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To study the spatial structure and geographic distribution of major active components in medical herb Dipsacus asperoides population, in Guizhou province, the author obtained the asperosaponin VI content among 38 D. asperoides population points. Using spatial statistic and traditional statistic, the spatial variation pattern has been found. Combining the environment variables, it is tried to reveal the geographic distribution rules between group of major active component in medical herb D. asperoides population and group of environmental factors. The results show: the spatial structure of major active component in medical herb D. asperoides population is randomly distributed in global space, but has two aggregation points which have a high positive correlation in local space; environmental factors value for group of major active component in medical herb D. asperoides population has a large difference in the interior-group, but environmental factors value has a small difference in inter-group.

From the beginning of the fourth national survey of the Chinese materia medica resources, there were 22 provinces have conducted pilots. The survey teams have reported immense data, it put forward the very high request to the database system construction. In order to ensure the quality, it is necessary to check and validate the data in database system. Data validation is important methods to ensure the validity, integrity and accuracy of census data. This paper comprehensively introduce the data validation system of the fourth national survey of the Chinese materia medica resources database system, and further improve the design idea and programs of data validation. The purpose of this study is to promote the survey work smoothly.

Objective: To conduct preliminary investigation to the species and reserves of medicinal plants in Huangfu Mountain, and to provide references to the general survey of those plants for medicine., Method: Combined with global positioning system (GPS), the program of investigation with grid sampling was used in this resource survey of medicinal plants., Result: After the preliminary investigation of the plants for medical use of Huangfu Mountain, it is found that there are 103 families with 313 kinds of plants. There are many medicinal plants and large distribution, such as Pseudostellaria heterophylla, Semiaguilegia adoxoides and Pinellia ternate., Conclusion: Huangfu Mount, with so many different kinds of medicinal plants and comfortable environment for part of the medicinal plants to grow, could be developed as a base for planting Chinese herbal medicines.

The paper introduces the basic concept and characteristics of hyperspectral remote sensing, and analyzed the application of hyperspectral remote sensing in the field of plants research. On the basis of the research advances of hyperspectral plant study, paper also analyzed the key facts that effects the application of hyperspectral remote sensing on the some researches which include distinguishing species,monitoring growth and quality etc. It proposed a new ideas and methods for people to research medicinal plants.

Traditional Chinese medicinal resource survey method is time-consuming, strenuous, and having great human influence, the precision is not high enough. This paper, by using spatial information technology, carries on spatial sampling survey for wild medicinal plants resource for generous species to arrange the quadrat scientifically and estimate the suitable area, reserve precisely of medicinal plants. It not only improves the survey precision, but reduces the workload of field survey and provides scientific basis for survey method of pilot work on the fourth national traditional Chinese medicinal resource census.

It is important to understand the ecophysiological characters of plants when exploring mechanisms underlying species substitution in the process of plant succession. In the present study, we selected 34 woody species from different stages of secondary succession in subtropical forests of southern China, and measured their hydraulic conductivity, gas exchange rates, leaf nutrients and drought-tolerance traits such as xylem resistance to cavitation, turgor loss point and carbon isotope ratio. Principal component analysis revealed that early-, mid- and late-successional species were significantly separated along axis 1, which was strongly associated with hydraulic-photosynthetic coordination. In contrast to species distributed in late-successional forest, early-successional species had the highest hydraulic conductivity, net photosynthetic rates, photosynthetic nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiencies, but had the lowest photosynthetic water-use efficiency. However, changes of the measured drought-tolerance traits of the 34 species along the succession did not demonstrate a clear trend - no significant correlations between these traits and plant successional stages were found. Moreover, the trade-off between hydraulic efficiency and safety was not identified. Taken together, our results suggested that hydraulic efficiency and photosynthetic function, rather than drought tolerance, play an important role in species distributions along plant succession in subtropical forests., (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

Background and Aims: The co-occurring of evergreen and deciduous angiosperm trees in Asian tropical dry forests on karst substrates suggests the existence of different water-use strategies among species. In this study it is hypothesized that the co-occurring evergreen and deciduous trees differ in stem hydraulic traits and leaf water relationships, and there will be correlated evolution in drought tolerance between leaves and stems., Methods: A comparison was made of stem hydraulic conductivity, vulnerability curves, wood anatomy, leaf life span, leaf pressure-volume characteristics and photosynthetic capacity of six evergreen and six deciduous tree species co-occurring in a tropical dry karst forest in south-west China. The correlated evolution of leaf and stem traits was examined using both traditional and phylogenetic independent contrasts correlations., Key Results: It was found that the deciduous trees had higher stem hydraulic efficiency, greater hydraulically weighted vessel diameter (D(h)) and higher mass-based photosynthetic rate (A(m)); while the evergreen species had greater xylem-cavitation resistance, lower leaf turgor-loss point water potential (π(0)) and higher bulk modulus of elasticity. There were evolutionary correlations between leaf life span and stem hydraulic efficiency, A(m), and dry season π(0). Xylem-cavitation resistance was evolutionarily correlated with stem hydraulic efficiency, D(h), as well as dry season π(0). Both wood density and leaf density were closely correlated with leaf water-stress tolerance and A(m)., Conclusions: The results reveal the clear distinctions in stem hydraulic traits and leaf water-stress tolerance between the co-occurring evergreen and deciduous angiosperm trees in an Asian dry karst forest. A novel pattern was demonstrated linking leaf longevity with stem hydraulic efficiency and leaf water-stress tolerance. The results show the correlated evolution in drought tolerance between stems and leaves.

Lianas are an important component of tropical forests and often abundant in open habitats, such as tree-fall gaps, forest edges, and disturbed forests. The abundance of lianas in tropical forests has been increasing as a result of global environmental change and increasing forest fragmentation. In order to understand this phenomenon in terms of leaf functional traits and to evaluate their competitive potential, we conducted a cost-benefit analysis of leaves from 18 liana species and 19 tree species in a tropical seasonal rain forest. The results revealed that lianas were scattered in a group distinct from trees along the first axis of a principal component analysis using 15 leaf ecophysiological traits, being located at the quick-return end of the leaf economics spectrum, with higher specific leaf area and photosynthetic rates (A), higher photosynthetic nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) use efficiencies, a lower leaf construction cost per unit leaf area (CC) and cost-benefit ratio (CC/A), and a shorter leaf life span (LLS). Trees showed the opposite trends. The results indicate that lianas can grow faster and capture resources more efficiently than trees in disturbed, open habitats. The positive relationship between LLS and CC/A revealed a trade-off between leaf construction cost and benefit over time. The 37 species analyzed had a mean foliar N/P ratio of 20, indicating that the forest was characterized by a P deficit. With an increasing atmospheric CO(2) concentration, the higher nutrient use efficiency could benefit lianas more than trees in terms of productivity, possibly also contributing to the increasing abundance of lianas in nutrient-limited tropical forests.

With the method of solid phase microextraction (SPME), a total of twenty-five volatiles were collected from rice plants induced by Nilaparvata lugens, and after applying azadirachtin fourteen of them were qualitatively identified by gas chromatography coupled by mass spectrometry (GC-MS), mainly of nine kinds of sesquiterpenes. Comparing with healthy rice plants, the plants attacked by N. lugens had more kinds of volatiles, including limonene, linalool, methyl salicylate, unknown 6, unknown 7, zingiberene, nerolidol, and hexadecane. Applying azadirachtin did not result in the production of new kind volatiles, but affected the relative concentrations of the volatiles induced by N. lugens. The proportions of limonene, linalool, methyl salicylate, unknown 6, zingiberene, and hexadecane changed obviously with the concentration of applied azadirachtin, while those of methyl salicylate, unknown 6, unknown 7, zingiberene, and nerolidol changed significantly with the days after azadirachtin application. Azadirachtin concentration, rice variety, and N. lugens density had significant interactions on the relative concentrations of all test N. lugens-induced volatiles.

Bemisia tabaci, a pest insect with stronger capabilities of flying and host plant-exploitation, is capable of flying 150 m high and over a distance as far as 7 km, but hardly flies higher than 0. 5 m and long distance in food-abundant areas. B. tabaci has the characteristics of both searching-and migrating flying, which enable it to exploit and locate on suitable hosts. Up to now, no oogenesis-flight syndrome of B. tabaci has been detected. Visual spectrum, air temperature and relative humidity, host quality, and wind speed are the main factors affecting the flight behavior of B. tabaci. In this paper, the flying capability of B. tabaci and the factors affecting its flight behavior were summarized, and the corresponding IPM strategies in the areas where B. tabaci could not overwintering in open field were discussed.

Objective: To investigate the relation of transfer growth factor (TGF-beta1) and beta-glucuronidase (beta-GCD) on the occurrence and progress of pancreatic cancer., Methods: The expression of TGF-beta1 and beta-GCD in the pancreatic cancer tissue and normal pancreatic tissue was determined synchronously using ABC method of immunohistochemistry., Results: The percentage of TGF-beta1 positive cells was significantly higher in pancreatic cancer tissue (43.8%+/-5.2%) than in adjacent pancreatic tissue (28.7%+/-3.6%, P<0.01). The worse the cancer cells differentiated and lymph nodes metastasis, the more over-expression of TGF-beta1. The percentage of beta-GCD positive cells was also significantly higher in the pancreatic cancer tissue (62.5%+/-4.1%) than in the adjacent pancreatic tissue (33.5%+/-2.8%, P<0.01). The degree of over-expression of beta-GCD was related to the degree of cancer cells differentiation, but not to the lymph nodes metastasis. The expression of TGF-beta1 was significantly correlated with the expression of beta-GCD in pancreatic cancer tissue., Conclusions: The genesis of pancreatic cancer results from multi-factor, multi-step and multi-gene variation. The synchronous detection of TGF-beta1 and beta-GCD helps to determine the malignant degree of tumors and the prognosis of patients with such disease.

A novel 21 kD calcium-binding protein from rabbit appendix B lymphocytes has been purified and characterized. Through heat-denaturation, using Phenyl-Sepharose and DEAE-Sepharose chromatography, we obtained 5.3 mg SDS-PAGE homogeneous CaBP(21) from 1 kg lymphocyte cells. Amino acid analysis showed the acidic amino acid content (Asp + Glu) to be 26% after HCL hydrolysis. The blocking of the N-terminus of CaBP(21) prevents the de novo Edman degradation, like most of the other calcium-binding proteins. CaBP(21) has 46% of hydrophobic amino acid (with Gly, without Trp) content, 10% of basic amino acid content and 44% of acidic and polar amino acids. Peptide mapping and SDS-PAGE combined Sephadex G-25 gel filtration proves that CaBP(21) consists of two identical or similar subunits. Ca(2+)-binding assays using Arsenazo III indicated one protein to bind 4 Ca(2+) with dissociation constant (K(d)) for Ca(2+) about 10(-5) mol/L.

The analysis of gibberellin GA3 by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was carried out with mu Bondapak C18 column. The developed reversed phase HPLC procedure enables the separation of different GAs with high resolution by means of ionic suppression, including the separation of double bond isomers GA1 and GA3. This method is convenient (without the necessity of derivatization), rapid (15 min for one overall run), sensitive (0.5 microgram is sufficient for precise assay), and has fine linearity (r = 0.999, n = 5) and reproducibility (relative standard deviation < 2%, n = 4).