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Auxin plays important roles throughout plant growth and development. However, the mechanisms of auxin regulation of plant structure are poorly understood. In this study, we identified a transcription factor (TF) of the BARLEY B RECOMBINANT/BASIC PENTACYSTEINE (BBR/BPC) family in apple (Malus × domestica), MdBPC2. It was highly expressed in dwarfing rootstocks, and it negatively regulated auxin biosynthesis. Overexpression of MdBPC2 in apple decreased plant height, altered leaf morphology, and inhibited root system development. These phenotypes were due to reduced auxin levels and were restored reversed after exogenous indole acetic acid (IAA) treatment. Silencing of MdBPC2 alone had no obvious phenotypic effect, while silencing both Class I and Class II BPCs in apple significantly increased auxin content in plants. Biochemical analysis demonstrated that MdBPC2 directly bound to the GAGA-rich element in the promoters of the auxin synthesis genes MdYUC2a and MdYUC6b, inhibiting their transcription and reducing auxin accumulation in MdBPC2 overexpression lines. Further studies established that MdBPC2 interacted with the polycomb group (PcG) protein LIKE HETEROCHROMATIN PROTEIN 1 (LHP1) to inhibit MdYUC2a and MdYUC6b expression via methylation of histone 3 lysine 27 (H3K27me3). Silencing MdLHP1 reversed the negative effect of MdBPC2 on auxin accumulation. Our results reveal a dwarfing mechanism in perennial woody plants involving control of auxin biosynthesis by a BPC transcription factor, suggesting its use for genetic improvement of apple rootstock. MdYUC2a and MdYUC6b are targets of H3K27me3 modification mediated by MdBPC2-MdLHP1, which regulates auxin biosynthesis during apple growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of identifying the geographical origin of peanuts by combining Raman spectroscopy with chemometrics. A total of 161 peanut samples were collected from Jilin, Jiangsu, and Shandong provinces in China, and their Raman spectra were collected. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the difference in characteristic Raman spectra of peanuts from these locations. Raman spectroscopy combined with principal component analysis (PCA), k-nearest neighbor (k-NN), stepwise linear discriminant analysis (SLDA), and support vector machines (SVM) were used to classify the peanuts by province and Jilin Province city. One-way ANOVA indicated that the peak intensities at 2900, 1660, 1440, 1077, and 848 cm−1 had significant differences. The peaks at 2900, 1660, 1440, 1300, and 1077 cm−1 had significant differences in the Jilin Province city. The correct identification rates were highest for k-NN. This study demonstrates the identification of the origin of peanuts by Raman spectroscopy with chemometrics and may provide technical support for the traceability of other agricultural products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) has been considered a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and has a proatherogenic effect. Many studies have found that TMAO is involved in plaque oxidative stress and lipid metabolism, but the specific mechanism is still unclear. In our study, meta-analysis and bioinformatic analysis were firstly conducted in the database, and found that the effect of high plasma TMAO levels on promoting atherosclerotic plaque may be related to the expression of key antioxidant genes nuclear factor erytheroid-derived-2-like 2 (NFE2L2/Nrf2) decreased. Next, we assessed the role of Nrf2-mediated signaling pathway in TMAO-treated foam cells. Our results showed that TMAO can inhibit the expression of Nrf2 and its downstream antioxidant response element such as heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and glutathione peroxidase4 (GPX4), resulting in increased production of reactive oxygen species and decreased activity of superoxide dismutase, promoting oxidative stress. And TMAO can also promote lipid accumulation in foam cells by inhibiting cholesterol efflux protein expression. In addition, upregulation of Nrf2 expression partially rescues TMAO-induced oxidative stress and reduces ATP-binding cassette A1 (ABCA1)–mediated lipid accumulation. Therefore, TMAO promotes oxidative stress and lipid accumulation in macrophage foam cells through the Nrf2/ABCA1 pathway, which may provide a potential mechanism for the proatherogenic effect of TMAO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As hyper-relational facts continue to proliferate within knowledge graphs, link prediction on binary relations has become inadequate, while link prediction on hyper-relations has emerged as a research hotspot. Existing methods typically employ n-ary tuples, primary triple with auxiliary descriptions, or hypergraphs to represent hyper-relational facts and conduct link prediction. However, medical hyper-relational facts are more intricate and frequently lack multiple components, which presents challenges for current methods in conveying their structure, semantics, and predicting multiple missing elements simultaneously. To address these issues, in this paper, we introduce MHRE, the pioneering link prediction method specifically designed for medical hyper-relational facts. Initially, we represent medical hyper-relational facts as a heterogeneous multi-relational directed graph with hyper-relations at its core to depict both its structure and implicit semantics. Next, we develop a role-aware graph attention mechanism network to acquire distributed vector representations of entities and relations within the graph. Importantly, it fine-tunes the semantic weights of different components within hyper-relational facts by incorporating neighboring nodes and role information through learning. Lastly, we devise a prediction module based on self-attention mechanisms, enabling the simultaneous prediction of multiple missing elements within a medical hyper-relational fact. We conduct experiments using publicly available datasets, such as JF17K, WikiPeople, and their adapted versions, alongside a proprietary medical dataset. We compare MHRE with state-of-the-art baselines and further conduct ablation studies and parameter analysis. The experimental results confirm the efficacy and superiority of MHRE. In a range of benchmark tests involving hyper-relational facts, MHRE consistently outperforms current state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This longitudinal study examined bidirectional relations between parental harsh punishment and psychoticism at the between‑ and within‑family levels in Chinese adolescents. There were 3,307 Chinese youth (43.6% girls, Mage = 11.30 years, SD = 0.24) who participated in a 4-wave longitudinal study, spaced 12 months apart. The results of cross-lagged panel modeling (i.e. CLPM) found the significant bidirectional relations between parental harsh punishment and psychoticism at the between-family level. However, the within-person level analysis of random intercept cross-lagged panel modeling (i.e. RI-CLPM) only revealed parental harsh punishment significantly predicted youth psychoticism, but not vice versa. Moreover, no sex differences were observed in the bidirectional relations between parental harsh punishment and psychoticism at the between- or within-family level. These results suggest parental harsh parenting could exacerbate the psychoticism trait at both the between- and within-family level, whereas the influence of young people's psychoticism on harsh parenting response from parents occurs only at the between-family level. The findings help to understand the nature of the dynamic process of change between psychoticism and harsh parenting among Chinese adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]