Retinoic acid can induce mouse embryonic stem cell R1/E to differentiate toward female germ cells while oleanolic acid can induce R1/E to differentiate toward both types of germ cells.

Retinoic acid (RA) and oleanolic acid (OA) were studied about their potential to induce mouse embryonic stem cell R1/E (MESC-R1/E) to differentiate toward germ cells. Embryoid bodies (EBs) first formed from MESC-R1/E and EBs were allowed to attach to the bottoms of normal cell-culturing plate and grow. Then, different compounds including RA, OA and so on were respectively added to induce MESC-R1/E to differentiate. After 72 h, microscopy images were taken for all interventions, then total RNAs were extracted, cDNAs were synthesized and real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (qPCR) was performed to detect the transcriptional expression patterns of 11 reproductive-differentiation-related genes for different compounds respectively. During the data analysis, it was found RA significantly up-regulated the expression levels of GDF-9, Stra8, SCP3, Mvh, ZP1, ZP2, and ZP3, while significantly down-regulated the levels of Itag6 and Itgb1, and the level of Oct-4 was down-regulated insignificantly, while the level of TP2 was up-regulated insignificantly; OA significantly up-regulated the expression levels of Stra8, SCP3, Mvh, ZP1, ZP2, Itgb1, and TP2, and the levels of Oct-4, GDF-9, ZP3, and Itga6 were up-regulated insignificantly. The data showed that RA can induce MESC-R1/E to differentiate toward female germ cells while OA can induce MESC-R1/E to differentiate toward male and female germ cells.

A novel membrane-bound E3 ubiquitin ligase enhances the thermal resistance in plants.

High temperature stress disturbs cellular homoeostasis and results in a severe retardation in crop growth and development. Thus, it is important to reveal the mechanism of plants coping with heat stress. In this study, a novel gene that we identified from Brassica napus, referred to as BnTR1, was found to play a key role in heat stress response in planta. BnTR1 is a membrane-bound RINGv (C4HC3) protein that displays E3 ligase activity in vitro. We demonstrated that modest expression of BnTR1 is sufficient to minimize adverse environmental influence and confers thermal resistance on development without any detrimental effects in B. napus and Oryza sativa. Our investigation into the action mechanism indicates that BnTR1 is likely to be involved in mediating Ca²âº dynamics by regulating the activity of calcium channels, which further alters the transcripts of heat shock factors and heat shock proteins contributing to plant thermotolerance. Hence, our study identified BnTR1 as a novel key factor underlying a conserved mechanism conferring thermal resistance in plants.