白木香悬浮培养细胞中2-(2-苯乙基)色酮化合物的诱导形成

白木香是我国生产沉香的唯一植物资源,为研究其中次生代谢产物的生物合成,从国产沉香中分离并鉴定了4种已知的2-(2-苯乙基)色酮化合物,实验中以此作为标准品,以白木香根悬浮培养细胞为材料,黄绿墨耳真菌提取物为诱导子,首次在组织培养物中成功诱导了2-(2-苯乙基)色酮化合物的产生,为研究中药沉香活性成分2-(2-苯乙基)色酮化合物的生物合成建立了一个试验体系。     

几种提取白木香茎干总RNA方法的比较

目的:通过比较多种RNA提取方法,确定白木香茎干RNA提取的有效手段,为白木香伤害形成沉香药材的分子研究奠定基础。方法:取2年生白木香茎,分别用CTAB法、TRIzol法、异硫氰酸胍-SDS法、Qiagen试剂盒和Nor gen试剂盒法提取总RNA,通过琼脂糖凝胶电泳和紫外分光光度法测定其产量与质量,并通过cDNA合成及小样本克隆测序检查RNA的可用性。结果:异硫氰酸胍-SDS法及Norgen试剂盒法提出的RNA条带清晰,完整性好;D260nm/D280nm值可达2.0左右,纯度较高,其产量足够应用于cDNA合成;其他方法不能提出RNA。结论:异硫氰酸胍-SDS法及Norgen试剂盒法可用于白木香茎干RNA提取。     

沉香属植物研究进展

对土沉香的植物形态、生态学特性、迁地保护措施、沉香形成机理,造香、采收和加工分级进行了综述.通过分析其药用价值、园林绿化、香精等方面的开发利用价值,认为土沉香作为乡土树种,不仅经济和观赏价值较高,而且适应性强、繁殖简单、栽培容易、病虫害少,可大力推广种植土沉香.     

Succession patterns of fungi associated to wound-induced agarwood in wild Aquilaria malaccensis revealed from quantitative PCR assay

Aquilaria malaccensis produces agarwood in response to wounding and fungal attack. However, information is limited regarding Aquilaria‘s interaction with its diverse fungal community. In this study, time-related changes of three natural fungal colonizers in two wounded wild A. malaccensis were tracked, beginning a few hours after wounding up to 12 months. Using species-specific primers derived from their nrITS sequences in quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR), we quantified the amount of Cunninghamella bainieri, Fusarium solani and Lasiodiplodia theobromae. Because time is a major factor affecting agarwood quantity and quality, 14 wood samples were collected at different time points, i.e., 0–18 h, 2–13 days, 2–18 weeks, and 6–12 months after wounding. qPCR data revealed that the abundance of the three species decreased over time. The fungi were detected in high numbers during the first few hours and days after wounding (40- to 25,000-fold higher levels compared with initial counts) and in low numbers (<1- to 3,200-fold higher than initially) many months later. Consistent with its role in defense response, the accumulation of secondary metabolites at the wounding site could have caused the decline in fungal abundance. Succession patterns of the two trees were not identical, indicating that fungal populations may have been affected by tree environment and wound microclimate. Our results are important for understanding the diversity of microbial community in wild Aquilaria species and their association to wound-induced agarwood formation. Fungi could be secondary triggers to agarwood production in situations where trees are wounded in attempt to induce agarwood.     

A shared response of thaumatin like protein, chitinase, and late embryogenesis abundant protein3 to environmental stresses in tea [Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze]

Drought poses a significant threat to tree plants including tea [Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze] that yields a popular beverage "tea." Consequence of drought is heat and salt stress, for which data on molecular response in tree species are not available. The present work analyzed drought-responsive subtracted cDNA libraries of tea to identify drought-responsive genes. Temporal and spatial gene expression suggested the involvement of chaperones as one of the major mechanisms to protect the plant against drought-related damages. A common response of thaumatin like protein, chitinase, and late embryogenesis abundant protein3 across four stresses suggests these to be useful targets to generate "drought stress proof" tea.     

Sesquiterpenoids in two different kinds of agarwood

Sesquiterpenoids of an agarwood originating from Aquilaria agallocha and of the other kind of agarwood (Aquilaria sp.; probably Aquilaria malaccensis) were investigated by a combination of GLC and GC/MS. The differences in sesquiterpene composition between the two kinds of agarwood are discussed.     

Characterization of delta-guaiene synthases from cultured cells of Aquilaria, responsible for the formation of the sesquiterpenes in agarwood

The resinous portions of Aquilaria plants, called agarwood, have been used as medicines and incenses. Agarwood contains a great variety of sesquiterpenes, and a study using cultured cells of Aquilaria showed the production of sesquiterpenes (α-guaiene, α-humulene, and δ-guaiene) to be induced by treatment with methyl jasmonate (MJ). In this study, the accumulation and production of sesquiterpenes were quantified. The amounts accumulated and produced reached a maximum at 12 h, and the most abundant product was α-humulene at 6 h and δ-guaiene after 12 h. However, a headspace analysis of the cells revealed that α-humulene is likely to be volatilized; so overall, the most abundant sesquiterpene in the cells was δ-guaiene. A cDNA library from RNA isolated from MJ-treated cells was screened using PCR methodologies to isolate five clones with very similar amino acid sequences. These clones were expressed in Escherichia coli, and enzymatic reactions using farnesyl pyrophosphate revealed that three of the clones yielded the same compounds as extracted from MJ-treated cells, the major product being δ-guaiene. These genes and their encoded enzymes are the first sesquiterpene synthases yielding guaiane-type sesquiterpenes as their major products to be reported. Expression of a fourth terpene synthase gene in bacteria resulted in the accumulation of the protein in insoluble forms. Site-directed mutagenesis of the inactive clone and three-dimensional homology modeling suggested that the structure of the N-terminal domain was important in facilitating proper folding of the protein to form a catalytically active structure.     

Assessing the performance of single-copy genes for recovering robust phylogenies

Phylogenies involving nonmodel species are based on a few genes, mostly chosen following historical or practical criteria. Because gene trees are sometimes incongruent with species trees, the resulting phylogenies may not accurately reflect the evolutionary relationships among species. The increase in availability of genome sequences now provides large numbers of genes that could be used for building phylogenies. However, for practical reasons only a few genes can be sequenced for a wide range of species. Here we asked whether we can identify a few genes, among the single-copy genes common to most fungal genomes, that are sufficient for recovering accurate and well-supported phylogenies. Fungi represent a model group for phylogenomics because many complete fungal genomes are available. An automated procedure was developed to extract single-copy orthologous genes from complete fungal genomes using a Markov Clustering Algorithm (Tribe-MCL). Using 21 complete, publicly available fungal genomes with reliable protein predictions, 246 single-copy orthologous gene clusters were identified. We inferred the maximum likelihood trees using the individual orthologous sequences and constructed a reference tree from concatenated protein alignments. The topologies of the individual gene trees were compared to that of the reference tree using three different methods. The performance of individual genes in recovering the reference tree was highly variable. Gene size and the number of variable sites were highly correlated and significantly affected the performance of the genes, but the average substitution rate did not. Two genes recovered exactly the same topology as the reference tree, and when concatenated provided high bootstrap values. The genes typically used for fungal phylogenies did not perform well, which suggests that current fungal phylogenies based on these genes may not accurately reflect the evolutionary relationships among species. Analyses on subsets of species showed that the phylogenetic performance did not seem to depend strongly on the sample. We expect that the best-performing genes identified here will be very useful for phylogenetic studies of fungi, at least at a large taxonomic scale. Furthermore, we compare the method developed here for finding genes for building robust phylogenies with previous ones and we advocate that our method could be applied to other groups of organisms when more complete genomes are available.     

Weighted rank aggregation of cluster validation measures: a Monte Carlo cross-entropy approach

MOTIVATION: Biologists often employ clustering techniques in the explorative phase of microarray data analysis to discover relevant biological groupings. Given the availability of numerous clustering algorithms in the machine-learning literature, an user might want to select one that performs the best for his/her data set or application. While various validation measures have been proposed over the years to judge the quality of clusters produced by a given clustering algorithm including their biological relevance, unfortunately, a given clustering algorithm can perform poorly under one validation measure while outperforming many other algorithms under another validation measure. A manual synthesis of results from multiple validation measures is nearly impossible in practice, especially, when a large number of clustering algorithms are to be compared using several measures. An automated and objective way of reconciling the rankings is needed. RESULTS: Using a Monte Carlo cross-entropy algorithm, we successfully combine the ranks of a set of clustering algorithms under consideration via a weighted aggregation that optimizes a distance criterion. The proposed weighted rank aggregation allows for a far more objective and automated assessment of clustering results than a simple visual inspection. We illustrate our procedure using one simulated as well as three real gene expression data sets from various platforms where we rank a total of eleven clustering algorithms using a combined examination of 10 different validation measures. The aggregate rankings were found for a given number of clusters k and also for an entire range of k. AVAILABILITY: R code for all validation measures and rank aggregation is available from the authors upon request. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary information are available at http://www.somnathdatta.org/Supp/RankCluster/supp.htm.     

A polynomial time algorithm for calculating the probability of a ranked gene tree given a species tree

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The ancestries of genes form gene trees which do not necessarily have the same topology as the species tree due to incomplete lineage sorting. Available algorithms determining the probability of a gene tree given a species tree require exponential computational runtime. RESULTS: In this paper, we provide a polynomial time algorithm to calculate the probability of a ranked gene tree topology for a given species tree, where a ranked tree topology is a tree topology with the internal vertices being ordered. The probability of a gene tree topology can thus be calculated in polynomial time if the number of orderings of the internal vertices is a polynomial number. However, the complexity of calculating the probability of a gene tree topology with an exponential number of rankings for a given species tree remains unknown. CONCLUSIONS: Polynomial algorithms for calculating ranked gene tree probabilities may become useful in developing methodology to infer species trees based on a collection of gene trees, leading to a more accurate reconstruction of ancestral species relationships.     

茶树实时荧光定量PCR分析中内参基因的选择

选择合适的内参基因是提高实时荧光定量PCR分析（qRT-PCR）准确性的先决条件。该文以茶树（Camellia sinensis）芽、叶、幼根、嫩茎、花瓣、种子和愈伤组织为材料,应用实时荧光定量PCR技术,分析了18S rRNA、GAPDH、β-actin和α-tubulin4个常用内参基因在茶树不同器官组织中的表达情况。经GeNorm和NormFinder软件分析发现,当利用荧光定量PCR分析比较茶树不同器官组织中的基因表达差异时,可选择β-actin作为校正内参基因;而比较不同成熟度的叶片和愈伤组织时,可以选择GAPDH作为校正内参基因。     

Chemical solution is an efficient method to induce the formation of 2-(2-phenylethyl) chromone derivatives in Aquilaria sinensis

Agarwood is a highly valuable resinous and fragrant heartwood used worldwide as advanced tea, incense for religious ceremonies, traditional Chinese medicine and perfume. Healthy trees do not produce agarwood; wounding and infectious disease initiate its formation. In this study, mechanical wounds, fungal elicitors and salt solution were applied to induce the formation of 2-(2-phenylethyl) chromones, which are the principal compounds in agarwood. In this research, chemical solution was the best inducer that could induce Aquilaria sinensis calli to produce the highest amount of chromones E and M at 79.20 and 41.62 μg g⁻¹, respectively. Chemical solution was then applied on three-year-old saplings by transfusion to verify its induction effect. Chromones E and M were detected in treated saplings after 15 d and then increased with increasing pruning time; their contents reached 22.05 and 3.42 μg g⁻¹, respectively. Our results suggested that chemical solution was the most promising chemical inducer for agarwood production on the industrial scale.     

Improved algorithms for finding gene teams and constructing gene team trees

A gene team is a set of genes that appear in two or more species, possibly in a different order yet with the distance between adjacent genes in the team for each chromosome always no more than a certain threshold δ. A gene team tree is a succinct way to represent all gene teams for every possible value of δ. In this paper, improved algorithms are presented for the problem of finding the gene teams of two chromosomes and the problem of constructing a gene team tree of two chromosomes. For the problem of finding gene teams, Beal et al. had an O(n lg2 n)-time algorithm. Our improved algorithm requires O(n lg t) time, where t ≤ n is the number of gene teams. For the problem of constructing a gene team tree, Zhang and Leong had an O(n lg2 n)-time algorithm. Our improved algorithm requires O(n lg n lglg n) time. Similar to Beal et al.'s gene team algorithm and Zhang and Leong's gene team tree algorithm, our improved algorithms can be extended to k chromosomes with the time complexities increased only by a factor of k.     

Selection of low-variance expressed Malus x domestica (apple) genes for use as quantitative PCR reference genes (housekeepers)

To accurately measure gene expression using PCR-based approaches, there is the need for reference genes that have low variance in expression (housekeeping genes) to normalise the data for RNA quantity and quality. For non-model species such as Malus x domestica (apples), previously, the selection of reference genes relied on using homology to reference genes in model species. In this study, a genomics approach was used to identify apple genes with low variance in expression in 217 messenger RNA (mRNA)-seq data sets covering different tissues, during fruit development, and treated with a range of different stress conditions. Ten potential reference genes were chosen for validation by quantitative PCR (qPCR) over 29 different tissue types and treatments. From the combined mRNA-seq and qPCR results, three potential reference genes are proposed that can be used as good controls for PCR based expression studies. The three genes show homology to lipid transfer proteins, phytochrome protein phosphatase and the ubiquitination pathway. With the progression of research away from non-model species, this approach provides a robust method for selecting candidate genes for use as reference genes in qPCR.