The accumulation and distribution of microplastics (MPs) in agricultural soils, including rice fields, is well studied. However, only a few studies have investigated the uptake of MPs by rice plants ...and the consequential toxic effects of MPs under solid-phase culture conditions. Hence, in this study, we explored the effects of different concentrations of polystyrene MPs (PS-MPs, with a size of 200 nm) on rice seed germination, root growth, antioxidant enzyme activity, and transcriptome. PS-MPs exhibited no significant effect on the germination of rice seeds (p > 0.05). However, PS-MPs significantly promoted root length (10 mg L−1; p < 0.05), and significantly reduced antioxidant enzyme activity (1000 mg L−1; p < 0.05). Staining with 3,3-diaminobenzidine and nitrotetrazolium blue chloride further revealed significant accumulation of reactive oxygen species in the roots of rice treated with PS-MPs. In addition, transcriptome data analysis revealed that PS-MPs induce the expression of genes related to antioxidant enzyme activity in plant roots. Specifically, genes related to flavonoid and flavonol biosynthesis were upregulated, whereas those involved in linolenic acid and nitrogen metabolism were downregulated. These results enhance our understanding of the responses of agricultural crops to MP toxicity.
The motion and distribution of lime particles in a basic oxygen furnace (BOF) is explored using the proposed 3D comprehensive numerical model taking into account the supersonic oxygen jet, ...bottom-blowing bubble, melt flow, temperature distribution, and lime particle movement. The gas/slag/metal three-phase flow and interface fluctuation are described using the volume of fluid approach. The two-way coupled Euler–Lagrange method is employed to evaluate the rising of bottom-blowing bubbles. In contrast, the one-way coupled Euler–Lagrange method is adopted to represent the motion of lime particles, which are shown to continuously descend under the effect of gravity after feeding on the top surface. Upon touching the molten slag, the particles first move towards the furnace wall, turning back from both sides, and then travel to the middle from both ends. The particles finally gradually disperse to the whole molten slag layer because of the large- and small-scale vortices.
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), an important grain legume crop of the world is seriously challenged by terminal drought and salinity stresses. However, very limited number of molecular markers and ...candidate genes are available for undertaking molecular breeding in chickpea to tackle these stresses. This study reports generation and analysis of comprehensive resource of drought- and salinity-responsive expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and gene-based markers.
A total of 20,162 (18,435 high quality) drought- and salinity- responsive ESTs were generated from ten different root tissue cDNA libraries of chickpea. Sequence editing, clustering and assembly analysis resulted in 6,404 unigenes (1,590 contigs and 4,814 singletons). Functional annotation of unigenes based on BLASTX analysis showed that 46.3% (2,965) had significant similarity (< or =1E-05) to sequences in the non-redundant UniProt database. BLASTN analysis of unique sequences with ESTs of four legume species (Medicago, Lotus, soybean and groundnut) and three model plant species (rice, Arabidopsis and poplar) provided insights on conserved genes across legumes as well as novel transcripts for chickpea. Of 2,965 (46.3%) significant unigenes, only 2,071 (32.3%) unigenes could be functionally categorised according to Gene Ontology (GO) descriptions. A total of 2,029 sequences containing 3,728 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were identified and 177 new EST-SSR markers were developed. Experimental validation of a set of 77 SSR markers on 24 genotypes revealed 230 alleles with an average of 4.6 alleles per marker and average polymorphism information content (PIC) value of 0.43. Besides SSR markers, 21,405 high confidence single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 742 contigs (with > or = 5 ESTs) were also identified. Recognition sites for restriction enzymes were identified for 7,884 SNPs in 240 contigs. Hierarchical clustering of 105 selected contigs provided clues about stress- responsive candidate genes and their expression profile showed predominance in specific stress-challenged libraries.
Generated set of chickpea ESTs serves as a resource of high quality transcripts for gene discovery and development of functional markers associated with abiotic stress tolerance that will be helpful to facilitate chickpea breeding. Mapping of gene-based markers in chickpea will also add more anchoring points to align genomes of chickpea and other legume species.
•AlO4 has the greatest degree of substitution of SiO4 when the Al/Si = 0.36.•NBO/Si is increasing and NBO/Al is decreasing with the increase of Al/Si.•Al/Si leads to the change of DOP, which makes ...the crystallization ability change.•The precipitated crystals have a great influence on the thermal conductivity.
The effect of Al/Si (weight ratio of Al2O3/SiO2) on the crystallization behaviors and structure of mold flux used for high Al-steel casting has been investigated by differential thermal analyses (DTA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and Raman spectroscopy technique. It can be found that the activation energy for crystallization increased with the increase of Al/Si when Al/Si <0.36, when Al/Si is greater than 0.36, the activation energy for crystallization decreased with the increase of Al/Si. The results of FT-IR and Raman spectrum showed that AlO4 has the greatest degree of substitution of SiO4 when the Al/Si = 0.36. The Q2 species is the main structural unit, the value of NBO/Si is increasing and NBO/Al is decreasing with the increase of Al/Si. The mainly precipitated crystal from mold flux change from akermanite to gehlenite with increasing Al/Si, besides, the forsterite increased with the increase of Al/Si. When the Al/Si = 0.22, the laminar fluorophlogopite crystal precipitated. The thermal conductivity increased with the increase of Al/Si because the structure of the precipitated crystal became simpler.
The effect of basicity and Cr
2
O
3
content on vitrification of the CaO-MgO-SiO
2
-Al
2
O
3
-Fe
2
O
3
-Cr
2
O
3
system during a melt-quenched process and the crystallization and mineralogical ...evolution of the obtained glasses were investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of the quenched samples indicated that lower basicity (
B
= 0.8 and 1.0) and lower Cr
2
O
3
concentration (< 4 wt pct) were favorable for glass formation.
B
= 1.25 and 1.5 samples were crystallized much easier, with most of the Cr captured in the spinel structure. Differential scanning calorimetry measurements revealed that the glass transition and crystallization temperatures both increased upon increasing the heating rate from 5 K to 20 K (°C)/min. In addition, compared with the samples without Cr
2
O
3
, the crystallization activation energy of those with Cr
2
O
3
were lower for the same basicity. For glassy samples heated above 1228 K (955 °C), XRD and scanning electron microscopy characterizations suggested that diopside and wollastonite were the main precipitated phases for the samples with
B
= 0.8, whereas akermanite and wollastonite were the main phases for samples with
B
= 1.0.
Treatment for many viral infections of the central nervous system (CNS) remains only supportive. Here we address a remaining gap in our knowledge regarding how the CNS and immune systems interact ...during viral infection. By examining the regulation of the immune and nervous system processes in a nonhuman primate model of West Nile virus neurological disease, we show that virus infection disrupts the homeostasis of the immune-neural-synaptic axis via induction of pleiotropic genes with distinct functions in each component of the axis. This pleiotropic gene regulation suggests an unintended off-target negative impact of virus-induced host immune responses on the neurotransmission, which may be a common feature of various viral infections of the CNS.
The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating respiratory pandemic in modern human history, with 50-100 million deaths worldwide. Here, we characterized the complete genomes of influenza A ...virus (IAV) from two fatal cases during the fall wave of 1918 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic in the United States, one from Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC, and the other from Camp Jackson, SC. The two complete IAV genomes were obtained by combining Illumina deep sequencing data from both total RNA and influenza viral genome-enriched libraries along with Sanger sequencing data from PCR across the sequencing gaps. This study confirms the previously reported 1918 IAV genomes and increases the total number of available complete or near-complete influenza viral genomes of the 1918 pandemic from four to six. Sequence comparisons among them confirm that the genomes of the 1918 pandemic virus were highly conserved during the main wave of the pandemic with geographic separation in North America and Europe. Metagenomic analyses revealed bacterial co-infections in both cases. Interestingly, in the Washington, DC, case, evidence is presented of the first reported
-influenza virus co-infection.
This study applied modern molecular biotechnology and high-throughput sequencing to formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded autopsy lung samples from two fatal cases during the fall wave of the 1918 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic in the United States. Complete influenza genomes were obtained from both cases, which increases the total number of available complete or near-complete influenza genomes of the 1918 pandemic virus from four to six. Sequence analysis confirms that the 1918 pandemic virus was highly conserved during the main wave of the pandemic with geographic separation in North America and Europe. Metagenomic analyses revealed bacterial co-infections in both cases, including the first reported evidence of
-influenza co-infection. Overall, this study offers a detailed view at the molecular level of the very limited samples from the most devastating influenza pandemic in modern human history.
Circular utilization of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) has received extensive attention for its economic and environmental benefits. The application of recycled asphalt mixtures (RAM) in the upper ...layer of asphalt pavement faces the issue of inferior anti-slip performance and durability. This study aims to recycle steel slag as virgin aggregates in RAM and quantitatively evaluate the service performance of RAM with steel slag. Steel slag and basalt RAM were firstly fabricated and the five different RAP contents were involved. Then tests of Marshall stability, indirect tensile strength and Cantabro spatter loss were conducted to investigate the moisture susceptibility of RAM. Moreover, their high temperature stability, crack resistance and skid resistance were characterized. Indirect tensile fatigue test combined with Hamburg wheel tracking test were carried out to discuss the durability of RAM. The comprehensive performance of RAM with steel slag were quantitatively assessed based on an improved radar chart evaluation method. The results show that involving steel slag reveals a remarkable enhancement function on water stability, high and low temperature performance, skid resistance and fatigue resistance of RAM. Steel slag RAM with 50% RAP content demonstrates a rutting depth of 7.60 mm and a creep slope of 2.54 × 10−4, indicating its superior durability in high temperature and water environment. Compared with the comprehensive evaluation function of 0.5336 for basalt RAM with 30% RAP dosage, steel slag RAM reaches 0.7801, which represents its preferable road performance.
Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) is a rapidly progressive and often fatal tick-borne disease caused by Rickettsia rickettsii. Its discovery and characterization by Howard Ricketts has been hailed ...as a remarkable historical example of detection and control of an emerging infectious disease, and subsequently led to the establishment of the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML). Here, we examined an unopened bottle of a vaccine, labeled as containing RMSF inactivated by phenol-formalin of infected ticks, developed prior to 1944 at RML by DNA analysis using Illumina high throughput sequencing technology. We found that it contains DNA from the Rocky Mountain wood tick (Dermacentor andersoni), the vector of RMSF, the complete genome of Rickettsia rickettsii, the pathogen of RMSF, as well as the complete genome of Coxiella burnetii, the pathogen of Q-fever. In addition to genomic reads of Rickettsia rickettsii and Coxiella burnetii, smaller percentages of the reads are from Rickettsia rhipicephali and Arsenophonus nasoniae, suggesting that the infected ticks used to prepare the vaccine carried more than one pathogen. Together, these findings suggest that this early vaccine was likely a bivalent vaccine for RMSF and Q-fever. This study is the among the first molecular level examinations of an historically important vaccine.
Summary
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important legume crop in the semi‐arid regions of Asia and Africa. Gains in crop productivity have been low however, particularly because of biotic and ...abiotic stresses. To help enhance crop productivity using molecular breeding techniques, next generation sequencing technologies such as Roche/454 and Illumina/Solexa were used to determine the sequence of most gene transcripts and to identify drought‐responsive genes and gene‐based molecular markers. A total of 103 215 tentative unique sequences (TUSs) have been produced from 435 018 Roche/454 reads and 21 491 Sanger expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Putative functions were determined for 49 437 (47.8%) of the TUSs, and gene ontology assignments were determined for 20 634 (41.7%) of the TUSs. Comparison of the chickpea TUSs with the Medicago truncatula genome assembly (Mt 3.5.1 build) resulted in 42 141 aligned TUSs with putative gene structures (including 39 281 predicted intron/splice junctions). Alignment of ∼37 million Illumina/Solexa tags generated from drought‐challenged root tissues of two chickpea genotypes against the TUSs identified 44 639 differentially expressed TUSs. The TUSs were also used to identify a diverse set of markers, including 728 simple sequence repeats (SSRs), 495 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), 387 conserved orthologous sequence (COS) markers, and 2088 intron‐spanning region (ISR) markers. This resource will be useful for basic and applied research for genome analysis and crop improvement in chickpea.
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