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In the world, chronic kidney disease (CKD) has been recognized as one of the critical public health problems, and the prevalence is higher in the elderly people. However, there are few studies on the association between exposure to multiple serum metal levels and CKD. A case-control study, we established, for elderly people in Anhui Province, China, to explore the effects of different metals and analyze the effect of mixed exposure on CKD. In this study, 287 cases of CKD and 287 controls were selected in the elderly health physical examination project in Tongling City, Anhui Province. Questionnaire survey, physical examination, and blood collection were conducted. Graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS) and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) were used to measure the concentration of serum metals. After selecting by least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), 5 metals were brought into the multi-metal model. After adjusting all potential covariates additionally, the concentrations of lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), and manganese (Mn) were significantly associated with CKD risk, whereas Pb, Se, and Cd had significant non-linearity with CKD. Besides, patients with highest quartiles of cobalt (Co), lead (Pb), and manganese (Mn) were 1.64, 1.39, and 0.64 times more possible to have CKD, respectively, as compared with the lowest levels. In the Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR) model, cadmium (Cd) had a combined effect with lead (Pb) possibly. This study suggested that the CKD risk was associated with exposure of multiple metals in elderly people. The underlying mechanisms of serum metals and CKD need more experimental and prospective studies to elucidate.

Recently, the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) has attracted global attention. Meanwhile, CVD has become the leading cause of death in China. Some epidemiological studies have indicated that ambient air pollution may contribute to increased mortality from CVD diseases. Many studies have found a strong association between air pollutants and the risk of CVD deaths in some big cities, but few have focused on the effects of six pollutants in rural areas. Our study aimed to investigate the effects of six air pollutants (CO, NO

One of the oldest crops, foxtail millet (Setaria italica), is regarded as a model plant for studying drought tolerance owing to its short life-cycle and small genome size. The miRNA member miR394 plays multifaceted roles in plants. In this study, we identified the Sit-miR394 target gene SiFBP6 using 5′ RLM-RACE (RNA ligase mediated rapid amplification of 5′ cDNA ends). An expression analysis in different tissues showed that Sit-miR394 was highly expressed in leaves and had a lower relative expression in roots, while the target gene SiFBP6 exhibited the opposite expression pattern, being strongly expressed in roots and relatively lowly expressed in leaves. Furthermore, Sit-miR394 was upregulated in foxtail millet under drought-stress conditions and by exogenous methyl jasmonate, ethephon, salicylic acid and abscisic acid treatments. The overexpression of Sit-miR394 in transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana increased its tolerance to drought stress. The germination rates and root lengths were significantly greater compared with the wild-type line, which suggested that Sit-miR394 plays a positive role in responding to drought conditions. Moreover, a transcription analysis indicated that the overexpression of Sit-miR394 affected the expression of a set of stress-related genes, thereby conferring an increased abiotic or biotic stress tolerance to transgenic Arabidopsis. Thus, Sit-miR394 functions in the positive modulation of abiotic or biotic stress tolerance and has potential applications in molecular breeding to enhance stress tolerance in crops.

Obesity has caused a huge burden of disease. Few studies have explored individuals' environmental exposure level and the impact of multiple environmental exposures on obesity. The aim of this study was to explore individual air pollution exposure evaluation, and the association between and multiple environmental factors and obesity among adult residents in rural areas of China. In this study, 8400 residents of 14 districts and counties in eastern of China were selected by multistage stratified cluster sampling, and a total of 8377 residents were included in the final analysis. We adopted BMI (Body Mass Index) 28 kg/m

This paper mainly focuses on the literary genre of ancient poetry with a certain rhythm and cadence, and proposes a novel automatic generation model of ancient poetry. The model uses about 300,000 Tang poems and Song poems as training data, uses One-hot encoding to process data, and uses long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) to learn the semantics of ancient poetry texts and conduct research across a single RNN structure. According to the user's requirements, the model can automatically calculate the most relevant coherent words in the context of the selected context, and generate common ancient poetry and specified words. The method of BLEU automatic evaluation and manual evaluation finally demonstrates the effectiveness of the experiment.

Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) is a salt-tolerant crop that can endure high salt concentrations without apparent damage. However, the plant’s response to salinity stress is a complex biological process. An analysis of the dynamic changes in transcript profiles will provide a global picture of the cotton response to salinity stress. Here, we monitored the transcriptome changes in two cotton genotypes, the salt-tolerant H15, and sensitive ZM12, at 0, 0.25, 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, and 48 h in roots exposed to 200-mM NaCl. In total, 13,894 and 5057 differentially expressed genes were identified as being involved in salt-stress tolerance in H15 and ZM12, respectively. Of these, 3825 genes were common to both genotypes. A differential expression analysis revealed that the number of differentially expressed genes increased significantly during the first 24 h after the salt-stress treatment and then significantly decreased at 48 h in both genotypes. A transcription factor (TF) analysis revealed three different patterns based on the expression of 45 TFs’ families, with the majority of differentially expressed TFs increasing rapidly after the salt-stress treatment in both genotypes. A weighted gene co-expression network analysis showed that two gene modules were related to salinity, and genes in these modules were mainly involved in plant–pathogen interactions, the plant MAPK signaling pathway, and diterpenoid biosynthesis. Our results increase the understanding of cotton metabolic pathways involved in responses to salt stress.

Background Cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) is a maternally inherited trait failing to produce functional pollen. It plays a pivotal role in the exploitation of crop heterosis. The specific locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) as a high-resolution strategy for the identification of new SNPs on a large-scale is gradually applied for functional gene mining. The current study combined the bulked segregant analysis (BSA) with SLAF-seq to identify the candidate genes associated with fertility restorer gene (Rf) in CMS cotton. Methods Illumina sequencing systematically investigated the parents. A segregating population comprising of 30 + 30 F2 individuals was developed using 3096A (female parent) as sterile and 866R (male parent) as a restorer. The original data obtained by dual-index sequencing were analyzed to obtain the reads of each sample that were compared to the reference genome in order to identify the SLAF tag with a polymorphism in parent lines and the SNP with read-associated coverage. Based on SLAF tags, SNP-index analysis, Euclidean distance (ED) correlation analysis, and whole genome resequencing, the hot regions were annotated. Results A total of 165,007 high-quality SLAF tags, with an average depth of 47.90× in the parents and 50.78× in F2 individuals, were sequenced. In addition, a total of 137,741 SNPs were detected: 113,311 and 98,861 SNPs in the male and female parent, respectively. A correlation analysis by SNP-index and ED initially located the candidate gene on 1.35 Mb of chrD05, and 20 candidate genes were identified. These genes were involved in genetic variations, single base mutations, insertions, and deletions. Moreover, 42 InDel markers of the whole genome resequencing were also detected. Conclusions In this study, associated markers identified by super-BSA could accelerate the study of CMS in cotton, and as well as in other crops. Some of the 20 genes’ preliminary characteristics provided useful information for further studies on CMS crops. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12864-017-4406-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Ethylene-responsive factors (ERFs) are commonly considered to play an important role in pathogen defense responses. However, only few of ERF members have been characterized in Sea island cotton (Gossypium barbadense). Here, we reported a novel AP2/ERF transcription factors gene, named GbERFb which was cloned and identified from Sea island cotton by RACE. The expression of GbERFb was significantly induced by treatments with ethylene, Methyl jasmonate, salicylic acid, wounding, H2O2 and Verticillium dahliae (V. dahliae) infection. Bioinformatics analysis showed that GbERFb protein containing a conserved ERF DNA binding domain and a nuclear localization signal sequence, belonged to IXb subgroup of the ERF family. Further experiments demonstrated that GbERFb could bind the GCC box cis-acting element and interact with GbMAPKb (MAP kinase) directly in yeast. Over-expression of GbERFb in tobacco could increase the disease resistance to V. dahliae. The results suggest that the GbERFb, a new AP2/ERF transcription factor, could enhance the resistance to V. dahliae and be useful in improvement of crop resistance to pathogenes.

The summary of the SLAF tag and SNP marker on chromosomes. (DOC 41 kb)

The information of genetic analysis onto the association region. (DOC 38 kb)

List of InDel marker primers. (DOC 51 kb)

The annotation of COG, KEGG, GO, Swiss-Prot and nr to the candidate genes. (DOC 51 kb)

Silver-containing stainless steels have shown broad spectrum antibacterial activities and exhibit potential applications in food industries and medical appliances. However, few results associated with the antibacterial process have been reported to uncover the interaction of silver implanted stainless steel and bacteria. In this paper we made a preliminary study on antibacterial mechanisms of silver implanted AISI 420 stainless steel. Silver ions exist in metallic state fitted by the Gaussian functions in the implanted layer, with the maximum silver concentration of 3.3 at.% appearing at 45 nm beneath the surface at the extracting voltage of 50 kV. Silver implanted stainless steel possesses excellent antibacterial activities against Escherichia coli at the implantation dose greater than 100 × 1015 ions/cm 2 . Antibacterial rate against E. coli improves with the increase of silver implantation dose, from 77.7% at 5 × 1015 ions/cm 2 to 98.4% at 1000 × 1015 ions/cm 2 . Dissolved silver ions are crucial for the bactericidal effect. The concentration of released silver ions increases from 35 ± 16 ppb at silver implantation dose of 5 × 1015 ions/cm 2 to 255 ± 20 ppb at silver implantation dose of 1000 × 1015 ions/cm 2 . Silver implanted stainless steel exhibits long-lasting antibacterial activity (antibacterial rate >90%) after exposure to air or immersion in tap water for over one year.

Ethylene-responsive factors (ERFs) are commonly considered to play an important role in pathogen defense responses. However, only few of ERF members have been characterized in Sea island cotton (Gossypium barbadense). Here, we reported a novel AP2/ERF transcription factors gene, named GbERFb which was cloned and identified from Sea island cotton by RACE. The expression of GbERFb was significantly induced by treatments with ethylene, Methyl jasmonate, salicylic acid, wounding, H2O2 and Verticillium dahliae (V. dahliae) infection. Bioinformatics analysis showed that GbERFb protein containing a conserved ERF DNA binding domain and a nuclear localization signal sequence, belonged to IXb subgroup of the ERF family. Further experiments demonstrated that GbERFb could bind the GCC box cis-acting element and interact with GbMAPKb (MAP kinase) directly in yeast. Over-expression of GbERFb in tobacco could increase the disease resistance to V. dahliae. The results suggest that the GbERFb, a new AP2/ERF transcription factor, could enhance the resistance to V. dahliae and be useful in improvement of crop resistance to pathogenes.

Targets of novel miRNAs identified by degradome sequencing. (DOC 57 kb)

The secondary structures of novel miRNA precursors (PDF 324 kb)

In this paper, we prepared poly para aminobenzoic acid (PABA) membrane on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) using cyclic voltammetry(CV) following electrochemically degrading to form a porous PABA (PPABA) membrane. The PPABA membrane was characterized using CV technique, scanning electron microscope (SEM) measurements. The PPABA membrane could improve sensitivity of dopamine (DA) and inhibit ascorbic acid (AA) and uric acid (UA) electrochemical oxidation. The PPABA/GCE-based electrohemical sensor displayed a good linear ranges from 0 μM to 30 μM DA with a low detection limits of 1.6 μM DA (S/N=3) in voltammetry measurement. The proposed sensor has the advantages of being simple, reproducible and stable and can be used as a new sensitive electrochemical biosensor for the detection of DA.

Polydopamine/cobalt hexacyanoferrate (PDA-CoHCF) composite films on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) have been electropolymerized by using cyclic voltammetry. The composite films were electrochemically activated in a potassium hydroxide solution and were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) measurements. The electrochemical activation could cause some changes of composite membrane interface structure and improve the electrochemical performance of the corresponding modified electrode in a phosphate buffer solution containing dopamine. The PDA-CoHCF film modified glassy carbon electrode could response dopamine sensitively in cyclic voltammetry measurements for electrochemical oxidation and reduction. The linear response slope and regression coefficient is 1.546 μA/μM and 0.985, respectively, in the concentration range from 2.0 μM to 10 μM dopamine.

Target plots of identified miRNA targets using degradome sequencing. (PDF 762 kb)

Primers used for RT-PCR in this study. (DOC 35 kb)

Glandless upland cotton has an important economic value. Embryogenic calli and regenerated plants were obtained from the hypocotyl explants of glandless upland cotton seedlings, cultivar Jisheng1. The results indicated that somatic embryogenesis was significantly influenced by the types of auxin and cytokinin. 2, 4-D was advantageous to induce cotton callus, but embryogenic callus could not be obtained on the 2, 4-D medium. Embryogenic calli were also not obtained on the MSB sold medium with the combination of IBA and BA. However, embryogenic calli were induced when the hypocotyl explants were cultured on the IBA and KT medium. More than 31% of the hypocotyl segments produced embryogenic calli when the MSB medium was supplemented with 1.0 mg·L−1 IBA and 0.5 mg·L−1 KT. Embryogenic calli with somatic embryos could be observed within three months. Somatic embryo germination and maturation occurred on the hormone-free MSB medium with 1.0 g·L−1 Gln and 0.5 g·L−1 Asn. A number of regenerated plants could be obtained in six months. In the present study, a simple and efficient system was established to induce a number of embryogenic calli and regenerate plantlets from hypocotyl explants.

Background Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) is a diploid C4 panicoid species. Because of its prominent drought resistance, small genome size, self-pollination, and short life cycle, foxtail millet has become an ideal model system for studying drought tolerance of crops. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous, small RNAs that play important regulatory roles in the development and stress response in plants. Results In this study, we applied Illumina sequencing to systematically investigate the drought-responsive miRNAs derived from S. italica inbred An04-4783 seedlings grown under control and drought conditions. Degradome sequencing was applied to confirm the targets of these miRNAs at a global level. A total of 81 known miRNAs belonging to 28 families were identified, among which 14 miRNAs were upregulated and four were downregulated in response to drought. In addition, 72 potential novel miRNAs were identified, three of which were differentially expressed under drought conditions. Degradome sequencing analysis showed that 56 and 26 genes were identified as targets of known and novel miRNAs, respectively. Conclusions Our analysis revealed post-transcriptional remodeling of cell development, transcription factors, ABA signaling, and cellar homeostasis in S.italica in response to drought. This preliminary characterization provided useful information for further studies on the regulatory networks of drought-responsive miRNAs in foxtail millet. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12863-016-0364-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

AISI 420 stainless steel implanted by Ag/Cu ions was fabricated for antibacterial purpose. The implantation of Ag/Cu ions was in a total dose of 2×1017 ions/cm2 at an extracting voltage of 50 KV. The chemical composition of the implanted layer was characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The Ag/Cu implanted stainless steel shows good antibacterial property to both Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Aspergillus niger (A. niger).