Removal of methanol from water by capacitive deionization system combined with functional nanoporous graphene membrane.

In this article, molecular dynamics simulations were used to examine the feasibility of capacitive deionization (CDI) system combined with a functionalized nanoporous graphene (NPG) membrane for removing methanol from water. The radial distribution function of electrode-methanol and methanol-water, the self-diffusion coefficient of methanol and water, the water density near the membrane, the interaction energy between methanol and membrane, the hydrogen bond structure between methanol and water, and the 2D density map of methanol molecules near the membrane under different electric field (EF) (to simulate the effect of capacitance) were examined to evaluate the separation performance of NPG membranes with hydrogen-passivated pores for methanol. The findings show that an EF with appropriate strength can decrease the amount of water molecules near methanol, increase the self-diffusion coefficient of methanol and water, increase hydrophobicity of hydrogenated pores, decrease the interaction between the NPG membrane and methanol, and weaken hydrogen bond interaction between water and methanol molecules. All these findings suggest that an appropriate EF can improve the NPG membrane's permeability to methanol, and verify the feasibility of CDI system combined with hydrogenated NPG membrane to remove methanol from water. This study is expected to propose a potential CDI application technology, and also give a novel idea for the removal of small organic molecules in water by functionalized NPG membrane.

[Investigation of benzo(a)pyrene contamination in edible vegetable oil sold in Henan Province from 2017 to 2019].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the contamination of benzo(a)pyrene in edible vegetable oil from Henan Province. METHODS: A total of 1190 edible vegetable oil samples from Henan Province were collected. The concentration of benzo(a)pyrene was examined by high performance liquid chromatography. RESULTS: The concentration of benzo(a)pyrene in prepackaged edible vegetable oils was <0. 3-63. 5 µg/kg with an average of 1. 5 µg/kg. The detection rate of benzo(a)pyrene in samples was 80. 0%, and the over standard rate was 0. 6%. In terms of subclasses of vegetable oil, the sesame seed oil samples were most seriously contaminated with benzo(a)pyrene. The risk of the benzo(a)pyrene contamination of sesame seed oil produced by aqueous extraction method was higher than that by mechanical pressed method. The risk of benzo(a)pyrene contamination in sesame seed oil and rapeseed oil increased as the decrease of quality grade. CONCLUSION: The result suggested that the sesame seed oil produced by aqueous extraction method had high risk in benzo(a)pyrene contamination in Henan Province.

Robust Multi-Frame Super-Resolution Based on Spatially Weighted Half-Quadratic Estimation and Adaptive BTV Regularization.

Multi-frame image super-resolution focuses on reconstructing a high-resolution image from a set of low-resolution images with high similarity. Combining image prior knowledge with fidelity model, the Bayesian-based methods have been considered as an effective technique in super-resolution. The minimization function derived from maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) is composed of a fidelity term and a regularization term. In this paper, based on the MAP estimation, we propose a novel initialization method for super-resolution imaging. For the fidelity term in our proposed method, the half-quadratic estimation is used to choose error norm adaptively instead of using fixed and norms. Besides, a spatial weight matrix is used as a confidence map to scale the estimation result. For the regularization term, we propose a novel regularization method based on adaptive bilateral total variation (ABTV). Both the fidelity term and the ABTV regularization guarantee the robustness of our framework. The fidelity term is mainly responsible for dealing with misregistration, blur, and other kinds of large errors, while the ABTV regularization aims at edge preservation and noise removal. The proposed scheme is tested on both synthetic data and real data. The experimental results illustrate the superiority of our proposed method in terms of edge preservation and noise removal over the state-of-the-art algorithms.

LMM5.1 and LMM5.4, two eukaryotic translation elongation factor 1A-like gene family members, negatively affect cell death and disease resistance in rice.

Lesion mimic mutant (LMM) genes, stimulating lesion formation in the absence of pathogens, play significant roles in immune response. In this study, we characterized a rice lesion mimic mutant, lmm5, which displayed light-dependent spontaneous lesions. Additionally, lmm5 plants exhibited enhanced resistance to all of the tested races of Magnaporthe oryzae and Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) by increasing the expression of defense-related genes and the accumulation of hydrogen peroxide. Genetic analysis showed that the lesion mimic phenotype of lmm5 was controlled by two genes, lmm5.1 and lmm5.4, which were isolated with a map-based cloning strategy. Remarkably, LMM5.1 and LMM5.4 share a 97.4% amino acid sequence identity, and they each encode a eukaryotic translation elongation factor 1A (eEF1A)-like protein. Besides, LMM5.1 and LMM5.4 were expressed in a tissue-specific and an indica-specific manner, respectively. In addition, high-throughput mRNA sequencing analysis confirmed that the basal immunity was constitutively activated in the lmm5 mutant. Taken together, these results suggest that the homologous eEF1A-like genes, LMM5.1 and LMM5.4, negatively affect cell death and disease resistance in rice.

The Fd-GOGAT1 mutant gene lc7 confers resistance to Xanthomonas oryzae pv. Oryzae in rice.

Disease resistance is an important goal of crop improvement. The molecular mechanism of resistance requires further study. Here, we report the identification of a rice leaf color mutant, lc7, which is defective in chlorophyll synthesis and photosynthesis but confers resistance to Xanthomonas oryzae pv. Oryzae (Xoo). Map-based cloning revealed that lc7 encodes a mutant ferredoxin-dependent glutamate synthase1 (Fd-GOGAT1). Fd-GOGAT1 has been proposed to have great potential for improving nitrogen-use efficiency, but its function in bacterial resistance has not been reported. The lc7 mutant accumulates excessive levels of ROS (reactive oxygen species) in the leaves, causing the leaf color to become yellow after the four-leaf stage. Compared to the wild type, lc7 mutants have a broad-spectrum high resistance to seven Xoo strains. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and qRT-PCR analysis indicate that many defense pathways that are involved in this broad-spectrum resistance are activated in the lc7 mutant. These results suggest that Fd-GOGAT1 plays an important role in broad-spectrum bacterial blight resistance, in addition to modulating nitrogen assimilation and chloroplast development.

The rice thylakoid membrane-bound ascorbate peroxidase OsAPX8 functions in tolerance to bacterial blight.

Thylakoid membrane-bound ascorbate peroxidase (tAPX) is a major H2O2-scavenging enzyme. To clarify its functions in tolerance to rice bacterial blight, we produced rice lines overexpressing and suppressing tAPX (OsAPX8). The overexpressing lines exhibited increased tolerance to bacterial pathogen. The RNA interference (RNAi) lines were considerably more sensitive than the control plant. Further analysis of the H2O2 content in these transgenic plants indicated that the H2O2 accumulation of OsAPX8-overexpressing plants was considerably less than that of wild-type and RNAi plants upon challenge with bacterial pathogen. Interestingly, H2O2 was the most important factor for the serious leaf dehydration and withering of rice without major resistance genes and was not the cause of hypersensitivity. It addition, wall tightening or loosening can occur according to the level of H2O2. In addition, OsAPX8 interacted with the susceptibility protein Os8N3/Xa13, and their binding repressed the reaction of OsAPX8 in tolerance to bacterial blight.

[Integration and expression of Xa21 in transgenic rice CX8621].

Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation system has been widely applied. However, the function of target gene is affected by multiple factors. With this system, we obtained a transgenic rice line CX8621 carrying the bacterial blight resistance gene Xa21. In previous work, we have confirmed that it was selectable maker-free and vector backbone-free. And after 16 generations of breeding, it still maintained perfect resistance to bacterial blight disease. On this basis, we analyzed the integration and expression of Xa21 in CX8621 at the present study. First, based on the border sequences of plasmid pBXa21 and Xa21, we designed nested primers and assured the integrity of Xa21 in CX8621. Second, we cloned the flanking sequences and located Xa21 on chromosome 2 using improved Tail-PCR. Then we analyzed the expression pattern of Xa21 in several tissues and at different developmental stages by RT-PCR. The results show that Xa21 can be stably expressed in CX8621, agreeing well with the disease resistance response as reported previously. In addition, we detected the protein levels of XA21 in CX8621 with antibody of natural XA21 protein. Surprisingly, no XA21 protein was detected in the seeds of CX8621. Thus, the integration and expression analysis of Xa21 in CX8621 provided a part of scientific evidences for the safety assessment of genetically modified rice.

Regulation of inflorescence branch development in rice through a novel pathway involving the pentatricopeptide repeat protein sped1-D.

Panicle type has a direct bearing on rice yield. Here, we characterized a rice clustered-spikelet mutant, sped1-D, with shortened pedicels and/or secondary branches, which exhibits decreased pollen fertility. We cloned sped1-D and found that it encodes a pentatricopeptide repeat protein. We investigated the global expression profiles of wild-type, 9311, and sped1-D plants using Illumina RNA sequencing. The expression of several GID1L2 family members was downregulated in the sped1-D mutant, suggesting that the gibberellin (GA) pathway is involved in the elongation of pedicels and/or secondary branches. When we overexpressed one GID1L2, AK070299, in sped1-D plants, the panicle phenotype was restored to varying degrees. In addition, we analyzed the expression of genes that function in floral meristems and found that RFL and WOX3 were severely downregulated in sped1-D. These results suggest that sped1-D may prompt the shortening of pedicels and secondary branches by blocking the action of GID1L2, RFL, and Wox3. Moreover, overexpression of sped1-D in Arabidopsis resulted in the shortening of pedicels and clusters of siliques, which indicates that the function of sped1-D is highly conserved in monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants. Sequence data from this article have been deposited with the miRBase Data Libraries under accession no. MI0003201.

RST invariant image watermarking algorithm with mathematical modeling and analysis of the watermarking processes.

In this paper, a new rotation and scaling invariant image watermarking scheme is proposed based on rotation invariant feature and image normalization. A mathematical model is established to approximate the image based on the mixture generalized Gaussian distribution, which can facilitate the analysis of the watermarking processes. Using maximum a posteriori probability based image segmentation, the cover image is segmented into several homogeneous areas. Each region can be represented by a generalized Gaussian distribution, which is critical for the analysis of the watermarking processes mathematically. The rotation invariant features are extracted from the segmented areas and are selected as reference points. Sub-regions centered at the feature points are used for watermark embedding and extraction. Image normalization is applied to the sub-regions to achieve scaling invariance. Meanwhile, the watermark embedding and extraction schemes are analyzed mathematically based on the established mathematical model. The watermark embedding strength is adjusted adaptively using the noise visibility function and the probability of error is analyzed mathematically. The mathematical relationship between fidelity and robustness is established. The experimental results show the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed scheme.

Co-expression of MG29 and ryanodine receptor leads to apoptotic cell death: effect mediated by intracellular Ca2+ release.

Perturbation of intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis has been shown to regulate the process of cell proliferation and apoptosis. Our previous studies show that mitsugumin 29 (MG29), a synaptophysin-related protein localized in the triad junction of skeletal muscle, serves an essential role in muscle Ca2+ signaling by regulating the process of store-operated Ca2+ entry. Here we report a functional interaction between MG29 and the ryanodine receptor (RyR)/Ca2+ release channel. The purified MG29 protein enhances activity of the RyR/Ca2+ release channel incorporated into the lipid bilayer membrane. Co-expression of MG29 and RyR in Chinese hamster ovary cells leads to apoptotic cell death resulting from depletion of intracellular Ca2+ stores, despite neither protein expression alone exhibits any significant effect on cell viability. In transient expression studies, the presence of RyR in the endoplasmic reticulum leads to retention of MG29 from the plasma membrane into the intracellular organelles. This functional interaction between MG29 and RyR could have important implications in the Ca2+ signaling processes of muscle cells. Our data also show that perturbation of intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis can serve as a key signal in the initiation of apoptosis.

A short segment of the R domain of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator contains channel stimulatory and inhibitory activities that are separable by sequence modification.

The regulatory (R) domain of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) contains consensus phosphorylation sites for cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) that are the basis for physiological regulation of the CFTR chloride channel. A short peptide segment in the R domain with a net negative charge of B9 (amino acids 817-838, NEG2) and predicted helical tendency is shown to play a critical role in CFTR chloride channel function. Deletion of NEG2 from CFTR completely eliminates the PKA dependence of channel activity. Exogenous NEG2 peptide interacts with CFTR to exert both stimulatory and inhibitory effects on the channel function. The NEG2 peptide with sequence scrambled to remove helical tendencies also inhibits channel function, but does not stimulate. Similar results are found for a NEG2 peptide whose helical structure is disrupted by a proline residue. When six of the negatively charged carboxylic acid residues are replaced by their cognate amides, reducing net negative charge to B3, but increasing helical propensity as assessed by circular dichroism, the peptide stimulates CFTR channel function, but does not inhibit. We speculate that the NEG2 region interacts with other cytosolic domains of CFTR to control opening and closing transitions of the chloride channel.