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Rice quality and safety is important for achieving national food security and social stability. Rice has been contaminated with heavy metals, pesticide residues, and fungal toxins, which has affected the healthy development of China’s rice industry and raised public concerns about the quality and safety of rice. Studies on risk assessment and early warning techniques for rice quality and safety can not only contribute to formulating rice-related policies, regulations and standards, but also can timely identify and prevent the potential risks, which have become an important field in rice quality and safety control. In this article, the main hazards including heavy metals, pesticide residues, and fungal toxins in rice and their possible sources were analyzed. Moreover, rice risk assessment techniques including hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment and risk characterization, as well as rice early warning technologies including pre-harvest warning, post-harvest warning and whole course warning were summarized, aiming to provide reference for scientific supervision and effective control of hazards in rice.

Summary: For mammals that originate in the cold north, adapting to warmer environments is crucial for southwards invasion. The brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) originated in Northeast China and has become a global pest. R. n. humiliatus (RNH) spread from the northeast, where R. n. caraco (RNC) lives, to North China and diverged to form a subspecies. Genomic analyses revealed that subspecies differentiation was promoted by temperature but impeded by gene flow and that genes related to fatty acid metabolism were under the strongest selection. Transcriptome analyses revealed downregulated hepatic genes related to fatty acid metabolism and upregulated those related to pheromones in RNH vs. RNC. Similar patterns were observed in relation to cold/warm acclimation. RNH preferred mates with stronger pheromone signals intra-populationally and more genetic divergence inter-populationally. We concluded that RNH experienced reduced fat utilization and increased pheromone-mediated sexual selection during its invasion from the cold north to warm south.

Due to the immunosuppressive microenvironment as well as the lack of medicine that targets the driver gene alterations, the prognosis of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma(PDAC)is worse than that of other malignant tumors.At present, chemotherapy is still the main stay of treatment for most patients with advanced PDAC. In recent years, with the continuous development of anti-cancer drugs and the wide application of next-generation sequencing technology, increasing number of studies have shown that genetic alteration could guide the selection of chemotherapy regimen and molecular targeted therapy for some patients with advanced PDAC.Guidelines of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology recommend that all patients with advanced PDAC should undergo somatic and germline genetic profiling to help determining the optimal treatment strategy and to prolong patients' survival. Therapy targeting KRAS mutation, cancer vaccines and therapy of anti-tumor metabolism are still in clinical research. This article will review current status and progress of medical treatment for advanced PDAC.

Background: This study explores molecular features associated with better prognosis in cholangiocarcinoma (CCA). Methods and Results: The transcriptomic and whole‐exome sequencing data obtained from paired tissues of 70 were analyzed, grouping them based on progression‐free survival (PFS), differentiation degree, and lymph node metastasis. Among the 70 patients, the TP53 gene mutation frequency was the highest (53%), while FLG gene mutation occurred exclusively in the long PFS group. In the comparison between long and short survival groups, the short PFS group exhibited higher monocyte infiltration levels (p = 0.0287) and upregulation of genes associated with cancer‐related transcriptional misregulation, chemokine signaling, and cytokine‐cytokine receptor interactions. Differences in immune cell infiltration and gene expression were significant across differentiation and lymph node metastasis groups. Particularly noteworthy was the marked increase in CD8 T cell and NK cell infiltration (p = 0.0291, 0.0459) in the lymph node metastasis group, significantly influences prognosis. Additionally, genes related to platinum resistance, Th17 cell differentiation, and Th1 and Th2 cell differentiation pathways were overexpressed in this group. In summary, higher monocyte infiltration levels in the short PFS group, along with elevated expression of genes associated with cancer‐related pathways, suggest a poorer prognosis. The significant increase in CD8 T cell and NK cell infiltration reflects an enhanced anti‐tumor immune response, underscoring the relevance of immune infiltration levels and gene expression in predicting outcomes for CCA patients. Conclusions: In this study, we elucidated the pertinent molecular mechanisms and pathways that influence the prognosis of CCAs through comprehensive multi‐omics analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Diabetes induces many complications including reduced fertility and low oocyte quality, but whether it causes increased mtDNA mutations is unknown. Methods We generated a T2D mouse model by using high-fat-diet (HFD) and Streptozotocin (STZ) injection. We examined mtDNA mutations in oocytes of diabetic mice by high-throughput sequencing techniques. Results T2D mice showed glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, low fecundity compared to the control group. T2D oocytes showed increased mtDNA mutation sites and mutation numbers compared to the control counterparts. mtDNA mutation examination in F1 mice showed that the mitochondrial bottleneck could eliminate mtDNA mutations. Conclusions T2D mice have increased mtDNA mutation sites and mtDNA mutation numbers in oocytes compared to the counterparts, while these adverse effects can be eliminated by the bottleneck effect in their offspring. This is the first study using a small number of oocytes to examine mtDNA mutations in diabetic mothers and offspring.

Cadmium (Cd) stress greatly limits the growth of rapeseed, and selenium is a micronutrient that is essential for rapeseed growth, but whether and how selenium application alleviates Cd-induced inhibition remains poorly understood. The present study investigated the alleviating effects of exogenous selenium on rapeseed growth under cadmium (Cd) stress based on the aspects of agronomic traits and soil bacterial community structure and diversity. The results show that low-selenium treatment increased the rapeseed yield by 20.92% by increasing the number of pods per plant under Cd stress, but such effects were not prominent when the selenium application rate was high. Meanwhile, selenium application significantly reduced the cadmium content by 4.74–26.89% in different organs of rapeseed. Further analysis suggested that the benefits of selenium in alleviating Cd stress might be induced by changes in soil bacterial community structure and diversity. In addition, in the functional metabolism spectrum of rapeseed microorganisms treated with selenium, there were 5 primary metabolic pathways with significant differences, and there were 32 and 169 pathways for secondary and tertiary metabolic pathways, respectively. Therefore, selenium treatment in rapeseed soil can alter the composition and metabolic function spectrum of soil microbial communities, ultimately affecting plant growth and Cd tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chlorophyll is a kind of green pigment for plant photosynthesis, which has a direct effect on plant growth. In this study, bioinformatics methods were used to identify the members of SGR gene family in Brassica napus, Brassica rapa, Brassica oleracea, and Arabidopsis thaliana. Most of the 28 SGR genes contained four exons, encoding basic proteins. Chromosome mapping and syntenic analysis showed that there was no tandem duplication in the SGR gene family members of Brassica napus. SGR gene family members had a linear relationship, highly homologous in evolution, and very conserved in the evolutionary process. Moreover, a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of chlorophyll content was performed using a Brassica 60K Illumina Infinium SNP array in 203 Brassica napus accessions. Two haplotype regions (Chr.A01: 6,193,165--6,317,757 bp and Chr.C01: 9,059,861--9,906,618 bp) carrying two SGR genes (BnaSGR1a-A01 and BnaSGR1-C01) were detected, which were significantly associated with chlorophyll content. Meanwhile, the regional association analysis of 50 resequenced rapeseed inbred lines revealed that a SNP located in exon 2 of BnaSGR1a-A01 significantly associated with chlorophyll content. Co-expression network analysis revealed that BnaSGR1a-A01 were directly linked with BnaSGR2-A03, and indirectly linked with BnaSGR1-C01, BnaSGR1-A08, BnaSGR2-C03, BnaSGR1-C07, BnaSGRL-C06, and BnaSGRL-A10, thus forming a molecular network involved in the potential regulation of chlorophyll content. Chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and the total chlorophyll content of T2 Arabidopsis transgenic plants overexpressing BnasSGR1a-A01 were significantly lower than wild type, indicating that BnaSGR1a-A01 regulated chlorophyll degradation. This study laid a foundation for the functional research and utilization of SGR gene in Brassica napus L. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]