Search

The GRAS protein family encodes a family of plant-specific transcription factors that have diverse and significant functions in regulating plant development and anthocyanin biosynthesis. Our study ...

Urban heat island could strengthen the warming trend of air temperature and cause the change of carbon cycle of urban ecosystems. The primary goal of this study was to explore the above phenomena in a subtropical city of Shenzhen. We selected four sites along a thermal gradient of the city and ran an ecological model to simulate hourly gross primary productivity and net ecosystem change of carbon for the purpose of analyzing the difference in the effects of urban heat island on vegetation growth and carbon sequestration. The work was also intended to help us understand future warming effects on carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystem in subtropical and tropical areas. The results of the modeling experiments showed that strengthened warming temperature by urban heat island could constrain vegetation carbon sequestration in hot seasons and promote vegetation growth in cool seasons. The seasonal sequence of carbon sequestration for the subtropical city was: spring > summer > autumn > winter. For the study period, the maximum amount of monthly carbon sequestration by urban ecosystems happened in May. In summer and autumn, vegetation gross primary productivity and carbon sequestration first increased with the increase in temperature, and then decreased after hourly temperature reached a threshold value. In addition, the number of days with high temperature constraints on vegetation carbon sequestration were significantly higher in the two urban sites than those in the two suburban sites. The above phenomena was driven by the fact that strengthened warming by urban heat island constrained vegetation photosynthesis and transpiration and caused the increase of ecosystem respirations. The above results indicated that the strengthened warming by urban heat island could create additional constraints on carbon sequestration of urban ecosystems in the subtropical regions. The results implied that future global warming may cause the weakening of vegetation carbon sequestration in the subtropical and tropical ecosystems.

Background Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Exosome shave emerged as crucial regulators of intercellular communication and that abundant Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are enriched within exosomes. CircRNAs are novel members of noncoding RNAs regulating cancer proliferation and progression. However, the function and regulatory mechanism of cancer-derived exosomal circRNAs in CRC remains unclear. Methods CRC cells-derived exosomes were characterized using transmission electron microscopy, nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) and western blot. CCK-8, wound healing and transwell assays, and flow cytometry assays were conducted to assess whether exosomes would affect the proliferation, metastasis, and apoptosis of CRC cells, respectively. Moreover, we performed the RNA sequencing and RT-qPCR to identify circRNAs in exosome-stimulated CRC cells. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) assay was used to detect the cellular distribution of circPACRGL. Bioinformatic analyses (StarBase 2.0) were used to pool the miRNA targets of circPACRGL. Luciferase assays were performed to verify the direct interaction. Finally, flow cytometry was used to detect the differentiation of N1-N2 neutrophils. Results Our study identified a novel CRC-derived exosomal circRNA, circPACRGL. We found circPACRGL was significantly upregulated in CRC cells after tumor-derived exosomes addition. Moreover, circPACRGL serves as a sponge for miR-142-3p/miR-506-3p to facilitate the transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) expression. As a result, circPACRGL promoted CRC cell proliferation, migration and invasion, as well as differentiation of N1 to N2 neutrophils via miR-142-3p/miR-506-3p-TGF-β1 axis. Conclusion Our study, the first to reveal that cancer-derived exosomal circPACRGL plays an oncogenic role in CRC proliferation and metastasis, providing mechanistic insights into the roles of circRNAs in CRC progression and a valuable marker for CRC treatment.

Treatment of cancer in humans requires a thorough understanding of the multiple pathways by which it develops. Recent studies suggest that nuclear receptor coactivator 4 (NCOA4) may be a predictive biomarker for renal cancer. In the present work, TCGA, GEPIA, and several bioinformatics approaches were used to analyze the NCOA4 expression patterns, prognostic relevance, and association between NCOA4 and clinicopathological features and immune cell infiltration. We investigated NCOA4 expression in malignancies. Low NCOA4 expression was associated with poor overall survival in individuals with malignancies such as cholangiocarcinoma, colon adenocarcinoma, and clear cell renal carcinoma. We also analyzed NCOA4 DNA methylation in normal and primary tumor tissues and investigated possible functional pathways underlying NCOA4-mediated oncogenesis. In conclusion, downregulation of NCOA4 is associated with poor prognosis, and NCOA4 may be a predictive biomarker for COAD.

Cell-surface ancillary glycoproteins basigin or embigin form heterodimeric complexes with proton-coupled monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs), facilitating the membrane trafficking of MCTs and regulating their transport activities. Here, we determine the cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) structure of the human MCT1-embigin complex and observe that embigin forms extensive interactions with MCT1 to facilitate its localization to the plasma membrane. In addition, the formation of the heterodimer effectively blocks MCT1 from forming a homodimer through a steric hindrance effect, releasing the coupling between two signature motifs and driving a significant conformation change in transmembrane helix 5 (TM5) of MCTs. Consequently, the substrate-binding pocket alternates between states of homodimeric coupling and heterodimeric decoupling states and exhibits differences in substrate-binding affinity, supporting the hypothesis that the substrate-induced motion originating in one subunit of the MCT dimer could be transmitted to the adjacent subunit to alter its substrate-binding affinity.

Additional file 8. Verification of SVs in ‘Yali’ through comparisons with the ‘Dangshansuli’ reference genome.

The insulation state of the converter transformer is closely related to the properties of the oil-paper insulation material. The study of the partial discharge characteristics of the wrinkled of the insulation paper has practical engineering significance for the fault diagnosis of the converter transformer. According to the actual operating environment inside the converter transformer, a set of oil-paper-insulated partial discharge measurement platform under the action of AC and DC composite voltage was built. The test results show that insulation paper wrinkles under the action of AC/DC composite voltage will cause insulation damage due to higher surface electric field and partial discharge; the discharge pulse repetition rate and discharge volume increase in the initial stage, development stage and final dangerous stage of discharge. The partial discharge caused by paper wrinkled significantly increases the CH4 content in the dissolved gas in the oil. This conclusion provides a certain basis for the realization of converter transformer fault diagnosis and condition monitoring.

The sodium-coupled bicarbonate cotransporter 1 (NBCe1) plays an essential role in the maintenance of acid-base homeostasis in the human body. However, little research has been done regarding the modification of NBCe1. Nedd4-2 is one of the most important ubiquitin E3 ligases in the kidney where it is responsible for mediating the ubiquitylation level of many important ion channel proteins; therefore, influencing their expression and membrane localization. In this study, we performed experiments based on a prediction from bioinformatics analysis that NBCe1 might be a Nedd4-2 target protein. The results of co-immunoprecipitation and glutathione S-transferase pull-down assays showed that Nedd4-2 interacted with NBCe1. An in vitro ubiquitination assay further demonstrated that Nedd4-2 is indeed the NBCe1 ubiquitin E3 ligase. The overexpression of Nedd4-2 decreased NBCe1 expression, while MG132 rescued the changes. Nedd4-2 overexpression also altered the subcellular distribution of NBCe1. Furthermore, the kidney specific Nedd4-2-knockout mice certified the alteration of NBCe1. In addition, we speculate that neddylation activates Nedd4-2. A co-immunoprecipitation analysis indicated that Nedd4-2 interacted with Nedd8. In vitro neddylation experiments further demonstrated that Nedd4-2 underwent neddylation modification. The overexpression of Nedd8 led to decreased NBCe1 expression, while Nedd4-2 inhibition rescued the changes. These findings demonstrate that Nedd4-2 acts as the ubiquitin E3 ligase of NBCe1, mediating the degradation and altering the subcellular distribution of NBCe1, and that the neddylation modification downregulated NBCe1 expression by upregulating Nedd4-2 activity.

This paper is to make the LCL three-level active power filter (APF) have a more stable midpoint potential balanced ability and better harmonic compensating performance. The novel midpoint potential modulated strategy that modulating-wave is injected into the zero sequence voltage is studied and the disadvantages of this method in the harmonic compensation are pointed out. Aiming at the problem that the zero sequence voltage component increases the distortion rate of the network side current, a new algorithm of midpoint potential balance based on LCL three -level APF is proposed. In this algorithm one low pass filter (LPF) is introduced to filter the zero sequence voltage component in order to reduce its influence on the compensation current and the designed parameters of the LPF are given. At last, the simulation and experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the compensation performance of the three-level APF and verify the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.

In order to solve the problem of dead time effect of the active power filter (APF), this paper gets down to the dead time effect of the generation principle and combines three-level switching state equations on the basis of three-level APF equivalent switching circuit. The linear relationship between the dead time and the current tracking error is calculated and detruded. Furthermore, it interprets explanation the effect of dead time clearly. A dead time compensation method is proposed for the problem of dead time effect. The control principle of this compensation method is given, and the performance of the system is analyzed from the point of view of the closed-loop characteristic of the control system. Compared with the dead time compensation system, it is found that the latter has better steady state performance. Finally, simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively suppress the dead time effect, and prove the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Mid-long term power load forecasting takes 5 or 10 years as an unit for forecasting. There are several methods for mid-long term load forecasting, in which the gray system prediction method is more effective. GM (1, 1) model is the most commonly used model of gray system. This model which has some limitations in real prediction, does not apply to predict the object has an S-shaped curve of growth. In this paper, the gray Verhulst model is applied to load forecasting, and predict the forecast of actual grid. This paper studies the application of gray Verhulst model in the mid-long term load forecasting: Firstly, it has been proved by examples that the gray Verhulst has higher accuracy than GM (1, 1) model when the forecast has an S-shaped curve. And the result based on the grey Verhulst model can be high precision prediction. Secondly, we applied the gray Verhulst model as a single model to the combination forecasting, and adopted recursive equal weighting method to calculate the weight of each single model that participate in the combination forecasting. Finally, we drew the following conclusion that it is feasible for the grey Verhulst model to involve in the combination forecasting and at the same time when the grey Verhulst model is applied to the combination forecasting which predict the mid-long term load, ideal result can be achieved.

Decision heuristic strategy can be viewed as one of the most central features of state-of-the-art conflict-driven clause-learning SAT solvers. Variable state independent decaying sum (VSIDS) still is the dominant branching heuristics because of its low cost. VSIDS consists of a rewarding mechanism for variables participating in the conflict. This paper proposes a new rewarding mechanism for branching strategy, rewarding variables differently depended on information provided by the conflict analysis process, that is to say, the literal block distance value of the learnt clause and the size of the backtrack level decided by the learnt clause. We implement it as part of the Glucose 3.0 solver and MapleCOMSPS solver. Compared with Glucose 3.0, the number of solved instances of the improved Glucose_LBD + BTL is enhanced by 6.0%; compared with MapleCOMSPS, the number of solved instances of MapleCOMSPS_LBD + BTL is added by 3.4%. These empirical results further shed light on the proposed heuristic having the advantage of solving Application benchmark from the SAT Competitions 2015-2017.

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains one of the leading causes of cancer-related death. The current study aimed to elucidate the mechanism by which exosomes carrying KRAS mutant contribute to neutrophil recruitment as well as the formation of the neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in CRC. Methods: APC-WT and APC-KRASG12D mouse models were initially established. The peripheral blood, spleen, bone marrow (BM) and mesenteric lymph nodes (mLN) were isolated to detect neutrophil content. Next, exosomes isolated from APC-WT and APC-KRASG12D mice were injected into APC-WT and APC-KRASG12D mice. The neutrophil ratio, NETs formation and IL-8 protein content in colon tissue were subsequently quantified. DKs-8 (wild type) and DKO-1 (KRAS mutant) cells were employed for in vitro experimentation. Then, DKs-8 cells were cultured with exosome-treated PMA stimulated neutrophil-forming NETs culture medium, with cell viability, invasion, migration, and adhesion evaluated. Results: Compared with APC-WT mice, the number of polyps and neutrophils in the peripheral blood, spleen and mLNs increased in APC-KRASG12D mice, with increased NETs formation, IL-8 expression, and exosomes. IL-8 upregulation, neutrophil recruitment and NETs formation were observed in mice injected with exosomes derived from APC-KRASG12D. The in vitro investigation results revealed that more NETs were formed by DKO-1-Exosomes, which were inhibited by DNAse. In addition, DKs-8 and DKO-1 cells-derived exosomes can adhere to NETs under static conditions in vitro. Exosomal KRAS mutants were noted to exert a stimulatory effect on the production of IL-8 while promoting NETs formation as well as CRC promotion. Conclusion: The results obtained provide evidence suggesting that exosomes may transfer mutant KRAS to recipient cells and trigger an increase in IL-8 production, promote neutrophil recruitment and form NETs, ultimately leading to the promotion of CRC. Funding Statement: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81873975, 81802084, 81974314, 81902984), the Excellent Academic Leader Training Program of Shanghai Health System (2018BR31), the Medical Guidace Science and Technology Support Project of Shanghai (19411964800), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (19ZR1448800), the Clinical Research and Cultivation Project of Shanghai Tongji Hospital [ITJ(ZD)1803, ITJ(ZD)1905, ITJ(QN)1905]. Declaration of Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Ethics Approval Statement: The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Tongji Hospital of Tongji University. All subjects have written informed consent. All animal use and experiments were performed in strict accordance with the procedures approved by the National Cancer Institute Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC).

The effects of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) on heavy metal fate and biotoxicity in farmland soil are mostly unknown. A flooding–drying simulation experiment was conducted to study the effects of three typical metal oxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs, ZnO-NPs and CuO-NPs) on the chemical speciation of heavy metals and micronutrient bioavailability in paddy soil. The results showed that the addition of ZnO-NPs and CuO-NPs caused significant increases in soil pH, Eh and EC after a 90-d flooding–drying process. ZnO-NPs and CuO-NPs addition caused clearly increase in the Zn and Cu concentrations in the acid-soluble fraction, Fe/Mn oxides-bound fraction and organic-bound fraction, leading to higher bioavailability in the soil. DTPA-extractable Zn and Cu increased to 184.6 mg kg−1 and 145.3 mg kg−1 in the maximum ZnO-NPs and CuO-NPs concentration treatments (500 mg kg−1). TiO2-NPs promoted the transformation of Mn from a Fe/Mn oxides-bound fraction to an acid-soluble fraction. Soil Cd bioavailability obviously decreased in the TiO2-NPs treatment but increased in the ZnO-NPs and CuO-NPs treatments.

With the widespread use of metal oxide nanoparticles (MNPs), agricultural soil is gradually becoming a primary sink for MNPs. The effect of these nanoparticles on the fate and the toxicity of co-existing heavy metals is largely unknown. In this paper, pot experiments were conducted to evaluate the impact of ZnO nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) on Cd toxicity and bioaccumulation in a soil-rice system. Different amounts of ZnO-NPs were added to three different levels of Cd-contaminated paddy soil (L-Cd, 1.0 mg kg−1; M-Cd, 2.5 mg kg−1; H-Cd, 5.0 mg kg−1). The results showed that the addition of ZnO-NPs significantly increased the soil pH value, and the soil pH value increased with the increase in ZnO-NP concentration. Reductions in plant height and biomass under Cd stress were recovered and increased after the addition of ZnO-NPs; the addition of ZnO-NP promoted rice biomass increased by 13~22% and 25~43% in the M-Cd and H-Cd groups, respectively, compared with that of the respective control treatment. A high concentration of ZnO-NPs could increase the concentration of bioavailable Cd in rhizosphere soil. In the L-Cd group, the Cd concentration of the rice in the L-Z500 treatment increased to 0.51 mg kg−1, exceeding the limit for acceptable Cd concentrations in rice of China (0.2 mg kg−1). This work revealed that ZnO-NPs could improve plant growth, especially in the early-growth stage, and alleviate the toxic effects of Cd. However, the addition of high-concentration (500 mg kg−1) ZnO-NPs in the lower Cd pollution soil could significantly facilitate the accumulation of Cd by Oryza sativa L.

Decision heuristic strategy plays a critical role in DPLL-based propositional SAT solvers. Variable State Independent Decaying Sum (VSIDS) branching heuristic can be viewed as one of the most central features of state-of-the-art Conflict-Driven Clause-Learning (CDCL) SAT solvers. VSIDS consists of a rewarding mechanism for these variables participating in conflict. In this paper, we propose a new decision strategy — Rvar_LBD — extension of the rewarding mechanism by rewarding more variables that yield are involved in learnt clauses with small Literal Block Distance value, and implement it as part of Glucose3.0 solver. These empirical results further shed light on the proposed heuristic has the advantage of solving application and craft benchmarks from the SAT Competitions 2014 to 2016.

The estimation of direction of arrival (DOA) is the main study of the direction finding and location of radio signal, MUSIC algorithm is the most classic DOA estimation. MUSIC algorithm can estimate independent signals’ DOA effectively, but it is failure to coherent signals. Concerning the issue, the modified MUSIC algorithm works when the correlative signals exist. However, the estimation performance of modified MUSIC algorithm will deteriorate in the case that the signal-noise rate is low. This paper improves the modified MUSIC algorithm by using matrix decomposition. Finally, the computer simulation results prove that this proposed method has better direction finding performance than the modified MUSIC algorithm with low signal to noise ratio.

Display images under high illumination may appear to have lower lightness and attenuated contrast. In this paper, we review the image degradation phenomenon in ambient light through photoreceptor physiology. The influence of different environmental parameters and their effects on various gray areas in images can be evaluated by the cone response difference. Based on this, we propose a fast global tone mapping method to minimize the cone response difference at different pixel intensity levels of images displayed at different illumination levels. This method has a superior computational efficiency and higher evaluation score than existing algorithms.

* Different portions of tree root systems play distinct functional roles, yet precisely how to distinguish roots of different functions within the branching fine-root system is unclear. * Here, anatomy and mycorrhizal colonization was examined by branch order in 23 Chinese temperate tree species of both angiosperms and gymnosperms forming ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular-mycorrhizal associations. * Different branch orders showed marked differences in anatomy. First-order roots exhibited primary development with an intact cortex, a high mycorrhizal colonization rate and a low stele proportion, thus serving absorptive functions. Second and third orders had both primary and secondary development. Fourth and higher orders showed mostly secondary development with no cortex or mycorrhizal colonization, and thus have limited role in absorption. Based on anatomical traits, it was estimated that c. 75% of the fine-root length was absorptive, and 68% was mycorrhizal, averaged across species. * These results showed that: order predicted differences in root anatomy in a relatively consistent manner across species; anatomical traits associated with absorption and mycorrhizal colonization occurred mainly in the first three orders; the single diameter class approach may have overestimated absorptive root length by 25% in temperate forests.

This paper concerns the representation of the linguistic evaluation set, which is often a total order set for its simple structure and operations. However, in some uncertain situations, the linguistic evaluation set with total order set is not enough for providing the assessments of the decision maker because all the linguistic labels are comparable. For describing the comparable and incomparable linguistic linguistic evaluation labels, a 2-dimension linguistic lattice implication algebra (2DL-LIA) is firstly introduced by combining two linguistic evaluation sets and a lattice implication algebra (LIA). Subsequently, the comparison analysis between two labels of a 2DL-LIA is investigated according to the structure of lattice. Finally, some operators are defined by using of the logical operators in a 2DL-LIA, and some properties of these operators are discussed, which are quite useful in the aggregation process of multi-attribute decision making (MADM).

Mechanisms of angiotensin II and cAMP regulating the expression of angiotensin II type 1 (AT(1)) receptor mRNA were studied in neonatal rat cardiomyocytes. Angiotensin II induced a transient decrease of AT(1)-mRNA expression in time- and dose-dependent manner. Maximal decrease (49.2 +/- 9.5% of control) occurred at 6 h of angiotensin II (10 nmol/l) treatment. AT(1) receptor antagonists 4-ethyl-2-n-propyl-1-[2'-(1H-tetrazol-5-yl)biphenyl-4-yl)methyl]imidazole-5-carboxylic acid (DMP811) and losartan as well as 1-(5-isoquinolinesulfonyl)-2-methylpiperazine dihydrochloride (H-7) reversed the down-regulation of AT(1)-mRNA expression. 6 h of phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) stimulation caused a decrease of AT(1)-mRNA level. Treatment by angiotensin II plus actinomycin D for 6 h produced the same effect as actinomycin D alone. These results suggest that angiotensin II down-regulates AT(1)-mRNA level of rat cardiomyocytes by inhibiting the transcription of AT(1) gene, which is mediated by AT(1) receptor and related to the activation of protein kinase C. Stimulation by forskolin plus 3-isobutyl-1-methyl-xanthine (IBMX) decreased the expression of AT(1)-mRNA to 68.1 +/- 21.5% of control at 6 h treatment; while increased to 207.9 +/- 27.1% of control at 48 h treatment. A series of 5'-upstream deletion mutants of AT(1A) promoter were produced and then were recombined with pGL(3) basic vector utilizing luciferase as reporter gene. Among all the constructors, p(-201/+ 74)Luc was of the highest luciferase activity (5.9 times higher than control) after stimulation by forskolin for 48 h. Further deletion from -201 to -61 resulted in a large decrease of activity. These results indicate that cAMP induces a time-dependent bi-directional regulation of AT(1)-mRNA expression. The cAMP responsible element (CRE) cis-element located in the region -201/-61 of rat AT(1A) promoter is forskolin inducible, which may mediate the up-regulation of AT(1)-mRNA expression induced by cAMP long-lasting stimulation.