Brassinosteroid regulates stomatal development in etiolated Arabidopsis cotyledons via transcription factors BZR1 and BES1.

Brassinosteroids (BRs) are phytohormones that regulate stomatal development. In this study, we report that BR represses stomatal development in etiolated Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) cotyledons via transcription factors BRASSINAZOLE RESISTANT 1 (BZR1) and bri1-EMS SUPPRESSOR1 (BES1), which directly target MITOGEN-ACTIVATED PROTEIN KINASE KINASE 9 (MKK9) and FAMA, 2 important genes for stomatal development. BZR1/BES1 bind MKK9 and FAMA promoters in vitro and in vivo, and mutation of the BZR1/BES1 binding motif in MKK9/FAMA promoters abolishes their transcription regulation by BZR1/BES1 in plants. Expression of a constitutively active MKK9 (MKK9DD) suppressed overproduction of stomata induced by BR deficiency, while expression of a constitutively inactive MKK9 (MKK9KR) induced high-density stomata in bzr1-1D. In addition, bzr-h, a sextuple mutant of the BZR1 family of proteins, produced overabundant stomata, and the dominant bzr1-1D and bes1-D mutants effectively suppressed the stomata-overproducing phenotype of brassinosteroid insensitive 1-116 (bri1-116) and brassinosteroid insensitive 2-1 (bin2-1). In conclusion, our results revealed important roles of BZR1/BES1 in stomatal development, and their transcriptional regulation of MKK9 and FAMA expression may contribute to BR-regulated stomatal development in etiolated Arabidopsis cotyledons.

Recent advances in understanding the regulatory mechanism of plasma membrane H+-ATPase through the brassinosteroid signaling pathway.

The polyhydroxylated steroid phytohormone brassinosteroids (BRs) control many aspects of plant growth, development and responses to environmental changes. Plasma membrane (PM) H+-ATPase, the well-known PM proton pump, is a central regulator in plant physiology, which mediates not only plant growth and development, but also adaptation to stresses. Recent studies highlight that PM H+-ATPase is at least partly regulated via the BR signaling. Firstly, the BR cell surface receptor BRASSINOSTEROID-INSENSITIVE 1 (BRI1) and multiple key components of BR signaling directly or indirectly influence PM H+-ATPase activity. Secondly, the SMALL AUXIN UP RNA (SAUR) gene family physically interacts with BRI1 to enhance organ development of Arabidopsis by activating PM H+-ATPase. Thirdly, RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) assays showed that the expression of some SAUR genes is upregulated under the light or sucrose conditions, which is related to the phosphorylation state of the penultimate residue of PM H+-ATPase in a time-course manner. In this review, we describe the structural and functional features of PM H+-ATPase, and summarize recent progress toward understanding the regulatory mechanism of PM H+-ATPase by BRs, and briefly introduce how PM H+-ATPase activity is modulated by its own biterminal regions and the post-translational modifications.

Determination of sulfide in complex biofilm matrices using silver-coated, 4-mercaptobenzonitrile-modified gold nanoparticles, encapsulated in ZIF-8 as surface-enhanced Raman scattering nanoprobe.

A surface-enhanced Raman scattering nanoprobe has been developed for sulfide detection and applied to  complex bacterial biofilms. The nanoprobe, Au@4-MBN@Ag@ZIF-8, comprised a gold core modified with 4-mercaptobenzonitrile (4-MBN) as signaling source, a layer of silver shell as the sulfide sensitization material, and a zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) as surface barrier. ZIF-8, with its high surface area and mesoporous structure, was applied to preconcentrate sulfide around the nanoprobe with its excellent adsorption capacity. Besides, the external wrapping of ZIF-8 can not only prevent the interference of biomolecules, such as proteins, with the Au@4-MBN@Ag assay but also enhance the detection specificity through the sulfide cleavage function towards ZIF-8. These properties are critical for the application of this nanoprobe to complex environmental scenarios. In the presence of sulfide, it was first enriched through adsorption by the outer ZIF-8 layer, then destroyed the barrier layer, and subsequently reacted with the Ag shell, leading to changes in the Raman signal. Through this rational design, the Au@4-MBN@Ag@ZIF-8 nanoprobe exhibited excellent detection sensitivity, with a sulfide detection limit in the nanomolar range and strong linearity in the concentration range  50 nM to 500 µM. Furthermore, the proposed Au@4-MBN@Ag@ZIF-8 nanoprobe was effectively utilized for sulfide detection in intricate biofilm matrices, demonstrating its robust selectivity and reproducibility.

The transcription factor OsGATA6 regulates rice heading date and grain number per panicle.

Heading date, panicle architecture, and grain size are key traits that affect the yield of rice (Oryza sativa). Here, we identified a new gene, OsGATA6, whose product regulates heading date. Overexpression of OsGATA6 resulted in delayed heading, increased grain number, and decreased grain size. Knockdown lines generated by artificial microRNA (amiRNA) and CRISPR genome-edited lines of OsGATA6 both showed earlier heading, decreased grain number, and increased grain size. These results suggested that OsGATA6 negatively regulates heading date, positively regulates panicle development, and affects grain size. OsGATA6 was found to be constitutively expressed in rice, and strongly expressed in young leaves and panicles. In situ hybridization analyses showed that OsGATA6 was specifically localized in superficial cells of the panicle primordium. Overexpression lines show decreased expression of RFT1 and Hd3a, which promote heading. OsMFT1, which delays heading date and increases grain number, was down-regulated in amiRNA lines. Further analyses showed that OsGATA6 could bind to the promoter of OsMFT1 and induce its expression, thereby regulating heading date and panicle development. Overexpression of OsGATA6 in Arabidopsis resulted in repressed expression of AtFT and late flowering, suggesting that its function is similar. Taken together, we have identified a new GATA regulator that influences rice heading date and grain number, which potentially increases rice yield.

Redox Regulation of the NOR Transcription Factor Is Involved in the Regulation of Fruit Ripening in Tomato.

Transcription factors (TFs) are important regulators of plant growth and development and responses to stresses. TFs themselves are also prone to multiple posttranslational modifications (PTMs). However, redox-mediated PTM of TFs in plants remains poorly understood. Here, we established that NON-RIPENING (NOR), a master TF regulating tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) fruit ripening, is a target of the Met sulfoxide reductases A and B, namely E4 and SlMsrB2, respectively, in tomato. Met oxidation in NOR, i.e. sulfoxidation, or mimicking sulfoxidation by mutating Met-138 to Gln, reduces its DNA-binding capacity and transcriptional regulatory activity in vitro. E4 and SlMsrB2 partially repair oxidized NOR and restore its DNA-binding capacity. Transgenic complementation of the nor mutant with NOR partially rescues the ripening defects. However, transformation of nor with NOR-M138Q, containing mimicked Met sulfoxidation, inhibits restoration of the fruit ripening phenotype, and this is associated with the decreased DNA-binding and transcriptional activation of a number of ripening-related genes. Taken together, these observations reveal a PTM mechanism by which Msr-mediated redox modification of NOR regulates the expression of ripening-related genes, thereby influencing tomato fruit ripening. Our report describes how sulfoxidation of TFs regulates developmental processes in plants.

A High-Speed Low-Cost VLSI System Capable of On-Chip Online Learning for Dynamic Vision Sensor Data Classification.

This paper proposes a high-speed low-cost VLSI system capable of on-chip online learning for classifying address-event representation (AER) streams from dynamic vision sensor (DVS) retina chips. The proposed system executes a lightweight statistic algorithm based on simple binary features extracted from AER streams and a Random Ferns classifier to classify these features. The proposed system's characteristics of multi-level pipelines and parallel processing circuits achieves a high throughput up to 1 spike event per clock cycle for AER data processing. Thanks to the nature of the lightweight algorithm, our hardware system is realized in a low-cost memory-centric paradigm. In addition, the system is capable of on-chip online learning to flexibly adapt to different in-situ application scenarios. The extra overheads for on-chip learning in terms of time and resource consumption are quite low, as the training procedure of the Random Ferns is quite simple, requiring few auxiliary learning circuits. An FPGA prototype of the proposed VLSI system was implemented with 9.5~96.7% memory consumption and <11% computational and logic resources on a Xilinx Zynq-7045 chip platform. It was running at a clock frequency of 100 MHz and achieved a peak processing throughput up to 100 Meps (Mega events per second), with an estimated power consumption of 690 mW leading to a high energy efficiency of 145 Meps/W or 145 event/µJ. We tested the prototype system on MNIST-DVS, Poker-DVS, and Posture-DVS datasets, and obtained classification accuracies of 77.9%, 99.4% and 99.3%, respectively. Compared to prior works, our VLSI system achieves higher processing speeds, higher computing efficiency, comparable accuracy, and lower resource costs.

Coiled-Coil N21 of Hpa1 in Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae Promotes Plant Growth, Disease Resistance and Drought Tolerance in Non-Hosts via Eliciting HR and Regulation of Multiple Defense Response Genes.

Acting as a typical harpin protein, Hpa1 of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae is one of the pathogenic factors in hosts and can elicit hypersensitive responses (HR) in non-hosts. To further explain the underlying mechanisms of its induced resistance, we studied the function of the most stable and shortest three heptads in the N-terminal coiled-coil domain of Hpa1, named N21Hpa1. Proteins isolated from N21-transgenic tobacco elicited HR in Xanthi tobacco, which was consistent with the results using N21 and full-length Hpa1 proteins expressed in Escherichia coli. N21-expressing tobacco plants showed enhanced resistance to tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and Pectobacterium carotovora subsp. carotovora (Pcc). Spraying of a synthesized N21 peptide solution delayed the disease symptoms caused by Botrytis cinerea and Monilinia fructicola and promoted the growth and drought tolerance of plants. Further analysis indicated that N21 upregulated the expression of multiple plant defense-related genes, such as genes mediated by salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA) and ethylene (ET) signaling, and genes related to reactive oxygen species (ROS) biosynthesis. Further, the bioavailability of N21 peptide was better than that of full-length Hpa1Xoo. Our studies support the broad application prospects of N21 peptide as a promising succedaneum to biopesticide Messenger or Illite or other biological pharmaceutical products, and provide a basis for further development of biopesticides using proteins with similar structures.

Protective role of anthocyanins in plants under low nitrogen stress.

Nitrogen (N) is a major nutrient of plants but often a limiting factor for plant growth and crop yield. To adapt to N deficiency, plants have evolved adaptive responses including accumulation of anthocyanins. However, it is still unclear whether the accumulated anthocyanins are part of the components of plant tolerance under low N stress. Here, we demonstrate that low N-induced anthocyanins contribute substantially to the low N tolerance of Arabidopsis thaliana. pap1-1, a mutant defective in MYB75 (PAP1), a MYB-type transcription factor that positively regulates anthocyanin biosynthesis in Arabidopsis, was found to have significantly decreased survival rate to low N stress compared to its wild-type plants. Similarly, tt3, a mutant with severe deficiency in dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR), a key enzyme in anthocyanin biosynthesis, also showed much lower survival rate under low N stress. These results indicate that anthocyanins are substantial contributors of plant tolerance to low N stress. Furthermore, a metabolomics analysis using LC-MS revealed changes in flavonoid profile in the pap1-1 and tt3 plants, which established a causal relationship between plant adaptation to low N stress and these compounds including anthocyanins. Our results showed an important role of anthocyanins rather than flavonols in conferring plant tolerance to low N stress.

Brassinosteroid Signaling in Plant⁻Microbe Interactions.

As sessile organisms, plants are frequently exposed to different stress conditions caused by either biotic or abiotic factors. Understanding the mechanisms that underlie plant interaction with the biotic and abiotic environments is fundamental to both plant biotechnology and sustainable agriculture. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a group of plant-specific steroidal compounds essential for normal growth and development. Recent research evidence indicates that BRs are also actively involved in plant⁻environment interactions and play important roles in shaping plant fitness and the growth⁻defense trade-offs. In this minireview, we focus our attention on recent advances in the understanding of BR functions in modulating plant interactions with different pathogenic microbes, with particular focus on how BR signaling primes the plant innate immunity pathways and achieves a trade-off between growth and immunity.

The mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 9 (MKK9) modulates nitrogen acquisition and anthocyanin accumulation under nitrogen-limiting condition in Arabidopsis.

Nitrogen (N) plays important roles as both a macronutrient and signal in plant growth and development. However, our understanding of N signaling and/or response mechanisms in plants is still limited. Here, we show that the mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 9 (MKK9) is involved in plant N responses in Arabidopsis by regulating production of anthocyanins and the ability of N acquisition under low N conditions. Transgenic plants that express a constitutively active version of MKK9 (MKK9DD) showed decreased accumulation of anthocynanins and reduced expression of key anthocyanin biosynthetic genes under low N condition compared to the plants expressing the inactive form of MKK9 (MKK9KR). The decreased anthocyanin accumulation could be due to the increased N level in the MKK9DD plants as these plants were shown to accumulate more N and have higher expression of N acquisition-related genes under low N condition as compared with the MKK9KR plants. Taken together, our results suggest that MKK9 plays a role in plant adaptation to low N stress by modulating both anthocyanin accumulation and N status.

The transcriptional regulatory network mediated by banana (Musa acuminata) dehydration-responsive element binding (MaDREB) transcription factors in fruit ripening.

Fruit ripening is a complex, genetically programmed process involving the action of critical transcription factors (TFs). Despite the established significance of dehydration-responsive element binding (DREB) TFs in plant abiotic stress responses, the involvement of DREBs in fruit ripening is yet to be determined. Here, we identified four genes encoding ripening-regulated DREB TFs in banana (Musa acuminata), MaDREB1, MaDREB2, MaDREB3, and MaDREB4, and demonstrated that they play regulatory roles in fruit ripening. We showed that MaDREB1-MaDREB4 are nucleus-localized, induced by ethylene and encompass transcriptional activation activities. We performed a genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation and high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-Seq) experiment for MaDREB2 and identified 697 genomic regions as potential targets of MaDREB2. MaDREB2 binds to hundreds of loci with diverse functions and its binding sites are distributed in the promoter regions proximal to the transcriptional start site (TSS). Most of the MaDREB2-binding targets contain the conserved (A/G)CC(G/C)AC motif and MaDREB2 appears to directly regulate the expression of a number of genes involved in fruit ripening. In combination with transcriptome profiling (RNA sequencing) data, our results indicate that MaDREB2 may serve as both transcriptional activator and repressor during banana fruit ripening. In conclusion, our study suggests a hierarchical regulatory model of fruit ripening in banana and that the MaDREB TFs may act as transcriptional regulators in the regulatory network.

Knocking out of carotenoid catabolic genes in rice fails to boost carotenoid accumulation, but reveals a mutation in strigolactone biosynthesis.

KEY MESSAGE: Targeted mutations in five carotenoid catabolism genes failed to boost carotenoid accumulation in rice seeds, but produced dwarf and high tillering mutants when OsCCD7 gene was knocked out. Carotenoids play an important role in human diet as a source of vitamin A. Rice is a major staple food in Asia, but does not accumulate carotenoids in the endosperm because of the low carotenoid biosynthesis or the degradation in metabolism. In this study, the CRISPR/Cas9 system was investigated in the targeted knockout of five rice carotenoid catabolic genes (OsCYP97A4, OsDSM2, OsCCD4a, OsCCD4b and OsCCD7) and in an effort to increase ß-carotene accumulation in rice endosperm. Transgenic plants that expressed OsNLSCas9 and sgRNAs were generated by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Various knockout mutations were identified at the T0 generation of the transgenic rice by TILLING and direct sequencing of the PCR products amplified from the target sites. Carotenoids were not accumulated in both mono-allelic and bi-allelic knockout mutations of the five genes. However, transgenic plants with homozygous or bi-allelic mutations to the OsCCD7 gene were extremely dwarfish with more tillers and lower seed setting than other transgenic or nontransgenic plants. This phenotype was similar to the previously reported ccd7 mutants, which are defective in the biosynthesis of strigolactone, a plant hormone that regulates branching in plants and tiller formation in rice.

Brassinosteroid is required for sugar promotion of hypocotyl elongation in Arabidopsis in darkness.

MAIN CONCLUSION: Brassinosteroid is necessary for sugar promotion of Arabidopsis hypocotyl elongation in darkness, and sugar positively regulates BRASSINAZOLE RESISTANT1 (BZR1) at both transcription and protein levels. Sugar has the ability to induce Arabidopsis hypocotyl elongation in the dark, but the detailed mechanisms remain not well understood. Here, we report that the steroidal phytohormone brassinosteroid (BR) is involved in sugar promotion of hypocotyl elongation in the dark. Sugar-induced hypocotyl elongation was significantly repressed in the BR-deficient mutant det2-1, BR-insensitive mutant bri1-5, and wild-type plants (Col-0), but not in the BR-hypersensitive mutants bzr1-1D and bes1-D treated with the BR biosynthetic inhibitor brassinazole (BRZ). Sugar also up-regulated the expression of genes that are related to cell elongation in a BR-dependent manner, and this effect was more remarkable in bzr1-1D and bes1-D than in their corresponding wild types in the presence of BRZ, suggesting an important role of BZR1 and bri1-ems-suppressor 1 (BES1) in this process. Sugar treatment seems to have little effect on BR biosynthesis, but enhances the expression of BZR1 and BES1, two transcription factors in BR signaling, in the dark. Furthermore, sugar treatment maintains higher BZR1 protein levels in plants grown in the dark. Collectively, our results indicate that BR is required for sugar promotion of hypocotyl elongation in darkness in Arabidopsis.

Stable mitotic inheritance of rice minichromosomes in cell suspension cultures.

KEY MESSAGE: Suspension cell cultures of rice minichromosomes were established. The minichromosomes in suspension cultured cells were mitotically stable and had active gene expression, thus have the potential to be used as gene expression vectors to produce valuable bioactive products. The plant artificial chromosome (PAC) is a novel vector for plant genetic engineering to produce genetically modified crops with multiple transgenes, or to produce valuable bioactive products through the expression of multiple genes or biochemical pathways as a bioreactor. PAC is mainly constructed by engineered minichromosomes through telomere-mediated chromosome truncations. We have constructed rice minichromosomes in a previous study. Thus, the understanding of rice minichromosome inheritance under different culture conditions has potential importance for their utility in future studies and applications. In this study, we performed suspension cultures of three rice minichromosome-containing cell lines, 1004-111, 1008-100 and 1004-011. Two cell lines, 1004-111 and 1008-100, showed typical S growth pattern consisting of a lag phase, an active growing exponential phase and a stationary phase, whereas cell line 1004-011 grew very slowly and eventually died. Both 1004-111 and 1008-100 minichromosomes were stably transmitted in cell suspension cultures without any abnormality. Foreign gene expression was verified from 1004-111 and 1008-100 minichromosomes in suspension cultures. The stable mitotic inheritance of minichromosomes and gene expression from them indicated that rice minichromosomes could be maintained and propagated in cell suspension cultures. This study tested key parameters for suspension cultures of rice cell lines with minichromosomes, and proved in concept the potential for industrial use of PAC vectors as bioreactors.

MyoD Is a Novel Activator of Porcine FIT1 Gene by Interacting with the Canonical E-Box Element during Myogenesis.

Fat-induced transcript 1 (FIT1/FITM1) gene is a member of the conserved gene family important for triglyceride-rich lipid droplet accumulation. FIT1 gene displays a similar muscle-specific expression across pigs, mice, and humans. Thus pigs can act as a useful model of many human diseases resulting from misexpression of FIT1 gene. Triglyceride content in skeletal muscle plays a key role in pork meat quality and flavors. An insertion/deletion mutation in porcine FIT1 coding region shows a high correlation with a series of fat traits. To gain better knowledge of the potential role of FIT1 gene in human diseases and the correlations with pork meat quality, our attention is given to the region upstream of the porcine FIT1 coding sequence. We cloned ~1 kb of the 5'-flanking region of porcine FIT1 gene to define the role of this sequence in modulating the myogenic expression. A canonical E-box element that activated porcine FIT1 promoter activity during myogenesis was identified. Further analysis demonstrated that promoter activity was induced by overexpression of MyoD1, which bound to this canonical E-box during C2C12 differentiation. This is the first evidence that FIT1 as the direct novel target of MyoD is involved in muscle development.

Regulation of the calcium-sensing receptor in both stomatal movement and photosynthetic electron transport is crucial for water use efficiency and drought tolerance in Arabidopsis.

Production per amount of water used (water use efficiency, WUE) is closely correlated with drought tolerance. Although stomatal aperture can regulate WUE, the underlying molecular mechanisms are still unclear. Previous reports revealed that stomatal closure was inhibited in the calcium-sensing receptor (CAS) antisense line of Arabidopsis (CASas). Here it is shown that decreased drought tolerance and WUE of CASas was associated with higher stomatal conductance due to improper regulation of stomatal aperture, rather than any change of stomatal density. CASas plants also had a lower CO2 assimilation rate that was attributed to a lower photosynthetic electron transport rate, leading to higher chlorophyll fluorescence. Gene co-expression combined with analyses of chlorophyll content and transcription levels of photosynthesis-related genes indicate that CAS is involved in the formation of the photosynthetic electron transport system. These data suggest that CAS regulates transpiration and optimizes photosynthesis by playing important roles in stomatal movement and formation of photosynthetic electron transport, thereby regulating WUE and drought tolerance.

Comparative proteomic analysis on wild type and nitric oxide-overproducing mutant (nox1) of Arabidopsis thaliana.

Nitric oxide (NO) as a ubiquitous signal molecule plays an important role in plant development and growth. Here, we compared the proteomic changes between NO-overproducing mutant (nox1) and wild-type (WT) of Arabidopsis thaliana using two-dimensional electrophoresis coupled with MALDI-TOF MS. We successfully identified 59 differentially expressed proteins in nox1 mutant, which are predicted to play potential roles in specific cellular processes, such as post-translational modification, energy production and conversion, metabolism, transcription and signal transduction, cell rescue and defense, development and differentiation. Particularly, expression levels of five anti-oxidative enzymes were altered by the mutation; and assays of their respective enzymatic activities indicated an enhanced level of oxidative stress in nox1 mutant. Finally, some important proteins were further confirmed at transcriptional level using quantitative real-time PCR revealing the systemic changes between WT and nox1. The result suggests that obvious morphological changes in the nox1 mutant may be regulated by different mechanisms and factors, while excess endogenous NO maybe one of the possible reasons.

Association between semen microbiome disorder and sperm DNA damage.

DNA fragmentation index (DFI), a new biomarker to diagnose male infertility, is closely associated with poor reproductive outcomes. Previous research reported that seminal microbiome correlated with sperm DNA integrity, suggesting that the microbiome may be one of the causes of DNA damage in sperm. However, it has not been elucidated how the microbiota exerts their effects. Here, we used a combination of 16S rRNA sequencing and untargeted metabolomics techniques to investigate the role of microbiota in high sperm DNA fragmentation index (HDFI). We report that increased specific microbial profiles contribute to high sperm DNA fragmentation, thus implicating the seminal microbiome as a new therapeutic target for HDFI patients. Additionally, we found that the amount of Lactobacillus species was altered: Lactobacillus iners was enriched in HDFI patients, shedding light on the potential influence of L. iners on male reproductive health. Finally, we also identified enrichment of the acetyl-CoA fermentation to butanoate II and purine nucleobase degradation I in the high sperm DNA fragmentation samples, suggesting that butanoate may be the target metabolite of sperm DNA damage. These findings provide valuable insights into the complex interplay between microbiota and sperm quality in HDFI patients, laying the foundation for further research and potential clinical interventions.IMPORTANCEThe DNA fragmentation index (DFI) is a measure of sperm DNA fragmentation. Because high sperm DNA fragmentation index (HDFI) has been strongly associated with adverse reproductive outcomes, this has been linked to the seminal microbiome. Because the number of current treatments for HDFI is limited and most of them have no clear efficacy, it is critical to understand how semen microbiome exerts their effects on sperm DNA. Here, we evaluated the semen microbiome and its metabolites in patients with high and low sperm DNA fragmentation. We found that increased specific microbial profiles contribute to high sperm DNA fragmentation. In particular, Lactobacillus iners was uniquely correlated with high sperm DNA fragmentation. Additionally, butanoate may be the target metabolite produced by the microbiome to damage sperm DNA. Our findings support the interaction between semen microbiome and sperm DNA damage and suggest that seminal microbiome should be a new therapeutic target for HDFI patients.

MorphBungee: A 65-nm 7.2-mm2 27-µJ/image Digital Edge Neuromorphic Chip with On-Chip 802-frame/s Multi-Layer Spiking Neural Network Learning.

This paper presents a digital edge neuromorphic spiking neural network (SNN) processor chip for a variety of edge intelligent cognitive applications. This processor allows high-speed, high-accuracy and fully on-chip spike-timing-based multi-layer SNN learning. It is characteristic of hierarchical multi-core architecture, event-driven processing paradigm, meta-crossbar for efficient spike communication, and hybrid and reconfigurable parallelism. A prototype chip occupying an active silicon area of 7.2 mm2 was fabricated using a 65-nm 1P9M CMOS process. when running a 256-256-256-256-200 4-layer fully-connected SNN on downscaled 16 × 16 MNIST images. it typically achieved a high-speed throughput of 802 and 2270 frames/s for on-chip learning and inference, respectively, with a relatively low power dissipation of around 61 mW at a 100 MHz clock rate under a 1.0V core power supply, Our on-chip learning results in comparably high visual recognition accuracies of 96.06%, 83.38%, 84.53%, 99.22% and 100% on the MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, ETH-80, Yale-10 and ORL-10 datasets, respectively. In addition, we have successfully applied our neuromorphic chip to demonstrate high-resolution satellite cloud image segmentation and non-visual tasks including olfactory classification and textural news categorization. These results indicate that our neuromorphic chip is suitable for various intelligent edge systems under restricted cost, energy and latency budgets while requiring in-situ self-adaptative learning capability.

Single-cell transcriptomics identifies senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) features of testicular aging in human.

The male reproductive system experiences degradation with age, predominantly impacting the testes. Testicular aging can result in failure to produce physiological testosterone levels, normal sperm concentrations, or both. However, we cannot predict the onset of testicular aging in advance. Using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, we conducted cell-cell communication network of human testis between older and young group, indicating Leydig cells' potential role in spermatogenesis microenvironment of aging testis. And we depicted the senescence-Associated Secretory Phenotype (SASP) features of aging testis by identifying differentially expressed senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP)-related genes between two group. Notably, IGFBP7 mainly expressed in Leydig cells of those differentially expressed SASP-related genes in aging testis. Furthermore, IGFBP7 protein located in the interstitial compartment of older mice confirmed by immunofluorescence and highly expressed in both human seminal plasma and mouse testis in the older group confirmed through Western blot. Together, our findings suggest that IGFBP7 may be a new biomarker of testicular aging.