Search

The molecular mechanism of flower development and sexual differentiation, which is an intricate process, still unclear in Vitis plants. In this study, we performed the transcriptome analysis by high-throughput sequencing to measure gene expression at three stages in male, female, and hermaphrodite grape flowers, and in combination with the fluctuation of hormones (ABA, IAA, BR, GA3, and JA) to understand the gene function and molecular basis of developmental processes in Vitis flowers. The results showed that more than 581 million clean reads were generated from all samples and average 83% reads were mapped on the Vitis vinifera genome. More, quite a large number of genes were differentially expressed between different stages within and across cultivars and various transcription factor families involved were identified in flower development. The genes belonging to MYB, bHLH, ERF, NAC, and WRKY have more numbers than other TF families. Furthermore, we analyzed the correlation of those hormones with 165 DEGs (including 36 TF genes). The results suggested that those genes might play important roles in sex differentiation during flower development and a unique opportunity to increase the efficiency of crossbreeding in Vitis plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the first large-scale database of measured spatially-varying anisotropic reflectance, consisting of 1,000 high-quality near-planar SVBRDFs, spanning 9 material categories such as wood, fabric and metal. Each sample is captured in 15 minutes, and represented as a set of high-resolution texture maps that correspond to spatially-varying BRDF parameters and local frames. To build this database, we develop a novel integrated system for robust, high-quality and -efficiency reflectance acquisition and reconstruction. Our setup consists of 2 cameras and 16,384 LEDs. We train 64 lighting patterns for efficient acquisition, in conjunction with a network that predicts per-point reflectance in a neural representation from carefully aligned two-view measurements captured under the patterns. The intermediate results are further fine-tuned with respect to the photographs acquired under 63 effective linear lights, and finally fitted to a BRDF model. We report various statistics of the database, and demonstrate its value in the applications of material generation, classification as well as sampling. All related data, including future additions to the database, can be downloaded from https://opensvbrdf.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telomerase plays a pivotal role in tumorigenesis by both telomere‐dependent and telomere‐independent activities, although the underlying mechanisms are not completely understood. Using single‐sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) across 9,264 tumour samples, we observe that expression of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) is closely associated with immunosuppressive signatures. We demonstrate that TERT can activate a subclass of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) independent of its telomerase activity to form double‐stranded RNAs (dsRNAs), which are sensed by the RIG‐1/MDA5‐MAVS signalling pathway and trigger interferon signalling in cancer cells. Furthermore, we show that TERT‐induced ERV/interferon signalling stimulates the expression of chemokines, including CXCL10, which induces the infiltration of suppressive T–cell populations with increased percentage of CD4+ and FOXP3+ cells. These data reveal an unanticipated role for telomerase as a transcriptional activator of ERVs and provide strong evidence that TERT‐mediated ERV/interferon signalling contributes to immune suppression in tumours. Synopsis: Expression of telomerase reverse transcriptase is closely associated with immunosuppressive signatures in tumours. TERT induces dsRNAs by bidirectional transcription of ERVs, which triggers interferon response and attracts suppressive T cell populations. TERT activates a subclass of ERVs to form dsRNAs independent of its telomerase activity by interacting with Sp1.dsRNAs transcribed from TA‐ERVs trigger interferon response via RIG‐1/MDA5‐MAVS signalling.Increased chemokine secretion attracts suppressive T cells and establishes an immunosuppressed microenvironment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are considered a promising tool for treating cerebral ischemic injury. However, their poor survival after transplantation limits their therapeutic effect and applications. Salidroside has been reported to exert potent cytoprotective and neuroprotective effects. This study aimed to investigate whether salidroside could improve MSC survival under hypoxic-ischemic conditions and, subsequently, alleviate cerebral ischemic injury in a rat model. MSCs were pretreated by salidroside under hypoxic-ischemic conditions. The cell proliferation, migratory capacity, and apoptosis were evaluated by means of Cell Counting Kit-8, transwell assay, and flow cytometry. MSCs pretreated with salidroside were transplanted into the rats subsequent to middle cerebral artery occlusion. The grip strength, 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride, and hematoxylin–eosin staining were used to analyze the therapeutic efficiency and pathological changes. The mature neuron marker NeuN and astrocyte marker GFAP in the focal area were detected by immunofluorescence. These results indicated that salidroside promoted the proliferation, migration and reduced apoptosis of MSCs under hypoxic-ischemic conditions. In vivo experiments revealed that transplantation of salidroside-pretreated MSCs strengthened the therapeutic efficiency by enhancing neurogenesis and inhibiting neuroinflammation in the hippocampal CA1 area after ischemia. Our results suggest that pretreatment with salidroside could be an effective strategy to enhance the cell survival rate and the therapeutic effect of MSCs in treating cerebral ischemic injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose neural trace photography, a novel framework to automatically learn high-quality scanning of non-planar, complex anisotropic appearance. Our key insight is that free-form appearance scanning can be cast as a geometry learning problem on unstructured point clouds, each of which represents an image measurement and the corresponding acquisition condition. Based on this connection, we carefully design a neural network, to jointly optimize the lighting conditions to be used in acquisition, as well as the spatially independent reconstruction of reflectance from corresponding measurements. Our framework is not tied to a specific setup, and can adapt to various factors in a data-driven manner. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework on a number of physical objects with a wide variation in appearance. The objects are captured with a light-weight mobile device, consisting of a single camera and an RGB LED array. We also generalize the framework to other common types of light sources, including a point, a linear and an area light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of the urban industry in recent years, air pollution in areas such as factories and streets has become more and more serious. Air quality problems directly affect the normal lives of residents. Effectively predicting the future air condition in the area through relevant historical data has high application value for early warning of this area. Through the study of the previous monitoring data, it is found that the pollutant data of adjacent monitoring stations are correlated in more periods. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid model based on CNN and Bi-LSTM, using CNN to synthesize multiple adjacent stations with strong correlations to extract spatial features between data, and using Bi-LSTM to extract features in the time dimension to finally achieve pollutant concentration prediction. Using the historical data of 40 monitoring stations in different locations of Fushun city to conduct research. By comparing with the traditional prediction model, the results prove that the model proposed in this paper has higher accuracy and stronger robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), huge amounts of data are generated, and companies are highly motivated to store the data on cloud servers for cost saving and efficient application. However, the IIoT data are always of great value. The direct outsourcing of such data can leak the important information of the companies and cause great business losses. A straightforward solution is to encrypt the data by using standard encryption methods before outsourcing. Nevertheless, this will make data utilization quite inconvenient. This paper focuses on the secure process of image data on cloud servers. Images are stored on cloud servers in encrypted form, and the local binary pattern feature can be directly extracted from the encrypted images for applications. The security analysis and experimental results demonstrate the security and effectiveness of our scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study of a 26-year-old female who was brought to the local schistosomiasis-specialized hospital in China for diagnosis and treatment after complaining of distention and abdominal pain for over a month. The patient was suspected to have advanced schistosomiasis due to her symptoms and blood test results as well as contact history. Early operation and effective decompression are also considered the major factors resulting in reversal of liver fibrosis for the case.

This article discusses a case report of a 26-year-old female in China who was diagnosed with advanced schistosomiasis japonica, a severe form of the parasitic disease schistosomiasis. The patient underwent a splenectomy, which resulted in the reversal of liver fibrosis. The article highlights the importance of early operation and effective decompression of the portal system in improving liver fibrosis in advanced schistosomiasis cases. It also emphasizes the need for regular ultrasound examinations in endemic regions to prevent the progression of the disease. [Extracted from the article]

In order to protect and promote the effective differentiation and rational utilization of grape germplasm resources, 34 grapevine varieties were selected from the National Germplasm Resources, Taigu Grape Nursery in China: 12 wine grapes (Group I), 14 table grapes (Group II) and 12 seedless grapes (Group III), 4 of which were in Group II, too. For the purpose of genetic characterization, 15 pairs of SSR (simple sequence repeat) primers were used. Sixty-six alleles were generated among Group I, including 64 polymorphic bands, with 1-8 alleles per locus. In Group II, a total of 54 alleles, from 1 to 8 (3.6 on average) alleles per locus, were identified. In Group III, 54 alleles with an average of 3.6 alleles per locus were identified and the percentage of polymorphic alleles was 94%. The 34 varieties clustered into two major clades in the dendrogram: V. vinifera with hybrid of V. vinifera and V. labrusca or hybrid of V. amurensisi and V. vinifera were clearly differentiated. After processing and filtering the raw data, we produced the molecular fingerprint code of each variety. These results showed that the SSR markers are useful for discrimination and analysis of genetic diversity of grapevine varieties. The SSR markers could be used to examine and distinguish the genetic resources among closely related varieties. This is also an effective tool for construction of a grapevine molecular fingerprinting system. The obtained data will be useful in grape breeding in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study was to increase plant conversion efficiency and reduce waste of the abnormal somatic embryos; factors influencing both the embryo morphology in germination and the embryogenic callus reinduction rate in secondary embryogenesis were studied in Vitis vinifera L. 'Thompson Seedless.' Embryos having mono-, di-, and multiple-normal cotyledons, trumpet-shaped, fascicular, and fused abnormal cotyledons were observed during germination. Normal embryos of one, two, and multiple cotyledons have a relatively higher conversion rate (48.89-64.44%) than abnormal ones (2.22-22.22%). Histomorphology analysis of these embryos showed that normal somatic embryos had a better developed vasculature and shoot meristem than abnormal individuals. A lower percentage of abnormal embryos formed when they germinated on Murashige and Skoog's medium (MS) and Woody Plant Medium (WPM) both of which contained 15 g/l sucrose and no plant growth regulators. Of all the abnormal embryos, only fused cotyledon embryos were suitable for recycling, and they were reinduced into the embryogenic callus. Cotyledons showed a higher reinduction rate (72.22%) than the other two parts: hypocotyls (4.44%) and roots (0%). In addition, recycled abnormal embryos produced many morphogenic types and this secondary embryogenesis could be used for embryo proliferation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) is one of the most important flaviviruses that targets the central nervous system (CNS) and causes encephalitides in humans. Although neuroinflammatory mechanisms may contribute to brain tissue destruction, the induction pathways and potential roles of specific chemokines in TBEV-mediated neurological disease are poorly understood.Methods: BALB/c mice were intracerebrally injected with TBEV, followed by evaluation of chemokine and cytokine profiles using protein array analysis. The virus-infected mice were treated with the CC chemokine antagonist Met-RANTES or anti-RANTES mAb to determine the role of RANTES in affecting TBEV-induced neurological disease. The underlying signaling mechanisms were delineated using RANTES promoter luciferase reporter assay, siRNA-mediated knockdown, and pharmacological inhibitors in human brain-derived cell culture models.Results: In a mouse model, pathological features including marked inflammatory cell infiltrates were observed in brain sections, which correlated with a robust up-regulation of RANTES within the brain but not in peripheral tissues and sera. Antagonizing RANTES within CNS extended the survival of mice and reduced accumulation of infiltrating cells in the brain after TBEV infection. Through in vitro studies, we show that virus infection up-regulated RANTES production at both mRNA and protein levels in human brain-derived cell lines and primary progenitor-derived astrocytes. Furthermore, IRF-3 pathway appeared to be essential for TBEV-induced RANTES production. Site mutation of an IRF-3-binding motif abrogated the RANTES promoter activity in virus-infected brain cells. Moreover, IRF-3 was activated upon TBEV infection as evidenced by phosphorylation of TBK1 and IRF-3, while blockade of IRF-3 activation drastically reduced virus-induced RANTES expression.Conclusions: Our findings together provide insights into the molecular mechanism underlying RANTES production induced by TBEV, highlighting its potential importance in the process of neuroinflammatory responses to TBEV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To initiate an efficient primary infection, it is important for baculovirus virions to penetrate through the peritrophic membrane (PM) of the host insect. It is frequently reported that enhancins of baculoviruses significantly enhance viral infection by degrading the various protein components of PMs. However, not all baculoviruses encode enhancins. GP37s of baculoviruses share high amino acid identity with fusolins, synergistic factors found in entomopoxviruses. In this study, a truncated Cydia pomonella granulovirus GP37 was expressed in Escherichia coli. The expressed GP37 effectively bound to chitin, and binding occurred predominantly within 3 h. GP37 altered the protein profiles of Spodoptera exigua PMs, from which a 50-kDa protein was dissociated. Droplet-feeding bioassays indicated that GP37 significantly enhanced the infectivity of nucleopolyhedroviruses (NPVs) and the lethality of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in S. exigua larvae. This is the first demonstration of the enhancement of NPVs and Bt infection by a baculovirus GP37. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first introduces Mani the Buddha of Light—a collection of ritual manuals of the Religion of Light from Xiapu county, Fujian Province, China and Diagram of the Universe—a Manichaean painting produced in South China in the late 14th to early 15th century. It then gives a detailed description of Mani the Buddha of Light with some illustrations of Diagram of the Universe. This paper further compares Mani the Buddha of Light and Buddhist worship and repentance ritual to demonstrate that the former utilized the form of the latter. It also analyzes the similarities and differences between the pantheons of Mani the Buddha of Light and other Manichaean materials. Ultimately it discusses the hypothesis that many pieces of the original texts in Mani the Buddha of Light should have come into being during the 9th–11th centuries and have been handed down generation after generation because of the strong vitality of its rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]