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.     

The Bio3D packages for structural bioinformatics

Bio3D is a family of R packages for the analysis of biomolecular sequence, structure, and dynamics. Major functionality includes biomolecular database searching and retrieval, sequence and structure conservation analysis, ensemble normal mode analysis, protein structure and correlation network analysis, principal component, and related multivariate analysis methods. Here, we review recent package developments, including a new underlying segregation into separate packages for distinct analysis, and introduce a new method for structure analysis named ensemble difference distance matrix analysis (eDDM). The eDDM approach calculates and compares atomic distance matrices across large sets of homologous atomic structures to help identify the residue wise determinants underlying specific functional processes. An eDDM workflow is detailed along with an example application to a large protein family. As a new member of the Bio3D family, the Bio3D‐eddm package supports both experimental and theoretical simulation‐generated structures, is integrated with other methods for dissecting sequence‐structure–function relationships, and can be used in a highly automated and reproducible manner. Bio3D is distributed as an integrated set of platform independent open source R packages available from: http://thegrantlab.org/bio3d/ .     

MicroRNA profiles in Sorghum exposed to individual drought or heat or their combination

Sorghum is largely grown for food, fodder and for biofuel production in semi-arid regions where the drought or high temperature or their combination co-occur. Plant microRNAs (miRNAs) are integral to the gene regulatory networks that control almost all biological processes including adaptation to stress conditions. Thus far, plant miRNA profiles under separate drought or heat stresses have been reported but not under combined drought and heat. In this study, we report miRNA profiles in leaves of sorghum exposed to individual drought or heat or their combination. Approximately 29 conserved miRNA families represented by 80 individual miRNAs, 26 families represented by 47 members of less conserved or sorghum-specific miRNA families as well as 8 novel miRNA families have been identified. Of these, 25 miRNAs were found to be differentially regulated in response to stress treatments. The comparative profiling revealed that the miRNA regulation was stronger under heat or combination of heat and drought compared to the drought alone. Furthermore, using degradome sequencing, 48 genes were confirmed as targets for the miRNAs in sorghum. Overall, this study provides a framework for understanding of the miRNA-guided gene regulations under combined stresses.

     

应用型本科高校围绕解决生物工程专业复杂工程问题能力培养的课程体系思考与构建

准确把握专业复杂工程问题的特征与内涵是设置专业毕业要求、构建课程体系、设计教学内容的重要前提。文中通过讨论生物产业的复杂工程问题特征,挖掘长三角地区生物产业对于本科层次人才的需求,总结岗位典型任务和要求,阐述了典型任务中包含的复杂工程问题的内涵。在此基础上构建了多阶段培养解决生物工程专业复杂工程问题能力的课程体系。该课程体系结合产教深度融合的医药生物技术学院、教师科研反哺教学项目建设、课程团队与一流课程建设、覆盖全员的学生专业社团建设等多种措施,更好地支撑了解决复杂工程问题能力的培养。     

新工科背景下生物反应工程课程的多元化教学模式 改革与探索

生物反应工程作为一门理论性与应用性都很强的专业课程,在生物工程等相关专业的课程设置中处于桥梁和纽带地位,对新型应用型工科人才的培养发挥着重要的作用。但由于该课程中公式等抽象理论知识过多,导致学生学习效率十分低下。因此,为了适应新工科教育背景下对创新型人才培养的需求,提高学生的学习兴趣和积极性,并培养学生的自主学习等创新能力,教学团队在课程教学中通过引入虚拟仿真技术、开展微课教学、采用案例式教学模式、利用科研平台等多元化方式,对该课程的教学模式、方法和手段尝试改革和探索,取得了一定的教学效果,并就此进行了一些探讨,以期能为相关课程的教学改革提供一些思路和启示。     

滇龙胆GrHDR基因的克隆与表达分析

龙胆苦苷(gentiopicroside)是中药龙胆中的主要药效成分,属于萜类化合物的衍生物。1-羟基-2-甲基-2-(E)-丁烯基-4-二磷酸还原酶[1-hydroxy-2-methyl-2-(E)-butenyl-4-diphosphate reductase,HDR]是萜类物质合成途径中的关键酶。为探讨不同光照条件下滇龙胆HDR(GrHDR)基因的表达与龙胆苦苷含量之间的关系,该文以滇龙胆叶片cDNA为模板,采用PCR和TA克隆技术获得GrHDR基因序列,对该序列进行生物信息学分析和表达分析,并采用高效液相色谱法测定龙胆苦苷含量,对该基因表达与龙胆苦苷含量进行比较。结果表明:(1)GrHDR基因(GenBank登录号: KJ917165.1)全长1 398 bp,编码465个氨基酸,推定GrHDR蛋白是亲水且稳定的,相对分子质量是52 281.25 Da,理论等电点是5.32;(2)该蛋白属于LYTB蛋白家族,可能定位于叶绿体上,无信号肽,二级结构主要由α-螺旋(45.16%)、β-转角(6.24%)、无规卷曲(33.98%)、延伸链(14.62%)构成;(3)GrHDR蛋白序列与同属植物秦艽的HDR蛋白相似性最高(95.71%);(4)实时荧光定量PCR结果显示GrHDR基因在滇龙胆中的表达量为根 > 叶 > 茎,而在10%、30%、100%全光光照条件下各组织的表达量有很大差异;(5)高效液相色谱法结果显示,不同光照条件下龙胆苦苷含量一致,均为根 > 叶 > 茎,其中100%全光光照下,药用部位根中龙胆苦苷含量达到7.141%,约是30%、10%全光光照条件的两倍,但该结果与同一光照条件下GrHDR基因表达规律不完全一致。该研究为阐述HDR基因功能及其与龙胆苦苷含量的关系提供参考。