Genetic assessment of captive Chinese water deer populations in Zhoushan Archipelago,China

Chinese water deer is a rare and vulnerable animal in China because of the poaching for medical use and the habitat loss. In this study, the genetic diversity and population genetic structure of 40 Chinese water deer from three populations in Zhoushan Archipelago were investigated with ten highly polymorphic microsatellite loci, including 4 screened from the nuclear DNA in the study, and 6 selected from the literature. According to the results, these captive populations had a higher genetic diversity than other rare cervid species, such as forest musk deer. No signs of inbreeding were detected. Low genetic differentiation among these populations was found. The probable reasons included the isolation by distance, the exchange among islands, or the supplement of the wild Chinese water deer. We proposed the deer raisers to strengthen the exchanges from different islands or mainland, and if possible, some deer would be returned to the wild to expand the wild population.     

Actomyosin contractility in olfactory placode neurons opens the skin epithelium to form the zebrafish nostril

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Intercalation of alkylviologen dications into the layered vanadium pentoxide

A novel series of inorganic–organic intercalation compounds were prepared by intercalating of alkylviologen dications into the layered vanadium pentoxide in the system of two phases of the liquid and the solid, and characterized by the techniques of X-ray diffraction (XRD), FT infrared (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and UV/vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS).     

Microplastics in soil-plant system: effects of nano/microplastics on plant photosynthesis,rhizosphere microbes and soil properties in soil with different residues

Plant and Soil - To investigate the effects of polystyrene microplastics (PS-beads) on the soil properties, photosynthesis of Flowering Chinese cabbage, the rhizosphere microbial community and...     

The genus Cahara Ghauri, 1978 of China (Hemiptera,Heteroptera, Pentatomidae,Halyini) with?descriptions of two new species

Cahara Ghauri from China with three species is reviewed here. Two of them, Cahara incisura sp. n. and Cahara nodula sp. n. are described here. Key to the three Chinese species, habitus photographs and illustrations of genitalia are also provided. All examined materials including the types of three species mentioned are deposited in the Institute of Entomology, Nankai University, Tianjin, China (NKUM).     

Biopolymer of alginate nature with a predominance of L-guluronic acid

Highly viscous polysaccharide (250–350 kDa) of an alginate nature with a predominance of α-L-guluronic acid (M/G = 0.22) was obtained from Azotobacter vinelandi. The yield of polysaccharide was 20.5 ± 0.5 g/l when cultured in a medium containing molasses at a viscosity of the cultural liquid of over 30000 cSt. The biopolymer is stable at pH 4.0–9.0 in a wide temperature range and well soluble in highly mineralized water; it retains a high viscosity level and can be used in the petroleum industry for enhanced oil recovery.     

谷子和狗尾草核型分析

作者研究了我国谷子(Setaria italica Beauv.)和狗尾草的核型与Giemsa带,两者核型基本相同,均为2n=18=14m+2sm+2st(SAT)。带型亦相近,另外在谷子和狗尾草中都发现有四倍体。     

Identification of 14-3-3 Proteins Phosphopeptide-Binding Specificity Using an Affinity-Based Computational Approach

The 14-3-3 proteins are a highly conserved family of homodimeric and heterodimeric molecules, expressed in all eukaryotic cells. In human cells, this family consists of seven distinct but highly homologous 14-3-3 isoforms. 14-3-3σ is the only isoform directly linked to cancer in epithelial cells, which is regulated by major tumor suppressor genes. For each 14-3-3 isoform, we have 1,000 peptide motifs with experimental binding affinity values. In this paper, we present a novel method for identifying peptide motifs binding to 14-3-3σ isoform. First, we propose a sampling criteria to build a predictor for each new peptide sequence. Then, we select nine physicochemical properties of amino acids to describe each peptide motif. We also use auto-cross covariance to extract correlative properties of amino acids in any two positions. Finally, we consider elastic net to predict affinity values of peptide motifs, based on ridge regression and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO). Our method tests on the 1,000 known peptide motifs binding to seven 14-3-3 isoforms. On the 14-3-3σ isoform, our method has overall pearson-product-moment correlation coefficient (PCC) and root mean squared error (RMSE) values of 0.84 and 252.31 for N–terminal sublibrary, and 0.77 and 269.13 for C–terminal sublibrary. We predict affinity values of 16,000 peptide sequences and relative binding ability across six permutated positions similar with experimental values. We identify phosphopeptides that preferentially bind to 14-3-3σ over other isoforms. Several positions on peptide motifs are in the same amino acid category with experimental substrate specificity of phosphopeptides binding to 14-3-3σ. Our method is fast and reliable and is a general computational method that can be used in peptide-protein binding identification in proteomics research.     

Phylogeny of the superfamily Gelechioidea (Lepidoptera: Obtectomera), with an exploratory application on geometric morphometrics

The superfamily Gelechioidea (Lepidoptera: Obtectomera) has a high species diversity. It consists of more than 18,400 described species and has a global distribution. Among it, large numbers of species were reported to be economically important to people's production and life. However, relationships among families or subfamilies in Gelechioidea have been exceptionally difficult to resolve using morphology or single gene genealogies. Multiple gene genealogies had been used in the molecular phylogenetic studies on Gelechioidea during the past years, but their phylogenetic relationships remain to be controversial mainly due to their limited taxa sampling relative to such high species diversity. In this paper, 89 ingroup species representing 55 genera are sequenced and added to the data downloaded from GenBank, and six species representing four closely related superfamilies are chosen as outgroup. The molecular phylogeny of Gelechioidea is reconstructed based on the concatenated data set composed of one mitochondrial marker (COI) and seven nuclear markers (CAD, EF-1ɑ, GAPDH, IDH, MDH, RpS5, wingless). The phylogenetic results, taking into consideration of the comparative morphological study, show that the clade of Gelechioidea is strongly supported and separated from other superfamilies, which further proves its monophyly. Five families are newly defined: Autostichidae sensu nov., Depressariidae sensu nov., Peleopodidae sensu nov., Ashinagidae sensu nov. and Epimarptidae sensu nov. Meanwhile, a monophyletic “SSABM” clade considered to be closely related is proposed for the first time, consisting of Stathmopodidae, Scythrididae, Ashinagidae, Blastobasidae and Momphidae. Moreover, geometric morphometric analyses using merged landmark data set from fore and hind wings of 118 representative species are conducted. The phenetic tree shows that the monophyly and phylogenetic relationships correspond with the results of molecular phylogeny largely, which well proves its importance and potential application in both phylogenetic reconstruction and species identification.