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Broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica) is an important B. oleracea cultivar, with high economic and agronomic value. However, comparative genome analyses are still needed to clarify variation among cultivars and phylogenetic relationships within the family Brassicaceae. Herein, the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of broccoli was generated by Illumina sequencing platform to provide basic information for genetic studies and to establish phylogenetic relationships within Brassicaceae. The whole genome was 153,364 bp, including two inverted repeat (IR) regions of 26,197 bp each, separated by a small single copy (SSC) region of 17,834 bp and a large single copy (LSC) region of 83,136 bp. The total GC content of the entire chloroplast genome accounts for 36%, while the GC content in each region of SSC,LSC, and IR accounts for 29.1%, 34.15% and 42.35%, respectively. The genome harbored 133 genes, including 88 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNAs, and 8 rRNAs, with 17 duplicates in IRs. The most abundant amino acid was leucine and the least abundant was cysteine. Codon usage analyses revealed a bias for A/T-ending codons. A total of 35 repeat sequences and 92 simple sequence repeats were detected, and the SC-IR boundary regions were variable between the seven cp genomes. A phylogenetic analysis suggested that broccoli is closely related to Brassica oleracea var. italica MH388764.1, Brassica oleracea var. italica MH388765.1, and Brassica oleracea NC_0441167.1. Our results are expected to be useful for further species identification, population genetics analyses, and biological research on broccoli., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a major cause of anovulatory infertility. Some studies showed that miRNAs were used as diagnostic/prognostic biomarkers for various diseases., Objective: To identify candidate miRNAs in Granulosa Cells (GCs) of PCOS and evaluate their potential values for PCOS diagnosis., Methods: We screened differentially expressed miRNAs in GCs between PCOS and controls by the microarray data from the GEO database. GCs were collected from 21 controls and 24 PCOS. The candidate miRNAs were verified by qRT-PCR. The correlation was investigated between candidate miRNAs and clinical characteristics in participants. Diagnostic value of candidate miRNAs was analyzed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve., Results: Seven miRNAs were differentially expressed in PCOS compared with controls. Furthermore, the validation results demonstrated that hsa-miR-3188 and hsa-miR-3135b showed higher levels in GCs with PCOS patients (p< 0.05). In addition, the expressions of hsa-miR-3188 and hsa-miR-3135b were negative correlated with FSH and hsa-miR-3188 was positive correlated with BMI (p< 0.05). ROC analysis indicated that hsa-miR-3188 and hsa-miR-3135b could differentiate PCOS from controls, and the hsa-miR-3188/3135b improved the predictive accuracy for PCOS., Conclusions: The expressions of hsa-miR-3188 and hsa-miR-3135b in human GCs were significantly associated with PCOS. Moreover, the hsa-miR-3188/3135b has certain diagnostic value for distinguishing PCOS.

Embryo abortion is the main cause of failure in chrysanthemum cross breeding, and the genes and proteins associated with embryo abortion are poorly understood. Here, we applied RNA sequencing and isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) to analyse transcriptomic and proteomic profiles of normal and abortive embryos. More than 68,000 annotated unigenes and 700 proteins were obtained from normal and abortive embryos. Functional analysis showed that 140 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and 41 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were involved in embryo abortion. Most DEGs and DEPs associated with cell death, protein degradation, reactive oxygen species scavenging, and stress-response transcriptional factors were significantly up-regulated in abortive embryos relative to normal embryos. In contrast, most genes and proteins related to cell division and expansion, the cytoskeleton, protein synthesis and energy metabolism were significantly down-regulated in abortive embryos. Furthermore, abortive embryos had the highest activity of three executioner caspase-like enzymes. These results indicate that embryo abortion may be related to programmed cell death and the senescence- or death-associated genes or proteins contribute to embryo abortion. This adds to our understanding of embryo abortion and will aid in the cross breeding of chrysanthemum and other crops in the future.

Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) is the leading cause of viral encephalitis in Asia and domestic pigs serve as the amplifying hosts. In the present study, the full genomic sequences of two JEV strains (HEN0701 and SH0601) isolated from pigs in China were determined and compared with other 12 JEV strains deposited in GenBank. These two strains had an 88.8% nucleotide sequence similarity and 97.9% deduced amino acid sequence homology. HEN0701 had high nucleotide sequence and high amino acid sequence identity with genotype I (GI) strains, while SH0601 had high nucleotide sequence and high amino acid sequence identity with GIII strains at both the gene and full genome levels. Further phylogenetic analysis showed that HEN0701 belonged to the JEV GI group and SH0601 was classified as a GIII strain. Analysis of codon usage showed there were a few differences between the GI and GIII strains in nucleotide composition and codon usage for the open reading frames.