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Saussurea wettsteiniana is a medicinally important herb endemic to Hengduan Mountains. Here, we report and characterize the complete chloroplast genome sequence of S. wettsteiniana to provide genomic resources useful for future study. The complete chloroplast genome is 152,631 bp in length, consisting of a large single copy and a small single copy of 83,552 bp and 18,637 bp, which were separated by a pair of inverted repeats of 25,221 bp. Totally 133 genes were annotated, including 87 protein-coding genes, 36 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA genes. We also detected two pseudo-genes (ycf1 and rps19). The overall GC content of the whole genome is 37.7%. The phylogenetic tree based on 23 complete plastomes indicated that S. wettsteiniana was closely related to S. involucrata of Compositae.

It has been hypothesized that geological and climatic changes in the Sino–Himalayan region played a significant role in evolutionary history. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by investigating the phylogeography of Excoecaria acerifolia (Euphorbiaceae), a riparian plant species that is widely distributed in the hot/warm-dry river valleys of the Sino–Himalayan region. Spatial analysis of molecular variance, a median-joining network and a Bayesian phylogenetic tree based on plastid DNA, all suggested three major lineages corresponding to the Jialing-Min-Dadu (JMD lineage), Jinsha-Yalong-Salween (JY lineage) and Yarlung Tsangpo-Mekong-Red-Nanpan (YMRN lineage) drainage basins. This was also generally supported by the results based on nuclear DNA. The divergence times of these three major lineages based on both datasets fell in the early Pleistocene, coinciding with the period of drainage reorganization events in the Sino–Himalayan region. The diversification times in the lineages were, however, dated back to the mid Pleistocene, corresponding to the Naynayxungla glaciation (0.72–0.50 Mya) and the penultimate glaciation (0.30–0.13 Mya), which were the most and second most severe glaciations in this region, respectively. Furthermore, mismatch analyses, neutrality test and ecological niche modelling suggest long-term demographic stability of the JY and JMD populations, with expansion only in the YMRN populations during the period(s) from the late penultimate glaciation (138.12 Kya) to the Last Interglacial (95.79 Kya), probably because of less extensive glaciations since the late Pleistocene and the gradually warming interglacial stage. Our study provides one of the few pieces of evidence indicating that combined historical drainage reorganization and climatic change since the Pleistocene might also have acted as important factors in the evolutionary history of riparian plants in the region.

Using a very low-resolution analog-to-digital convertor (ADC) unit at each antenna can remarkably reduce the hardware cost and power consumption of a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. However, such a pure low-resolution ADC architecture also complicates parameter estimation problems such as time/frequency synchronization and channel estimation. A mixed-ADC architecture, where most of the antennas are equipped with low-precision ADCs while a few antennas have full-precision ADCs, can solve these issues and actualize the potential of the pure low-resolution ADC architecture. In this paper, we present a unified framework to develop a family of detectors over the massive MIMO uplink system with the mixed-ADC receiver architecture by exploiting probabilistic Bayesian inference. As a basic setup, an optimal detector is developed to provide a minimum mean-squared-error (MMSE) estimate on data symbols. Considering the highly nonlinear steps involved in the quantization process, we also investigate the potential for complexity reduction on the optimal detector by postulating the common \emph{pseudo-quantization noise} (PQN) model. In particular, we provide asymptotic performance expressions including the MSE and bit error rate for the optimal and suboptimal MIMO detectors. The asymptotic performance expressions can be evaluated quickly and efficiently; thus, they are useful in system design optimization. We show that in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime, the distortion caused by the PQN model can be ignored, whereas in the high-SNR regime, such distortion may cause 1-bit detection performance loss. The performance gap resulting from the PQN model can be narrowed by a small fraction of high-precision ADCs in the mixed-ADC architecture., Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) has the highest biodiversity for an extreme environment worldwide, and provides an ideal natural laboratory to study adaptive evolution. In this study, we generated a draft genome sequence of cyanobacteria Trichormus sp. NMC-1 in the QTP and performed whole transcriptome sequencing under low temperature to investigate the genetic mechanism by which T. sp. NMC-1 adapted to the specific environment. Its genome sequence was 5.9 Mb with a G+C content of 39.2% and encompassed a total of 5362 CDS. A phylogenomic tree indicated that this strain belongs to the Trichormus and Anabaena cluster. Genome comparison between T. sp. NMC-1 and six relatives showed that functionally unknown genes occupied a much higher proportion (28.12%) of the T. sp. NMC-1 genome. In addition, functions of specific, significant positively selected, expanded orthogroups, and differentially expressed genes involved in signal transduction, cell wall/membrane biogenesis, secondary metabolite biosynthesis, and energy production and conversion were analyzed to elucidate specific adaptation traits. Further analyses showed that the CheY-like genes, extracellular polysaccharide and mycosporine-like amino acids might play major roles in adaptation to harsh environments. Our findings indicate that sophisticated genetic mechanisms are involved in cyanobacterial adaptation to the extreme environment of the QTP.

Ethylene is an essential plant gaseous hormone that controls many aspects of plant growth and development, especially the fruit ripening. It is important to know how this hormone is synthesized and how its production is regulated to understand the roles of ethylene in plant development. The aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate synthase (ACS) gene is a rate-limiting enzyme in the ethylene biosynthesis pathway, which is encoded by a highly divergent multi-gene family in plant species. Although many ACS genes have been cloned from a wide variety of plant species previously, their origin and evolutionary process are still not clear. In this study, we conducted a phylogenetic analysis based on an updated dataset including 107 members of plant ACS genes and eight ACS-like genes from animal as well as six AATase genes. The motifs were identified and the positive selection and functional divergence in the ACS gene family were detected. The results obtained from these analyses are consistent with previous division of the ACS gene family in angiosperm, i.e., three distinct clades, and show that the duplications of three subclades (I, II and III) ACS genes have occurred after the divergence of gymnosperm and angiosperm. We conclude that the ACS genes could have experienced three times significant positive selection as they underwent expansion in land plants and gain the full-scale ethylene biosynthesis and regulatory functions, and all plant ACS genes originated from plant-ACS-like genes which come from AATase genes.

The reorganization of major river drainages in the Sino-Himalayan region of Southwest China was caused primarily by river separation and capture events following the most recent uplift of the Tibetan Plateau (

Background The central function of chloroplasts is to carry out photosynthesis, and its gene content and structure are highly conserved across land plants. Parasitic plants, which have reduced photosynthetic ability, suffer gene losses from the chloroplast (cp) genome accompanied by the relaxation of selective constraints. Compared with the rapid rise in the number of cp genome sequences of photosynthetic organisms, there are limited data sets from parasitic plants. Principal Findings/Significance Here we report the complete sequence of the cp genome of Cistanche deserticola, a holoparasitic desert species belonging to the family Orobanchaceae. The cp genome of C. deserticola is greatly reduced both in size (102,657 bp) and in gene content, indicating that all genes required for photosynthesis suffer from gene loss and pseudogenization, except for psbM. The striking difference from other holoparasitic plants is that it retains almost a full set of tRNA genes, and it has lower dN/dS for most genes than another close holoparasitic plant, E. virginiana, suggesting that Cistanche deserticola has undergone fewer losses, either due to a reduced level of holoparasitism, or to a recent switch to this life history. We also found that the rpoC2 gene was present in two copies within C. deserticola. Its own copy has much shortened and turned out to be a pseudogene. Another copy, which was not located in its cp genome, was a homolog of the host plant, Haloxylon ammodendron (Chenopodiaceae), suggesting that it was acquired from its host via a horizontal gene transfer.