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Hippotiscus dorsalis (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) is a common pest that feeds on the stems of Moso bamboo. Therefore, investigating the molecular processes related to its fundamental physiology is important. In this study, transcriptome sequencing was employed to compare gene expression in different tissues of male and female adults. A total of 36,238 annotated unigenes were identified through the NR database and compared with those of other known species. Among these, Halyomorpha halys and Nezara viridula showed the highest homology with H. dorsalis, with a total similarity exceeding 86 %. The top significant differentially expressed genes were mainly associated with protein digestion, carbohydrates metabolism, as well as reproduce regulation between sexes. The Gene Ontology enrichment analysis across three different segments of each sex revealed some terms associated with detoxification such like IMP biosynthetic process and acetyl-CoA metabolic process. Additionally, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analysis highlighted significant pathways related to glucose metabolism and pancreatic secretion. Further investigation of these DEGs, particularly in the calcium signaling pathway and glycan biosynthesis and metabolism, is essential for understanding sugar metabolism and transport in phytophagous insects., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Large synthetic oligonucleotides such as guide ribonucleic acid (gRNA), a critical reagent in clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 genome editing, have complex higher order structures (HOS) inherent in their design. In this study, we first developed a generic anion exchange chromatography (AEX) method for the comprehensive analysis of a 100mer single guide ribonucleic acid (sgRNA) impurity profiling. AEX demonstrated superior resolution compared to other common chromatographic methods employed for sgRNA analysis, such as Ion-Pairing Reversed Phase Liquid Chromatography (IP-RPLC) and Hydrophilic Interaction Chromatography (HILIC). Moreover, we discovered AEX's potential in probing the HOS of RNAs by adjusting the temperature and using organic additives. Our study also highlighted that sgRNA possesses a unique HOS distinctly different from other therapeutic nucleic acids, such as antisense oligonucleotides and messenger RNAs., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Bingchuan Wei reports financial support was provided by Genentech Inc., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Halogenated Organic Phosphate Esters (OPEs) are commonly found in plasticizers and flame retardants. However, they are one kind of persistent contaminants that can pose a significant threat to human health and ecosystem as new environmental estrogen. In this study, two representative halogenated OPEs, tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TDCP) and tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate (TDBP), were selected as experimental subjects to investigate their interaction with human serum albumin (HSA). Despite having similar structures, the two ligands exhibited contrasting effects on enzyme activity of HSA, TDCP inhibiting enzyme activity and TDBP activating it. Furthermore, both TDCP and TDBP could bind to HSA at site I, interacted with Arg222 and other residues, and made the conformation of HSA unfolded. Thermodynamic parameters indicated the main driving forces between TDBP and HSA were hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces, while TDCP was mainly hydrophobic force. Molecular simulations found that more hydrogen bonds of HSA-TDBP formed during the binding process, and the larger charge area of TDBP than TDCP could partially account for the differences observed in their binding abilities to HSA. Notably, the cytotoxicity of TDBP/TDCP was inversely proportional to their binding ability to HSA, implying a new method for determining the cytotoxicity of halogenated OPEs in vitro., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In this study, we aimed to develop a hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) method for the analysis of single guide ribonucleic acid (sgRNA), a critical reagent used in CRISPR genome editing. Our results showed that effective profiling of sgRNA can be achieved by suppressing the surface charge of the stationary phase in HILIC. We identified hydrogen bonding as the primary retention mechanism with potential weak partitioning in HILIC separation of large oligonucleotides like 100-mer sgRNA. Moreover, we demonstrated that direct coupling of HILIC with mass spectrometry (MS) allows the intact mass analysis of sgRNA and its impurities with minimal adduct present. Finally, we characterized the post peak shown in the low temperature HILIC and identified it as sgRNA aggregates. Our findings provide valuable insight into the characterization of sgRNA and highlight the potential of HILIC-MS as a powerful analytical tool for relatively large oligonucleotide analysis., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Bingchuan Wei reports financial support was provided by Genentech Inc., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Euwallacea interjectus (Curculionidae: Scolytinae) is an ambrosia beetle species in its early stages of research. Therefore, studying the related molecular mechanism associated with the development and egg laid is essential. Transcriptome sequencing was used in this study to compare the gene expression of the beetles at different developmental stages and female adults before and after oviposition. A total of 40,047 annotated unigenes were obtained. There were 4225 differentially expressed unigenes (DEUs) from larva to prepupa stage, 3651 DEUs between prepupa and pupa, 1675 DEUs generated from pupa to adult, and 4762 DEUs between females before and after oviposition. The most significant pathway differences between different development stages and before and after oviposition were selected through functional annotation of DEUs between different stages. Among them, there were many pathways related to protein metabolism including: neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, endoplasmic reticulum and RNA transport. This study provides valuable information on the molecular regulation mechanism of development and the egg laid of E. interjectus., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Tropospheric ozone (O 3 ) is the main phytotoxic air pollutant threatening food security, while ethylenediurea (EDU) can effectively mitigate O 3 -induced crop yield loss. EDU's mode of action, however, remains unclear, and the underlying physiological mechanisms of mitigating O 3 -induced crop yield loss are poorly understood. We cultivated hybrid rice seedlings under two O 3 treatments (NF, nonfiltered ambient air; and NF60, ambient air plus 60 ppb O 3 ) and sprayed foliage with 0 or 450 ppm EDU every ten days and determine photosynthesis-related traits, biomass indicators, and yield components. We found that EDU significantly increased the leaf nitrogen (N) allocation to photosynthesis (N P ) and the grain N accumulation, while the grain N accumulation was positively correlated with N P and root biomass. EDU significantly increased the rice yield mainly by increasing the individual grain weight rather than the number of panicles and grains. While EDU protected from yield loss, the degree of protection was only 31% under NF60 treatment, thus EDU was unable to offer complete protection under high O 3 pollution. These results will be conducive to a better understanding of the EDU protection mechanism and better application of EDU under high O 3 pollution in the future., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

To investigate whether nitrogen (N) load affects the ozone (O 3 ) stomatal flux-effect relationship for birch biomass, three-year old birch saplings were exposed to seven different O 3 profiles (24 h mean of 35-66 ppb) and four different N loads (10, 30, 50 and 70 kg ha -1  yr -1 ) in precision-controlled hemispherical glasshouses (solardomes) in 2012 and 2013. Stomatal conductance (g s ) under optimal growth conditions was stimulated by enhanced N supply but was not significantly affected by enhanced O 3 exposure. Birch root, woody (stem + branches) and total biomass (root + woody) were not affected by the Phytotoxic Ozone Dose (POD 1 SPEC) after two seasons of O 3 exposure, and enhanced N supply stimulated biomass production independent of POD 1 SPEC (i.e. there were no POD 1 SPEC × N interactions). There was a strong linear relationship between the stem cross-sectional area and tree biomass at the end of the experiment, which was not affected by O 3 exposure or N load. Enhanced N supply stimulated the stem cross-sectional area at the end of season 2, but not at the end of season 1, which suggests a time lag before tree biomass responded to enhanced N supply. There was no significant effect of POD 1 SPEC on stem cross-sectional area after either the first or second growing season of the experiment. Contrasting results reported in the literature on the interactive impacts of O 3 and N load on tree physiology and growth are likely due to species-specific responses, different duration of the experiments and/or a limitation of the number of O 3 and N levels tested., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Finite mesophyll conductance (g m ) reduces the rate of CO 2 diffusion from the leaf intercellular space to the chloroplast and constitutes a major limitation of photosynthesis in trees. While it is well established that g m is decreased by stressors such as drought and high temperature, few studies have investigated if the phytotoxic air pollutant ozone (O 3 ) affects g m . We quantified the relative importance of three different types of limitations of photosynthesis in poplar trees exposed to elevated O 3 : decreases in stomatal conductance, g m and biochemical photosynthetic capacity. The O 3 -induced reductions in light-saturated net photosynthesis were linked to significant declines in g m and biochemical photosynthetic capacity (in particular carboxylation). There was no significant effect of O 3 on stomatal conductance. Of the O 3 -induced limitations on photosynthesis, g m limitation was by far the most important (-16%) while biochemical limitation (-8%) was rather small. Both limitations grew in magnitude over the study period and varied in response to leaf-specific O 3 exposure. Our findings suggest that declines in g m may play a key role in limiting photosynthesis of plants exposed to elevated O 3 , an effect hitherto overlooked., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We investigated the effects of elevated ozone (O 3 ) concentration on leaf nitrogen (N), a key determinant of plant photosynthesis, with two clones of poplar grown in open-top chambers. We focus on the difference between mass-based leaf N concentration (N mass ) and area-based one (N area ) in their responses to elevated O 3 , and the allocation of N to different leaf components: photosynthetic apparatus, cell walls, and others under elevated O 3 level. Our results showed that elevated O 3 significantly increased N mass , but reduced N area and leaf mass per area (LMA). The two clones showed no difference in N mass response to O 3 , but the more sensitive clone showed greater reduction of N area and LMA due to O 3 . We also found positive relationships between N area and photosynthetic parameters, e.g. light-saturated photosynthetic rate (A sat ). Furthermore, elevated O 3 significantly reduced photosynthetic N-use efficiency (PNUE) and leaf N allocation to photosynthetic components, while increasing N allocation to cell walls and other components. We concluded that plants invested more N in cell walls and other components to resist O 3 damages at the expense of photosynthetic N. The change of N allocation in plant leaves in response to elevated O 3 could have an impact on ecological processes, e.g. leaf litter decomposition., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

A sensitive analytical method using mixed mode HPLC separation coupled with charged aerosol detection (CAD) was developed for quantitative analysis of lithium. The method is capable of separating lithium ion from different drug matrices and other ions in a single run thus eliminating the organic matrix and ionic analyte interferences without extensive sample preparation such as derivatization and extraction. The separation space and chromatographic conditions are defined by systematic studies of the retention behaviors of lithium and potential interfering ions and different type of pharmaceutical APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) under reversed-phase, HILIC and cation/anion exchange mechanisms. Compared to other current analytical techniques for lithium analysis, the presented method provides a new approach and demonstrates high sensitivity (0.02ng for LOD and 0.08ng for LOQ in both standard and sample solution). The method has been validated for pharmaceutical samples and can be potentially applied to biological, food and environmental samples., (Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

A mixed-mode chromatography coupled with charged aerosol detector (CAD) method was developed in this work to simultaneously determine pharmaceutical counterions including both inorganic ions and organic ions in the forms of cations and anions. 25 commonly used pharmaceutical ions were studied and simultaneously separated within 20 min by this single method. A silica based mixed-mode column with reversed-phase/cation-exchange/anion-exchange modes was used. It provides reversed-phase, strong cation-exchange and weak anion-exchange properties at the same time. It also provides the HILIC behavior at high percentage of organic solvent. The effects of mobile-phase organic strength, buffer ions, ionic strength, pH and column temperature have been investigated to optimize the method as well as to understand the retention and separation mechanisms. Conventional HPLC system was used and no special chromatography system is needed. The presented method has been employed successfully for screening and quantitative analysis of counterions, unknown ionic impurities and salts in active pharmaceutical ingredients and in process control samples with excellent accuracy, precision and sensitivity. This method provides a simple, fast and generic approach to speed up pharmaceutical research and development process and enhance lab efficiency. The similar methodologies can be applied to other ion analysis., (Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)