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关键词： Antioxidative system   crop physiology   F-v/F-m   heat stress   phytohormones   stress tolerance   wheat  

摘要： Two wheat genotypes forming high and low biomass, exhibiting differential expression of an isoflavone reductase-like (IRL) gene, and resulting in contrasting grain yield under heat stress field conditions were analyzed in detail for their responses under controlled heat and elevated CO2 conditions. Significant differences in IRL expression between the two lines were hypothesized to be the basis of their differential performance under the tested conditions and their stress tolerance potential. By a holistic approach integrating advanced cell physiological phenotyping of the antioxidative and phytohormone system in spikes and leaves with measurements of ecophysiological and agronomic traits, the genetic differences of the genotypes in IRL expression were assessed. In response to heat and elevated CO2, the two genotypes showed opposite regulation of IRL expression, which was associated with cytokinin concentration, total flavonoid contents, activity of superoxide dismutase, antioxidant capacity and photosynthetic rate in leaves, and cytokinin concentration and ascorbate peroxidase activity in spikes. Our study showed that IRL expression is associated with wheat yield performance under heat stress at anthesis, mediated by diverse physiological mechanisms. Hence, based on our results, the IRL gene is a promising candidate for developing genetic markers for breeding heat-tolerant wheat.

关键词： Aegilops   evaporative demand   genetic diversity   leaf expansion   leaf growth   temperature   transpiration   Triticum   vapour pressure deficit (VPD)   wheat  

摘要： There are potential sources of alleles and genes currently present in wheat-related species that have the potential to be introduced into wheat breeding programs targeting current and future hot and dry climates. However, to date neither the intra- nor the interspecific diversity of the responses of leaf growth and transpiration to temperature and evaporative demand have been investigated in across a significant range of wheat-related species. By analysing 12 groups of wheat-related species and subspecies, we were able to examine the multi-dimensional structure of the genetic diversity for traits linked to plant vegetative structures and their development, and to leaf expansion and transpiration, together with their responses to 'non-stressing' ranges of temperature and evaporative demand. In addition to providing new insights on how genome type, ploidy level, phylogeny, and breeding pressure act together to structure this genetic diversity, our study also provides new mathematical formalisms and associated parameters for trait responses across a wide range of genetic diversity in wheat-related species. This will potentially allow crop models to predict the impact of this diversity on yield, and thus to indicate potential sources of varietal improvement for modern wheat germplasms through interspecific crosses.

关键词： Medical image segmentation   Adversarial attack   Differential evolution algorithm   Robustness evaluation  

摘要： Deep learning is an effective tool to assist doctors with many time-consuming and error-prone medical image analytical tasks. However, deep models are shown to be vulnerable to adversarial attacks, posing significant challenges to clinical applications. Existing works regarding the robustness of deep learning models are scarce, where most of them focus on the attack of medical image classification models. In this paper, a differential evolution attack (DEAttack) method is proposed to generate adversarial examples for medical image segmentation models. Our method does not require extra information such as the net-work's structures and weights compared with the most widely investigated gradient-based attack meth-ods. Additionally, benefit from the embedded differential evolution algorithm, which can preserve diversities of the optimization space. The proposed method can achieve better results than gradient -based methods, which can successfully attack the segmentation model with only perturbing a small frac-tion of the image pixels, demonstrating that the medical image segmentation model is more susceptible to adversarial examples. In addition to evaluating model robustness attack with public datasets, our DEAttack method was also tested on the clinical diagnostic dataset, demonstrating its superior perfor-mance and elegant process for the robustness evaluation of deep models in medical image segmentation. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

关键词： computed tomography   thymic carcinoma   thymic cysts   thymic neoplasms   thymic vein   thymoma  

摘要： Although differentiating benign and malignant thymic epithelial lesions is important to avoid unnecessary treatment and predict prognosis, it is challenging because of overlaps in the chest computed tomography (CT) findings. In this study, we investigated whether the diameter of the thymic vein and other CT findings could differentiate between benign (thymoma and thymic cysts) and malignant (thymic carcinoma, [TCa]) lesions. We conducted a retrospective study across two tertiary referral hospitals in Japan between November 2009 and June 2018. We included 12 patients with TCa, 34 patients with thymomas, and 17 patients with thymic cysts. We analyzed the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to determine the best cut-off values and performed univariate and multivariate analyses of CT findings to distinguish TCa from other benign lesions. Post-hoc analysis was performed for the maximum short axis of the thymic vein using the Mann-Whitney U test, and the number of the maximum short axis of the thymic vein >= the cutoff was determined using the Fisher exact test with a family-wise error-correction using Bonferroni's method. ROC analysis showed that a maximum short axis of the thymic vein >= 2 mm was considerably more frequent in TCa than in the other lesions (P < .001 for both), with 83% sensitivity and 86% specificity. Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed the association with TCa of the number of the maximum short axis of the thymic vein >= 2 mm (P = .005, multivariate generalized linear model analysis), ill-defined margin (P = .001), and mediastinal lymphadenopathy (P < .001). Thymic vein diameter was in descendimg order of TCa > thymoma > thymic cysts with statistically significant differences between the groups (Ps < .05). Thymic vein diameter was significantly longer in TCa than in thymoma and thymic cysts. Measurement of the maximum short axis of the thymic vein could be a powerful diagnostic tool to differentiate TCa from thymoma and thymic cysts.

关键词： Cell signaling   Peptides and proteins   Monomers   Fluorescence resonance energy transfer   Receptors  

摘要： Transmembrane receptors are central components of the chemosensory systems by which motile bacteria detect and respond to chemical gradients. An attractant bound to the receptor periplasmic domain generates conformational signals that regulate a histidine kinase interacting with its cytoplasmic domain. Ligand-induced signaling through the periplasmic and transmembrane domains of the receptor involves a piston-like helical displacement, but the nature of this signaling through the >200 A four-helix coiled coil of the cytoplasmic domain had not yet been identified. We performed single-molecule Forster resonance energy transfer measurements on Escherichia coli aspartate receptor homodimers inserted into native phospholipid bilayers enclosed in nanodiscs. The receptors were labeled with fluorophores at diagnostic positions near the middle of the cytoplasmic coiled coil. At these positions, we found that the two N-helices of the homodimer were more distant, that is, less tightly packed and more dynamic than the companion C-helix pair, consistent with previous deductions that the C-helices form a stable scaffold and the N-helices are dynamic. Upon ligand binding, the scaffold pair compacted further, while separation and dynamics of the dynamic pair increased. Thus, ligand binding had asymmetric effects on the two helical pairs, shifting mean distances in opposite directions and increasing the dynamics of one pair. We suggest that this reflects a conformational change in which differential alterations to the packing and dynamics of the two helical pairs are coupled. These coupled changes could represent a previously unappreciated mode of conformational signaling that may well occur in other coiled-coil signaling proteins.

关键词： Coronavirus  

摘要： An automated Cas12a-microfluidic system was constructed to distinguish the B.1.617.2 (delta) variant of SARS-CoV-2 from the wild-type virus rapidly and was validated using 30 clinical samples, showing 100% consistency with next-generation sequencing. It will be a potential tool for the rapid differential diagnosis of the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.

关键词： Androgen receptor   ergosterol   LNCaP   DU-145   MTT bioassay   molecular dynamics simulations  

摘要： Androgen-dependent LNCaP and androgen-independent DU-145 cells, were treated with different concentrations of ergosterol (15 mu M and 25 mu M) and its respective cell viability was measured by MTT bioassay. While ergosterol showed an antiproliferative effect on LNCaP, on DU-145 promoted cell proliferation. This differential effect suggests that the effect of ergosterol might be related to its ability to act as an Androgen Receptor ligand. In silico Molecular Dynamics simulations were performed to analyze the interaction mechanism between androgen receptor and ergosterol, in comparison with natural ligands, 5 alpha-dihydrotestosterone and testosterone. Our model suggests that the binding of androgen receptor with ergosterol is thermodinamically feasible, which is concordant with our experimental results.

关键词： Fractional Brownian motion   nonlocal Sobolev-type neutral fractional stochastic differential equations   approximate controllability   clarke subdifferential  

摘要： By using fractional calculus, stochastic analysis theory and fixed point theorems, sufficient conditions for approximate controllability of nonlocal Sobolev-type neutral fractional stochastic differential equations with fractional Brownian motion and Clarke subdifferential are established. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the obtained results.

摘要： Kinetics of Immune Response to Covid-19 Vaccines B-cell and T-cell responses were measured to assess the stability and duration of vaccine-induced immunity. Responses to BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 peaked early and declined over 6 to 8 months. The response to ***2.S reached a lower peak but continued without evidence of notable decline for 8 months. Response levels correlating with protection have not yet been defined.