The MYB Activator WHITE PETAL1 Associates with MtTT8 and MtWD40-1 to Regulate Carotenoid-Derived Flower Pigmentation in Medicago truncatula.

Carotenoids are a group of natural tetraterpenoid pigments with indispensable roles in the plant life cycle and the human diet. Although the carotenoid biosynthetic pathway has been well characterized, the regulatory mechanisms that control carotenoid metabolism, especially in floral organs, remain poorly understood. In this study, we identified an anthocyanin-related R2R3-MYB protein, WHITE PETAL1 (WP1), that plays a critical role in regulating floral carotenoid pigmentation in Medicago truncatula Carotenoid analyses showed that the yellow petals of the wild-type M. truncatula contained high concentrations of carotenoids that largely consisted of esterified lutein and that disruption of WP1 function via Tnt1 insertion led to substantially reduced lutein accumulation. WP1 mainly functions as a transcriptional activator and directly regulates the expression of carotenoid biosynthetic genes including MtLYCe and MtLYCb through its C-terminal acidic activation motif. Further molecular and genetic analyses revealed that WP1 physically interacts with MtTT8 and MtWD40-1 proteins and that this interaction facilitates WP1's function in the transcriptional activation of both carotenoid and anthocyanin biosynthetic genes. Our findings demonstrate the molecular mechanism of WP1-mediated regulation of floral carotenoid pigmentation and suggest that the conserved MYB-basic-helix-loop-helix-WD40 regulatory module functions in carotenoid biosynthesis in M. truncatula, with specificity imposed by the MYB partner.

The antagonistic MYB paralogs RH1 and RH2 govern anthocyanin leaf markings in Medicago truncatula.

Patterned leaf coloration in plants generates remarkable diversity in nature, but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unclear. Here, using Medicago truncatula leaf marking as a model, we show that the classic M. truncatula leaf anthocyanin spot trait depends on two R2R3 MYB paralogous regulators, RED HEART1 (RH1) and RH2. RH1 mainly functions as an anthocyanin biosynthesis activator that specifically determines leaf marking formation depending on its C-terminal activation motif. RH1 physically interacts with the M. truncatula bHLH protein MtTT8 and the WDR family member MtWD40-1, and this interaction facilitates RH1 function in leaf anthocyanin marking formation. RH2 has lost transcriptional activation activity, due to a divergent C-terminal domain, but retains the ability to interact with the same partners, MtTT8 and MtWD40-1, as RH1, thereby acting as a competitor in the regulatory complex and exerting opposite effects. Moreover, our results demonstrate that RH1 can activate its own expression and that RH2-mediated competition can repress RH1 expression. Our findings reveal the molecular mechanism of the antagonistic gene paralogs RH1 and RH2 in determining anthocyanin leaf markings in M. truncatula, providing a multidimensional paralogous-antagonistic regulatory paradigm for fine-tuning patterned pigmentation.

The short-term safety and effectiveness of a new distal perforating stent graft in Type B aortic dissection: a retrospective study.

BACKGROUND: Spinal artery ischemia (SCI) events can result from over coverage of the descending thoracic aorta with a coated stent during Thoracic Endovascular Aortic Repair (TEVAR). The aim of this study was to determine whether a new distal perforating stent could reduce the incidence of spinal cord ischemia while remodeling the true lumen. METHODS: TBAD patients treated with Talos stent in the vascular surgery Department of Yan 'an Hospital affiliated to Kunming Medical University between December 2017 and October 2019 were retrospectively analyzed to investigate the short-term safety and effectiveness of Talos stent. RESULTS: A total of the 20 patients, including 14 males and 6 females, with an average age of 52.65 ± 8.98 years (range 37-68 years), were included in the analysis. Stent-grafts were successfully implanted in all patients under local anesthesia, with a technical success rate of 100%. The average operation time was 50.75 ± 13.01 min. A total of 2 cases (10%) presented chest pain associated with intercostal artery ischemia that was relieved on the 3rd and 5th postoperative day, respectively. Postoperative mean follow-up was 16.15 ± 3.99 months. No paraplegia or other complications occurred. And stenting did not induce new tears. No migration, deformation, or fracture of the stents occurred. There was a significant difference in the remolding of the true lumen preoperatively and at 12 months postoperatively (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Talos stent has achieved satisfactory clinical treatment results in short term.

Occlusion facial expression recognition based on feature fusion residual attention network.

Recognizing occluded facial expressions in the wild poses a significant challenge. However, most previous approaches rely solely on either global or local feature-based methods, leading to the loss of relevant expression features. To address these issues, a feature fusion residual attention network (FFRA-Net) is proposed. FFRA-Net consists of a multi-scale module, a local attention module, and a feature fusion module. The multi-scale module divides the intermediate feature map into several sub-feature maps in an equal manner along the channel dimension. Then, a convolution operation is applied to each of these feature maps to obtain diverse global features. The local attention module divides the intermediate feature map into several sub-feature maps along the spatial dimension. Subsequently, a convolution operation is applied to each of these feature maps, resulting in the extraction of local key features through the attention mechanism. The feature fusion module plays a crucial role in integrating global and local expression features while also establishing residual links between inputs and outputs to compensate for the loss of fine-grained features. Last, two occlusion expression datasets (FM_RAF-DB and SG_RAF-DB) were constructed based on the RAF-DB dataset. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed FFRA-Net achieves excellent results on four datasets: FM_RAF-DB, SG_RAF-DB, RAF-DB, and FERPLUS, with accuracies of 77.87%, 79.50%, 88.66%, and 88.97%, respectively. Thus, the approach presented in this paper demonstrates strong applicability in the context of occluded facial expression recognition (FER).

Identification of two rare NPRL3 variants in two Chinese families with familial focal epilepsy with variable foci 3: NGS analysis with literature review.

Background: The GAP Activity Towards Rags 1 (GATOR1) complex, which includes DEPDC5, NPRL2, and NPRL3, plays a key role in epilepsy. It has been reported that focal epilepsy is associated with mutations in the NPRL3 gene in some cases. We report two rare mutations in the NPRL3 gene in two unrelated Chinese families with focal epilepsy in this study. Methods: The proband and her brother in family E1 first experienced seizures at 1.5 and 6 years of age, respectively. Despite resection of epileptogenic foci, she still suffered recurrent seizures. The first seizure of a 20-year-old male proband in family E2 occurred when he was 2 years old. To identify pathogenic variants in these families, whole-exome sequencing (WES) was performed on genomic DNA from peripheral blood. Results: In family E1, the trio-WES analysis of the proband and her brother without apparent structural brain abnormalities identified a heterozygous variant in the NPRL3 gene (c.954C>A, p.Y318*, NM_001077350.3). In family E2, the proband carried a heterozygous NPRL3 mutation (c.1545-1G>C, NM_001077350.3). Surprisingly, the mothers of the two probands each carried the variants, but neither had an attack. Bioinformatics analysis predicted that the mutation (c.954C>A) was in the highly conserved amino acid residues of NPRL3, which affected the α-helix of NPRL3 protein, leading to a truncated protein. The splice variant (c.1545-1G>C) resulted in the loss of the last exon of the NPRL3 gene. Conclusion: The results of this study provide a foundation for diagnosing NPRL3-related epilepsy by enriching their genotypes and phenotypes and help us identify the genetic etiologies of epilepsy in these two families.

Oxygen vacancies on Nb2O5 enhanced the performance of H2O2 electrosynthesis from O2 reduction.

A serial oxygen vacancy (OV) on Nb2O5 is synthesised by H2 calcination, and H-300 exhibited high selectivity and activity for H2O2 (93.4%, 562.5 mmol gcat-1). A volcano relationship is identified between the OV content and performance, which provides an attractive insight into designing electrocatalysts.

Genome-wide identification and characterization of cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase family genes in Medicago truncatula.

Cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenases (CKXs) play a key role in the irreversible degradation of phytohormone cytokinin that is necessary for various plant growth and development processes. However, thus far, detailed investigations of the CKX gene family in the model legume Medicago truncatula are limited. In this study, we identified 9 putative CKX homologues with conserved FAD- and cytokinin-binding domains in the M. truncatula genome. We analyzed their phylogenetic relationship, gene structure, conserved domain, expression pattern, protein subcellular locations and other properties. The tissue-specific expression profiles of the MtCKX genes are different among different members and these MtCKXs also displayed different patterns in response to synthetic cytokinin 6-benzylaminopurine (6-BA) and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), suggesting their diverse roles in M. truncatula development. To further understand the biological function of MtCKXs, we identified and characterized mutants of each MtCKX by taking advantage of the Tnt1 mutant population in M. truncatula. Results indicated that M. truncatula plants harboring Tnt1 insertions in each single MtCKX genes showed no morphological changes in aerial parts, suggesting functional redundancy of MtCKXs in M. truncatula shoot development. However, disruption of Medtr4g126160, which is predominantly expressed in roots, leads to an obvious reduced primary root length and increased lateral root number, indicating the specific roles of cytokinin in regulating root architecture. We systematically analyzed the MtCKX gene family at the genome-wide level and revealed their possible roles in M. truncatula shoot and root development, which shed lights on understanding the biological function of CKX family genes in related legume plants.