Overexpression of Jatropha Gibberellin 2-oxidase 6 (JcGA2ox6) Induces Dwarfism and Smaller Leaves, Flowers and Fruits in Arabidopsis and Jatropha.

Gibberellins (GAs) are plant hormones that play fundamental roles in plant growth and development. Gibberellin 2-oxidase (GA2ox) plays a direct role in determining the levels of bioactive GAs by catalyzing bioactive GAs or their immediate precursors to inactive forms. In this study, a GA2ox gene, designated JcGA2ox6, was isolated from Jatropha curcas. JcGA2ox6 is expressed in all tissues of adult Jatropha, with the highest expression level in male flowers and the lowest expression level in young leaves. Overexpression of JcGA2ox6 in Arabidopsis resulted in a typical dwarf phenotype, along with late flowering, smaller leaves and flowers, shorter siliques and smaller seeds. Similarly, when JcGA2ox6 was overexpressed in Jatropha, the transgenic plants exhibited a dwarf phenotype with dark-green leaves and smaller inflorescences, flowers, fruits and seeds. However, the flowering time of Jatropha was not affected by overexpression of JcGA2ox6, unlike that in the transgenic Arabidopsis. Moreover, the number of flowers per inflorescence, the weight of 10 seeds and the seed oil content were significantly decreased in transgenic Jatropha. The results indicated that overexpression of JcGA2ox6 had a great impact on the vegetative and reproductive growth of transgenic Jatropha. Furthermore, we found that the dwarf phenotype of transgenic Jatropha was caused by a decrease in endogenous bioactive GA4, which was correlated with the degree of dwarfism.

Studies on quantitative analysis and automatic recognition of cell types of lung cancer.

Recognition of lung cancer cells is very important to the clinical diagnosis of lung cancer. In this paper we present a novel method to extract the structure characteristics of lung cancer cells and automatically recognize their types. Firstly soft mathematical morphology methods are used to enhance the grayscale image, to improve the definition of images, and to eliminate most of disturbance, noise and information of subordinate images, so the contour of target lung cancer cell and biological shape characteristic parameters can be extracted accurately. Then the minimum distance classifier is introduced to realize the automatic recognition of different types of lung cancer cells. A software system named "CANCER.LUNG" is established to demonstrate the efficiency of this method. The clinical experiments show that this method can accurately and objectively recognize the type of lung cancer cells, which can significantly improve the pathology research on the pathological changes of lung cancer and clinical assistant diagnoses.

Mitochondrial genome of silver gudgeon, Squalidus argentatus (Teleostei, Cypriniformes).

In this paper, we first determined the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of Squalidus argentatus, which was 16,607 bp in size and the whole base composition was estimated to be 30.48% A, 25.45% T, 27.36% C, 16.72% G with AT bias of 55.93%. The complete mitogenome comprised 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes and 1 control region, with the gene order and content identical to other vertebrate mitogenomes. The complete mitogenome of S. argentatus provides the valuable information for population genetics and phylogeography studies on this species.

Complete mitochondrial genome of the smallscale yellowfin, Plagiognathops microlepis (Teleostei: Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae).

The smallscale yellowfin, Plagiognathops microlepis is the only one species in the genus Plagiognathops. In this study, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of the P. microlepis. The complete mitogenome was 16,623 bp in size, consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, and 1 control region. It has the typical circular molecule structure of vertebrate's mitochondrial genome. The whole base composition was estimated to be 30.60% A, 25.19% T, 27.32% C and 16.89% G with AT bias of 55.79%. The complete mitogenome of P. microlepis provides the basis for preservation of genetic resources and genetic breeding studies on this species.

Complete mitochondrial genome of the pseudobream, Pseudobrama simoni (Teleostei:Cypriniformes:Cyprinidae).

The Pseudobrama simoni (Bleeker) is the only one species within the genus Pseudobrama of the subfamily Xenocyprinae. In this study, we first determined the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of the P. simoni. The whole mitogenome is 16,618 bp in size, consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes and 1 control region. The gene order and molecule structure are similar to most vertebrates. The complete mitogenome of P. simoni provides the valuable information for the biogeographic and phylogenetic studies on the subfamily Xenocyprinae.