Integrated Microarray to Identify the Hub miRNAs and Constructed miRNA–mRNA Network in Neuroblastoma Via Bioinformatics Analysis

Neurochemical Research - Neuroblastomas (NB) are childhood malignant tumors originating in the sympathetic nervous system. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an essential regulatory role in tumorigenesis and...     

Application of plant metabarcoding to identify diverse honeybee pollen forage along an urban–agricultural gradient

Understanding animal foraging ecology requires large sample sizes spanning broad environmental and temporal gradients. For pollinators, this has been hampered by the laborious nature of morphologically identifying pollen. Identifying pollen from urban environments is particularly difficult due to the presence of diverse ornamental species associated with consumer horticulture. Metagenetic pollen analysis represents a potential solution to this issue. Building upon prior laboratory and bioinformatic methods, we applied quantitative multilocus metabarcoding to characterize the foraging ecology of honeybee colonies situated in urban, suburban, mixed suburban–agricultural and rural agricultural sites in central Ohio, USA. In cross‐validating a subset of our metabarcoding results using microscopic palynology, we find strong concordance between the molecular and microscopic methods. Our results suggest that forage from the agricultural site exhibited decreased taxonomic diversity and temporal turnover relative to the urban and suburban sites, though the generalization of this observation will require replication across additional sites and cities. Our work demonstrates the power of honeybees as environmental samplers of floral community composition at large spatial scales, aiding in the distinction of taxa characteristically associated with urban or agricultural land use from those distributed ubiquitously across the sampled landscapes. Observed patterns of high forage diversity and compositional turnover in our more urban sites are likely reflective of the fine‐grain heterogeneity and high beta diversity of urban floral landscapes at the scale of honeybee foraging. This provides guidance for future studies investigating how relationships between urbanization and measures of pollinator health are mediated by variation in floral resource dynamics across landscapes.     

Autophagy in plants: Physiological roles and post‐translational regulation

In eukaryotes, autophagy helps maintain cellular homeostasis by degrading and recycling cytoplasmic materials via a tightly regulated pathway.Over the past few decades, significant progress has been made towards understanding the physiological functions and molecular regulation of autophagy in plant cells. Increasing evidence indicates that autophagy is essential for plant responses to several developmental and environmental cues, functioning in diverse processes such as senescence, male fertility, root meristem maintenance, responses to nutrient starvation,and biotic and abiotic stress. Recent studies have demonstrated that, similar to nonplant systems,the modulation of core proteins in the plant autophagy machinery by posttranslational modifications such as phosphorylation, ubiquitination,lipidation, S-sulfhydration, S-nitrosylation, and acetylation is widely involved in the initiation and progression of autophagy. Here, we provide an overview of the physiological roles and posttranslational regulation of autophagy in plants.     

Potassium and phosphorus transport and signaling in plants

Nitrogen(N), potassium(K), and phosphorus(P) are essential macronutrients for plant growth and development, and their availability affects crop yield. Compared with N, the relatively low availability of K and P in soils limits crop production and thus threatens food security and agricultural sustainability. Improvement of plant nutrient utilization efficiency provides a potential route to overcome the effects of K and P deficiencies. Investigation of the molecular mechanisms underlying how plants sense, absorb, transport, and use K and P is an important prerequisite to improve crop nutrient utilization efficiency. In this review, we summarize current understanding of K and P transport and signaling in plants, mainly taking Arabidopsis thaliana and rice(Oryza sativa) as examples. We also discuss the mechanisms coordinating transport of N and K, as well as P and N.     

Evaluation of the efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine in comparison with chloroquine in moderate and severe patients with COVID-19

Science China Life Sciences -     

Multifaceted roles of duckweed in aquatic phytoremediation and bioproducts synthesis

Duckweed (Lemnaceae) is a fast‐growing aquatic vascular plant. It has drawn an increasing attention worldwide due to its application in value‐added nutritional products and in sewage disposal. In particular, duckweed is a promising feedstock for bioenergy production. In this review, we summarized applications of duckweed from the following four aspects. Firstly, duckweed could utilize nitrogen, phosphorus, and inorganic nutrition in wastewater and reduces water eutrophication efficiently. During these processes, microorganisms play an important role in promoting duckweed growth and improving its tolerance to stresses. We also introduced our pilot‐scale test using duckweed for wastewater treatment and biomass production simultaneously. Secondly, its capability of fast accumulation of large amounts of starch makes duckweed a promising bioenergy feedstock, catering the currently increasing demand for bioethanol production. Pretreatment conditions prior to fermentation can be optimized to improve the conversion efficiency from starch to bioethanol. Furthermore, duckweed serves as an ideal source for food supply or animal feed because the composition of amino acids in duckweed is similar to that of whey protein, which is easily digested and assimilated by human and other animals. Finally, severing as a natural plant factory, duckweed has shown great potential in the production of pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements. With the surge of omics data and the development of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats technology, remodeling of the metabolic pathway in duckweed for synthetic biology study will be attainable in the future.