Biodegradation of atrazine with biochar-mediated functional bacterial biofilm: Construction, characterization and mechanisms.

The abuse and residue of herbicides in the black soil area had seriously affected the soil structure, function and crop growth, posing severe threats to agricultural soil environment and public health. Given the limitation of routine microbial remediation, innovative and eco-friendly functional bacterial biofilm which could adapt under adverse conditions was developed on the biochar to investigate its enhanced bioremediation and metabolic characteristics of typical herbicide atrazine. Results revealed that the atrazine degrading strain Acinetobacter lwoffii had competitive advantage in soil indigenous microorganisms and formed dense biofilms on the biochar which was beneficial to cell viability maintenance and aggregations. Metatranscriptomics and RT-qPCR analysis demonstrated that the biochar-mediated biofilm improved the frequency of intercellular communications through quorum sensing and two-component signal regulation systems, and enhanced the atrazine biodegradation efficiency through horizontal gene transfer in co-metabolism mode, providing important scientific basis for the biological remediation of farmland soil non-point source pollution.

Artificial Intelligence Network Embedding, Entrepreneurial Intention, and Behavior Analysis for College Students' Rural Tourism Entrepreneurship.

To promote the development of the rural economy and improve entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities, college students' willingness and behavior toward rural tourism entrepreneurship were investigated in this study. First of all, based on the previous research results, the influencing factor model was determined for college students' entrepreneurial intention. Second, a questionnaire survey was made to collect data from a university in Xi'an City. Finally, the artificial neural network (ANN), improved by a genetic algorithm (GA) based on an artificial intelligence network, was used to study the relationship between college students' entrepreneurial intention and behavior, and the simulation was carried out on MATLAB2013b software. The results show that the average evaluation accuracy is 81.13% for 60 groups of data using the unmodified back propagation neural network (BPNN) algorithm, while the average evaluation accuracy is 92.17% for the BPNN algorithm improved and optimized by GA, with an ascent of 11.04%. Therefore, the BPNN algorithm improved and optimized by GA is better than the unmodified BPNN algorithm; It is also feasible and effective in the analysis of influencing factors of college students' entrepreneurial intention and behavior. The research provides a basis for colleges and universities to carry out entrepreneurship education on a large scale and to cultivate their innovative talents.

Research Note: A novel recombinant subgroup E isolate of the avian leukosis virus with a subgroup B-like Gp85 region in China.

The avian leukosis virus (ALV) strain DL00766 was isolated from a farm in China. The phylogenetic analysis showed that env had the highest homology with the E subgroup reference strain, ranging from 94.5% to 94.9%, whereas gp85 had the highest homology with the B and E subgroups, which were 89.0% to 91.3% and 91.3% to 91.8%. In addition, point mutation analysis of gp85 showed that a 400 bp long fragment in gp85 of DL00766 had the highest homology with subgroup B, ranging from 90.1% to 97.5%, and only 82.7% to 83.1% with E subgroup. These results indicate, DL00766 may be an AVL subgroup E isolate with a subgroup B-like gp85 region. This is also the first finding that the E subgroup is used as a recombinant subject, and the subgroup B provides a recombinant virus of an exogenous gene.

A one-step reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification for detection and discrimination of infectious bursal disease virus.

BACKGROUND: Infectious bursal disease (IBD) is a highly contagious immunosuppressive disease in young chickens caused by infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV). It causes huge economic losses to the poultry industry. The objective of this study is to develop a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method for the detection and discrimination of IBDV. RESULTS: In this study, we applied reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) to detect IBDV in one simple step and further identified the very virulent strain from non-vvIBDVs with a simply post-amplification restriction enzyme analysis. Based on sequence analysis, a set of two inner, two outer and two loop primers were designed to target the VP5 gene and they showed great specificity with no cross reaction to the other common avian pathogens. The detection limit determined by both color change inspection and agarose gel electrophoresis was 28 copies viral RNA, which was almost as sensitive as a real-time RT-PCR previous developed in our laboratory. We also identified a unique Tfi I restriction site located exclusively in non-vvIBDVs, so very virulent strain could be distinguished from current vaccine strains. By screening a panel of clinical specimens, results showed that this method is high feasible in clinical settings, and it obtained results 100% correlated with real-time RT-PCR. CONCLUSION: RT-LAMP is a rapid, simple and sensitive assay. In combination with the Tfi I restriction analysis, this method holds great promises not only in laboratory detection and discrimination of IBDV but also in large scale field and clinical studies.

Development of loop-mediated isothermal amplification for rapid detection of avian leukosis virus subgroup A.

This study aimed to establish a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method for distinguishing avian leukosis virus (ALV) subgroup A from other subgroups of the virus. On the basis of the results of sequence comparison and the sequence characteristics of ALV subgroups, a LAMP method was designed to target the gp85 segment for detection of ALV-A. Under optimal reaction conditions, ALV-A LAMP produced neither cross-reactions with other major subgroups (including subgroups J, B, C, and E) nor nonspecific reactions with other common avian infectious diseases. A sensitivity test showed that this method can detect 20 copies of proviral nucleic acid sequence within 45 min, which is 100 times more sensitive than the conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This method can detect subgroup A virus rapidly and the results can be assessed based on color changes. The whole reaction process can be performed without opening the lid of the reaction tube, which reduces the possibility of contamination greatly and simplifies the detection process, indicating the considerable potential of this method for in situ application in the future.

A single amino acid in the C-terminus of VP3 protein influences the replication of attenuated infectious bursal disease virus in vitro and in vivo.

The very virulent infectious bursal disease virus (vvIBDV) Gx strain causes over 60% mortality in chickens but cannot replicate in CEF cultures. The attenuated Gt strain, however, is not virulent in chickens and replicates well in CEF cultures. The two strains display differences in 6 amino acids in VP4 and 4 amino acids in VP3. To determine whether VP4 and VP3 are involved in the virulence and replication of IBDV, three chimeric viruses, in which the VP4/VP3/3'UTR, VP3/3'UTR or VP4 region of Gt were replaced by the corresponding region of Gx, were constructed and characterized in vitro and in vivo. The substituted regions in VP4 or VP3 did not affect virulence of Gt. While the substituted region in VP4 had no effect on viral replication of Gt in CEF cultures, substitution of the VP3/3'UTR region did reduce the replicative capacity of the virus. Through site-directed mutagenesis, three rescued recombinant viruses with a single amino acid substitution in the C-terminus of VP3 of the Gt strain (L981P, A990V and T1005A) were characterized in a similar manner. Amino acid substitution at position 990 reduced viral replication of Gt and reduced its efficacy of protection against vvIBDV Gx challenge in vivo. This study provides important information for the design and development of more effective IBDV vaccines using reverse genetics.