Taxonomy and evolution history of two new litter-decomposing Ciliochorella (Amphisphaeriales, Sporocadaceae).

The genus Ciliochorella is a group of pestalotioid fungi, which typically occurs in subtropical and tropical areas. Species from the Ciliochorella genus play important roles in the decomposition of litter. In this study, we introduce two new species (Ciliochorellachinensissp. nov. and C.savannicasp. nov.) that were found on leaf litter collected from savanna-like vegetation in hot dry valleys of southwestern China. Phylogenetic analyses of combined LSU, ITS and tub2 sequence datasets indicated that C.chinensis and C.savannica respectively form a distinct clade within the Ciliochorella genus. The comparison of the morphological characteristics indicated that the two new species are well differentiated within this genus species. Analysis of the evolutionary history suggests that Ciliochorella originated from the Eurasian continent during the Paleogene (38 Mya). Further, we find that both new species can produce cellulase and laccase, playing a decomposer role.

Identification of the glutamine synthetase (GS) gene family in four wheat species and functional analysis of Ta4D.GSe in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Drought stress can negatively impact crop yield and quality. Improving wheat yields under drought stress is a major objective of agronomic research. Glutamine synthetase (GS) is a key enzyme of nitrogen metabolism that is critical to plant growth and development in abiotic stress response. However, to date, no systemic characterization of the GS genes has yet been conducted in wheat and its close relatives. We identified a total of 15 GS genes in Triticum aestivum (2n = 6x = 42; AABBDD), as well as 9 GS genes in Triticum dicoccoides (2n = 4x = 28; AABB), 6 in Aegilops tauschii (2n = 2x = 14; DD), and 5 in Triticum urartu (2n = 2x = 14; AA). The 35 GSs were further clustered into five lineages according to the phylogenetic tree. Synteny analysis revealed that the three subgenomes in bread wheat retained extensive synteny between bread wheat and its three relative species. We identified three up-regulated TaGSs (Ta4A.GSe, Ta4B.GSe, and Ta4D.GSe) from transcriptome data after drought and salt stress. Ta4D.GSe was subsequently used for further functional studies, and its subcellular localization were determined in Arabidopsis protoplasts. Its overexpression in Arabidopsis enhanced drought tolerance by increasing the ability of scavenging of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and osmotic adjustment. We identified GS gene family in four wheat species and performed comparative analyses of their relationships, chromosome locations, conserved motif, gene structure, and synteny. The subcellular localization of Ta4D.GSe was detected and its drought tolerance function was demonstrated. Taken together, these findings provide insight into the potential functional roles of the GS genes in abiotic stress tolerance. KEY MESSAGE: This report clearly shows detailed characterization of GS gene family in four wheat species and demonstrates that Ta4D.GSe plays an important role in enhancing drought tolerance by improving the scavenging of ROS and osmotic adjustment ability in Arabidopsis.

Experimental study of a compressive line sensing imaging system in a turbulent environment.

Turbulence poses challenges in many atmospheric and underwater surveillance applications. The compressive line sensing (CLS) active imaging scheme has been demonstrated in simulations and test tank experiments to be effective in scattering media such as turbid coastal water, fog, and mist. The CLS sensing model adopts the distributed compressive sensing theoretical framework that exploits both intrasignal sparsity and the highly correlated nature of adjacent areas in a natural scene. During sensing operation, the laser illuminates the spatial light modulator digital micromirror device to generate a series of one-dimensional binary sensing patterns from a codebook to encode the current target line segment. A single element detector photomultiplier tube acquires target reflections as the encoder output. The target can then be recovered using the encoder output and a predicted on-target codebook that reflects the environmental interference of original codebook entries. In this work, we investigated the effectiveness of the CLS imaging system in a turbulent environment. The development of a compact CLS prototype will be discussed, as will a series of experiments using various turbulence intensities at the Naval Research Lab's Simulated Turbulence and Turbidity Environment. The experimental results showed that the time-averaged measurements improved both the signal-to-noise radio and the resolution of the reconstructed image in the extreme turbulence environment. The contributing factors for this intriguing and promising result will be discussed.

[Clinical report on treatment of thrombocytopenia with rhIL-11 (Mega) in 10 chronic aplastic anemia patients].

In order to evaluated the curative effect of rhIL-11 (Mega) on thrombocytopenia in chronic aplastic anemia (CAA) patients, ten CAA cases with thrombocytopenia after administration of conventional drugs were selected and subcutaneously injected 0.75 mg Mega per day in 1 - 2 courses of treatment on the basis of conventional therapy. Results showed that platelet counts were obviously increased and the bleeding symptoms were alleviated in all CAA patients after application of Mega for treatment. In conclusion, the rhIL-11 (Mega) could be used as an effective drug for treatment of thrombocytopenia in CAA patients.