Novel Jasmonic Acid-Coumarin Pathway in the Eggplant That Inhibits Vitellogenin Gene Expression To Prevent Mite Reproduction.

Plants activate direct and indirect defense mechanisms in response to perceived herbivore invasion, which results in negative consequences for herbivores. Tetranychus cinnabarinus is a polyphagous generalist herbivore that inflicts substantial agricultural and horticultural damage. Our study revealed that mite feeding significantly increased jasmonic acid (JA) in the eggplant. The damage inflicted by the mites decreased considerably following the artificial application of JA, thereby indicating that JA initiated the defense response of the eggplant against mites. The transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses demonstrated the activation of the JA-coumarin pathway in response to mite feeding. This pathway protects the eggplant by suppressing the reproductive capacity and population size of the mites. The JA and coumarin treatments suppressed the vitellogenin gene (TcVg6) expression level. Additionally, RNA interference with TcVg6 significantly reduced the egg production and hatching rate of mites. In conclusion, the JA-coumarin pathway in the eggplant decreases the egg-hatching rate of mites through suppression of TcVg6.

FAM60A promotes osteosarcoma development and progression.

BACKGROUND: Osteosarcoma (OS) is a highly malignant primary bone tumor. Family of homology 60A (FAM60A) reportedly contributes to the malignant growth of some tumors. METHODS: Herein we investigated the mRNA expression level of FAM60A by combining OS and non-cancer samples from public databases. Immunohistochemistry was performed to determine protein expression levels of FAM60A in patients with OS. Further, RT-qPCR and western blotting were conducted to evaluate FAM60A expression in various OS cell lines. CCK-8 assay, colony formation assay, and flow cytometry were applied to determine the function of FAM60A. Finally, functional enrichment analysis was performed based on FAM60A co-expressed genes. RESULTS: FAM60A mRNA expression level was found to be significantly upregulated (standardized mean difference = 1.27, 95% CI [0.67-1.88]). Survival analyses suggested that higher expression of FAM60A was indicative of poor prognoses. Similarly, FAM60A protein expression level was also observed to be upregulated. Knocking down FAM60A expression inhibited OS cell proliferation, increased apoptosis, and blocked cells from entering the S phase. Besides, cell cycle was the most prominently enriched pathway, and BUB1, DTL, and EXO1 were identified as hub genes. CONCLUSIONS: FAM60A expression was found to be markedly upregulated in OS; furthermore, FAM60A was observed to promote OS cell proliferation, inhibit apoptosis, and participate in cell cycle regulation. Besides, FAM60A may interact with hub genes to participate in the progress of OS.

Conflicts in Mitochondrial Phylogenomics of Branchiopoda, with the First Complete Mitogenome of Laevicaudata (Crustacea: Branchiopoda).

Conflicting phylogenetic signals are pervasive across genomes. The potential impact of such systematic biases may be reduced by phylogenetic approaches accommodating for heterogeneity or by the exclusive use of homoplastic sites in the datasets. Here, we present the complete mitogenome of Lynceus grossipedia as the first representative of the suborder Laevicaudata. We employed a phylogenomic approach on the mitogenomic datasets representing all major branchiopod groups to identify the presence of conflicts and concordance across the phylogeny. We found pervasive phylogenetic conflicts at the base of Diplostraca. The homogeneity of the substitution pattern tests and posterior predictive tests revealed a high degree of compositional heterogeneity among branchiopod mitogenomes at both the nucleotide and amino acid levels, which biased the phylogenetic inference. Our results suggest that Laevicaudata as the basal clade of Phyllopoda was most likely an artifact caused by compositional heterogeneity and conflicting phylogenetic signal. We demonstrated that the exclusive use of homoplastic site methods combining the application of site-heterogeneous models produced correct phylogenetic estimates of the higher-level relationships among branchiopods.

Comparative Mitogenomic Analyses and New Insights into the Phylogeny of Thamnocephalidae (Branchiopoda: Anostraca).

Thamnocephalidae, a family of Anostraca which is widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, currently consists of six genera and approximately 63 recognized species. The relationships among genera in Thamnocephalidae and the monophyly of Thamnocephalidae, determined using morphological characteristics or gene markers, remain controversial. In order to address the relationships within Thamnocephalidae, we sequenced Branchinella kugenumaensis mitogenomes and conducted a comparative analysis to reveal the divergence across mitogenomes of B. kugenumaensis. Using newly obtained mitogenomes together with available Anostracan genomic sequences, we present the most complete phylogenomic understanding of Anostraca to date. We observed high divergence across mitogenomes of B. kugenumaensis. Meanwhile, phylogenetic analyses based on both amino acids and nucleotides of the protein-coding genes (PCG) provide significant support for a non-monophyletic Thamnocephalidae within Anostraca, with Asian Branchinella more closely related to Streptocephalidae than Australian Branchinella. The phylogenetic relationships within Anostraca were recovered as follows: Branchinectidae + Chirocephalidae as the basal group of Anostraca and halophilic Artemiidae as a sister to the clade Thamnocephalidae + Streptocephalidae. Both Bayesian inference (BI)- and maximum likelihood (ML)-based analyses produced identical topologies.

The Analgesic Efficacy of Ultrasound-guided Quadratus Lumborum Block Transmuscular or Posterior Approach After Hip Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis with Trial Sequential Analysis.

BACKGROUND: No review or meta-analysis exists to elucidate the efficacy and safety of quadratus lumborum block (QLB) on the pain intensity, opioid requirement, and mobilization in patients undergoing hip surgery. This systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials were designed to compare QLB with no block or placebo (without other nerve/plexus blocks) for patients undergoing hip surgery. METHODS: Two individual researchers conducted the platform searches on the PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases from inception to June 12, 2021. Only English publications were included. The pain at rest score at 12 postoperative hours was designated as the primary outcome. Secondary outcomes included rest pain at rest scores at 6 and 24 postoperative hours, dynamic pain score at 6, 12, and 24 postoperative hours, total opioid consumption, postoperative nausea and vomiting, and patient satisfaction. RESULTS: Seven trials including 514 patients were included. When compared with controls, the QLB technique significantly reduced pain at rest scores at 12 hours after surgery (mean difference -1.15, -1.52 to -0.77, P <0.0001). The secondary outcomes were limited by heterogeneity: secondary pain outcomes and opioid consumption were consistently improved with QLB ( P <0.05); patient satisfaction and postoperative nausea and vomiting were similar between the groups based on the Inverse Variance Heterogeneity model ( P >0.05). The overall quality of evidence was moderate. CONCLUSIONS: There is moderate evidence that QLB employment in hip surgery produces significant reduction in pain scores and opioid consumption within 24 hours. QLB appears to be an appropriate option for postoperative analgesia after hip surgery.

Probabilistic Circuit Implementation Based on P-Bits Using the Intrinsic Random Property of RRAM and P-Bit Multiplexing Strategy.

Probabilistic computing is an emerging computational paradigm that uses probabilistic circuits to efficiently solve optimization problems such as invertible logic, where traditional digital computations are difficult to solve. This paper proposes a true random number generator (TRNG) based on resistive random-access memory (RRAM), which is combined with an activation function implemented by a piecewise linear function to form a standard p-bit cell, one of the most important parts of a p-circuit. A p-bit multiplexing strategy is also applied to reduce the number of p-bits and improve resource utilization. To verify the superiority of the proposed probabilistic circuit, we implement the invertible p-circuit on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), including AND gates, full adders, multi-bit adders, and multipliers. The results of the FPGA implementation show that our approach can significantly save the consumption of hardware resources.

Phylogenetic Signal Dissection of Heterogeneous 28S and 16S rRNA Genes in Spinicaudata (Branchiopoda, Diplostraca).

It is still a challenge to reconstruct the deep phylogenetic relationships within spinicaudatans, and there are several different competing hypotheses regarding the interrelationships among Eocyzicidae, Cyzicidae s. s., Leptestheriidae, and Limnadiidae of the Suborder Spinicaudata. In order to explore the source of the inconsistencies, we focus on the sequence variation and the structure model of two rRNA genes based on extensive taxa sampling. The comparative sequence analysis revealed heterogeneity across species and the existence of conserved motifs in all spinicaudatan species. The level of intraspecific heterogeneity differed among species, which suggested that some species might have undergone a relaxed concerted evolution with respect to the 28S rRNA gene. The Bayesian analyses were performed on nuclear (28S rRNA, EF1α) and mitochondrial (16S rRNA, COI) genes. Further, we investigated compositional heterogeneity between lineages and assessed the potential for phylogenetic noise compared to signal in the combined data set. Reducing the non-phylogenetic signals and application of optimal rRNA model recovered a topology congruent with inference from the transcriptome data, whereby Limnadiidae was placed as a sister group to Leptestheriidae + Eocyzicidae with high support (topology I). Tests of alternative hypotheses provided implicit support for four competing topologies, and topology I was the best.

Sensing Circuit Design Techniques for RRAM in Advanced CMOS Technology Nodes.

Resistive random access memory (RRAM) is one of the most promising new nonvolatile memories because of its excellent properties. Moreover, due to fast read speed and low work voltage, it is suitable for seldom-write frequent-read applications. However, as technology nodes shrink, RRAM faces many issues, which can significantly degrade RRAM performance. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the sensing schemes to improve the application range of RRAM. In this paper, the issues faced by RRAM in advanced technology nodes are summarized. Then, the advantages and weaknesses in the novel design and optimization methodologies of sensing schemes are introduced in detail from three aspects, the reference schemes, sensing amplifier schemes, and bit line (BL)-enhancing schemes, according to the development of technology in especially recent years, which can be the reference for designing the sensing schemes. Moreover, the waveforms and results of each method are illustrated to make the design easy to understand. With the development of technology, the sensing schemes of RRAM become higher speed and resolution, low power consumption, and are applied at advanced technology nodes and low working voltage. Now, the most advanced nodes the RRAM applied is 14 nm node, the lowest working voltage can reach 0.32 V, and the shortest access time can be only a few nanoseconds.

Characterization of the complete mitochondrial genome of Chinese Triops granarius and implications for species delimitation.

The mt genome of T. granarius (15.121 bp), containing 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), 2 ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs) and one control region, present the typical pattern of phyllopod mt genomes from the perspective of gene content and order. All PCGs initiate with standard start codon of ATN and share the complete stop codon of TAA or TAG, whereas nd1 initiates with GTG, nd2 terminates with AGA and nd4 terminates with a single T. The secondary structures of rrnL and rrnS comprise of 48 helices and 32 helices, respectively. The patterns of evolutionary rate heterogeneity were observed at different levels in Triops. Phylogenetic analyses were performed based on the nucleotide sequences and amino acid sequences showed that Asian T. granarius was a sister group to (T. longicaudatus + T. australiensis), and T. cancriformis was the basal clade of Triops. Furthermore, we investigated the genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships of different T. granarius s.l. populations. Ten phylogenetic lineages are separated on species level by mean maximum likelihood distance ≥ 12.2% in the cox1 gene. While the six populations occurring in Inner Mongolia of China, Mongolia and Russia, investigated for haplotypes belonged to the same haplotype networks.

An approach for degradation of grape seed and skin proanthocyanidin polymers into oligomers by sulphurous acid.

To develop an efficient method for degradation of grape seed and skin proanthocyanidins polymers into oligomers, an optimized sulphurous acid degradation conditions for grape seed with the temperature of 60 °C, reaction time of 60 min and sample-sulphurous acid ratio of 1:0.2, and for grape skin with the temperature of 40 °C, reaction time of 60 min and sample-sulphurous acid ratio of 1:0.2, were established. Afterwards, HSCCC and prep-HPLC were used to fractionate and isolate individual proanthocyanidin oligomers from the degradation products. Total of ten dimeric or trimeric procyanidins were obtained, and most of them presented high yield (from 0.7 mg to 13.6 mg per run in grape seed and from 0.5 mg to 4.1 mg per run in grape skin) and high purity (over 90%). The proposed method provides a new way for large preparation of oligomeric proanthocyanidins from naturally abundant and wasted polymeric ones.

Determination and evaluation of the thermophysical properties of an alkali carbonate eutectic molten salt.

The thermal physical properties of Li2CO3-Na2CO3-K2CO3 eutectic molten salt were comprehensively investigated. It was found that the liquid salt can remain stable up to 658 °C (the onset temperature of decomposition) by thermal analysis, and so the investigations on its thermal physical parameters were undertaken from room temperature to 658 °C. The density was determined using a self-developed device, with an uncertainty of ±0.00712 g cm(-3). A cooling curve was obtained from the instrument, giving the liquidus temperature. For the first time, we report the obtainment of the thermal diffusivity using a laser flash method based on a special crucible design and establishment of a specific sample preparation method. Furthermore, the specific heat capacity was also obtained by use of DSC, and combined with thermal diffusivity and density, was used to calculate the thermal conductivity. We additionally built a rotating viscometer with high precision in order to determine the molten salt viscosity. All of these parameters play an important part in the energy storage and transfer calculation and safety evaluation for a system.