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Environmental temperature and humidity play a vital role in plant-pathogen interactions, which profoundly affect the occurrence of crop diseases. However, the specific methods and mechanisms through which intermittent changes in temperature and humidity mitigate plant diseases remain unclear. In this study, six temperature and humidity combinations were set, the disease severity of tomatoes and biomass of Botrytis cinerea were analyzed, and the infection process of pathogens was observed using an optical microscope. Furthermore, dual RNA-seq analysis was performed to explore the interactions between plants and pathogens. Results showed that the 24 hours postinoculation (hpi)-12 h day (regulation was performed at 24 hpi for 12 h after inoculation during the day) treatment reduced the gray mold severity and biomass of B. cinerea in plants by the greatest amount and effectively inhibited the growth of mycelia. The 24 hpi-12 h day treatment induced the upregulation of light reactions, photorespiration, and Calvin cycle-related genes in tomatoes, whereas fungal genes related to the biosynthesis of sesquiterpene botrydial and polyketide botcinic acid were downregulated. Overall, we identified the optimal combination of temperature and humidity changes to inhibit the development of tomato gray mold and preliminarily explored the interactions between tomato and B. cinerea under temperature and humidity changes. This work has practical importance and provides a theoretical basis for the ecological control of plant diseases.

Ovarian dysfunction, including premature ovarian insufficiency and decreased ovarian reserve, affects the ovarian reserve and is one of the leading causes of female infertility. More and more cases of ovarian dysfunction are associated with genetic factors. Here, we identified eight potential variants in five genes (MSH4, HFM1, SYCE1, FSHR, and C14orf39) from six independent families by exome sequencing. The splice-site variants in SYCE1 and MSH4 affected canonical splicing isoforms, leading to missing protein domains or premature termination. Our findings expand the mutational spectrum of ovarian dysfunction and provide potential biomarkers for future genetic counseling and for more personalized treatments. Exome sequencing was shown to be a useful tool to better dissect the genetic basis for ovarian dysfunction and yielded a genetic diagnosis in about 5.0% (6/124) of cases in a cohort of 124 patients with ovarian dysfunction.

STUDY QUESTION Can new genetic factors responsible for male infertility be identified, especially for those characterized by asthenospermia despite normal sperm morphology? SUMMARY ANSWER We identified the novel pathogenetic gene IQ motif and ubiquitin-like domain-containing (IQUB) as responsible for male infertility characterized by asthenospermia, involving sperm radial spoke defects. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY To date, only a few genes have been found to be responsible for asthenospermia with normal sperm morphology. Iqub, encoding the IQUB protein, is highly and specifically expressed in murine testes and interacts with the proteins radial spoke head 3 (RSPH3), CEP295 N-terminal like (CEP295NL or DDC8), glutathione S-transferase mu 1 (GSTM1) and outer dense fiber of sperm tails 1 (ODF1) in the yeast two-hybrid system. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION The IQUB variant was identified by whole-exome sequencing in a cohort of 126 male infertility patients with typical asthenospermia recruited between 2015 and 2020. Knockout (KO) and knockin (KI) mouse models, scanning and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and other functional assays were performed, between 2019 and 2021. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS The IQUB variant was identified by whole-exome sequencing and confirmed by Sanger sequencing. Iqub KO and KI mice were constructed to mimic the phenotype of the affected individual. After recapitulating the phenotype of human male infertility, scanning and TEM were performed to check the ultrastructure of the sperm. Western blot and co-immunoprecipitation were performed to clarify the pathological mechanism of the IQUB variant. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE We identified a homozygous nonsense IQUB variant (NM_001282855.2:c.942T> G(p.Tyr314*)) from an infertile male. Iqub KO and KI mice mimicked the infertility phenotype and confirmed IQUB to be the pathogenetic gene. Scanning and TEM showed that sperm of both the mouse models and the affected individual had radial spoke defects. The functional assay suggested that IQUB may recruit calmodulin in lower Ca2+ environments to facilitate the normal assembly of radial spokes by inhibiting the activity of RSPH3/p-ERK1/2 (a nontypical AKAP (A-Kinase Anchoring Protein) forming by RSPH3 and phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1 and 2 (p-ERK1/2)). LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION Additional cases are needed to confirm the genetic contribution of IQUB variants to male infertility. In addition, because no IQUB antibody is available for immunofluorescence and the polyclonal antibody we generated was only effective in western blotting, immunostaining for IQUB was not performed in this study. Therefore, this study lacks direct in vivo proof to confirm the effect of the variant on IQUB protein level. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS Our results suggest a causal relation between IQUB variants and male infertility owing to asthenospermia, and partly clarify the pathological mechanism of IQUB variants. This expands our knowledge of the genes involved in human sperm asthenospermia and potentially provides a new genetic marker for male infertility. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFC2700100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32130029, 82171643, 81971450, 82001538, and 81971382) and the Guangdong Science and Technology Department Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Innovation Project (2020A0505140003). There are no competing interests to declare. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER N/A.

The accumulation and storage of maternal mRNA is crucial for oocyte maturation and embryonic development. PATL2 is an oocyte-specific RNA-binding protein, and previous studies have confirmed that PATL2 mutation in Human and knockout mice cause oocyte maturation arrest or embryonic development arrest, respectively. However, the physiological function of PATL2 in the process of oocyte maturation and embryonic development is largely unknown. Here, we report that PATL2 is highly expressed in growing oocytes and coupled with EIF4E and CPEB1 to regulate maternal mRNA expression in immature oocytes. The GV oocytes from Patl2−/- mice exhibit decreasing maternal mRNA expression and reduced levels of protein synthesis. We further confirmed PATL2 phosphorylation in the oocyte maturation process and identified the S279 phosphorylation site using phosphoproteomics. We found the S279D mutation decreased the protein level of PATL2 and led to subfertility in Palt2S279D knock-in mice. Our work reveals the previously unrecognized role of PATL2 in regulating the maternal transcriptome and shows that phosphorylation of PATL2 leads to the regulation of PATL2 protein levels via ubiquitin-mediated proteasomal degradation in oocytes.

Fertilization is a fundamental process of development, and the blocking mechanisms act at the zona pellucida (ZP) and plasma membrane of the egg to prevent any additional sperm from binding, permeating and fusing after fertilization. In clinical practice, some couples undergoing recurrent IVF failures that mature oocytes had abnormal fertilization for unknown reason. Ovastacin encoded by ASTL cleave the ZP protein ZP2 and play a key role in preventing polyspermy. Here, we identified bi-allelic variants in ASTL that are mainly characterized by fertilization problems in humans. All four independent affected individuals had bi-allelic frameshift variants or predicted damaging missense variants, which follow a Mendelian recessive inheritance pattern. The frameshift variants significantly decreased the quantity of ASTL protein in vitro. And all missense variants affected the enzymatic activity that cleaves ZP2 in mouse egg in vitro. Three knock-in female mice (corresponding to three missense variants in patients) all show subfertility due to low embryo developmental potential. This work presents strong evidence that pathogenic variants in ASTL cause female infertility and provides a new genetic marker for the diagnosis of fertilization problems.

Approximate multipliers have gradually become a focus of research due to the emergence of fault-tolerant applications. This paper deals with the approximation methods for an approximation multiplier with truncation, probability transformation and a majority gate-based compressor chain. With the help of probability analysis, the proposed approximation methods are utilized in an approximate [Formula: see text] unsigned multiplier to achieve low accuracy loss, high efficiency for time and power. Compared with the precise and approximate multipliers, the proposed design brings 55.0%, 39.0% reduction in delay and 73.8%, 22.6% power saving. The proposed multiplier achieves better peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) values when evaluated with an image processing application.

Since multimodal imaging technology is able to provide multiple perspectives on the lesion, it has become increasingly important in clinical diagnosis and treatment planning. In this paper, a novel medical image fusion using gradient domain-guided filter random walk (GDGFRW) and side window filtering (SWF) in the framelet transform (FT) domain is presented. Firstly, FT is performed on the original multimodal source images to obtain the corresponding approximate and residual representations. Secondly, a novel model—GDGFRW, which combines the superiorities of both gradient domain guided filtering and random walks—is constructed to interpret the approximate sub-bands, while the residual sub-bands are fused by SWF. Finally, the fused approximate sub-bands and residual sub-bands undergo inverse FT to generate the final fused image. To verify its effectiveness, the proposed method was tested on different categories of multimodal medical image fusion issues, in more than 40 pairs of source images. The proposed method outperforms the current representative ones in terms of both subjective visual performance and objective assessment.

Peptidyl arginine deiminase, type VI (PADI6) is a member of the subcortical maternal complex (SCMC), which plays vital roles in mammalian embryogenesis. Most mutations in SCMC members have been reported to cause human embryonic arrest, and a total of 15 mutations in PADI6 have been shown to be responsible for early embryonic arrest according to previous studies. However, the genetic factors behind this phenotype remain to be understood in further detail. Here, we identified 13 novel mutations and 4 previously reported mutations of PADI6 in 14 patients who were diagnosed with abnormal embryonic development caused by early arrest, embryonic fragmentation, and recurrent implantation failure. Most of the mutations were predicted by in silico analysis to be deleterious or damaging to the function of PADI6. In addition, the total and East Asian population frequencies of the mutations were low or absent in the gnomAD database. Our study expands the mutational spectrum in PADI6 and will provide precise targets for genetic counseling in the future.

Temperature and humidity play an important role in plant–pathogen interactions. However, regulating the temperature and humidity specifically to inhibit the development of plant diseases remains unclear. In this study, we explored the influence of intermittent temperature and humidity variation on tomato gray mold. Intermittent regulation of temperature and humidity (increasing temperature with decreasing humidity for different periods within 24 h) inhibited the disease severity of plants and the infection process of Botrytis cinerea. The 4h treatment (increasing temperature accompanied by decreasing humidity for 4 h and recovering for 4 h, and so on) effectively inhibited the development of tomato gray mold, reduced the biomass of B. cinerea, delayed the differentiation time of mycelia, and inhibited the accumulation of H2O2 in tomato leaves at the later stage of infection. The increased expressions of HSP20, HSP70, HSP90, BAG6, and BAG7 in tomatoes were mainly caused by environmental changes and environment–plant–pathogen interactions, and the increased expression of the latter was greater than that of the former in the 2h (increasing temperature accompanied by decreasing humidity for 2 h and recovering for 2 h, and so on) and 4h treatments. Pathogen infection induced the expression of defense-related genes in tomatoes, and the increase in the expressions of FLS2, FEI1, PI2, Pti5, and WRKY75 induced by B. cinerea in the 4h treatment was greater than that under unregulated temperature and humidity conditions. In general, intermittent temperature and humidity variation can effectively inhibit the development of tomato gray mold, and the 4h treatment had the best inhibitory effect.

γCbPhAP, a red ambient phosphorescence-dominated afterglow material showing a long τDelay of 0.50 s and a relatively high φDelay of 12.2% under ambient conditions was designed and synthesized.

When guided by retro-cues, humans can flexibly focus their attention on a specific representation in visual working memory (VWM) during the maintenance phase. These retro-cues improve the memory of the attended information in a phenomenon called the retro-cue benefit, but with a memory cost of unattended information. The cost has recently been proven reversible for object-based representations, showing that the memory performance of an unattended object is enhanced with refocused attention. However, reversibility of the unattended feature-based representation impairment is unclear. In the present study, we looked for a representation of a re-attended feature in VWM, and we then investigated the quality of its preservation. Across three behavioral experiments, we used paradigms with different levels of probe precision, and we manipulated the number of retro-cues (no-cue vs. single-cue vs. double-cue conditions). In the double-cue condition, two cues were sequentially oriented to different features in a trial, allowing the representation of an unattended feature in the first cue array to become re-attended and then weighted in the probe array. We found that (a) the representation of a re-attended feature existed in VWM and was enhanced by the refocused attention (Experiments 1 and 3); (b) this phenomenon was not affected by our manipulations of stimulus-onset asynchrony between the cue and the probe (Experiment 2); and (c) compared to constantly focused attention, the enhancement of refocused attention on representations of a feature was weakened(Experiment 3). Our findings provide evidence supporting a flexible maintenance process of representations guided by feature-based attention.

In visual working memory (VWM) tasks, participants’ performances can be improved through the use of dimension-based retro-cues, which direct internal attention to prioritize a particular dimension (e.g., color or orientation) of VWM representations even after the stimuli disappear. This phenomenon is known as the dimension-based retro-cue benefit (RCB). The present study investigates whether sustained attention is required for the dimension-based RCB by inserting interference or interruption between the retro-cue and the test array to distract attention. We tested the effects of perceptual interference or cognitive interruption on dimension-based RCB when the interference (Experiments 1 and 2 with masks) or interruption (Experiments 3 and 4 with an odd-even task) occurred concurrently with the stages for the maintenance of prioritized information (long cue-and-interference/interruption interstimulus interval, e.g., Experiments 1 and 3) or the deployment of attention (short cue-and-interference/interruption interstimulus interval, e.g., Experiments 2 and 4). Our results demonstrate that perceptual interference or cognitive interruption attenuates the dimension-based RCB. These findings suggest that sustained attention is necessary for the effective prioritization of a specific dimension of VWM representations. peerReviewed

In this paper, we investigate two families of fully coupled linear Forward-Backward Stochastic Differential Equations (FBSDE). Within these families, one could get the same well-posedness of FBSDEs with totally different structures. The first family of FBSDEs are proved to be equivalent with respect to the Unified Approach. Thus one could get the well-posedness of the whole family if one member exists a unique solution. Another equivalent family of FBSDEs are investigated by introducing a linear transformation method. By reason of the fully coupling structure between the forward and backward equations, it leads to a highly interdependence in solutions. We are able to lower the coupling of FBSDEs, by virtue of the idea of transformation, without losing the well-posedness. Moreover, owing to the non-degeneracy of the transformation matrix, the solution to original FBSDE is totally determined by solutions of FBSDE after transformation. In addition, an example of optimal Linear Quadratic (LQ) problem is presented to illustrate., 18 pages

Most objects show high degrees of spatial regularity (e.g. beach umbrellas appear above, not under, beach chairs). The spatial regularities of real-world objects benefit visual working memory (VWM), but the mechanisms behind this spatial regularity effect remain unclear. The "encoding specificity" hypothesis suggests that spatial regularity will enhance the visual encoding process but will not facilitate the integration of information online during VWM maintenance. The "perception-alike" hypothesis suggests that spatial regularity will function in both visual encoding and online integration during VWM maintenance. We investigated whether VWM integrates sequentially presented real-world objects by focusing on the existence of the spatial regularity effect. Throughout five experiments, we manipulated the presentation (simultaneous vs. sequential) and regularity (with vs. without regularity) of memory arrays among pairs of real-world objects. The spatial regularity of memory objects presented simultaneously, but not sequentially, improved VWM performance. We also examined whether memory load, verbal suppression and masking, and memory array duration hindered the spatial regularity effect in sequential presentation. We found a stable absence of the spatial regularity effect, suggesting that the participants were unable to integrate real-world objects based on spatial regularities online. Our results support the encoding specificity hypothesis, wherein the spatial regularity of real-world objects can enhance the efficiency of VWM encoding, but VWM cannot exploit spatial regularity to help organize sampled sequential information into meaningful integrations. publishedVersion

In daily life, most objects show high degrees of spatial regularity (e.g., beach umbrellas appear above, not under, beach chairs). Previous studies have shown that spatial regularities of real-world objects benefit visual working memory (VWM), but the mechanisms of this spatial regularity effect remain unclear. This effect can be explained by an “encoding-specificity” hypothesis or a “perception-alike” hypothesis. The former suggests that spatial regularity will enhance the visual encoding process but will not facilitate to integrate information online during VWM maintenance, while the latter suggests that spatial regularity will function in both visual encoding and online integration during VWM maintenance. We investigated whether VWM integrates sequentially presented real-world objects by focusing on the existence of the spatial regularity effect. In five experiments, we first manipulated the presentation (simultaneous vs. sequential) and regularity (with vs. without regularity) of memory arrays among pairs of real-world objects. The spatial regularity of memory objects presented simultaneously, but not sequentially, improved VWM performance. We also examined whether memory load, verbal suppression and masking, and memory array duration hindered the spatial regularity effect in the sequential presentation. However, we found a stable absence of the spatial regularity effect in these experiments, suggesting that participants were unable to integrate real-world objects based on spatial regularities online. Our results support the “encoding-specificity” hypothesis, wherein the spatial regularity of real-world objects can enhance the efficiency of the VWM encoding, but VWM cannot exploit spatial regularity to help organize sampled sequential information into meaningful integrations.

Cancer remains one of the most threatening diseases, which kills millions of lives every year. As a promising perspective for cancer treatments, anticancer peptides (ACPs) overcome a lot of disadvantages of traditional treatments. However, it is time-consuming and expensive to identify ACPs through conventional experiments. Hence, it is urgent and necessary to develop highly effective approaches to accurately identify ACPs in large amounts of protein sequences. In this work, we proposed a novel and effective method named ME-ACP which employed multi-view neural networks with ensemble model to identify ACPs. Firstly, we employed residue level and peptide level features preliminarily with ensemble models based on lightGBMs. Then, the outputs of lightGBM classifiers were fed into a hybrid deep neural network (HDNN) to identify ACPs. The experiments on independent test datasets demonstrated that ME-ACP achieved competitive performance on common evaluation metrics.

Organophosphate esters (OPEs) are widely used as flame retardants and plasticizers. OPEs have been released into various environments (e.g., water, sediments, dust and air, and soil). To investigate the occurrence and distribution of OPEs in various environments in China, this review collects and discusses the published scientific studies in this field. Chlorinated OPEs, as flame retardants, are the predominant OPEs found in the environment. The analysis of data revealed large concentration variations among microenvironments, including inflowing river water (range: 0.69–10.62 µgL−1), sediments (range: 0.0197–0.234 µg/g), dust (range: 8.706–34.872 µg/g), and open recycling sites’ soil (range: 0.122–2.1 µg/g). Moreover, OPEs can be detected in the air and biota. We highlight the overall view regarding environmental levels of OPEs in different matrices as a starting point to monitor trends for China. The levels of OPEs in the water, sediment, dust, and air of China are still low. However, dust samples from electronic waste workshop sites were more contaminated. Human activities, pesticides, electronics, furniture, paint, plastics and textiles, and wastewater plants are the dominant sources of OPEs. Human exposure routes to OPEs mainly include dermal contact, dust ingestion, inhalation, and dietary intake. The low level of ecological risk and risk to human health indicated a limited threat from OPEs. Furthermore, current challenges and perspectives for future studies are prospected. A criteria inventory of OPEs reflecting the levels of OPEs contamination association among different microenvironments, emerging OPEs, and potential impact of OPEs on human health, particularly for children are needed in China for better investigation.