Critical Role of Cys168 in Noggin Protein's Biological Function

Previous studies have indicated that noggin exerts its neural inducing effect by binding andantagonizing bone morphogenetic protein 4(BMP4).In order to further clarify the relationship between thestructure and the function of noggin,and elucidate the possible mechanism responsible for noggin-BMP4interaction,we generated three noggin mutants,C168S,C174S and C197S,by using a site-directed mu-tagenesis method.Ectopic expression of wild-type(WT)noggin,C174S or C197S,in Xenopus animal caps(ACs)by mRNA injection converted the explants(prospective ectoderm)into neural tissue,as indicated bythe neural-like morphology and expression of the neural cell adhesion molecule(NCAM)in the ACs.Incontrast,ACs expressing C 168S suffered an epidermal fate similar to the control caps.Similarly,among the threemutants,only C 168S lost the dorsalizing function.These studies highlight the critical role played by Cys168in noggin's biological activities.It probably participates in the formation of an intermolecular disulfide bridge.     

Diversity in the Content of Some Nutritional Components in Husked Seeds of Three Wild Rice Species and Rice Varieties in Yunnan Province of China

In addition to rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivars, there are three wild rice species, namely O.rufipogon Griff, O. officinalis Wall and O. granulata Baill, in Yunnan Province, China. Each species has different subtypes and ecological distributions. Yunnan wild rice species are excellent genetic resources for developing new rice cultivars. The nutritional components of the husked seeds of wild rice have not been investigated thus far. Herein, we report on the contents of total protein, starch, amylose, 17 amino acids, and five macro and five trace mineral elements in husked seeds from three wild rice species and six O. sativa cultivars. The mean (± SD) protein content in the husked rice of O. rufipogon, O. officinalis, and O. granulata was (14.5 ± 0.6)%, (16.3 ± 1. 1)%, and (15.3 ± 0.5)%, respectively. O. officinalis Ⅲ originating from Gengma had the highest protein content (19.3%). In contrast, the average protein content of six O. sativa cultivars was only 9.15%. The total content of 17 amino acids of three wild rice species was 30%-50% higher than that of the six cultivars. Tyrosine, lysine, and valine content in the three wild rice species was 34%-209% higher than that of the cultivars. However, the difference in total starch content among different O. sativa varieties or types of wild rice species was very small. The average amylose content of O. rufipogon, O. officinalis,and O. granulata was 12.0%, 9.7%, and 11.3%, respectively, much lower than that of the indica and japonica varieties (14.37%-17.17%) but much higher than that of the glutinous rice cultivars (3.89%). The sulfur, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and ferrite content in the three wild rice species was 30%-158% higher than that of the six cultivars. The considerable difference in some nutritional components among wild rice species and O. sativa cultivars represents a wide biodiversity of Yunnan Oryza species. Based on the results of the present study, it is predicted that some good genetic traits, especially high protein and ideal amylose content, of Yunnan wild rice species may be useful in improving the nutritional value of rice. This is the first report regarding the amino acid, mineral element, protein and amylose content of husked seeds of some Yunnan wild rice species that have important genetic characteristics for rice quality and nutritional value.     

Improvement, Comparison, and Application of Field Measurement Methods for Grassland Vegetation Fractional Coverage

As one of the important vegetation parameters, vegetation fractional coverage （VFC） is more difficult to measure accurately among a good many parameters of plant communities. The temperate typical steppe in the north of China was chosen for investigation in the present study and a digital camera was used to measure herb community coverage in the field, adopting methods of ocular estimation, gridding measurement, visual interpretation, supervised classification, and information extraction of color spatial transformation to calculate the VFC of images captured by the digital camera. In addition VFC calculated by various methods was analyzed and compared VFC, enabling us to propose an effective method for measuring VFC using a digital camera. The results of the present study indicate that： （i） as two common useful and effective methods of measuring VFC with a digital camera, not only does the error of estimated values of visual estimation and supervised classification vary considerably, but the degree of automatization is very low and depends, to a great extent, on the manipulator; （ii） although the method of visual interpretation may assure the precision of the calculated VFC and enable the precision of results obtained using other methods to be determined, as far as large quantities of data are concerned, this method has the disadvantages of wasting time and energy, and the applications of this method are limited; （iii） the precision and stability of VFC calculated using the grid and node method are superior to those of visual estimation and supervised classification and inferior to those of visual interpretation, but, as for visual interpretation and supervised classification, gridding measurements are difficult to apply in practice because they are not time efficient; and （iv） in terms of the precision of calculation of the VFC, an information-extracting model based on an intensity, hue, saturation （IHS） color space-multi-component series segmentation strategy is superior to methods of ocular estimation, gridding measurement, and supervised classification. In terms of practical efficiency, the information-extracting model is superior to visual interpretation, supervised classification, and gridding measurement. It has been proven that estimating the VFC of the north temperate typical steppe using this model is feasible. This is very fundamental research work in grassland ecology.     

Overexpression of the OsPDCD5 Gene Induces Programmed Cell Death in Rice

The primary aim of the present study was to investigate the overexpression of the rice （Oryza sativa L.） programmed cell death 5 （OsPDCD5） gene in rice plant. Constitutive expression of OsPDCD5 from the cauliflower mosaic virus （CaMV） 35S promoter induced programmed cell death （PCD） in transgenic rice. Programmed cell death was accompanied by typical features, including inhibition of developmental growth, a reduction of fresh weight, degradation of total protein content, and fragmentation of genomic DNA. These results suggest that OsPDCD5 plays an essential role in the regulation of PCD in rice plants.     

Comparative genomics and phylogenetic analysis of S. dysenteriae subgroup

Shigella spp are the pathogen of bacillary dysentery, the leading intestinal contagious disease in China. According to the O antigen, Shigella spp can be sub-grouped into four species: S.dysenteriae, S. flexneri, S. boydii and S. sonnei, also known as Shigella sub-groups A, B, C and D. In developing countries, S. dysenteriae A1, one of the thirteen serotypes in A sub-group, resulted in extremely serious bacterial diarrhea with mortality of 7%[1]. Traditional classifications were unsucces…     

Analysis of ESTs and gene expression patterns of the poste-rior silkgland in the fifth instar larvae of silkworm, Bom-byx mori L.

The fibroin gene expression pattern and regulation of the posterior silkgland were studied by means of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) using the first and fifth day larvae of the fifth instar of silkworm, Bombyx mori L (strain: C 108). The results showed that there were 911 repetitive ESTs and 1950 single sequences (Singlets) among total 2861 consentient sequences, which were spliced. 1335 sequences were identified and the other 1526 were unknown. 5560 sequences (55.89%) in the posterior silkgland cell of the silkworm were new ESTs without ho-mology with EST data published by Mita et al. The number of repetitive ESTs and single sequences from the first day larvae of the fifth instar was double more than that of the fifth day of the same instar in the silkworms. The unigenes which were more than 50 in repetitive EST size (contig size) came to only about 0.5% in total consentient sequences. There were significant differences between gene expression frequencies, and expressed genes were related to fibroin synthesis and its secretion and fibroin composition. Comparing the fifth day with the first day of the fifth instar, the genes-expressed quantity of fibroin heavy-chain gene was 18 fold higher, fibroin light-chain gene 9 fold and fibroin P52 gene 8 fold. 508 genes functioned for cellular component and 315 for enzyme after function tracing. These results implied that the gene expression of the first day was mainly for preparation for fibroin synthesis except for the growth of silkgland cells, and the gene expression of the fifth day of the fifth instar was mainly for synthesizing and excreting fibroin. Because the ratio of heavy chain, light chain and p25 of fibroin was not 6:6:1 as theoretically expected, or its special H-chain structure, the H-chain gene was not easy to detect through EST technique. Most of genes among total 2861 consentient sequences functioned for fibroin synthesis and secretion. This suggested the fibroin synthesis and secretion procedure of the posterior silkgland was more complex than the knowledge we have.     

The diversity effect of inductive reasoning under segment manipulation of complex cognition

Forming a general reasonable conclusion from a limited number of examples is one of the most mar-velous psychological activities of human beings. This kind of activities is inductive reasoning which is a key issue rising from the cross fields of psychology, phi-losophy, cognitive science, and so on. It is a thinking process of generalizing from concrete cases. The di-versity effect of inductive reasoning refers to the phe-nomenon that the inductive argument of more diverse premise can obtain s…     

节节麦5D染色体上随体多态性的一个证据

5D染色体是节节麦整个染色体组中唯一的1对随体染色体, 其随体位于5D短臂的末端。对来源于中国的9个不同的节节麦居群的吉姆萨C带分析表明: 同一份节节麦居群内不同植株或不同细胞,这个端部随体在整个有丝分裂前期、中期和间期都很稳定,表现为大小、强弱一致的端部特征带。但是不同节节麦居群间5D染色体上的这个随体C带存在多态性。5D染色体上的随体区域可以作为小麦遗传分析和遗传操作的标记性状。同时本文还对这种多态性与普通小麦 5D染色体短臂上随体的消失的关系作了分析。 Abstract:C-banding analysis of satellites in 9 accessions of Ae.tauschii native to China was carried out with C-banded miotic interphases,prophases and metaphases,The results showed that the c-banded heterochromatin of satellites of Ae.tauschii did not change in size during the whole miotic stage and novariaton was observed among plants and cells within a accession,while polymorphism in c-banded satellites between different accessions was found.The C-banded heterochromatin of satellites of Ae.tauschii can be used as a marker in genetic research and genetic research and genetic manipulation.Further discussion is made on the relation between the polymorphism and the satellie loss in common wheat.     

云南芒人肤纹参数及苯硫脲味盲率分析

本文首次报道了我国的一个待识别民族-芒人的13项肤纹参数, 并将13项参数与汉族比较,大多有显著或高度显著性差异。同时,本文还报告了对芒人PTC味盲频率的调查分析结果。