Abstract Legumin A is a seed storage protein that provides nutrients for seed germination. The purpose of this study was to describe the structure and expression pattern of the EuLEGA gene in ...Eucommia ulmoides Oliver ( E. ulmoides ) and to infer its functional role. The 1287 bp coding sequence of the EuLEGA CDS of the EuLEGA gene, encoding a protein containing 428 amino acid residues, was cloned. The structure predicted that the protein belonged to the RmlC (deoxythymidine diphosphates, dTDP)-4-dehydrorhamnose 3,5-epimerase)-like cupin conserved domain family, which contains both RmlC, a key enzyme for the synthesis of rhamnose and legumin A. The overexpression (OE) vector of the EuLEGA gene was constructed and genetically transformed into tobacco and E. ulmoides ; the RNA interference (RNAi) vector of the EuLEGA gene was constructed and genetically transformed into E. ulmoides ; and the contents of legumin A and rhamnose were detected. The results showed that the EuLEGA gene could significantly increase the content of legumin A in transgenic tobacco leaves and transgenic E. ulmoides regenerative buds, and the OE of this gene in E. ulmoides could promote an increase in rhamnose content. RNAi caused a significant decrease in the legumin A content in the regenerated buds of E. ulmoides . These was a significant increase in legumin A in the transgenic tobacco seeds, and these results indicate that the expression of the EuLEGA gene is closely related to the accumulation of legumin A. Subcellular localization studies revealed that EuLEGA is localized to the cytoplasm with the vacuolar membrane. Analysis of the EuLEGA gene expression data revealed that the expression level of the EuLEGA gene in the samaras was significantly greater than that in the leaves and stems. In addition, the study also demonstrated that GA 3 can upregulate the expression levels of the EuLEGA gene, while ABA and MeJA can downregulate its expression levels.
The 3D genome has been shown to be organized into modules including topologically associating domains (TADs) and compartments that are primarily defined by spatial contacts from Hi-C. There exists a ...gap to investigate whether and how the spatial modularity of the chromatin is related to the functional modularity resulting from chromatin activity. Despite histone modifications reflecting chromatin activity, inferring spatial modularity of the genome directly from the histone modification patterns has not been well explored. Here, we report that histone modifications show a modular pattern (referred to as regulation associated modules, RAMs) that reflects spatial chromatin modularity. Enhancer-promoter interactions, loop anchors, super-enhancer clusters and extrachromosomal DNAs (ecDNAs) are found to occur more often within the same RAMs than within the same TADs. Consistently, compared to the TAD boundaries, deletions of RAM boundaries perturb the chromatin structure more severely (may even cause cell death) and somatic variants in cancer samples are more enriched in RAM boundaries. These observations suggest that RAMs reflect a modular organization of the 3D genome at a scale better aligned with chromatin activity, providing a bridge connecting the structural and functional modularity of the genome.
A new, low-cost approach based on the application of atmospheric radio frequency glow discharge (rf-GD) optical emission spectroscopy (OES) has been developed for near real-time measurement of ...multielemental concentration in airborne particulate phase. This method involves deposition of aerosol particles on the tip of a cathode in a coaxial microelectrode system, followed by ablation, atomization, and excitation of the particulate matter using the rf-GD. The resulting atomic emissions are recorded using a spectrometer for elemental identification and quantification. The glow discharge plasma in our system was characterized by measuring spatially resolved gas temperatures (378–1438 K) and electron densities (2–5 × 1014 cm–3). Spatial analysis of the spectral features showed that the excitation of the analyte occurred in the region near the collection electrode. The temporal analysis of spectral features in the rf-GD showed that the collected particles were continuously ablated; the time for complete ablation of 193 ng of sucrose particles was found to be approximately 2 s. The system was calibrated using 100 nm particles containing C, Cd, Mn, and Na, respectively. The method provides limits of detection in the range of 0.055–1.0 ng, and a measurement reproducibility of 5–28%. This study demonstrates that the rf-GD can be an excellent excitation source for the development of low-cost hand-held sensors for elemental measurement of aerosols.
Spectrum sharing and energy harvesting are promising techniques to improve the bandwidth and energy efficiencies to meet the ever-growing demand of wireless data transmissions. In this paper, we ...propose an efficient relay-based spectrum sharing protocol in the cognitive radio network, where the secondary user (SU) can implicitly harvest the radio frequency (RF) energy from the primary user (PU) transmissions. Using the harvested energy, the SU can assist the PU transmission to exchange for the opportunity of spectrum access. Both the Alamouti coding and the superposition coding techniques are adopted by the transmitters to facilitate the primary data relaying and the secondary data transmission simultaneously. The joint decoding and the interference cancelation techniques are adopted by the receivers to retrieve the desired signals. The more power allocated for the primary data relaying, the higher throughput can be achieved for the PU, while the less throughput is available for the SU with less energy remained. The optimal power allocation is numerically determined by maximizing the SU throughput while guaranteeing the PU throughput. Numerical results show that our protocol can greatly improve the system throughput and the impacts of various system settings are revealed for the network deployment.
In addition to storage of genetic information, DNA can also catalyze various reactions. RNA-cleaving DNAzymes are the catalytic DNAs discovered the earliest, and they can cleave RNAs in a ...sequence-specific manner. Owing to their great potential in medical therapeutics, virus control, and gene silencing for disease treatments, RNA-cleaving DNAzymes have been extensively studied; however, the mechanistic understandings of their substrate recognition and catalysis remain elusive. Here, we report three catalytic form 8-17 DNAzyme crystal structures. 8-17 DNAzyme adopts a V-shape fold, and the Pb
cofactor is bound at the pre-organized pocket. The structures with Pb
and the modification at the cleavage site captured the pre-catalytic state of the RNA cleavage reaction, illustrating the unexpected Pb
-accelerated catalysis, intrinsic tertiary interactions, and molecular kink at the active site. Our studies reveal that DNA is capable of forming a compacted structure and that the functionality-limited bio-polymer can have a novel solution for a functional need in catalysis.
Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in various biological processes such as proliferation, cell death and differentiation. Here, we show that a liver-enriched lncRNA, named liver ...fibrosis-associated lncRNA1 (lnc-LFAR1), promotes liver fibrosis. We demonstrate that lnc-LFAR1 silencing impairs hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) activation, reduces TGFβ-induced hepatocytes apoptosis in vitro and attenuates both CCl
- and bile duct ligation-induced liver fibrosis in mice. Lnc-LFAR1 promotes the binding of Smad2/3 to TGFβR1 and its phosphorylation in the cytoplasm. Lnc-LFAR1 binds directly to Smad2/3 and promotes transcription of TGFβ, Smad2, Smad3, Notch2 and Notch3 which, in turn, results in TGFβ and Notch pathway activation. We show that the TGFβ1/Smad2/3/lnc-LFAR1 pathway provides a positive feedback loop to increase Smad2/3 response and a novel link connecting TGFβ with Notch pathway. Our work identifies a liver-enriched lncRNA that regulates liver fibrogenesis and suggests it as a potential target for fibrosis treatment.Activated hepatic stellate cells are the principal contributors to liver fibrosis by secreting a variety of pro-fibrogenic cytokines . Here Zhang et al. demonstrate that a liver-enriched lncRNA, lnc-LFAR1, promotes liver fibrosis and HSC activation by activating TGFβ and Notch signaling.
In this paper, we consider a wireless powered cognitive relaying system with a secondary relay (SR) capable of harvesting wireless energy. Along with an access point (AP) continuously transmitting ...the primary data to a primary user (PU), a secondary source (SS) can transmit the secondary data to a secondary destination (SD) with the help of SR using the decode-and-forward (DF) protocol. SR can harvest energy from both SS and AP in both time and power domains using time-splitting and power-splitting techniques. The interference from primary data transmissions can help boost the amount of harvested energy at SR. The transmit power of SS is regulated by the interference threshold at PU and the allowable peak power. Despite the above two constraints, the transmit power of SR is further constrained by the amount of harvested energy. Once SR successfully decodes the data from SS, it will forward the data to SD using a constrained power. We analyze the approximate outage probabilities for both primary and secondary systems. Simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of our theoretical analysis and reveal the impacts of various parameters to the outage performance.
► Granite waste and fly ash are incorporated into magnesium oxychloride cement (MOC). ► The water absorption of granite waste from the slurry results in increased hydration product of ...5Mg(OH)2⋅MgCl2⋅8H2O. ► The excess water absorption of granite waste from low-concentration brine leads to compact microstructure of GFMOC, whereas from the high concentration of brine leads to porous microstructure. ► The sound composition and compact microstructure of the hydration product lead to high compressive strength of GFMOC. ► Incorporated granite waste can increase the compressive strength of fly ash MOC.
This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on compressive strength of granite waste fly ash magnesium oxychloride cement (GFMOC). Various GFMOC specimens were prepared with 23°Bé or 25°Bé brine and different proportions of granite fragment (GF) or granite sludge (GS) ranging from 0% (for the control mixture) to 40% of magnesia weight. Compression tests were conducted at the age of 3, 7, and 28days. The hydration products and paste microstructure were analyzed by XRD and SEM, respectively. The results demonstrated that the water absorption and filling role of the fine particles of granite waste in GFMOC slurry are favorable for 5Mg(OH)2⋅MgCl2⋅8H2O (P5) and dense microstructure, respectively. The quantity ratio of P5 to Mg(OH)2 (MH) and microstructure are important factors responsible for the compressive strength of GFMOC. The incorporation of granite wastes as aggregate can increase the compressive strength of fly ash magnesium oxychloride cement (FMOC).
When aerial cameras get aerial remote sensing images, the defocus will occur because of reasons such as air pressure, temperature and ground elevation changes, resulting in different image sharpness ...of continual aerial remote sensing images. Nowadays, the rapidly developing feature matching algorithm will rapidly reduce the registration rate between images with different image sharpness. Therefore, in order to enable aerial cameras to get image sharpness parameters according to the locations of aerial image feature points with inconsistent sharpness, this paper proposes a feature matching algorithm between aerial images with different sharpness by using DEM data and multiple constraints. In this paper, the feature matching range is extended according to the modified aerial imaging model and the nonlinear soft margin support vector machine. Then the relative moving speed and its variation of the feature points in the image are obtained by using the extended L-k optical flow, and finally the epipolar geometric constraint is introduced. To locate the feature points is obtained under multiple constraints, there is no need to calculate the feature point descriptors, and some mismatched point pairs are corrected, which improves the matching efficiency and precision. The experimental results show the feature matching precision of this algorithm is more than 90%, and the running time and matching precision can meet various application needs of aerial cameras.
The human genome is tightly packaged into chromatin whose functional output depends on both one-dimensional (1D) local chromatin states and three-dimensional (3D) genome organization. Currently, ...chromatin modifications and 3D genome organization are measured by distinct assays. An emerging question is whether it is possible to deduce 3D interactions by integrative analysis of 1D epigenomic data and associate 3D contacts to functionality of the interacting loci. Here we present EpiTensor, an algorithm to identify 3D spatial associations within topologically associating domains (TADs) from 1D maps of histone modifications, chromatin accessibility and RNA-seq. We demonstrate that active promoter-promoter, promoter-enhancer and enhancer-enhancer associations identified by EpiTensor are highly concordant with those detected by Hi-C, ChIA-PET and eQTL analyses at 200 bp resolution. Moreover, EpiTensor has identified a set of interaction hotspots, characterized by higher chromatin and transcriptional activity as well as enriched TF and ncRNA binding across diverse cell types, which may be critical for stabilizing the local 3D interactions.
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