Identification and characterization of circadian clock genes in the head transcriptome of Conopomorpha sinensis Bradley.

Conopomorpha sinensis Bradley is the most detrimental pest to litchi and longan in China. Adult eclosion, locomotion, mating and oviposition of C. sinensis usually occur at night, regulated by a circadian rhythm. Nevertheless, our understanding of the linkages between adult circadian rhythms and clock genes remains inadequate. To address this gap, transcriptomic analysis was conducted on female and male heads (including antennae) of C. sinensis using the Illumina HiSeq 6000 platform to identify major circadian clock-related genes. The annotated sequences were analyzed by BLASTx, and candidate clock genes were classified based on conservation, predicted domain architectures, and phylogenetic analysis. The analysis revealed a higher conservation of these genes among the compared moths. Further, the expression profile analysis showed a significant spatiotemporal and circadian rhythmic accumulation of some clock genes during development. The candidate clock genes were predominantly expressed in the head, highlighting their crucial function in circadian rhythm regulation. Moreover, CsinPer, CsinTim1, and CsinCry1 displayed similar dynamic expressions with a peak expression level in the 4th age adults, suggesting their involvement in regulation of courtship and mating behaviors. The CsinPer and CsinTim1 mRNA oscillated strongly with a similar phase, containing a peak expression just before the female mating peak. This work will greatly contribute to understanding the circadian clock system of C. sinensis and provide valuable information for further studies of the molecular mechanisms involved in rhythmicity in fruit-boring pests.

Sublethal effect of chlorpyrifos on predatory behavior and physiology of Eocanthecona furcellata (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae).

Insecticides have been known to reduce the predation efficacy of natural enemies. However, the mechanism of the sublethal effect of insecticides on the functional response of predators remains unclear. This study investigated the sublethal effects of the broad-spectrum insecticide chlorpyrifos on the predatory bug Eocanthecona furcellata (Wolff), which is a potential biological control agent against pests in integrated pest management (IPM) programs. After exposure to a sublethal concentration of chlorpyrifos, the predation capacity and the maximum predatory number of E. furcellata increased by 11.27 and 15.26%, respectively, with prey handling time decreased by 15.07%, and the searching efficiency increased by 5.88-12.61%. Additionally, the intraspecific interference effect was enhanced. Glutathione S-transferase (GST) activity was significantly decreased after 12- to 60-h treatment. At 12 h after treatment, the expression levels of GST gene (GST3), acetylcholinesterase gene (AChE), and cytochrome P450 monooxygenasegene (cyp6B1) were significantly up-regulated by 1.47-, 1.48-, and 2.05-fold, respectively, while GST gene (GST1) was significantly down-regulated by 16.67-fold. These results indicated that a sublethal chlorpyrifos concentration inhibited the GST activity and stimulated the predatory behavior of E. furcellata. The results will advance our understanding of the toxicological mechanism of predatory stink bug responses to insecticides and predict chlorpyrifos' effects on predators in an IPM program.

Multi-omics analysis reveals the molecular regulatory network underlying the prevention of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum against LPS-induced salpingitis in laying hens.

BACKGROUND: Salpingitis is one of the common diseases in laying hen production, which greatly decreases the economic outcome of laying hen farming. Lactiplantibacillus plantarum was effective in preventing local or systemic inflammation, however rare studies were reported on its prevention against salpingitis. This study aimed to investigate the preventive molecular regulatory network of microencapsulated Lactiplantibacillus plantarum (MLP) against salpingitis through multi-omics analysis, including microbiome, transcriptome and metabolome analyses. RESULTS: The results revealed that supplementation of MLP in diet significantly alleviated the inflammation and atrophy of uterus caused by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in hens (P < 0.05). The concentrations of plasma IL-2 and IL-10 in hens of MLP-LPS group were higher than those in hens of LPS-stimulation group (CN-LPS group) (P < 0.05). The expression levels of TLR2, MYD88, NF-κB, COX2, and TNF-α were significantly decreased in the hens fed diet supplemented with MLP and suffered with LPS stimulation (MLP-LPS group) compared with those in the hens of CN-LPS group (P < 0.05). Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) induced by MLP were involved in inflammation, reproduction, and calcium ion transport. At the genus level, the MLP supplementation significantly increased the abundance of Phascolarctobacterium, whereas decreased the abundance of Candidatus_Saccharimonas in LPS challenged hens (P < 0.05). The metabolites altered by dietary supplementation with MLP were mainly involved in galactose, uronic acid, histidine, pyruvate and primary bile acid metabolism. Dietary supplementation with MLP inversely regulates LPS-induced differential metabolites such as LysoPA (24:0/0:0) (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: In summary, dietary supplementation with microencapsulated Lactiplantibacillus plantarum prevented salpingitis by modulating the abundances of Candidatus_Saccharimonas, Phascolarctobacterium, Ruminococcus_torques_group and Eubacterium_hallii_group while downregulating the levels of plasma metabolites, p-tolyl sulfate, o-cresol and N-acetylhistamine and upregulating S-lactoylglutathione, simultaneously increasing the expressions of CPNE4, CNTN3 and ACAN genes in the uterus, and ultimately inhibiting oviducal inflammation.

Clinical characteristics of current COVID-19 rehabilitation outpatients in China.

To understand the clinical characteristics of omicron in COVID-19 Rehabilitation Clinic after the current shift of dynamic zeroing policy, we consecutively collected the patients' data who visited in COVID-19 Rehabilitation Clinic of a Grade-A tertiary hospital in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, from January 3 to January 10, 2023, analyzed related data and then compared the pneumonia between elderly and non-elderly groups. The results showed that 95.68% of the patients in COVID-19 Rehabilitation Clinic had symptoms, 70.10% had a dry cough, 12.36% had abnormal complete blood count or C-reactive protein, 19.35% had electrolyte disorder, and 2% had abnormal troponin or creatine kinase-MB. 40.45% of patients had abnormal lung CT findings, among them 86.49% of elderly patients had abnormal lung CT findings, and the utilization rate of glucocorticoids in COVID-19 Rehabilitation Clinic was only 5.98%, although people are all susceptible to getting the COVID-19 infection, the elderly are more prone to getting pneumonia, and the glucocorticoids utilization rate is relatively insufficient. It is needed to be stressed that Chinese medical staff should pay more attention to the elderly patients who are vulnerable to getting pneumonia during this period.

Optical coherence tomography angiography metrics in diabetes: Focusing on diabetic retinopathy and carotid atherosclerosis.

BACKGROUND: To explore the value of Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) metrics in the early diagnosis of vascular complications in diabetes. METHODS: All participants underwent OCTA with a swept-source OCT device. Automated measurements of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area, vessel density (VD), and blood flow density (BFD) of both 3 × 3 and 6 × 6 windows were then obtained after a quality check. RESULTS: Diagnostic models based on multiple risk factors were developed separately for diabetic retinopathy and carotid atherosclerosis using random forest and multivariate logistic regression methods. The addition of specific OCTA metrics improved the diagnostic prediction of DR compared with the models of risk factors alone (Inner Retinal Blood Flow Density in 3 × 3 window, IRBFD; Brier score 0.124 vs. 0.149; AUC, 0.887 vs. 0.836) (Central Retinal Blood Flow Density in 3 × 3 window, CRBFD; Brier score 0.142 vs. 0.149; AUC, 0.851 vs. 0.836). Adding diabetic peripheral vascular disease (DPVD) indicator improved the prediction of carotid atherosclerosis (Brier score, 0.180 vs. 0.192; AUC, 0.802 vs. 0.781. The FAZ in the 3 × 3 window also achieved this effect when targeting only T2DM patients (AUC, 0.797 vs. 0.766; Brier score, 0.183 vs. 0.195). CONCLUSIONS: Focusing on IRBFD and CRBFD in the 3 × 3 window of OCTA allows for a more sensitive prediction of the occurrence of DR in diabetic patients. Meanwhile, the quantitative microvascular information provided by OCTA and the occurrence of DPVD may be crucial for diagnosing carotid atherosclerosis. For T2DM patients, we also propose the possibility of FAZ in the 3 × 3 window as a potential diagnostic indicator.

Predatory stink bug, Eocanthecona furcellata (Wolff) responses to oral exposure route of λ-cyhalothrin via sex-specific modulation manner.

The toxic effects of insecticides on predatory arthropods have closely related to their exposure routes. However, little is known about the effects of insecticide on reproductive parameters when the route of exposure occurs at a trophic level via prey intake. We therefore conducted current studies assessing whether Eocanthecona furcellata adults would be affected by feeding with λ-cyhalothrin-contaminated prey. Reproductive parameters, i.e. prolonged premating and preoviposition durations, reduced number of egg batches and egg amount, disturbed ovarian development, and suppressed expression of reproductive related genes were observed in E. furcellata females by feeding with treated prey. Moreover, reduced survival rate and altered carbohydrate metabolism parameters were detected in male bugs. Biochemical parameters, including MDA content, the activities of three antioxidant enzymes and three detoxification enzymes exhibited sex-specific responses after oral-exposure to λ-cyhalothrin in E. furcellata. The results indicate that the insecticide affects the fitness and leads to impairing reproductive potential via sex-specific modulation manner in predator insects. Taken together, our results provide a comprehensive assessment about detrimental impacts of λ-cyhalothrin-exposure on predators via prey intake, as well as a solid basis for further research to protect the predators from hazardous impacts of insecticides.

Functional characterization of chemosensory proteins in response to artificial light treatment in Thalassodes immissaria.

BACKGROUND: Chemosensory proteins (CSPs) play a vital role in the response to environmental stimuli in insects. However, the involvement of insect CSPs in the stress response to night-time environmental changes has not been examined. RESULTS: In the current study, four TiCSP genes were first cloned from Thalassodes immissaria by transcriptome and RACE-PCR techniques. TiCSPs had typical characteristics of insect CSPs, including a highly conserved four-cysteine motif and olfactory-specific protein D (OS-D) or OS-D superfamily domains. TiCSP1-4 were clustered classified within different clades in a phylogenetic analysis and were differentially expressed at all developmental stages. Under night-time artificial light stress, the expression levels of TiCSP1 in males were significantly decreased at 24 h, and those of TiCSP2 were decreased in both adult sexes at 48 h. In a molecular docking analysis, TiCSPs showed relatively higher binding affinities with sex pheromone components than with host plant volatile molecules. CONCLUSION: Taking the reduced expression levels of TiCSPs and binding affinities into account, TiCSP1 and TiCSP2 are involved in the stress response processes of T. immissaria under light treatment. Our study supplies basic data for the evaluation of the effects of light interference control technology - an emerging physical control measure on nontarget pests of lychee orchards. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

Evidence for the Participation of Chemosensory Proteins in Response to Insecticide Challenge in Conopomorpha sinensis.

Chemosensory proteins (CSPs) are a type of efficient transporters that can bind various hydrophobic compounds. Previous research has shown that the expression levels of some insect CSPs were significantly increased after insecticide treatment. However, the role of CSPs in response to insecticide challenge is unclear. Conopomorpha sinensis is the most destructive borer pest of litchi (Litchi chinensis) and longan (Euphoria longan) in the Asia-Pacific region. Here, we studied the expression patterns and potential functions of 12 CSP genes (CsCSPs) from C. sinensis in response to λ-cyhalothrin exposure. The spatiotemporal distribution of CsCSPs suggested that they were predominantly expressed in the female abdomen, female legs, and male legs. The expression levels of CsCSPs were affected in a time-dependent manner after λ-cyhalothrin treatment in both sexes of C. sinensis adults. Compared to the control group, the expression levels of CsCSP1, CsCSP2, CsCSP9, and CsCSP12 in females were significantly increased by 2-4 times, while only one CsCSP, three CsCSPs, and two CsCSPs were significantly upregulated in males at three time points post-treatment. The sex-biased variance of CSP expression may be related to sex-specific detoxification enzymatic activities and survival rates of C. sinensis in response to insecticide challenge. Homology modeling and molecular docking analyses showed that the binding energy value of CsCSP1-12 to λ-cyhalothrin was negative and the binding energy between CsCSP9 and λ-cyhalothrin was the lowest (-11.35 kJ/mol). Combined with expression alterations of CsCSP1-12, the results indicate that CsCSP1, CsCSP2, CsCSP9, and CsCSP12 were involved in binding and ferrying of λ-cyhalothrin in C. sinensis.

Decreased cuticular penetration minimizes the impact of the pyrethroid insecticide λ-cyhalothrin on the insect predator Eocanthecona furcellata.

The use of broad-spectrum pesticides may reduce the biological control efficacy of predatory arthropods. Hence, the risks of pesticides to predators need to be evaluated. Here, we assessed the effects of a broad spectrum pyrethroid λ-cyhalothrin on a polyphagous predatory insect Eocanthecona furcellata via contact exposure route. The recommended application rate of λ-cyhalothrin was lower than the LR50 and HQ (in-field) was equal to 0.57, indicating the risk of λ-cyhalothrin to E. furcellata was low. Dried λ-cyhalothrin residue had no effect on the mortality, body weight, protein content of cuticle, or activities of major detoxification enzymes in E. furcellata. Residual of λ-cyhalothrin was only detected in the cuticle and legs of E. furcellata with a decreasing trend as time went by and no λ-cyhalothrin was detected inside the body. Additionally, a comparative transcriptome analysis was conducted to study global changes in gene expression in E. furcellata at different time points following exposure to λ-cyhalothrin-contaminated environment. A total of 57,839 unigenes with an average length of 1044 bp and an N50 of 1820 bp were obtained. In total, 118 and 109 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) at 12 h, and 60 h were identified between two groups. The DEGs were largely enriched in functional categories related to the structural constituent of cuticle. Accordingly, multiple cuticle protein-coding genes were up-regulated at 12 h after pesticide exposure. The present study stressed the importance of evaluating the compatibility between a specific pesticide (λ-cyhalothrin) and E. furcellata via simulating the releasing predators after insecticide application. The data could help optimize the pesticide use, optimizing the ecological services of E. furcellata as a BCA, and expanding its use into more areas of agriculture.

Medical image segmentation model based on triple gate MultiLayer perceptron.

To alleviate the social contradiction between limited medical resources and increasing medical needs, the medical image-assisted diagnosis based on deep learning has become the research focus in Wise Information Technology of med. Most of the existing medical segmentation models based on Convolution or Transformer have achieved relatively sound effects. However, the Convolution-based model with a limited receptive field cannot establish long-distance dependencies between features as the Network deepens. The Transformer-based model produces large computation overhead and cannot generalize the bias of local features and perceive the position feature of medical images, which are essential in medical image segmentation. To address those issues, we present Triple Gate MultiLayer Perceptron U-Net (TGMLP U-Net), a medical image segmentation model based on MLP, in which we design the Triple Gate MultiLayer Perceptron (TGMLP), composed of three parts. Firstly, considering encoding the position information of features, we propose the Triple MLP module based on MultiLayer Perceptron in this model. It uses linear projection to encode features from the high, wide, and channel dimensions, enabling the model to capture the long-distance dependence of features along the spatial dimension and the precise position information of features in three dimensions with less computational overhead. Then, we design the Local Priors and Global Perceptron module. The Global Perceptron divides the feature map into different partitions and conducts correlation modelling for each partition to establish the global dependency between partitions. The Local Priors uses multi-scale Convolution with high local feature extraction ability to explore further the relationship of context feature information within the structure. At last, we suggest a Gate-controlled Mechanism to effectively solves the problem that the dependence of position embeddings between Patches and within Patches in medical images cannot be well learned due to the relatively small number of samples in medical images segmentation data. Experimental results indicate that the proposed model outperforms other state-of-the-art models in most evaluation indicators, demonstrating its excellent performance in segmenting medical images.

Broadband angular dispersion compensation for digital micromirror devices.

In this Letter, we present a compact broadband angular dispersion compensation method for digital micromirror devices (DMDs) and ultrashort pulse lasers, which effectively extends the conventional single-wavelength compensation design to a wide wavelength range of 300 nm. First, a parametric model was developed for the dispersion compensation unit, consisting of a transmission grating and a 4f telescope sub-unit, to guide the selection of components and parameter optimization for broadband applications. In the experiments, we designed a single slit-based metrology system to measure and quantify the compensated angular dispersion of a Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser with a pulse width of 75 fs. The results indicate that our method can reduce the angular dispersion to 0.04°, i.e., pulse widening less than 20 fs, over a wavelength range of 750-1050 nm. To demonstrate this, the DMD system was used as a multi-wavelength beam shaper to reconstruct a wavefront that contains the "CUHK" pattern and the results confirmed its ability to provide effective broadband angular dispersion compensation. This means the DMD can be used in different applications that employ a broadband light source, e.g., wavelength tunable femtosecond laser, attosecond laser, supercontinuum laser, and multi-color LED.

Inferring Drug-Target Interactions Based on Random Walk and Convolutional Neural Network.

Computational strategies for identifying new drug-target interactions (DTIs) can guide the process of drug discovery, reduce the cost and time of drug development, and thus promote drug development. Most recently proposed methods predict DTIs via integration of heterogeneous data related to drugs and proteins. However, previous methods have failed to deeply integrate these heterogeneous data and learn deep feature representations of multiple original similarities and interactions related to drugs and proteins. We therefore constructed a heterogeneous network by integrating a variety of connection relationships about drugs and proteins, including drugs, proteins, and drug side effects, as well as their similarities, interactions, and associations. A DTI prediction method based on random walk and convolutional neural network was proposed and referred to as DTIPred. DTIPred not only takes advantage of various original features related to drugs and proteins, but also integrates the topological information of heterogeneous networks. The prediction model is composed of two sides and learns the deep feature representation of a drug-protein pair. On the left side, random walk with restart is applied to learn the topological vectors of drug and protein nodes. The topological representation is further learned by the constructed deep learning frame based on convolutional neural network. The right side of the model focuses on integrating multiple original similarities and interactions of drugs and proteins to learn the original representation of the drug-protein pair. The results of cross-validation experiments demonstrate that DTIPred achieves better prediction performance than several state-of-the-art methods. During the validation process, DTIPred can retrieve more actual drug-protein interactions within the top part of the predicted results, which may be more helpful to biologists. In addition, case studies on five drugs further demonstrate the ability of DTIPred to discover potential drug-protein interactions.

Effects of different probiotic fermented feeds on production performance and intestinal health of laying hens.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of different probiotic fermented diets on production performance and intestinal health of laying hens. A total of 360 healthy 22-wk-age Jingfen No. 6 layers were randomly divided into 4 treatments: basal diet (CON); supplemented with 6% Clostridium butyricum fermented feed (CB); supplemented with 6% Lactobacillus crispatus fermented feed (LC); supplemented with 6% Lactobacillus salivarius fermented feed (LS). The experiment lasted for 8 wk. The results showed that the levels of crude fiber, ß-glucan and pH of feed decreased significantly after fermentation (P < 0.05). Compared with CON group, the feed conversion ratio (FCR) was decreased significantly (P < 0.05), and albumen height and Haugh unit in LC group and LS group were increased significantly (P < 0.05). Fermented feed supplementation significantly improved villus height (VH) of the jejunum and the ratio of villus height to crypt depth (VH/CD) of the ileum (P < 0.05). Additionally, the VH and VH/CD of the duodenum were significantly increased in LS group (P < 0.05). Furthermore, the ACE and chao1 indexes in LS group were extremely significant higher than that in the other 3 groups (P < 0.05). In addition, compared with CON group, the abundance of Rikenellaceae and Methanobacteriaceae was significantly decreased at the family level in LC group and LS group (P < 0.05), while the abundance of Ruminocaceae was significantly higher (P < 0.05). Collectively, feeding Lactobacillus salivarius and Lactobacillus crispatus fermented feed improved the FCR, albumen height and Haugh unit of laying hens, and Lactobacillus salivarius fermented feed supplementation could improve intestinal health by ameliorating intestinal morphology, altering microbial composition and enhancing microbial community richness.

Two new species of Chilocorus Leach, 1815 from Laos (ColeopteraCoccinellidaeChilocorini).

BACKGROUND: Chilocorus Leach, 1815 the largest genus of Chilocorini, contains more than 80 species, mainly preying on Coccoidea. Many species of Chilocorus are economically important as they are widely used as biological control agents. NEW INFORMATION: In this study, two new species of the genus Chilocorus Leach are described from Laos: C.toulakhomianus Li & Wang, sp. n. and C.vientianicus Li & Wang, sp. n. Diagnoses and detailed descriptions of the new species are given. Each species is illustrated in detail, including genitalia. Distribution maps are presented.

Fast 3D super-resolution imaging using a digital micromirror device and binary holography.

SIGNIFICANCE: High-speed three-dimensional (3D) super-resolution microscopy is a unique tool to investigate various biological phenomena; yet the technology is not broadly adopted due to its high cost and complex system design. AIM: We present a compact, low-cost, and high-speed 3D structured illumination microscopy (SIM) based on a digital micromirror device and binary holography to visualize fast biological events with super-resolution. APPROACH: The 3D SIM uses a digital micromirror device to generate three laser foci with individually controllable positions, phases, and amplitudes via binary holography at the back aperture of objective lens to form optimal 3D structured patterns. Fifteen raw images are sequentially recorded and processed by the 3D SIM algorithm to reconstruct a super-resolved image. RESULTS: Super-resolution 3D imaging at a speed of 26.7 frames per second is achieved with a lateral and axial resolution of 155 and 487 nm, which corresponds to a 1.65- and 1.63-times resolution enhancement, respectively, comparing with standard deconvolution microscopy. CONCLUSIONS: The 3D SIM realizes fast super-resolution imaging with optimal 3D structured illumination, which may find important applications in biophotonics.

Effects of Different Fermented Feeds on Production Performance, Cecal Microorganisms, and Intestinal Immunity of Laying Hens.

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of different compound probiotics on the performance, cecal microflora, and intestinal immunity of laying hens. A total of 270 Jing Fen No.6 (22-week-old) were randomly divided into 3 groups: basal diet (CON); basal diet supplemented with 6% fermented feed A by Bacillussubtilis,Lactobacillus, and Yeast (FA); and with 6% fermented feed B by C. butyricum and L. salivarius (FB). Phytic acid, trypsin inhibitor, ß-glucan concentrations, and pH value in fermented feed were lower than the CON group (p < 0.05). The feed conversion ratio (FCR) in the experimental groups was decreased, while albumen height and Haugh unit were increased, compared with the CON group (p < 0.05). Fermented feed could upregulate the expression of the signal pathway (TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB) to inhibit mRNA expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines (p < 0.05). Fermented feed promoted the level of Romboutsia (in the FA group) Butyricicoccus (in the FB group), and other beneficial bacteria, and reduced opportunistic pathogens, such as Enterocooccus (p < 0.05). Spearman's correlations showed that the above bacteria were closely related to albumen height and intestinal immunity. In summary, fermented feed can decrease the feed conversion ratio, and improve the performance and intestinal immunity of laying hens, which may be related to the improvement of the cecal microflora structure.

Effect of diflubenzuron on the chitin biosynthesis pathway in Conopomorpha sinensis eggs.

Conopomorpha sinensis is the dominant borer pest of Litchi chinensis (litchi) and Euphoria longan (longan) in China. Control of C. sinensis is difficult because of its cryptic life habit; thus, an effective ovicide could be beneficial. The larvicidal effects of diflubenzuron (DFB) have been documented in many insect pest species. Therefore, DFB might be a useful ovicide to control C. sinensis. However, the detailed mode of action of DFB interference with insect molting and egg hatching is unclear. Thus, we studied alterations in expression of all genes potentially affected by DFB treatment using a transcriptome approach in 2-d-old C. sinensis eggs. Clean reads were assembled to generate 203 455 unigenes and 440 558 transcripts. A total of 4625 differently expressed genes, which included 2670 up-regulated and 1955 down-regulated unigenes, were identified. Chitin binding and chitin metabolic processes were among the most significant enriched pathways according to Gene Ontology analyses. Most of the genes that encode enzymes involved in the chitin biosynthesis pathway were unaffected, whereas genes that presumably encode cuticle proteins were up-regulated. Furthermore, altered expression patterns of 10 genes involved in the chitin biosynthesis pathway of C. sinensis embryos were observed in response to DFB treatment at different time points by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. We also observed abnormal development; there was reduced chitin content and modulated chitin distribution of newly hatched larvae, and altered egg hatching. Our findings illustrate an ovicidal effect of DFB on C. sinensis, and reveal more molecular consequences of DFB treatment on insects.

Prediction of Drug-Target Interactions Based on Network Representation Learning and Ensemble Learning.

Identifying interactions between drugs and target proteins is a critical step in the drug development process, as it helps identify new targets for drugs and accelerate drug development. The number of known drug-protein interactions (positive samples) is much lower than that of the unknown ones (negative samples), which forms a class imbalance. Most previous methods only utilised part of the negative samples to train the prediction model, so most of the information on negative samples was neglected. Therefore, a new method must be developed to predict candidate drug-related proteins and fully utilise negative samples to improve prediction performance. We present a method based on non-negative matrix factorisation and gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT), named NGDTP, to identify the candidate drug-protein interactions. NGDTP integrates multiple kinds of protein similarities, drugs-proteins interactions, and multiple kinds of drugs similarities at different levels, including target proteins of drugs, drug-related diseases, and side effects of drugs. We propose a network representation learning method based on matrix factorisation to learn low-dimensional vector representations of drug and protein nodes. On the basis of these low-dimensional node representations, a GBDT-based prediction model was constructed and it obtains the association scores through establishing multiple decision trees for a drug-protein pairs. NGDTP is an ensemble learning model that fully utilises all the negative samples to effectively alleviate the problem of class imbalance. NGDTP achieves superior prediction performance when it is compared with several state-of-the-art methods. The experimental results indicate that NGDTP also retrieves more actual drug-protein interactions in the top part of prediction result, which drew significant attention from the biologists. In addition, case studies on 10 drugs further confirmed the ability of the NGDTP to identify potential candidate proteins for drugs.

Ecdysone Receptor (EcR) and Ultraspiracle Protein (USP) Genes From Conopomorpha sinensis Bradley Eggs: Identification and Expression in Response to Insecticides.

Conopomorpha sinensis Bradley (Lepidoptera: Gracilariidae) is the dominant insect pest of litchi (chinensis Sonn.) and longan (Euphoria longan Lour.) fruit trees. Management of this pest species is a challenging task due to its cryptic borer behavior. Controlling C. sinensis at the egg stage is the best alternative strategy to chemical control of C. sinensis adults. However, thorough studies regarding the indirect and sublethal effects of chemicals on the different developmental stages of C. sinensis are insufficient. In this study, the effect of some insecticides was evaluated on C. sinensis eggs. The ovicidal activity of chlorbenzuron, abamectin, chlorantraniliprole, and λ-cyhalothrin was confirmed by morphological observation of the defects in C. sinensis eggs. Moreover, we characterized four essential ecdysone receptor proteins in insects [i.e., two isoform ecdysone receptors (EcR: CsEcRA. CsEcRB) and two isoform ultraspiracle proteins (USP: CsUSP1, CsUSP2)] from C. sinensis eggs. The CsEcRA, CsEcRB, CsUSP1, and CsUSP2 genes consisted of 1521-, 1614-, 1410-, and 1236-bp open reading frames which encoded proteins of 506, 527, 469, and 413 amino acid residues, respectively. Furthermore, the embryonic differential responses of CsEcRs, CsUSPs, and vitellogenin receptor (VgR: CsVgR) to insecticides were evaluated by qRT-PCR. Among the five tested genes, CsVgR and CsUSP1 were the most sensitive to all the tested insecticides, with fold change of the expression diminished by 4.27-8.70 times compared with untreated control insects. The data suggests that these insecticidal compounds regulate the expression of these specific proteins, which might eventually lead to reduced viability of C. sinensis eggs. We present here the first data providing molecular elucidation of ecdysone receptor genes and their differential responses to insecticides in C. sinensis eggs. Together with our previous report of insecticide sublethal effects on two reproduction-related genes in C. sinensis adults, CsVgR and CsUSP1 seem to be appropriate molecular parameters for the evaluation of insecticide impact on C. sinensis. This study exemplifies the potential utility of transcriptional measurement of nuclear receptors as the molecular biomarkers for ecotoxicological evaluations of ovicidal impact of insecticides.

New records and checklist of Chilocorini (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) from China.

BACKGROUND: China is one of the countries with the greatest species diversity of Chilocorini (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), including nearly forty-five percent of the known genera and fourteen percent of all described species in this tribe. Recently, we discovered three species previously not recorded in China. NEW INFORMATION: In this study, three species Priscibrumus uropygialis (Mulsant, 1853), Priscibrumus disjunctus Canepari, 1997 and Brumus octosignatus (Gebler, 1830) are documented for the first time in China. Brumus octosignatus is the first member of the genus Brumus Mulsant, 1850 recorded in China. Detailed descriptions, illustrations and distributions of these three species are provided. A checklist of Chinese Chilocorini is also given.