Exploring transcriptional signalling mediated by OsWRKY13, a potential regulator of multiple physiological processes in rice

BACKGROUND Rice transcription regulator OsWRKY13 influences the functioning of more than 500 genes in multiple signalling pathways, with roles in disease resistance, redox homeostasis, abiotic stress responses, and development. RESULTS To determine the putative transcriptional regulation mechanism of OsWRKY13, the putative cis-acting elements of OsWRKY13-influenced genes were analyzed using the whole genome expression profiling of OsWRKY13-activated plants generated with the Affymetrix GeneChip Rice Genome Array. At least 39 transcription factor genes were influenced by OsWRKY13, and 30 of them were downregulated. The promoters of OsWRKY13-upregulated genes were overrepresented with W-boxes for WRKY protein binding, whereas the promoters of OsWRKY13-downregulated genes were enriched with cis-elements putatively for binding of MYB and AP2/EREBP types of transcription factors. Consistent with the distinctive distribution of these cis-elements in up- and downregulated genes, nine WRKY genes were influenced by OsWRKY13 and the promoters of five of them were bound by OsWRKY13 in vitro; all seven differentially expressed AP2/EREBP genes and six of the seven differentially expressed MYB genes were suppressed by in OsWRKY13-activated plants. A subset of OsWRKY13-influenced WRKY genes were involved in host-pathogen interactions. CONCLUSION These results suggest that OsWRKY13-mediated signalling pathways are partitioned by different transcription factors. WRKY proteins may play important roles in the monitoring of OsWRKY13-upregulated genes and genes involved in pathogen-induced defence responses, whereas MYB and AP2/EREBP proteins may contribute most to the control of OsWRKY13-downregulated genes.This work was supported by grants from the National Program of High Technology Development of China, the National Program on the Development of Basic Research in China, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China

Facing alternative futures: prospects for and paths to food security in Africa

"Food security in Africa has substantially worsened since 1970. Although the proportion of malnourished individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa has remained in the range of 33–35 percent since around 1970, the absolute number of malnourished people in Africa has increased substantially with population growth, from around 88 million in 1970 to an estimate of over 200 million in 1999–2001. Yet this discouraging trend need not be a blueprint for the future. New research from IFPRI shows that the policy and investment choices of African policymakers and the international development community can make an enormous difference for Africa's future agricultural production and food security. By modeling the results of a number of different policy scenarios in Africa through the year 2025, we show that the number of malnourished children, one important indicator of food security, could rise as high as 41.9 million or fall as low as 9.4 million. These scenarios, therefore, shed light on the effectiveness of various policies and investments in assuring a food-secure future for Africa.' from TextFood insecurity, Forecasting, Agricultural productivity, Human capital, Malnutrition in children, Impact model,

Looking ahead: long-term prospects for Africa's agricultural development and food security

"Sub-Saharan Africa is the only developing region in the world where food insecurity has worsened instead of improved in recent decades. In this discussion paper, Mark W. Rosegrant, Sarah A. Cline, Weibo Li, Timothy B. Sulser, and Rowena A. Valmonte-Santos show that this discouraging trend need not be a blueprint for the future. The research contained in this discussion paper was conducted in preparation for the IFPRI 2020 Africa conference “Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020: Prioritizing Actions, Strengthening Actors, and Facilitating Partnerships,” held in Kampala, Uganda, April 1–3, 2004. The authors examine the implications of several different policy scenarios based on IFPRI's International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT). This model, developed at IFPRI in the early 1990s, has been continually updated to incorporate more food sectors and geographic regions. In this paper, the authors use IMPACT to assess the consequences of a wide range of policy and investment choices for Africa, including a business as usual scenario (continuation of current policy and investment trends through 2025), a pessimistic scenario (declining trends in key investments and in agricultural productivity), and a vision scenario (improving trends in investments and hence in agricultural productivity and human capital), as well as scenarios for more effective use of rainfall in agriculture, reduced marketing margins, and three different scenarios for trade liberalization. The wide variation in results reveals how much these choices will matter. For example, the number of malnourished children under five years old in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2025 is projected to be 38.3 million under business as usual, 55.1 million under the pessimistic scenario, and 9.4 million under the vision scenario. It is our hope that this research will clarify the steps needed to help stimulate the actions contributing to approaching the vision scenario. " From Foreword by Joachim von BraunImpact model, Food insecurity, Forecasting, Agricultural productivity, Human capital, Malnutrition in children,

High-efficiency generation of nanoscale single silicon vacancy defect array in silicon carbide

Color centers in silicon carbide have increasingly attracted attention in recent years owing to their excellent properties such as single photon emission, good photostability, and long spin coherence time even at room temperature. As compared to diamond which is widely used for holding Nitrogen-vacancy centers, SiC has the advantage in terms of large-scale, high-quality and low cost growth, as well as advanced fabrication technique in optoelectronics, leading to the prospects for large scale quantum engineering. In this paper, we report experimental demonstration of the generation of nanoscale $V_{Si}$ single defect array through ion implantation without the need of annealing. $V_{Si}$ defects are generated in pre-determined locations with resolution of tens of nanometers. This can help in integrating $V_{Si}$ defects with the photonic structures which, in turn, can improve the emission and collection efficiency of $V_{Si}$ defects when it is used in spin photonic quantum network. On the other hand, the defects are shallow and they are generated $\sim 40nm$ below the surface which can serve as critical resources in quantum sensing application

Bright room temperature single photon source at telecom range in cubic silicon carbide

Single photon emitters (SPEs) play an important role in a number of quantum information tasks such as quantum key distributions. In these protocols, telecom wavelength photons are desired due to their low transmission loss in optical fibers. In this paper, we present a study of bright single-photon emitters in cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) emitting in the telecom range. We find that these emitters are photostable and bright at room temperature with a count rate of ~ MHz. Together with the fact that SiC is a growth and fabrication-friendly material, our result may pave the way for its future application in quantum communication technology applications.Comment: Accepted by Nature Communication

Tianshengyuan-1 (TSY-1) regulates cellular Telomerase activity by methylation of TERT promoter.

Telomere and Telomerase have recently been explored as anti-aging and anti-cancer drug targets with only limited success. Previously we showed that the Chinese herbal medicine Tianshengyuan-1 (TSY-1), an agent used to treat bone marrow deficiency, has a profound effect on stimulating Telomerase activity in hematopoietic cells. Here, the mechanism of TSY-1 on cellular Telomerase activity was further investigated using HL60, a promyelocytic leukemia cell line, normal peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood. TSY-1 increases Telomerase activity in normal peripheral blood mononuclear cells and CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells with innately low Telomerase activity but decreases Telomerase activity in HL60 cells with high intrinsic Telomerase activity, both in a dose-response manner. Gene profiling analysis identified Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) as the potential target gene associated with the TSY-1 effect, which was verified by both RT-PCR and western blot analysis. The β-galactosidase reporter staining assay showed that the effect of TSY-1 on Telomerase activity correlates with cell senescence. TSY-1 induced hypomethylation within TERT core promoter in HL60 cells but induced hypermethylation within TERT core promoter in normal peripheral blood mononuclear cells and CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells. TSY-1 appears to affect the Telomerase activity in different cell lines differently and the effect is associated with TERT expression, possibly via the methylation of TERT promoter

Characterization and identification of the integrin family in silkworm, Bombyx mori

YesAs an important economic insect, Bombyx mori is also a useful model organism for lepidopteran insect. Integrins are evolutionarily conserved fromsponges to humans, and play vital roles inmany physiological and pathological processes. To explore their diverse functions of integrins in insect, eleven integrins including sixα and five β subunitswere cloned and characterized fromsilkworm. Our results showed that integrins fromsilkwormown more family members compared to other invertebrates. Among those α subunits, integrins α1, α2, and the other four subunits belong to PS1, PS2, and PS3 groups, respectively. The β subunits mainly gather in the insect βν group except the β1 subunit which belongs to the insect β group. Expression profiles demonstrated that the integrins exhibited distinct patterns, but were mainly expressed in hemocytes. α1 and β2 subunits are the predominant ones either in the embryogenesis or larva stages. Interestingly, integrins were significantly up-regulated after stimulated by 20-hydroxyecdysone (20-E) in vivo. These results indicate that integrins performdiverse functions in hemocytes of silkworm. Overall, our results provide a newinsight into the functional and evolutionary features of integrins.National Basic Research Programof China (No. 2012cb114603), the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20130182110003), the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (cstc2013jcyjys0007), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU111014)

Subsurface fatigue crack generation in Ti-Fe-O alloy at low temperature

横浜国立大学博士（工学）doctoral thesi