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Aims: This study aims to investigate the safety, tolerability, efficacy, and pharmacokinetics of Pynegabine as an add‐on therapy in the treatment of focal epilepsy. Methodology: This is a protocol phase‐IIa, randomized, double‐blinded, placebo‐controlled, multicenter study in patients with focal epilepsy from multiple centers in China who have been treated with at least 2 ASMs without effective control. The study involves an 8‐week run‐in period with stable use of previous medications. Patients are then randomized to receive either Pynegabine or a placebo. Sentinel administration is performed initially, and subsequent patients are randomized based on safety assessments. Three dose cohorts (15, 20, and 25 mg/d) are established. Efficacy is assessed through various measures, including seizure frequency, CGI score, PGI score, HAMA score, HAMD score, MoCA scale score, QOLIE‐31 scale score, and 12 h‐EEG score. Safety evaluations, PK blood samples, concomitant medications, and adverse events are also recorded. Conclusion: Data from the study will be used to evaluate the safety, tolerability, efficacy, and pharmacokinetics of Pynegabine tablets as add‐on therapy for focal epilepsy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genomic selection (GS) has the potential to improve selection efficiency and shorten the breeding cycle in fruit tree breeding. In this study, we evaluated the effect of prediction methods, marker density and the training population (TP) size on pear GS for improving its performance and reducing cost. We evaluated GS under two scenarios: (1) five-fold cross-validation in an interspecific pear family; (2) independent validation. Based on the cross-validation scheme, the prediction accuracy (PA) of eight fruit traits varied between 0.33 (fruit core vertical diameter) and 0.65 (stone cell content). Except for single fruit weight, a slightly better prediction accuracy (PA) was observed for the five parametrical methods compared with the two non-parametrical methods. In our TP of 310 individuals, 2 000 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers were sufficient to make reasonably accurate predictions. PAs for different traits increased by 18.21%e46.98% when the TP size increased from 50 to 100, but the increment was smaller (-4.13%e33.91%) when the TP size increased from 200 to 250. For independent validation, the PAs ranged from 0.11 to 0.45 using rrBLUP method. In summary, our results showed that the TP size and SNP numbers had a greater impact on the PA than prediction methods. Furthermore, relatedness among the training and validation sets, and the complexity of traits should be considered when designing a TP to predict the test panel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Different portions of tree root systems play distinct functional roles, yet precisely how to distinguish roots of different functions within the branching fine-root system is unclear. • Here, anatomy and mycorrhizal colonization was examined by branch order in 23 Chinese temperate tree species of both angiosperms and gymnosperms forming ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular–mycorrhizal associations. • Different branch orders showed marked differences in anatomy. First-order roots exhibited primary development with an intact cortex, a high mycorrhizal colonization rate and a low stele proportion, thus serving absorptive functions. Second and third orders had both primary and secondary development. Fourth and higher orders showed mostly secondary development with no cortex or mycorrhizal colonization, and thus have limited role in absorption. Based on anatomical traits, it was estimated that c. 75% of the fine-root length was absorptive, and 68% was mycorrhizal, averaged across species. • These results showed that: order predicted differences in root anatomy in a relatively consistent manner across species; anatomical traits associated with absorption and mycorrhizal colonization occurred mainly in the first three orders; the single diameter class approach may have overestimated absorptive root length by 25% in temperate forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]