Adaptive changes in plant phenology are often considered to be a feature of the so-called 'domestication syndrome' that distinguishes modern crops from their wild progenitors, but little detailed ...evidence supports this idea. In soybean, a major legume crop, flowering time variation is well characterized within domesticated germplasm and is critical for modern production, but its importance during domestication is unclear. Here, we identify sequential contributions of two homeologous pseudo-response-regulator genes, Tof12 and Tof11, to ancient flowering time adaptation, and demonstrate that they act via LHY homologs to promote expression of the legume-specific E1 gene and delay flowering under long photoperiods. We show that Tof12-dependent acceleration of maturity accompanied a reduction in dormancy and seed dispersal during soybean domestication, possibly predisposing the incipient crop to latitudinal expansion. Better understanding of this early phase of crop evolution will help to identify functional variation lost during domestication and exploit its potential for future crop improvement.
Abstract
Radial velocity (RV) is among the most fundamental physical quantities obtainable from stellar spectra and is rather important in the analysis of time-domain phenomena. LAMOST ...Medium-resolution Survey (MRS) DR7 contains five million single-exposure stellar spectra with spectral resolution
R
∼ 7500. However, the temporal variation of the RV zero-points (RVZPs) of the MRS, which makes the RVs from multiple epochs inconsistent, has not been addressed. In this paper, we measure the RVs of 3.8 million single-exposure spectra (for 0.6 million stars) with signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) higher than 5 based on the cross-correlation function method, and propose a robust method to self-consistently determine the RVZPs exposure by exposure for each spectrograph with the help of Gaia DR2 RVs. Such RVZPs are estimated for 3.6 million RVs and can reach a mean precision of ∼0.38 km s
−1
. The result of the temporal variation of RVZPs indicates that our algorithm is efficient and necessary before we use the absolute RVs to perform time-domain analyses. Validating the results with APOGEE DR16 shows that our absolute RVs can reach an overall precision of 0.84/0.80 km s
−1
in the blue/red arm at 50 < S/N < 100 and of 1.26/1.99 km s
−1
at 5 < S/N < 10. The cumulative distribution function of the standard deviations of multiple RVs (
N
obs
≥ 8) for 678 standard stars reaches 0.45/0.54, 1.07/1.39, and 1.45/1.86 km s
−1
in the blue/red arm at the 50%, 90%, and 95% levels, respectively. Catalogs of the RVs, RVZPs, and selected candidate RV standard stars are available at
https://github.com/hypergravity/paperdata
.
Context.
Several dynamically cold streams have been associated with certain globular clusters (GCs) based on orbital energies and angular momenta. Some of these streams are surprisingly far apart ...from their progenitors and one such pair is Triangulum and NGC 5824. Triangulum can be considered as a piece of the leading tail of NGC 5824 since the cluster’s future orbit matches well with the stream’s track. The existence of the leading tail of NGC 5824 is the motivation behind the search for its trailing tail.
Aims.
Our goal is to confirm the connection between Triangulum and NGC 5824. We also search for the trailing tail of the cluster.
Methods.
The selection of member stars of Triangulum is made through various cuts in metallicity, proper motions (PMs), radial velocity and a color–magnitude diagram (CMD). The selected members are compared in phase space to a mock stream that models the disruption of NGC 5824. We then try to detect the trailing tail of the cluster based on a modified matched-filter technique. Stars are assigned weights using their color differences from the cluster’s locus in the CMD. These weights are further scaled, based on the stars’ departures from expected PMs of the model stream.
Results.
A total of 26 member stars for Triangulum are obtained, 16 of which are newly identified. These members are consistent with the mock stream in the phase space, and their metalicity and position on the CMD are in good agreement with NGC 5824. By applying the matched filter, a tenuous trailing tail of the cluster is detected, spanning ∼50° long on sky. The signature matches well with the mock stream’s trajectory.
Conclusions.
Our results support that the Triangulum stream acts as a part of the leading tail for NGC 5824. On the trailing side, we detected a 50° tail extending from the cluster. The existence of both leading and trailing tails for the GC NGC 5824 is verified.
Flowering time and plant height are key agronomic traits that directly affect soybean (Glycine max) yield. APETALA1 (AP1) functions as a class A gene in the ABCE model for floral organ development, ...helping to specify carpel, stamen, petal, and sepal identities. There are four AP1 homologs in soybean, all of which are mainly expressed in the shoot apex. Here, we used clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) – CRISPR‐associated protein 9 technology to generate a homozygous quadruple mutant, gmap1, with loss‐of‐function mutations in all four GmAP1 genes. Under short‐day (SD) conditions, the gmap1 quadruple mutant exhibited delayed flowering, changes in flower morphology, and increased node number and internode length, resulting in plants that were taller than the wild type. Conversely, overexpression of GmAP1a resulted in early flowering and reduced plant height compared to the wild type under SD conditions. The gmap1 mutant and the overexpression lines also exhibited altered expression of several genes related to flowering and gibberellic acid metabolism, thereby providing insight into the role of GmAP1 in the regulatory networks controlling flowering time and plant height in soybean. Increased node number is the trait with the most promise for enhancing soybean pod number and grain yield. Therefore, the mutant alleles of the four AP1 homologs described here will be invaluable for molecular breeding of improved soybean yield.
Flowering time and plant height are key agronomic traits that directly affect soybean yield. Here, we used CRISPR‐Cas9 technology to generate a homozygous quadruple mutant, gmap1, with loss‐of‐function mutations in all four GmAP1 genes. We reported that soybean AP1 homologs change in flower morphology, flowering time and plant height.
Soybean (Glycine max) is an economically important oil and protein crop. Plant height is a key trait that significantly impacts the yield of soybean; however, research on the molecular mechanisms ...associated with soybean plant height is lacking. The CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat)/Cas9 (CRISPR-associated system 9) system is a recently developed technology for gene editing that has been utilized to edit the genomes of crop plants.
Here, we designed four gRNAs to mutate four LATE ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL (LHY) genes in soybean. In order to test whether the gRNAs could perform properly in transgenic soybean plants, we first tested the CRISPR construct in transgenic soybean hairy roots using Agrobacterium rhizogenes strain K599. Once confirmed, we performed stable soybean transformation and obtained 19 independent transgenic soybean plants. Subsequently, we obtained one T
transgene-free homozygous quadruple mutant of GmLHY by self-crossing. The phenotypes of the T
-generation transgene-free quadruple mutant plants were observed, and the results showed that the quadruple mutant of GmLHY displayed reduced plant height and shortened internodes. The levels of endogenous gibberellic acid (GA3) in Gmlhy1a1b2a2b was lower than in the wild type (WT), and the shortened internode phenotype could be rescued by treatment with exogenous GA3. In addition, the relative expression levels of GA metabolic pathway genes in the quadruple mutant of GmLHY were significantly decreased in comparison to the WT. These results suggest that GmLHY encodes an MYB transcription factor that affects plant height through mediating the GA pathway in soybean. We also developed genetic markers for identifying mutants for application in breeding studies.
Our results indicate that CRISPR/Cas9-mediated targeted mutagenesis of four GmLHY genes reduces soybean plant height and shortens internodes from 20 to 35 days after emergence (DAE). These findings provide insight into the mechanisms underlying plant height regulatory networks in soybean.
•The hydrogeochemistry and geothermometry of 36 thermal water is investigated.•The thermal water resources are mostly of the Ca·Mg-SO4 or Ca-SO4 type.•The reservoir temperature and circulation depth ...are calculated.•A conceptual model of regional scale groundwater flow is proposed.
Many geothermal reservoirs in Chongqing in southwestern China are located in carbonate rock aquifers and exploited through drilling. Water samples from 36 geothermal wells have been collected in the main urban area of Chongqing. Chemical types of the thermal water samples are Ca·Mg-SO4 and Ca-SO4. High contents of Ca2+ and SO42− in the thermal water samples are derived from the dissolution of evaporates. Furthermore, the HCO3− concentration is constrained by the common ion effect. Drilling depth has no effect on the physical and chemical characteristics according to the results of a t-test. The geothermal reservoir’s temperature can be estimated to be 64.8–93.4°C (average 82°C) using quartz and improved SiO2 geothermometers. Values of δD and δ18O for the thermal water samples indicate that the thermal water resources originate from local precipitation with a recharge elevation between 838 and 1130m and an annual air temperature between 10.4 and 13.9°C. A conceptual model of regional scale groundwater flow for the thermal water is proposed. The thermal water mainly originates from the meteoric water recharged in the elevated areas of northeastern Tongluoshan and Huayingshan by means of percolation through exposed carbonate before becoming groundwater. The groundwater is heated at depth and moves southwest along the fault and the anticlinal core in a gravity-driven regime. The thermal water is exposed in the form of artesian hot springs in river cutting and low-elevation areas or in wells.
ABSTRACT
By mining the data from Gaia Early Data Release 3, Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration Data Release 16, and Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber ...Spectroscopic Telescope Data Release 8, 11 member stars of the NGC 5466 tidal stream are detected and 7 of them are newly identified. To reject contaminators, a variety of cuts are applied in sky position, colour–magnitude diagram, metallicity, proper motion, and radial velocity. We compare our data to a mock stream generated by modelling the cluster’s disruption under a smooth Galactic potential plus the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The concordant trends in phase space between the model and observations imply that the stream might have been perturbed by the LMC. The two most distant stars among the 11 detected members trace the stream’s length to 60° of sky, supporting and extending the previous length of 45°. Given that NGC 5466 is so distant and potentially has a longer tail than previously thought, we expect that the NGC 5466 tidal stream could be a useful tool in constraining the Milky Way gravitational field.
In this work, the non-uniform corrosion behavior of 6061 Al alloy in mass 3.5% sodium chloride solution under a crevice spacing of d = 206 μm was studied by using wire beam electrode (WBE) method. ...The combined tests of the WBE with dynamic potential polarization (Tafel) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) curves were carried out, together with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and an X-ray photoelectric spectroscope. The results showed that the crevice corrosion was not obvious at the early stage, and the potential of Al alloy in the crevice area was higher than that outside the crevice. With increasing corrosion time, under the combined action of Al2O3, SiO2 and metal chloride gradually formed on the surface of Al alloy, the crevice area was reversed into the anode area, with corrosion current density of 3.399 × 10−4 A cm−2, which gradually showed the characteristics of crevice corrosion. This phenomenon suggested that the corrosion products and surface oxides of Al alloy determined the difference of corrosion behavior between the inside and outside crevice. Thus, it is well proved that the WBE is a feasible method to study corrosion behavior of crevice.
Summary
The aim of this study was to determine whether systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) in burn patients is mediated by the brain natriuretic peptide (BNP)/natriuretic peptide A ...receptor (NPRA)‐induced heat shock factor 1 (HSF‐1) signalling pathway. Mononuclear cells (MNCs) that were isolated from patients with burn injuries and SIRS mouse models and a RAW264.7 cell line were treated with normal serum or serum obtained from animals with burn injuries. In parallel, small hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) against BNP or NPRA were transfected in both cell types. Western blotting (WB) and enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) were used to detect protein expression and inflammatory factor levels, respectively. We found that interleukin (IL)‐12, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)‐α, C‐reactive protein (CRP), and BNP levels were increased and IL‐10 levels were decreased in the plasma and MNCs in vivo in the animal model of SIRS. Additionally, NPRA was upregulated, whereas HSF‐1 was downregulated in monocytes in vivo. Treatment of RAW264.7 cells with burn serum or BNP induced IL‐12, TNF‐α, and CRP secretion as well as HSF‐1 expression. Finally, silencing BNP with shRNA interrupted the effect of burn serum on RAW264.7 cells, and silencing NPRA blocked burn serum‐ and BNP‐mediated changes in RAW264.7 cells. These results suggest that the interaction of NPRA with BNP secreted from circulatory MNCs as well as mononuclear macrophages leads to inflammation via HSF‐1 during SIRS development following serious burn injury.
Background
Liver resection for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with portal vein tumor thrombus (PVTT) offers a chance of cure, although survival is often limited. The actual 3-year survival ...and its associated prognostic factors have not been reported.
Methods
A nationwide database of HCC patients with PVTT who underwent liver resection with ‘curative’ intent was analyzed. The clinicopathologic characteristics, the perioperative, and survival outcomes for the actual long-term survivors were compared with the non-long-term survivors (patients who died within 3 years of surgery). Univariable and multivariable regression analyses were performed to identify predictive factors associated with long-term survival outcomes.
Results
The study included 1590 patients with an actuarial 3-year survival of 16.6%, while the actual 3-year survival rate was 11.7%. There were 171 patients who survived for at least 3 years after surgery and 1290 who died within 3 years of surgery. Multivariable regression analysis revealed that total bilirubin > 17.1 μmol/l, AFP > 400 ng/ml, types of hepatectomy, extent of PVTT, intraoperative blood loss > 400 ml, tumor diameter > 5 cm, tumor encapsulation, R0 resection, liver cirrhosis, adjuvant TACE, postoperative early recurrence (< 1 year), and recurrence treatments were independent prognostic factors associated with actual long-term survival.
Conclusion
One in nine HCC patients with PVTT reached the long-term survival milestone of 3 years after resection. Major hepatectomy, controlling intraoperative blood loss, R0 resection, adjuvant TACE, and ‘curative’ treatment for initial recurrence should be considered for patients to achieve better long-term survival outcomes.
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