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Summary: Grain yield is one of the most important and complex trait for genetic improvement in crops; it is known to be controlled by a number of genes known as quantitative trait loci (QTLs). In the past decade, many yield‐contributing QTLs have been identified in crops. However, it remains unclear whether those QTLs confer the same yield performance in different genetic backgrounds. Here, we performed CRISPR/Cas9‐mediated QTL editing in five widely‐cultivated rice varieties and revealed that the same QTL can have diverse, even opposing, effects on grain yield in different genetic backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) named hybrid MOEA with adaptive multi-population strategy (HMOEA-AMP) is proposed for multi-objective optimization problems (MOPs).In the framework of HMOEA-AMP, the particle swarm optimization and differential evolution are hybridized to guide the exploitation of the Pareto optimal solutions and the exploration of the optimal distribution of the achieved solutions, respectively. Multiple subpopulations are constructed in an adaptive fashion according to a number of scalar subproblems, which are decomposed from a MOP through a set of predefined weight vectors. Comprehensive experiments using a set of benchmark are conducted to investigate the performance of HMOEA-AMP in comparison with several state-of-the-art MOEAs. The experimental results show the advantage of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The operation process design is one of the key issues in the manufacturing and service sectors. As a typical operation process, the scheduling with consideration of the deteriorating effect has been widely studied; however, the current literature only studied single function requirement and rarely considered the multiple function requirements which are critical for a real-world scheduling process. In this article, two function requirements are involved in the design of a scheduling process with consideration of the deteriorating effect and then formulated into two objectives of a mathematical programming model. A novel multiobjective evolutionary algorithm is proposed to solve this model with combination of three strategies, i.e. a multiple population scheme, a rule-based local search method and an elitist preserve strategy. To validate the proposed model and algorithm, a series of randomly-generated instances are tested and the experimental results indicate that the model is effective and the proposed algorithm can achieve the satisfactory performance which outperforms the other state-of-the-art multiobjective evolutionary algorithms, such as nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II and multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition, on all the test instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, along with our country cadmium pollution in rice is increasingly serious, the safety and quality of rice in China has been under serious threat. Contamination of rice with cadmium also draws great attention because of its serious threat to food safety and its potential harm to human health. Thus, it's very important and necessary for food industry to find a method to decrease the degree of cadmium pollution in polished rice. Cadmium in rice has been demonstrated that it mainly bonded with protein and little cadmium accumulated in starch and other nutritional ingredients. And processing of soaking, heating, washing can reduce the content of cadmium in rice powder, but the effect of cadmium removal is not obvious. Hence, it also was proved that the amount of heavy metals in rice dropped significantly after fermentation using lactic acid bacteria. Therefore, in order to resolve the problem of "excessive cadmium" polished rice utilization, this paper tried to reduce the content of cadmium in "excessive cadmium" polished rice(cadmium content of 0.6479mg/kg) by lactic acid bacteria and produce safe fermented rice products, and the fermentation conditions were studied and optimized. The mixed strains of Lactobacillus plantarum and Pediococcus pentosaceus(2:1,v/v) were selected as the suitable fermentation strain by comparative test. The effects of rice powder size, fermentation time, fermentation temperature and inoculum size of mixed strains on the removal rate of cadmium in polished rice also were evaluated by single-factor experiment. The results showed that fermentation time, fermentation temperature and inoculum size of mixed strains could significantly affect the removal rate of cadmium(P<0.05). However, the effect of rice powder size(20-100 mesh) on the removal rate of cadmium was not significant(P>0.05). Then, fermentation time, fermentation temperature and inoculum size of mixed strains were further researched using a three-variable, three level Box-Benhnken design to optimize the fermentation conditions. The results indicated that the interaction effects of fermentation temperature and fermentation time, fermentation temperature and inoculum size of mixed strains on the removal rate of cadmium were extremely significant (P<0.01). Moreover, the significant degree of three factors was in order as fermentation temperature (A, P<0.01)>fermentation time (B, P<0.01)>inoculum size of mixed strains (C, P<0.01). When rice powder size was selected as 40 mesh, the optimum fermentation conditions were obtained with fermentation temperature of 40.8, fermentation time of 23.4 h, and the inoculum size of 3%. In this optimal conditions, the verification test demonstrated that the removal rate of cadmium in polished rice powder was 85.73%, and the content of cadmium in fermented rice noodle was 0.0925 mg/kg and met the national food sanitation standard (0.2 mg/kg). In addition, the verification test showed that there was a good fit between the experimental and the predicted values, relative standard deviation was 0.918. Therefore, the results indicated that this method could efficiently remove cadmium in polished rice and provide a reference for industrial production of fermented rice noodle. The results of research also can provide a theoretical basis for further study on the mechanism on cadmium removal in rice by lactic acid bacteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Objective] The research aimed to analyze characteristics of atmospheric electric field in polluted area. [Method] By using data of atmospheric electric field meter in Taiyuan in 2009, daily and annual changes of atmospheric electric field in Taiyuan were analyzed. [Result] Atmospheric electric field intensity in Taiyuan was higher than that in other areas. Daily change was double-peak double-valley type. The first highest value appeared at nightfall, and the second highest value was before the noon. The first lowest value appeared in early morning, while the second lowest value appeared after the noon. Annual change was single-peak single-valley type. The maximum appeared in winter, while the minimum appeared in summer. [Conclusion] When forecasting thunderstorm, in the area with higher aerosol content, alarm threshold of electric field should be adjusted via comparison with actual observation, which had very strong regional characteristics. By analyzing real-time monitoring data of atmospheric electric field, thunderstorm forecast could be realized, and timeliness and accuracy of warning and forecast could be increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a genetic analysis and identification of a large leaf angles mutant found in rice. Establishment of a large number of T-DNA insertional rice mutant pools; Isolation of the genes from the rice; Participation of WRKY gene in plant developmental processes.

Multi-layered structure of reconstituted meat-based products from minced fish was formed by physical extrusion, followed by an investigation into the impact of extrusion strength on structural and physicochemical properties before and after frying. Under an appropriate pressure (3-9 kPa), the air within minced fish underwent enrichment and rearrangement to form a stratified phase, promoting the formation of multi-layered structure during frying. Conversely, the lower pressure (≤1.5 kPa) was insufficient for phase separation and directional rearrangement, while the higher pressure (≥15 kPa) would cause the stratified phase to flow out of food system. Moreover, by directly increasing water mobility and meat compactness, physical extrusion indirectly caused more water loss and stronger ionic bonds during frying, which was positively correlated with multi-layered structure. However, an excessive pressure caused an increase in random coil and hydrophobic interactions during frying, which was negatively correlated with multi-layered structure. In conclusion, appropriate physical extrusion strength promoted the formation of multi-layered structure., 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 Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Weeds are one of the main factors affecting crop growth, making weed control a pressing global problem. In recent years, interest in intelligent mechanical weed-control equipment has been growing., Methods: We propose a semantic segmentation network, RDS&#95;Unet, based on corn seedling fields built upon an improved U-net network. This network accurately recognizes weeds even under complex environmental conditions, facilitating the use of mechanical weeding equipment for reducing weed density. Our research utilized field-grown maize seedlings and accompanying weeds in expansive fields. We integrated the U-net semantic segmentation network, employing ResNeXt-50 for feature extraction in the encoder stage. In the decoder phase, Layer 1 uses deformable convolution with adaptive offsets, replacing traditional convolution. Furthermore, concurrent spatial and channel squeeze and excitation is incorporated after ordinary convolutional layers in Layers 2, 3, and 4., Results: Compared with existing classical semantic segmentation models such as U-net, Pspnet, and DeeplabV3, our model demonstrated superior performance on our specially constructed seedling grass semantic segmentation dataset, CGSSD, during the maize seedling stage. The Q6mean intersection over union (MIoU), precision, and recall of this network are 82.36%, 91.36%, and 89.45%, respectively. Compared to those of the original network, the proposed network achieves improvements of 5.91, 3.50, and 5.49 percentage points in the MIoU, precision, and recall, respectively. The detection speed is 12.6 frames per second. In addition, ablation experiments further confirmed the impactful contribution of each improvement component on the overall semantic segmentation performance., Discussion: This study provides theoretical and technical support for the automated operation of intelligent mechanical weeding devices., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Cui, Tan, Bai and Fu.)

With improved quality of life, types of waste have become increasingly complex, and waste classification has become a global issue. As a result, the world is facing a waste-classified collection problem. However, the existing research on waste collection has paid little attention to waste classification. In this paper, we consider the pretreatment and classification of waste transfer stations. In recent years, global warming caused by carbon emissions has become a serious problem. Therefore, this work proposes the first dual-objective multi-depot two-echelon green vehicle routing system with various pickups to optimize waste-classified collection based on a mixed-integer programming model. To ensure the efficiency of our developed model, we designed a multiobjective brainstorming optimization algorithm with a novel clustering strategy based on the rank-clustering method and differential mutation. Compared with two classical multiobjective optimization algorithms in various generated test instances and a real-world case, the experimental results showed that the proposed model can help sanitation departments improve the economic and environmental benefits of waste-classified collection, and the proposed algorithm is an excellent optimizer for solving associated problems., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Inspired by Nature's ingenuity, considerable progress has been made in recent years to develop chemoenzymatic processes by the integration of environmentally friendly feature of biocatalysis with versatile reactivity of chemocatalysis. However, the current types of chemoenzymatic processes are relatively few and mostly rely on metal catalysts. Here, we report a previously unexplored cooperative chemoenzymatic system for the synthesis of N-heterocycles. Starting from alcohols and amines, benzimidazole, pyrazine, quinazoline, indole, and quinoline can be obtained in excellent yields in water with O 2 as the terminal oxidant. Synthetic bridged flavin analog is served as a bifunctional organocatalyst for the regeneration of cofactor nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide in the bioprocess and oxidative cyclodehydrogenation in the chemoprocess. Compared to the classical acceptorless dehydrogenative coupling strategy, being metal and base free, requiring only water as solvent, and not needing atmosphere protection were observed for the present method, exhibiting a favorable green and sustainable alternative.

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has caused severe damage to the supply chain such that manufacturers may face long-term supply disruptions. In this paper, a disruption recovery strategy of a supply chain system is investigated from the perspective of product change, in which the life cycle and design change time of a new product are both considered in order to minimize the losses of manufacturer after disruptions. A mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is presented to address the disruption recovery problem for this multi-period, multi-supplier, and multi-stage supply chain system. A two-stage heuristic algorithm is designed to solve the problem. Experimental results show that the proposed disruption mitigation strategy can effectively reduce the profit loss of manufacturer due to supply disruption, and demonstrate the impact of product life cycle in the selection of new product design planning. A sensitivity analysis is performed to ensure the applicability of the model in the actual environment, which illustrates the effect of different parameter changes on the results. This work can help manufacturers establish an optimal recovery strategy whenever the supply chain system experiences supply disruptions., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Nowadays, the reverse supply chain management receives much attention because of its critical role in environmental protection and economic development. Disassembly is very important in the reverse supply chain. It aims at dismantling valuable components from end-of-life products which are then remanufactured into like-new ones after reprocessing and reassembly operations. To efficiently organize and manage the remanufacturing process from the perspective of sustainable development, this work proposes a stochastic disassembly sequence planning problem with consideration of noise pollution and energy consumption to achieve disassembly profit maximization. A chance-constrained programming model is formulated to describe it mathematically. Then, a discrete marine predators algorithm combined with a stochastic simulation approach is specially designed. By conducting simulation experiments on some real-life instances and comparing the designed approach with two popularly known methods in literature, we mainly find that the proposed model and approach can make better disassembly plan for the investigated problem with maximal profit subject to the given noise pollution and energy consumption constraints. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can efficiently and effectively handle the considered problem, which contributes to reaching the highly reliable and environmentally sustainable disassembly process.

ING3 (inhibitor of growth gene 3) is a member of the ING gene family, and is considered as a candidate tumor suppressor gene. In order to explore the roles of ING3 in tumorigenesis and cancer progression of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), ING3 expression was assessed in 173 cases of HNSCC by immunohistochemistry. The expression of ING3 was also compared to clinicopathological variables, and the expression of several tumorigenic markers. Nuclear expression of ING3 in HNSCC was significantly lower than that in dysplasia and normal epithelium, and was negatively correlated with a poor-differentiated status, T staging and TNM staging. In contrast, cytoplasmic expression of ING3 was significantly increased in HNSCC, and was statistically associated with lymph node metastasis and 14-3-3η expression. In addition, nuclear expression of ING3 was positively correlated with the expression of p300, p21 and acetylated p53. In conclusion, decreases in nuclear ING3 may play important roles in tumorigenesis, progression and tumor differentiation in HNSCC. Increases in cytoplasmic ING3 may be due to 14-3-3η binding and may also be involved in malignant progression. Nuclear ING3 may modulate the transactivation of target genes, promoting apoptosis through interactions with p300 and p21. Moreover, ING3 may interact with p300 to upregulate the level of acetylation of p53, and promote p53-mediated cell cycle arrest, senescence and/or apoptosis. Therefore, ING3 may be a potential tumor suppressor and a possible therapeutic target in HNSCC.

Flowering time is an important agronomic trait that coordinates the plant life cycle with regional adaptability and thereby impacts yield potentials for cereal crops. The CONSTANS (CO)-like gene family plays vital roles in the regulation of flowering time. CO-like proteins are typically divided into four phylogenetic groups in rice. Several genes from groups I, III, and IV have been functionally characterized, though little is known about the genes of group II in rice. We report the functional characterization in rice of a constitutive floral inhibitor, OsCOL16, encoding a group-II CO-like protein that delays flowering time and increases plant height and grain yield. Overexpression of OsCOL16 resulted in late heading under both long-day and short-day conditions. OsCOL16 expression exhibits a diurnal oscillation and serves as a transcription factor with transcriptional activation activity. We determined that OsCOL16 up-regulates the expression of the floral repressor Ghd7, leading to down-regulation of the expression of Ehd1, Hd3a, and RFT1. Moreover, genetic diversity and evolutionary analyses suggest that remarkable differences in flowering times correlate with two major alleles of OsCOL16. Our combined molecular biology and phylogeographic analyses revealed that OsCOL16 plays an important role in regulating rice photoperiodic flowering, allowing for environmental adaptation of rice., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Homogalacturonan (HG) is the main component of pectins. HG methylesterification has recently emerged as a key determinant controlling cell attachment, organ formation, and phyllotaxy. However, whether and how HG methylesterification affects intercellular metabolite transport has rarely been reported. Here, we identified and characterized knockout mutants of the rice ( Oryza sativa ) OsQUA2 gene encoding a putative pectin methyltransferase. Osqua2 mutants exhibit a remarkable decrease in the degree of methylesterification of HG in the culm-sieve element cell wall and a markedly reduced grain yield. The culm of Osqua2 mutant plants contains excessive sucrose (Suc), and a 13 CO 2 feeding experiment showed that the Suc overaccumulation in the culm was caused by blocked Suc translocation. These and other findings demonstrate that OsQUA2 is essential for maintaining a high degree of methylesterification of HG in the rice culm-sieve element cell wall, which may be critical for efficient Suc partitioning and grain filling. In addition, our results suggest that the apoplastic pathway is involved in long-distance Suc transport in rice. The identification and characterization of the OsQUA2 gene and its functionality revealed a previously unknown contribution of HG methylesterification and provided insight into how modification of the cell wall regulates intercellular transport in plants., (© 2017 American Society of Plant Biologists. All Rights Reserved.)

The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-associated endonuclease 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system has emerged as a promising technology for specific genome editing in many species. Here we constructed one vector targeting eight agronomic genes in rice using the CRISPR/Cas9 multiplex genome editing system. By subsequent genetic transformation and DNA sequencing, we found that the eight target genes have high mutation efficiencies in the T 0 generation. Both heterozygous and homozygous mutations of all editing genes were obtained in T 0 plants. In addition, homozygous sextuple, septuple, and octuple mutants were identified. As the abundant genotypes in T 0 transgenic plants, various phenotypes related to the editing genes were observed. The findings demonstrate the potential of the CRISPR/Cas9 system for rapid introduction of genetic diversity during crop breeding.

A rice mutant with light-green leaves was discovered from a transgenic line of Oryza sativa. The mutant has reduced chlorophyll content and abnormal chloroplast morphology throughout its life cycle. Genetic analysis revealed that a single nuclear-encoded recessive gene is responsible for the mutation, here designated as lgl1. To isolate the lgl1 gene, a high-resolution physical map of the chromosomal region around the lgl1 gene was made using a mapping population consisting of 1984 mutant individuals. The lgl1 gene was mapped in the 76.5kb region between marker YG4 and marker YG5 on chromosome 12. Sequence analysis revealed that there was a 39bp deletion within the fourth exon of the candidate gene Os12g0420200 (TIGR locus Os12g23180) encoding a chloroplast stem-loop-binding protein of 41kDa b (CSP41b). The lgl1 mutation was rescued by transformation with the wild type CSP41b gene. Accordingly, the CSP41b gene is identified as the LGL1 gene. CSP41b was transcribed in various tissues and was mainly expressed in leaves. Expression of CSP41b-GFP fusion protein indicated that CSP41b is localized in chloroplasts. The expression levels of some key genes involved in chlorophyll biosynthesis and photosynthesis, such as ChlD, ChlI, Hema1, Ygl1, POR, Cab1R, Cab2R, PsaA, and rbcL, was significantly changed in the lgl1 mutant. Our results demonstrate that CSP41b is a novel gene required for normal leaf color and chloroplast morphology in rice., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Key Message: Moderate overexpression of CYP734A4 improves grain number per main panicle and seed setting rate. Brassinosteroid (BR) homeostasis and signaling are crucial for plant growth and development. CYP734A genes encode cytochrome P450 monooxygenases that control the level of bioactive BRs by degrading BRs. However, fertile plants overexpressing CYP734As have not been reported in rice. Here, we isolated a novel semi-dominant mutant brd3-D, in which T-DNA was inserted approximately 4 kb upstream of the CYP734A4 gene (GenBank Accession AB488667), causing its overexpression. The mutant is characterized by dwarfism, small grains, and erect leaves and is less sensitive to brassinolide-induced lamina joint inclination and primary root elongation. However, increased grain number per main panicle and improved seed setting rate were also found in heterozygous brd3-D. To our knowledge, these traits have not been reported in other BR deficient mutants. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis indicated that phenotypic severity of the brd3-D mutant is positively correlated with the CYP734A4 transcription level. In accordance with the increased expression of CYP734A4, a lower castasterone (a rice BR) content was detected in the brd3-D mutants. Knockout of brd3-D by using the CRISPR/Cas9 system rescued the mutation. In addition, transgenic plants overexpressing CYP734A4 with the 35S enhancer mimicked the brd3-D phenotypes, confirming that moderate overexpression of the CYP734A4 gene can improve grain number per main panicle and the seed setting rate in rice. Further studies showed that overexpression of CYP734A4 influences the expressions of multiple genes involved in the BR pathway, and the expression of CYP734A4 is induced by exogenous brassinolide, confirming the negative regulatory role of CYP734A4 in the BR pathway. CYP734A4 might provide a useful gene resource for developing new high-yielding rice varieties.

The preliminary role of calcineurin B-like protein-interacting protein kinases (CIPKs) in stress response is defined but the exact function of OsCIPK10 gene in rice stress response and its expression pattern yet unclear. In this study we explored the possible functions of OsCIPK10 gene by reverse genetics approaches and also revealed its expression pattern by GUS staining. From the preliminary study of this gene we presumed its function to assist plant to resist stress but over-expressed OsCIPK10 rice transgenic lines showed no significant phenotypic differences from the wild type either under high salt or low potassium conditions, however the gene knockdown plants using inverted repeat strategy presented meaningful healthy plants compared to wild type under the stress of salt. Further we checked the expression profile under high salt and low potassium conditions in wild type and found that OsCIPK10 decreases under high salt and increases on low potassium conditions. So we speculate that OsCIPK10 is actually going to function in response to high salt and low potassium stress. We also explored the expression pattern of this gene using Gus staining and found that gene expresses in all plant tissues, the only exception observed was its higher expression in the vascular tissues.

Gene expression in rice roots under nutritional stress was studied using micro array techniques. The results showed that when re-supplied with sufficient amounts of nutrition after nutrition stress, the expression of OsPra2 (a small G protein which is homologous with Pea Pra2 protein) decreased in the plants root tissue. The cDNA sequence of the OsPra2 gene and its promoter, which is about 1 kb upstream of the translation origin point, was obtained using RT-PCR and PCR approaches. The OsPra2 protein contains four conserved GTP/GDP binding domains and specific domain of Rab small G protein family. The expression of OsPra2 and GST fusion protein in onion epidermal cells showed that OsPra2 protein was localized in the membrane and nucleus of the cell. The fusion expression of OsPra2 promoter and GUS reporter gene in transgenic rice suggested that the OsPra2 promoter allowed GUS expression in coleoptiles and roots. Compared with wild type rice, OsPra2 over expressed transgenic rice showed an obvious dwarf phenotype which resembles the BR deficient rice.

Phospholipase Ds (PLDs) exist in many plants. PLDs catalyse the hydrolysis of phospholipids (e.g. phosphatidylcholine) in cell membrane into phosphatidic acid (PA) and polar free heads (e.g. choline). Two PLD members from rice, OsPLD3 and OsPLD4, were studied by reverse genetics approaches. The results showed that the promoters of OsPLD3 and OsPLD4 could drive the expression of the reporter gene in various tissues of the rice flower organs at different levels. The expression of both genes was induced by wounding and methyl jasmonate (MeJA), but with different intensity at different time intervals. No prominent phenotypes were observed by RNA interference with the gene-specific artificial miRNAs or over-expression of the target genes in rice plants, implying the functional redundancy among different members of the rice PLD family.