Analysis of Panax ginseng miRNAs and Their Target Prediction Based on High-Throughput Sequencing.

Panax ginseng has been widely and effectively used as medicine for thousands of years. However, only limited studies have been conducted to date on ginseng miRNAs. In the present study, we collected 3 ginseng samples from the Changbai Mountain in China. Small RNA libraries were constructed and sequenced on the Illumina HiSeq platform. Sequencing analyses identified 3798 miRNAs, including 298 known miRNAs and 3500 potentially novel miRNAs. The miR166, miR159, and miR396 families were among the most highly expressed miRNAs in all libraries. The results of miRNA expression analyses were validated by qRT-PCR. Target gene prediction through computational and pathway annotation analyses revealed that the primary pathways were related to plant development, including metabolic processes and single-organism processes. It has been reported that plant miRNAs might be one of the hidden bioactive ingredients in medicinal plants. Based on the combined use of RNAhybrid, Miranda, and TargetScan software, a total of 50,992 potential human genes were predicted as the putative targets of 2868 miRNAs. Interestingly, the enriched KEGG pathways were associated with some human diseases, especially cancer, immune system diseases, and neurological disorders, and this could support the clinical use of ginseng. However, the human targets of ginseng miRNAs should be confirmed by further experimental validation. Our results provided valuable insight into ginseng miRNAs and the putative roles of these miRNAs.

Verification of miRNAs in ginseng decoction by high-throughput sequencing and quantitative real-time PCR.

Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer is a precious traditional Chinese medicine that has been clinically used for over thousands of years. In general, ginseng needs to be prepared to ginseng decoction before taking it. MicroRNAs are a class of small (18-24 nt), single-stranded molecules that regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. Considering that ginseng miRNAs may be bioactive compounds, we used Illumina high-throughput sequencing and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) to validate the existence of miRNAs in fresh ginseng decoction which have been boiled at high temperature. Our previous studies have demonstrated that there are several miRNAs in fresh ginseng. The roots of fresh Panax ginseng were prepared according to routine methods, from which miRNAs were extracted and sequenced. A total of 43 miRNAs were identified from water decoction by Illumina high-throughput sequencing, belonging to 71 miRNA families. The target genes of these miRNAs were predicted by sequencing, and were annotated by GO, KEGG and Nr databases. The functions of these target genes mainly included plant hormone signal transduction, transcription regulation, macromolecular metabolism and auxin signaling. Nine highly expressed miRNAs (miR159, miR167, miR396, miR166, miR168, miR156, miR165, miR162 and miR394) were verified by qRT-PCR, and the results of Illumina high-throughput sequencing and qRT-PCR were consistent. Results from this study indicate that miRNAs remained stable in P. ginseng after high-temperature boiling. Additionally, Illumina high-throughput sequencing was superior in the acquisition of higher amount of small RNAs.

A Barycentric Coordinate-Based Approach to Formation Control Under Directed and Switching Sensing Graphs.

This paper investigates two formation control problems for a leader-follower network in 3-D. One is called the formation marching control problem, the objective of which is to steer the agents to maintain a target formation shape while moving with the synchronized velocity. The other one is called the formation rotating control problem, whose goal is to drive the agents to rotate around a common axis with a target formation. For the above two problems, we consider directed and switching sensing topologies while the communication is assumed to be bidirectional and switching. We develop approaches utilizing barycentric coordinates toward these two problems. Local control laws and graphical conditions are acquired to ensure global convergence in both scenarios.

Formation Control With Size Scaling Via a Complex Laplacian-Based Approach.

We consider the control of formations of a leader-follower network, where the objective is to steer a team of multiple mobile agents into a formation of variable size. We assume that the shape description of the formation is known to all the agents, which is captured by a complex-valued Laplacian associated with the sensing graph, but the size scaling of the formation is not known or only known to two agents, called the leaders in the network. A distributed linear control strategy is developed in this paper such that the agents converge to the desired formation shape, for which the size of the formation is determined by the two leaders. Moreover, in order to make all agents in a formation move with a common velocity, the distributed control law also incorporates a velocity consensus component, which is implemented with the help of a communication network that may, in general, be of different topology from the sensing graph. Both the setup of single-integrator kinematics and the one of double-integrator dynamics are addressed in the same framework except that the acceleration control in the double-integrator setup has an extra damping term.