Sciences,
03/2015, Letnik:
16, Številka:
3
Journal Article, Book Review
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
High-throughput sequencing has revealed that the majority of RNAs have no capacity to encode protein. Among these non-coding transcripts, recent work has focused on the roles of long noncoding RNAs ...(lncRNAs) of >200 nucleotides. Although many of their attributes, such as patterns of expression, remain largely unknown, lncRNAs have key functions in transcriptional, post-transcriptional, and epigenetic gene regulation; Also, new work indicates their functions in scaffolding ribonuclear protein complexes. In plants, genome-wide identification of lncRNAs has been conducted in several species, including Zea mays, and recent research showed that lncRNAs regulate flowering time in the photoperiod pathway, and function in nodulation. In this review, we discuss the basic mechanisms by which lncRNAs regulate key cellular processes, using the large body of knowledge on animal and yeast lncRNAs to illustrate the significance of emerging work on lncRNAs in plants.
Exciplex forming cohosts have been widely adopted in phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs), achieving high efficiency with low roll-off and low driving voltage. However, the ...influence of the exciplex-forming hosts on the lifetimes of the devices, which is one of the essential characteristics, remains unclear. Here, we compare the influence of the bulk exciplex and interface exciplex on the performances of the devices, demonstrating highly efficient orange PHOLEDs with long lifetime at low dopant concentration by efficient Förster energy transfer from the interface exciplex. A bipolar host, (3'-(4,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl)-(1,1'-biphenyl)-3-yl)-9-carbazole (CzTrz), was adopted to combine with a donor molecule, tris(4-(9H-carbazol-9-yl)phenyl)amine (TCTA), to form exciplex. Devices with energy transfer from the interface exciplex achieve lifetime almost 2 orders of magnitude higher than the ones based on bulk exciplex as the host by avoiding the formation of the donor excited states. Moreover, a highest EQE of 27% was obtained at the dopant concentration as low as 3 wt % for a device with interface exciplex, which is favorable for reducing the cost of fabrication. We believe that our work may shed light on future development of ideal OLEDs with high efficiency, long-lifetime, low roll-off and low cost simultaneously.
High temperature, whether transitory or constant, causes physiological, biochemical and molecular changes that adversely affect tree growth and productivity by reducing photosynthesis. To elucidate ...the photosynthetic adaption response and examine the recovery capacity of trees under heat stress, we measured gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence, electron transport, water use efficiency, and reactive oxygen-producing enzyme activities in heat-stressed plants.
We found that photosynthesis could completely recover after less than six hours of high temperature treatment, which might be a turning point in the photosynthetic response to heat stress. Genome-wide gene expression analysis at six hours of heat stress identified 29,896 differentially expressed genes (15,670 up-regulated and 14,226 down-regulated), including multiple classes of transcription factors. These interact with each other and regulate the expression of photosynthesis-related genes in response to heat stress, controlling carbon fixation and changes in stomatal conductance. Heat stress of more than twelve hours caused reduced electron transport, damaged photosystems, activated the glycolate pathway and caused H2O2 production; as a result, photosynthetic capacity did not recover completely.
This study provides a systematic physiological and global gene expression profile of the poplar photosynthetic response to heat stress and identifies the main limitations and threshold of photosynthesis under heat stress. It will expand our understanding of plant thermostability and provides a robust dataset for future studies.
Tropical forests play an important role in global carbon (C) cycling due to high primary productivity and rapid litter and soil organic C decomposition. However, it is still unclear how changing ...rainfall will influence soil CO2 losses (i.e. via soil respiration) in tropical forests. Here, using a rainfall and litter manipulation experiment in a tropical forest, we show that enhanced litter-leached dissolved organic carbon (DOC) production with increased rainfall frequency drives substantial CO2 loss via soil respiration. A 50% increase in rainfall frequency (no change in total rainfall amount) enhanced inputs of DOC by 28%, total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) by 17%, and total dissolved phosphorus (TDP) by 34% through leaching from litter layer to soil surface likely due to faster litter decomposition rate, and stimulated soil respiration by ∼17% (about 1.16 t C ha−1 yr−1). Soil respiration responded to altered rainfall frequency with limited when litter layer was removed. Accordingly, soil microbial biomass C (MBC) and fine root biomass were increased by 23% and 20%, respectively only in the plots with litter layer. A 50% reduction in total rainfall (no change in rainfall frequency) did not change litter-leached DOC and nutrients fluxes, soil MBC, fine root biomass, or annual mean soil respiration rates. The new finding – that enhanced leached-DOC production with increased rainfall frequency drives profound increases in soil respiration in tropical forests – suggests that future climate changes may have significant impacts on soil C dynamics and global C budget, and argues for the importance of incorporating this underappreciated feedback into prognostic models used to predict future C-climate interactions.
•Increased rainfall frequency (IRF) enhanced soil respiration in litter intact plots.•IRF did not change soil respiration in the plot without litter layer.•IRF increased litter-leached DOC flux.•The increase in litter DOC flux was the major driver of higher soil respiration.•Drought did not change litter-leached DOC or annual mean soil respiration.
Recent studies have suggested that tropical forests may not be resilient against climate change in the long term, primarily owing to predicted reductions in rainfall and forest productivity, ...increased tree mortality, and declining forest biomass carbon sinks. These changes will be caused by drought‐induced water stress and ecosystem disturbances. Several recent studies have reported that climate change has increased tree mortality in temperate and boreal forests, or both mortality and recruitment rates in tropical forests. However, no study has yet examined these changes in the subtropical forests that account for the majority of China's forested land. In this study, we describe how the monsoon evergreen broad‐leaved forest has responded to global warming and drought stress using 32 years of data from forest observation plots. Due to an imbalance in mortality and recruitment, and changes in diameter growth rates between larger and smaller trees and among different functional groups, the average DBH of trees and forest biomass have decreased. Sap flow measurements also showed that larger trees were more stressed than smaller trees by the warming and drying environment. As a result, the monsoon evergreen broad‐leaved forest community is undergoing a transition from a forest dominated by a cohort of fewer and larger individuals to a forest dominated by a cohort of more and smaller individuals, with a different species composition, suggesting that subtropical forests are threatened by their lack of resilience against long‐term climate change.
Old-Growth Forests Can Accumulate Carbon in Soils Zhou, Guoyi; Liu, Shuguang; Li, Zhian ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
12/2006, Letnik:
314, Številka:
5804
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Old-growth forests have traditionally been considered negligible as carbon sinks because carbon uptake has been thought to be balanced by respiration. We show that the top 20-centimeter soil layer in ...preserved old-growth forests in southern China accumulated atmospheric carbon at an unexpectedly high average rate of 0.61 megagrams of carbon hectare-1 year-1 from 1979 to 2003. This study suggests that the carbon cycle processes in the belowground system of these forests are changing in response to the changing environment. The result directly challenges the prevailing belief in ecosystem ecology regarding carbon budget in old-growth forests and supports the establishment of a new, nonequilibrium conceptual framework to study soil carbon dynamics
AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) senses energetic stress and, in turn, promotes catabolic and suppresses anabolic metabolism coordinately to restore energy balance. We found that a diverse array ...of AMPK activators increased mTOR complex 2 (mTORC2) signaling in an AMPK-dependent manner in cultured cells. Activation of AMPK with the type 2 diabetes drug metformin (GlucoPhage) also increased mTORC2 signaling in liver in vivo and in primary hepatocytes in an AMPK-dependent manner. AMPK-mediated activation of mTORC2 did not result from AMPK-mediated suppression of mTORC1 and thus reduced negative feedback on PI3K flux. Rather, AMPK associated with and directly phosphorylated mTORC2 (mTOR in complex with rictor). As determined by two-stage in vitro kinase assay, phosphorylation of mTORC2 by recombinant AMPK was sufficient to increase mTORC2 catalytic activity toward Akt. Hence, AMPK phosphorylated mTORC2 components directly to increase mTORC2 activity and downstream signaling. Functionally, inactivation of AMPK, mTORC2, and Akt increased apoptosis during acute energetic stress. By showing that AMPK activates mTORC2 to increase cell survival, these data provide a potential mechanism for how AMPK paradoxically promotes tumorigenesis in certain contexts despite its tumor-suppressive function through inhibition of growth-promoting mTORC1. Collectively, these data unveil mTORC2 as a target of AMPK and the AMPK-mTORC2 axis as a promoter of cell survival during energetic stress.
Orange‐emitting phosphorescent organic light‐emitting diodes (PHOLEDs) are drawing more and more attention; however, high‐performance hosts designed for orange PHOLEDs are rare. Here, four ...indolocarbazole/1, 3, 5‐triazine hybrids are synthesized to optimize the singlet and triplet energies, as well as transporting properties, for ideal orange PHOLEDs. By introducing moieties with different electronegativity, a graded reduction of the singlet and triplet energies is achieved, resulting in minimum injection barrier and minimum energy loss. Besides, the charge transporting abilities are also tuned to be balanced on the basis of the bipolar features of those materials. The optimized orange PHOLED shows a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 24.5% and a power efficiency of 64 lm W–1, both of which are among the best values for orange PHOLEDs. What is more, the efficiency roll‐off is extremely small, with an EQE of 24.4% at 1000 cd m–2 and 23.8% at 10 000 cd m–2, respectively, which is the lowest efficiency roll‐off for orange PHOLEDs to date, resulting in the highest EQE for orange PHOLEDs when the luminance is above 1000 cd m–2. Besides the balanced charges, the small roll‐off is also attributed to the wide recombination zone resulting from the bipolar features of the hosts.
A series of indolocarbazole/1, 3, 5‐triazine hybrids are designed and prepared as hosts for phosphorescent orange‐emitting diodes. Singlet‐triplet splitting and carrier injection/transporting are adjusted by introducing moieties with different electronegativity. By harmonizing the optical and electrical properties, high efficiency with ultra‐low roll‐off is realized in the device.
Wood formation affects the chemical and physical properties of wood, and thus affects its utility as a building material or a feedstock for biofuels, pulp and paper. To obtain genome-wide insights on ...the transcriptome changes and regulatory networks in wood formation, we used high-throughput RNA sequencing to characterize cDNA libraries of mature xylem from tension wood (TW), opposite wood (OW), and normal wood (NW), in the industrial tree species Populus tomentosa.
Our sequencing generated 140,978,316 (TW), 128,972,228 (OW), and 117,672,362 (NW) reads, corresponding to 10,127 (TW), 10,129 (OW), and 10,129 (NW) unique genes. Of these, 361 genes were differentially transcribed between TW and OW (log2FC ≥ 1 or ≤ -1, FDR < 0.05), 2,658 differed between OW and NW, and 2,417 differed between TW and NW. This indicates that NW differs significantly from the wood in branches; GO term analysis also indicated that OW experienced more transcriptome remodeling. The differentially expressed genes included 97 encoding transcription factors (TFs), 40 involved in hormone signal transduction, 33 in lignin biosynthesis, 21 in flavonoid biosynthesis, and 43 in cell wall metabolism, including cellulose synthase, sucrose synthase, and COBRA. More than half of the differentially expressed TF showed more than 4-fold lower transcript levels in NW compared with TW or OW, indicating that TF abundances differed dramatically in different wood types and may have important roles in the formation of reaction wood. In addition, transcripts of most of the genes involved in lignin biosynthesis were more abundant in OW compared with TW, consistent with the higher lignin content of OW. We constructed two transcriptomic networks for the regulation of lignin and cellulose biosynthesis, including TFs, based on the co-expression patterns of different genes. Lastly, we used reverse transcription quantitative PCR to validate the differentially expressed genes identified.
Here, we identified the global patterns and differences in gene expression among TW, OW, and NW, and constructed two transcriptomic regulatory networks involved in TW formation in P. tomentosa. We also identified candidate genes for molecular breeding of wood quality, and provided a starting point to decipher the molecular mechanisms of wood formation in Populus.
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