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The aim of the study was to investigate the appropriate postharvest storage temperature for Pouteria caimito Radlk., to prolong its storage life, and more broadly to expand the market for Pouteria caimito. The effects of different storage temperatures on the postharvest physiology and storage quality of P. caimito were studied by determining the main quality indices and physiological indices of fruit samples stored at 5, 10, 15 or 20 ℃ after harvest. The results showed that cold storage could maintain the quality of P. caimito to a certain extent, but chilling injury (CI) symptoms, characterized by pitting and water-soaked appearance of the fruit surface and peel browning, appeared after three days of storage at 5 ℃. Compared with the other three storage temperatures, storage at 10 ℃ could maintain higher levels of fruit hardness, total soluble solids (TSS), vitamin C (VC) and total sugar, and lower respiratory intensity and cell membrane permeability. Compared with 20 ℃, storage at 10 ℃ could inhibit the increase of malondialdehyde (MDA) content, peroxidase (POD) and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity, thereby delaying the senescence and browning of P. caimito. Therefore, 10 ℃ was the appropriate storage temperature for P. caimito. The results of this study will provide a theoretical basis for postharvest quality maintenance of P. caimito.

Maize productivity in the central belt plays a significant role in the food security of China. With good adaptability and disease resistance, landrace germplasm is important for maize improvement. A total of 246 landrace accessions were collected from the maize belts in central China and genotyped with the SLAF-seq (Specific-Locus Amplified Fragment Sequencing) method, and 144,650 SNPs were obtained for each accession. The results showed that the landrace accessions could be divided into three major groups. In the cluster results, Group I included 64 accessions, which mainly belonged to the landrace of White horse teeth; Group II had 71 accessions, which mainly belonged to the lantern red landraces; the rest of the 116 accessions were clustered as Group III, including a variety of types landraces and seven indicator inbred lines. In the results of structure and multidimensional scaling, the accessions' attribution differed with the clusters, the main reason for which is the attribution change in intermediate germplasms. Linkage disequilibrium decay distance was 0.98 kb, which was much lower than that of temperate and tropical maize inbred lines, indicated the much higher genetic diversity of landrace germplasms. The results can help us select suitable landrace germplasms and speed up the process of inbred line development and maize improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) has been widely used to image the three-dimensional (3D) structures and functions of various millimeter-size bio-specimen such as zebrafish. However, the sample adsorption and scattering cause shading of the light-sheet illumination, preventing the even 3D image of thick samples. Herein, we report a continuous-rotational light-sheet microscope (CR-LSM) that enables simultaneous 3D bright-field and fluorescence imaging. With a high-accuracy rotational stage, CR-LSM records the outline projections and the fluorescent images of the sample at multiple rotation angles. Then, 3D morphology and fluorescent structure were reconstructed with a developed algorithm. Using CR-LSM, zebrafish's whole-fish contour and blood vessel structures were obtained simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Neutrophil percentage-to-albumin ratio (NPAR) was significantly correlated with diabetes-related complications. There are little data about NPAR and mortality risk in individuals with diabetes., Methods: This study included 3858 diabetes patients from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted from 1988 to 2018. Using a restricted cubic spline (RCS), the relationship between the NPAR and mortality risk was shown. Multivariable Cox regression models were used to evaluate the relationship between the NPAR and diabetes-cause and all-cause death. An examination of the time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was used to assess how well the NPAR predicted survival outcomes., Results: Among 3858 diabetes individuals, a total of 1198 (31.1%) died over a mean follow-up of 7.86 years; of these, 326 (8.4%) had diabetes-related deaths and 872 (22.6%) had deaths from other causes. The RCS regression analysis showed a positive linear association between the NPAR and all-cause and diabetes-cause mortality. High NPAR group had a significantly higher risk of all-cause and diabetes-cause mortality in univariate and multivariate analysis. Compared with low NPAR group, high NPAR group had a low survival rate of diabetes cases in all-cause death and diabetes-cause mortality with area under the curve of the 3-, 5-, and 10-year ROC curve being 0.725, 0.739, and 0.734 for all-cause mortality and 0.754, 0.752, and 0.745 for diabetes-cause mortality, respectively., Conclusion: In summary, we examined 3858 diabetes patients from NHANES database (1998-2018) and suggested NPAR as a biomarker for all-cause and diabetes-cause mortality prediction., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Clinical Laboratory Analysis published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

A large number of immune receptors consist of nucleotide binding site-leucine rich repeat (NBS-LRR) proteins and leucine rich repeat-receptor-like kinases (LRR-RLK) that play a crucial role in plant disease resistance. Although many NBS-LRR genes have been previously identified in Zea mays, there are no reports on identifying NBS-LRR genes encoded in the N-terminal Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) motif and identifying genome-wide LRR-RLK genes. In the present study, 151 NBS-LRR genes and 226 LRR-RLK genes were identified after performing bioinformatics analysis of the entire maize genome. Of these identified genes, 64 NBS-LRR genes and four TIR-NBS-LRR genes were identified for the first time. The NBS-LRR genes are unevenly distributed on each chromosome with gene clusters located at the distal end of each chromosome, while LRR-RLK genes have a random chromosomal distribution with more paired genes. Additionally, six LRR-RLK/RLPs including FLS2, PSY1R, PSKR1, BIR1, SERK3, and Cf5 were characterized in Zea mays for the first time. Their predicted amino acid sequences have similar protein structures with their respective homologues in other plants, indicating that these maize LRR-RLK/RLPs have the same functions as their homologues act as immune receptors. The identified gene sequences would assist in the study of their functions in maize.