Improvement in growth and yield attributes of cluster bean through optimization of sowing time and plant spacing under climate change scenario

Cluster bean (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L.) yield has plateaued due to reduction in rainfall and rise in temperature. Therefore, its production cycle could not get appropriate water and temperature. It becomes important to standardize the sowing time and plant spacing of cluster beans in changing climate scenarios to get higher productivity. Therefore, a field study was conducted in 2019 at the Research area of MNS-University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan to evaluate the effect of four sowing times (15th May, 1st June, 15th June, and 1st July) and three plant spacings (10, 12 and 15 cm) on crop growth, yield, and physiological functions of cluster bean genotype BR-2017 under split plot arrangement under randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. The sowing times (15th May, 1st June, 15th June, and 1st July) were placed in the main plot, while plant spacing (10, 12 and 15 cm) was maintained in subplots. The significant effect of sowing time and plant spacing was observed on pod plant⁻¹, pod length, grain yield, and 1000-grain weight. Results showed that 1st June sowing performed better over 15th May, 15th June, and 1st July, while plant spacing 15 cm about in all sowing times showed higher results on growth and yield parameters of cluster bean over plant spacing 10, 12, and 15 cm. The 1st June sowing time at 15 cm plant spacing showed 8.0, 22.7, and 28.5% higher grains pod^-1 than 15th May, 15th June, and 1st July sowing, respectively. Maximum grain yield was observed on 1st June in all three spacings (10, 12, and 15 cm). The chord diagram indicates that the crop has received optimum environmental conditions when sown 1st June over other sowing times. In conclusion, 1st June sowing with 15 cm plant spacing could be a good option to achieve maximum productivity of cluster bean under changing climate scenario.     

玉米品种抗蚜性鉴定评价方法与标准研究

本研究以玉米蚜为研究对象,在云南省昭通地区通过田间调查和相关数据分析,研究了玉米蚜田间种群动态,评价了27个不同品种玉米的抗蚜性,探索了更为简便的玉米抗蚜性评价方法。结果表明:玉米蚜在田间的发生有两个高峰期,分别是抽雄散粉期和蜡熟期;采用玉米整个生育期蚜量比值法比较不同品种玉米的抗性,发现高抗品种有6个、抗性品种有6个、中抗品种有6个、感虫品种有4个、高感品种有5个,玉米蚜的种群数量在不同品种玉米间存在显著差异;采用玉米蚜暴发时期到玉米完熟期的蚜量比值来评价玉米抗蚜性可行。     

Full Length Bid is sufficient to induce apoptosis of cultured rat hippocampal neurons

Background  

Bcl-2 homology domain (BH) 3-only proteins are pro-apoptotic proteins of the Bcl-2 family that couple stress signals to the mitochondrial cell death pathways. The BH3-only protein Bid can be activated in response to death receptor activation via caspase 8-mediated cleavage into a truncated protein (tBid), which subsequently translocates to mitochondria and induces the release of cytochrome-C. Using a single-cell imaging approach of Bid cleavage and translocation during apoptosis, we have recently demonstrated that, in contrast to death receptor-induced apoptosis, caspase-independent excitotoxic apoptosis involves a translocation of full length Bid (FL-Bid) from the cytosol to mitochondria. We induced a delayed excitotoxic cell death in cultured rat hippocampal neurons by a 5-min exposure to the glutamate receptor agonist N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA; 300 μM).     

Paracrine control of tissue regeneration and cell proliferation by Caspase-3

Executioner caspases such as Caspase-3 and Caspase-7 have long been recognised as the key proteases involved in cell demolition during apoptosis. Caspase activation also modulates signal transduction inside cells, through activation or inactivation of kinases, phosphatases and other signalling molecules. Interestingly, a series of recent studies have demonstrated that caspase activation may also influence signal transduction and gene expression changes in neighbouring cells that themselves did not activate caspases. This review describes the physiological relevance of paracrine Caspase-3 signalling for developmental processes, tissue homeostasis and tissue regeneration, and discusses the role of soluble factors and microparticles in mediating these paracrine activities. While non-cell autonomous control of tissue regeneration by Caspase-3 may represent an important process for maintaining tissue homeostasis, it may limit the efficiency of current cancer therapy by promoting cell proliferation in those cancer cells resistant to radio- or chemotherapy. We discuss recent evidence in support of such a role for Caspase-3, and discuss its therapeutic implication.     

A 3-D Propagation Model for Emerging Land Mobile Radio Cellular Environments

A tunable stochastic geometry based Three-Dimensional (3-D) scattering model for emerging land mobile radio cellular systems is proposed. Uniformly distributed scattering objects are assumed around the Mobile Station (MS) bounded within an ellipsoidal shaped Scattering Region (SR) hollowed with an elliptically-cylindric scattering free region in immediate vicinity of MS. To ensure the degree of expected accuracy, the proposed model is designed to be tunable (as required) with nine degrees of freedom, unlike its counterparts in the existing literature. The outer and inner boundaries of SR are designed as independently scalable along all the axes and rotatable in horizontal plane around their origin centered at MS. The elevated Base Station (BS) is considered outside the SR at a certain adjustable distance and height w.r.t. position of MS. Closed-form analytical expressions for joint and marginal Probability Density Functions (PDFs) of Angle-of-Arrival (AoA) and Time-of-Arrival (ToA) are derived for both up- and down-links. The obtained analytical results for angular and temporal statistics of the channel are presented along with a thorough analysis. The impact of various physical model parameters on angular and temporal characteristics of the channel is presented, which reveals the comprehensive insight on the proposed results. To evaluate the robustness of the proposed analytical model, a comparison with experimental datasets and simulation results is also presented. The obtained analytical results for PDF of AoA observed at BS are seen to fit a vast range of empirical datasets in the literature taken for various outdoor propagation environments. In order to establish the validity of the obtained analytical results for spatial and temporal characteristics of the channel, a comparison of the proposed analytical results with the simulation results is shown, which illustrates a good fit for 10⁷ scattering points. Moreover, the proposed model is shown to degenerate to various notable geometric models in the literature by an appropriate choice of a few parameters.     

New perspectives in diet analysis based on DNA barcoding and parallel pyrosequencing: the trnL approach

The development of DNA barcoding (species identification using a standardized DNA sequence), and the availability of recent DNA sequencing techniques offer new possibilities in diet analysis. DNA fragments shorter than 100-150 bp remain in a much higher proportion in degraded DNA samples and can be recovered from faeces. As a consequence, by using universal primers that amplify a very short but informative DNA fragment, it is possible to reliably identify the plant taxon that has been eaten. According to our experience and using this identification system, about 50% of the taxa can be identified to species using the trnL approach, that is, using the P6 loop of the chloroplast trnL (UAA) intron. We demonstrated that this new method is fast, simple to implement, and very robust. It can be applied for diet analyses of a wide range of phytophagous species at large scales. We also demonstrated that our approach is efficient for mammals, birds, insects and molluscs. This method opens new perspectives in ecology, not only by allowing large-scale studies on diet, but also by enhancing studies on resource partitioning among competing species, and describing food webs in ecosystems.     

A mutation in the cytosolic O-acetylserine (thiol) lyase induces a genome-dependent early leaf death phenotype in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Arabidopsis</Emphasis>

Background  

Cysteine is a component in organic compounds including glutathione that have been implicated in the adaptation of plants to stresses. O-acetylserine (thiol) lyase (OAS-TL) catalyses the final step of cysteine biosynthesis. OAS-TL enzyme isoforms are localised in the cytoplasm, the plastids and mitochondria but the contribution of individual OAS-TL isoforms to plant sulphur metabolism has not yet been fully clarified.     

Isolation and cholinesterase-inhibition studies of sterols from Haloxylon recurvum

Haloxysterols A-D (1-4), new C-24 alkylated sterols, have been isolated from the chloroform soluble fraction of Haloxylon recurvum, along with five known sterols 5-9, which are reported for the first time from this species. Their structures were determined by means of 1D- and 2D-NMR techniques. Compounds 1-9 inhibited cholinesterase enzymes in a concentration-dependent manner with K(i) values ranging between 0.85-25.5 and 1.0-19.0 microM against acetylcholinesterase (AChE; EC 3.1.1.7) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE; EC 3.1.1.8) enzymes, respectively. Lineweaver-Burk, Dixon plots and their secondary replots indicated that compounds 1-9 are non-competitive inhibitors of both AChE and BChE enzymes.