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Grapholita molesta Busck (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) is a major fruit pest of a wide range of Rosaceae trees. Olfaction plays a crucial role in insect behavioral activities, and insects primarily rely on odorant receptors (ORs) to detect odorant molecules. Several olfactory-related genes in G. molesta have been studied; however, the ORs of G. molesta are unclear. Here, GmolOR7, a general OR gene, was cloned and characterized. Sequence alignment and phylogenetic tree analysis showed that GmolOR7 is closely related to Cydia pomonella OR54, with the amino acid sequence identity of 80.21%. Furthermore, the different developmental stages and tissues of GmolOR7 in G. molesta were analyzed by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The results demonstrated that GmolOR7 was expressed at higher levels in adults, and particularly in the antennae of females. GmolOR7 expression was the highest in 3-d-old adults. These results will provide an indication for further functional study of the GmolOR7 in G. molesta and its role in the detection of host-plant volatiles by insects in general.

Many types of argument claims and supports (premises) are made in a research paper. The study analyzed the types of claims and supports used in the Abstract and Introduction sections of sociology research papers, and the common argument patterns. Seventy papers were sampled from ten sociology journals with the highest impact factor in InCites Journal Citation Reports. The research papers were categorized into three types of research: Investigative research, Development and evaluation research, and Descriptive research. A coding scheme of claims and supports was developed. Sequential association rule mining was used to identify textual argument patterns. The study identified significant differences in argument profile across the three types of research papers, and differences in argument patterns. For example, Investigative research papers typically follow the basic argument pattern of (General statement or Research gap) … Research objective … Research method … Research result … (General result or Research contribution/recommendation) in the Abstract. However, Development & Evaluation research and Descriptive research Abstracts often modify the basic pattern with Concept/theory/model-related claims and Research idea/approach. Methodology contributions of the paper include the coding scheme for argument claims and supports in research papers, and the method of analyzing argument patterns. Different types of sociology research tend to follow different argument strategies. As there is substantial overlap between argument elements and rhetorical functions, the common argument patterns identified in this study suggest common rhetorical move/step patterns as well.

When writing a research paper, the author has to select information to include in the paper to support various arguments. The information has to be organized and synthesized into a coheren...

Resistance of five field populations of Mythimna separata (Walker) collected from Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces of China to six different insecticides was evaluated by leaf dip method in the laboratory. The results showed that all populations were relatively sensitive to emamectin benzoate with a resistance ratio (RR) of 0.583–1.583 folds. All populations showed susceptible or low level resistance to chlorantraniliprole and beta-cypermethrin. Compared with a relatively susceptible strain of M. separata, the resistance level of the whole populations ranged from susceptible to moderate to chlorpyrifos and lambda-cyhalothrin, moderate to high to phoxim (RR=19.367–70.100) except for population from Sanyuan County (RR=2.567). Pair-wise correlation analysis among different insecticides indicated that chlorpyrifos has a significantly positive and significant correlation with emamectin benzoate. Chlorantraniliprole didn't have significant correlation with emamectin benzoate, chlorpyrifos and phoxim. Therefore, emamectin benzoate, chlorantraniliprole and beta-cypermethrin are recommended to control oriental armyworm. Meanwhile, to postpone the occurrence and development of insecticide resistance in Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces, alternative and rotational application of insecticides between chlorantraniliprole and emamectin benzoate or chlorpyrifos is necessary.

Background: Candida albicans, a common fungal pathogen that can cause opportunistic infections, is regarded as an apparently asexual, diploid fungus. A parasexual cycle was previously found between homozygotes with opposite mating type-like loci (MTLa/α). Fluconazole-resistant strains had a higher proportion of MTL homozygotes, whereas MTL homozygous C. albicans was found in only about 3.2% of clinical strains. MTL heterozygotes had a low frequency (1.4 Ã 10â4) of whiteâopaque switching to MTL homozygotes in nature. Methods: Here, a reference C. albicans strain (SC5314) was used in a fluconazole-induced assay to obtain standard opaque MTL homozygous strains and first-generation daughter strains from the fluconazole inhibition zone. Further separation methods were employed to produce second- and third-generation daughter strains. Polymerase chain reaction analysis based on MTL genes was used to define MTL genotypes, and microscopic observations, a flow-cytometric assay, and an antifungal E-test were used to compare microbiological characteristics. Results: MTL homozygotes were found at a high frequency (17 of 35; 48.6%) in fluconazole-induced first-generation daughter strains, as were morphological polymorphisms, decreased DNA content, and modified antifungal drug susceptibility. High-frequency MTL homozygosity was identified inside the fluconazole inhibition zone within 24 hours. The DNA content of fluconazole-induced daughter strains was reduced compared with their progenitor SC5314 and standard MTL homozygous strains. Conclusion: Treatment with fluconazole, commonly used to treat invasive candidiasis, inhibited the growth of C. albicans and altered its microbiological characteristics. Our results suggest that fluconazole treatment induces the high frequency of loss of heterozygosity and microbiological polymorphism in C. albicans. Keywords: Candida albicans, fluconazole, loss of heterozygosity, mating type-like gene

Research papers typically have an abstract that is structured in a variation of the well-known IMRaD structure: introduction, method, results and discussion/conclusion/contribution. Content-wise, an abstract gives an overview of the research topic, but often also specifies the research objectives, and outlines the methods and research results. A good abstract will also make an argument (often indirectly) for why the research objective is worth investigating (e.g., by pointing out a research gap), and for the validity of the research results and significance/contribution of the study. The content (i.e. information) and arguments have to be expressed in text in a way that helps the reader to understand the information provided and to be persuaded of the arguments. This study analyzes the information structure that support the following types of arguments found in sociology research abstracts: research objective, research result, research gap, and significance/contribution of the research. An argument can be divided into the argument point or claim (e.g., a research objective) and supporting argument (e.g., information that justifies the research objective). The argument point can be analyzed into component concept-relation-concept triples, that indicate the various types of information that make up the argument point. The supporting argument can also be analyzed into concept-relation-concept triples. The concept-relation-concept triples are linked up into an information structure or pattern. The data for this study were abstracts taken from 24 journal articles published in eight sociology journals with high impact factors listed in InCites Journal Citation Reports—three articles from each journal. The abstracts were analyzed to identify common concept-relation-concept triples and bigger information patterns in the text content, especially in the research objective, research result, research gap and significance/contribution statements. We developed a few semantic frames to represent common information structures or patterns, following frame semantics theory. This paper describes three common semantic frames found in the research abstracts: the Research-relation frame represents the structure of research objectives or research results that identify an association (e.g., causal relation) between two concepts, as well as the modality (i.e. true, false, probable, etc.) and size of the relation. It also represents other types of information related to the argument (i.e. context, qualifier and rebuttal) as well as the supporting argument (i.e. evidence and explanation). the Comparison frame represents comparisons between two or more concepts as well as the result of the comparison. the Study frame represents the research structure at a high level—the type of research objective, type of research method and type of research result. In particular, it indicates whether the study represents a historical, descriptive, development, evaluative or investigative type of study. For example, a development type of study seeks to develop a method, theory/model or software system. The three semantic frames with their associated semantic roles (indicating different types of related information) are shown graphically in Figures 1 to 3. The results of applying these frames to analyze the information structure in the four types of arguments will be reported, including the frequency distributions of the three semantic frames and their semantic roles. For example, the most commonly used Research-relations in the 24 sociology research abstracts are Cause-effect and Association, each occurring in 67% of the abstracts. The abstracts typically highlight the research context (50%) and specify a limitation (29%) related to the research context (e.g., the location of data collection). As for the types of study, the 24 sociology research abstracts include 3 historical analyses, 5 development, 8 evaluation, 6 identification, and 14 investigation studies. Some studies involve more than one type of research. The study also analyzed the relations among the three semantic frames. Thus, the information structures in research abstracts can be represented as a network of instantiated semantic frames. For example, a Research-relation instance is often linked to a Comparison instance, as research study often involves comparison between two or more things. A study may compare two subclasses of a concept defined by differences in an attribute, for example hotel websites with and without embedded social media channels. The comparison may focus on (or measure) another attribute of the concept, for example comparing user experience for hotel websites with and without embedded social media channels. A comparison may also be made between the study results and a hypothesis, an expectation, or what has been reported in previous studies. For example, in this statement “This indicates that the ability of messages to cross small-world human social networks may be overestimated”, implies that the result is less than what was expected. In addition, investigation of a Research_relations sometimes involve comparisons of attributes of the Research _relation. The relevance or relation of the research to the broader field and to previous research is sometimes made, and this often involves an implicit or explicit comparison, as in the following example, “This study extended this line of research to investigate whether these same maternal education patterns in parenting are observed among a set of parenting behaviors that are linked to young children’s health.” Filling a research gap is one of the most important and prevalent argument. A research gap can be expressed in terms of the Research_relation . An author can highlight the gap by indicating that the relation between two concepts is not fully known, and it is desirable to find out. For example: “Little is known about couples’ shared time and how actual time spent together is associated with well-being.” The Comparison frame can also be used to characterize a research gap by comparing two subclasses of the concepts involved, two attributes of a concept, or two or more values of a Research_relation attribute. The motivation for this study is to identify common information structures and arguments for the purpose of teaching students how to write good research abstracts. However, the semantic frames and their relations are expected to be useful for developing knowledge representation schemes to support text summarization of research papers. Keywords : Semantic frames, Argument structures, Knowledge organization

Candida albicans is considered to be an obligate diploid fungus. Here, we describe an approach to isolate aneuploids or haploids induced by the short-term (12–16 h) exposure of diploid reference strains SC5314 and CAI4 to the most commonly used antifungal drug, fluconazole, followed by repeated single-cell separation among small morphologically distinct colonies in the inhibition zone. The isolated strains had altered cell morphology and LOH events in the MTL and other marker alleles of the analyzed loci at 8 chromosomes of C. albicans with decreased DNA content. The present study employed next-generation sequencing (NGS) combined flow cytometry analysis of the DNA content to analyze the haploid, autodiploid, and aneuploid strains that arose from the fluconazole treatment instead of using the conventional single nucleotide polymorphism/comparative genome hybridization (SNP/CGH) method. A multiple-alignment tool was also developed based on sequenced data from NGS to establish haplotype mapping for each chromosome of the selected strains. These findings revealed that C. albicans experiences ‘concerted chromosome loss’ to form strains with homozygous alleles and that it even has a haploid status after short-term exposure to fluconazole. Additionally, we developed a new platform to analyze chromosome copy number using NGS.

To determine the relationship between protein expression and insect diapause, a proteomic approach was used to investigate the proteins extracted from larvae of the wheat blossom midge Sitodiplosis mosellana Gehin at different developmental stages, including pre-diapause, over-summering diapause, over-wintering diapause and post-diapause. Using 2-DE gels stained with coomassie brilliant blue, about 300 protein spots were detected in the extracts of pre-diapause larvae and 275 for those in each of the other stages. There were 91, 92 and 95 protein spots that showed more than a 2-fold change in abundance in the over-summering diapause, over-wintering diapause and post-diapause stages compared with pre-diapause. Eight protein spots, which showed the greatest difference in the larvae at different stages of diapause, were analyzed using Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS). Seven of them were successfully identified from their peptide mass fingerprints using the NCBInr database. They were proopiomelanocortin, NADH dehydrogenase subunit 1 and F10F2.5, which were up-regulated or unique to pre-diapause larvae, IKK interacting protein isoform 2 up-regulated in diapause and post-diapause larvae, GA10647-PA unique in over-wintering diapause larvae, purple CG16784-PB isoform B and B0228.6 up-regulated in over-summering and over-wintering diapause larvae. The potential functions of these proteins during wheat blossom midge diapause are discussed.

Southwestern corn borer (SWCB, Diatraea grandiosella) and fall armyworm (FAW, Spodoptera frugiperda) are major pests of sorghum in the southern United States. Host plant resistance is a desirable means for reducing plant damage and yield losses from both insects. In this study, we evaluated 12 sorghum lines for whorl-stage resistance to leaf-feeding SWCB and FAW in greenhouse and laboratory bioassays. Differential plant responses were detected against the two insects. Among 12 lines tested, CM1821, Della and PI196583 were resistant to both insects, while BTx2752 was largely susceptible. Line R.09110 was resistant to SWCB, but susceptible to FAW, whereas Redbine-60 was susceptible to SWCB, but not to FAW. In addition, we quantified various chemical components in the plants and determined their association with insect resistance. Tannin and chlorophyll in leaves did not show any significant correlation with resistance to either insects, but contents of soluble protein in general were negatively correlated with resistance to both insects. Endogenous soluble sugar and dhurrin were only positively correlated with resistance to SWCB, but not with FAW resistance. To gain some molecular insight into resistance mechanism of sorghum to SWCB, we performed qPCR reactions for key genes encoding enzymes involved in dhurrin and jasmonic acid (JA) biosynthesis on selected resistant or susceptible lines. Although these genes were rapidly and strongly induced by insect feeding in all lines, the observed resistance is likely explained by higher constitutive dhurrin contents in some resistant lines and higher basal JA biosynthesis in others. Our results suggest that sorghum utilizes multiple strategies to defend itself against SWCB.

The activities of protective enzymes peroxidase (POD), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) in pre-diapause, diapause, and post-diapause larvae of Sitodiplosis mosellana Gehin were determined by using protective enzyme testing kits. The results indicated that the activities of the three protective enzymes showed a decreasing trend from pre-diapause to early diapause larvae. In one-year cycle, the SOD and CAT activities of diapause larvae had the same responses to environmental temperature, i.e., increased at lower temperature but decreased at higher temperature, while POD activity was related to both environmental temperature and the development situation of the larvae. A similar seasonal variation trend was observed in the three protective enzymes of both no-cocooned and cocooned larvae in one-year cycle. The three protective enzyme activities of no-cocooned larvae were higher than those of cocooned larvae at the same diapause stage. No significant difference of the three protective enzyme activities was found between 1st and 2nd year diapause larvae. The activities of the three protective enzymes increased gradually with the development of post-diapause larvae.