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The ornamental plants of Althaea rosea Cavan. were exposed to cadmium (Cd) at concentrations of 0, 5, 10, 50 and 100 mg·kg−1 to evaluate the potential of accumulation capacity and tolerance ability. The results showed that A. rosea was a Cd tolerance plant, and Cd accumulation was 4.57 mg·kg−1 in shoot and 9.43 mg·kg−1 in root at 100 mg·kg−1 Cd concentration. The high tolerance ability could be explained by the distribution characteristics and the defense mechanism. The accumulated Cd was allocated in root, older leaves, and subcellular level of the cell wall and supernatant soluble fraction to protect the physiological leaves from damage. The defense systems included the enzyme systems of superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) that could effectively eliminate the excessive ROS, and the non-enzymes system of total soluble proteins and non-protein thiols (NP-SH) that played an important role in detoxification. Thus, A. rosea could be used as a potential species for phytoremediation in Cd contaminated areas and beautify the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plastid genomes (plastomes) of non-photosynthetic plants generally undergo gene loss and pseudogenization. Despite massive plastomes reported in different parasitism types of the broomrape family (Orobanchaceae), more plastomes representing different degradation patterns in a single genus are expected to be explored. Here, we sequence and assemble the complete plastomes of three holoparasitic Cistanche species (C. salsa , C. mongolica , and C. sinensis) and compare them with the available plastomes of Orobanchaceae. We identified that the diverse degradation trajectories under purifying selection existed among three Cistanche clades, showing obvious size differences in the entire plastome, long single copy region, and non-coding region, and different patterns of the retention/loss of functional genes. With few exceptions of putatively functional genes, massive plastid fragments, which have been lost and transferred into the mitochondrial or nuclear genomes, are non-functional. In contrast to the equivalents of the Orobanche species, some plastid-derived genes with diverse genomic locations are found in Cistanche. The early and initially diverged clades in different genera such as Cistanche and Aphyllon possess obvious patterns of plastome degradation, suggesting that such key lineages should be considered prior to comparative analysis of plastome evolution, especially in the same genus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The soil microbial biomass, atmospheric carbon dioxide and abundance of decomposer are influenced by rate and addition pattern of glucose carbon. The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of single and repeated additions of glucose-C on soil microbial biomass carbon (SMBC) and CO2 response in black soil of China. The incubator study comprising of 116-days was conducted in different fertility levels of black soil of Jilin province of China, to determine the effects of glucose addition patterns viz single addition (2% glucose-C once application) and repeated addition (2% glucose-C in five splits) on soil microbial biomass carbon and CO2 accumulation. Fortygram air dried soil was filled into 250 ml Schott bottle and bottles were arranged in CRD-factorial design with 5 repeats. Factor (A), included glucose addition patterns (single & repeated additions). Factor (B), consisted of soil fertility levels: low, medium and high on the basis of soil organic carbon. Thereafter glucose-C (2%) solution was added drop wise to soil. The addition patterns showed positive response on SMBC, CO2 evolved and CO2 accumulation. Over all mean (low, medium and high fertility soils) of repeated addition depicted 32% and 0.92% higher values of SMBC than control and single additions, respectively. The CO2 emission of repeated addition was 21.3% higher in low fertility soil. The mean CO2 accumulation showed higher values in low fertility soil by single addition than repeated and control in all soils. Single glucose-C addition in combination with different soil fertility levels augmented the microbial biomass and triggered carbon mineralization for shorter period (up to 3 weeks). The repeated addition of glucose in combination with different soil fertility levels also enhanced soil microbial biomass carbon and CO2 in longer incubation period. It is concluded from this study that microbial starvation for organic carbon was very high hence; repeated addition may be suggested to meet C demand of microbes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fringe projection profilometry (FPP) has been widely used in various fields because of its high precision and efficiency. However, fringe images containing overexposed areas are obtained by traditional FPP for high-reflective object surfaces, which leads to errors in absolute phase and three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction results. A robust 3D reconstruction technique based on a polarization state-based ternary polarization coding strategy is proposed to address these errors. Instead of the light intensity coding patterns, the polarization coding patterns are used in this method. Next, the S1 image is calculated using the polarization image captured by the camera. The Stokes parameter is utilized to segment the fringe codewords without using a specially designed threshold. The proposed method enhanced the stability of the fringes, improved the quality of the fringes, and reduced the number of fringe patterns. Experimental results verified that the proposed method has higher robustness than the conventional method in the measurement of objects with high-reflective surfaces. The results reveal that the proposed method can suppress the effect of highlight areas in the reconstruction of high-reflective surfaces to obtain accurate absolute phases and reconstruct the 3D point cloud data reliably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Many plants sense the seasonal cues, day length or photoperiod changes, to align the timing of the developmental transition to flowering with changing seasons for reproductive success. Inductive day lengths through the photoperiod pathway induce the expression of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) or FT relatives that encode a major mobile florigen to promote flowering. In Arabidopsis thaliana, under inductive long days the photoperiod pathway output CONSTANS (CO) accumulates toward the end of the day, and associates with the B and C subunits of Nuclear Factor Y (NF‐Y) to form the NF‐CO complex that acts to promote FT expression near dusk, whereas Polycomb group (PcG) proteins function to silence FT expression. How NF‐CO acts to antagonize the function of PcG proteins to regulate FT expression remains unclear. Here, we show that the NF‐CO complex bound to the proximal FT promoter, through chromatin looping, acts in concert with an NF‐Y complex bound to a distal enhancer to reduce the levels of PcG proteins, including both Polycomb repressive complex 1 (PRC1) and PRC2 at the FT promoter, leading to a relieving of Polycomb silencing and thus FT de‐repression near dusk. Thus, our study provides molecular insights on how the ‘active’ photoperiod pathway and the ‘repressive’ Polycomb silencing system interact to control temporal FT expression, conferring the long‐day induction of flowering in Arabidopsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In agro-ecosystems, the relationship between soil fertility and crop yield is mediated by manure application. In this study, an 8-year field experiment was performed with four fertilizer treatments (NPK, NPKM1, NPKM2, and NPKM3), where NPK refers to chemical fertilizer and M1, M2, and M3 refer to manure application rates of 15, 30, and 45 Mg ha−1 year−1, respectively. The results showed that the NPKM (NPKM1, NPKM2, and NPKM3) treatments produced greater and more stable yields (4.95-5.45 Mg ha−1 and 0.59-0.75) than the NPK treatment (4.01 Mg ha−1 and 0.50). Crop yields under the NPKM treatments showed two trends, with a rate of decrease of 0.48-0.83 Mg ha−1 year−1 during the first 4 years and a rate of increase of 0.10-0.25 Mg ha−1 year−1 during the last 4 years. The soil organic carbon (SOC) significantly increased under all treatments. The estimated annual SOC decomposition rate was 0.35 Mg ha−1 year−1 and the equilibrium SOC level was 6.22 Mg ha−1. Soil total nitrogen (N), available N, total phosphorus (P) and available P under the NPKM treatments increased by 0.15-0.26, 15-33, 0.17-0.66 and 45-159 g kg−1, respectively, compared with the NPK treatment. Manure application mainly influenced crop yield by affecting the soil TN, available N, and available P, which accounted for up to 64% of the crop yield variation. Taken together, applying manure can determine or at least improve the effects of soil fertility on crop yield in acidic soils in South China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ara h 2 was purified from peanuts that were thermally treated by various processes, including boiling, glycation, frying and roasting. The allergenicity of Ara h 2 in Balb/c mice and the influence of thermal processing on the structural characteristics, and binding capacity of three core antigenic epitopes were studied. The results demonstrated that boiling, glycation and frying induced the down-regulation of the allergenicity of Ara h 2 in Balb/c mice, the collapse of its tertiary/secondary structure, and a reduction in the core epitope binding capacity; roasting showed a comparable allergenicity and the weakest inhibitory effect on core epitope binding capacity. These results indicate that thermal processing causes alteration of the protein structure and core epitopes of Ara h 2, and may affect its allergenicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]