The complete chloroplast genome of Hemiboea pterocaulis (Gesneriaceae) exclusively distributed in Guilin, Guangxi, China.

Hemiboea pterocaulis is a unique species only found in Guilin, Guangxi, China. In this study, we sequenced and assembled the complete chloroplast genome of H. pterocaulis and revealed its phylogenetic relationship with other Hemiboea species. The chloroplast genome sequence of H. pterocaulis is 153,159 bp in length and comprises a large single-copy (LSC) region of 84,178 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 18,087 bp, and a pair of inverted repeat (IR) regions, each with a length of 25,447 bp. It has a total GC content of 37.6% and encodes 132 genes, including 87 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA genes. The phylogenetic relationships based on the complete chloroplast genome sequences of Hemiboea taxa indicate that H. pterocaulis is most closely related to H. suiyangensis, indicating that H. pterocaulis is an independent species and is separated from the H. subcapitata complex. These results provide valuable insights into the phylogeny, species divergence, and delimitation of the Hemiboea genus.

The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Zanthoxylum ailanthoides Sieb. et. Zucc (Rutaceae): an important medicinal plant.

Zanthoxylum ailanthoides is a deciduous tree, with important medicinal and economic values. The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Z. ailanthoides was assembled and the phylogenetic relationship to other species was inferred in this study. The chloroplast genome is 157,209 bp in length, including two inverted repeats of 26,408 bp, a large single-copy of 86,099 bp and a small single copy of 18,294 bp. Moreover, the chloroplast genome contains 129 genes, including 84 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, and 8 rRNA genes. The overall GC content of the chloroplast genome is 38.4%. The phylogenetic analysis indicated that Z. ailanthoides was grouped with a clade containing the species of Z. multijugum, Z. calcicola, Z. oxyphyllum, Z. stenophyllum, and the genus was closely related to Phellodendron. This study contributes to a better understanding of the phylogenetic relationships among Zanthoxylum species.

Synthesis of Crocin I and Crocin II by Multigene Stacking in Nicotiana benthamiana.

Crocins are a group of highly valuable water-soluble carotenoids that are reported to have many pharmacological activities, such as anticancer properties, and the potential for treating neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease. Crocins are mainly biosynthesized in the stigmas of food-medicine herbs Crocus sativus L. and Gardenia jasminoides fruits. The distribution is narrow in nature and deficient in resources, which are scarce and expensive. Recently, the synthesis of metabolites in the heterologous host has opened up the potential for large-scale and sustainable production of crocins, especially for the main active compounds crocin I and crocin II. In this study, GjCCD4a, GjALDH2C3, GjUGT74F8, and GjUGT94E13 from G. jasminoides fruits were expressed in Nicotiana benthamiana. The highest total content of crocins in T1 generation tobacco can reach 78,362 ng/g FW (fresh weight) and the dry weight is expected to reach 1,058,945 ng/g DW (dry weight). Surprisingly, the primary effective constituents crocin I and crocin II can account for 99% of the total crocins in transgenic plants. The strategy mentioned here provides an alternative platform for the scale-up production of crocin I and crocin II in tobacco.

The complete chloroplast genome and phylogenomic analysis of Camellia sinensis var. sinensis cultivar 'Liupao', a landrace from Guangxi, China.

Liupao tea is one of the well-known Chinese tea brands and a famous local specialty in Wuzhou, Guangxi, China. However, the genetic background and phylogenetic relationship of the native resource plants of Liupao tea need study, especially at the genomic level. In this study, we reported the complete chloroplast (cp) genome sequence of Camellia sinensis var. sinensis cultivar 'Liupao' (LP, Liupao tea population) and inferred its phylogenetic relationship to other tea plant variants or cultivars. The cp genome had a total length of 157,097 bp and the overall GC content was 37.3%. The cp genome contained one LSC region (86,641 bp) and one SSC region (18,276 bp), which were separated by two IR regions (26,090 bp, respectively). Moreover, the cp genomes were composed of 130 genes, including 86 protein-coding genes, 36 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA genes. The phylogenetic analysis showed that LP was closely related to C. sinensis var. pabilimba cv. 'Lingyunbaihao'. This study will provide useful information for further investigating the genetic background, evolution, and breeding of LP as well as other tea cultivars and varieties.

Heterologous mogrosides biosynthesis in cucumber and tomato by genetic manipulation.

Mogrosides are widely used as high-value natural zero-calorie sweeteners that exhibit an array of biological activities and allow for vegetable flavour breeding by modern molecular biotechnology. In this study, we developed an In-fusion based gene stacking strategy for transgene stacking and a multi-gene vector harbouring 6 mogrosides biosynthesis genes and transformed it into Cucumis sativus and Lycopersicon esculentum. Here we show that transgenic cucumber can produce mogroside V and siamenoside I at 587 ng/g FW and 113 ng/g FW, respectively, and cultivated transgenic tomato with mogroside III. This study provides a strategy for vegetable flavour improvement, paving the way for heterologous biosynthesis of mogrosides.

Effects of light intensity on the growth of Polygala fallax Hemsl. (Polygalaceae).

Polygala fallax Hemsl. (Polygalaceae), a traditional Chinese medicinal species, requires optimal growth conditions for artificial cultivation. Irradiance is one of the primary environmental factors that affects the growth and survival of P. fallax Hemsl. plants, which seemingly grow better under weak irradiance conditions. However, the optimum light intensity for growing P. fallax Hemsl. is not clear. To determine the optimum light intensity for cultivating this medicinal plant species, P. fallax Hemsl. plants from two different habitats were grown and exposed to three shade treatments (50% shade, 70% shade and 90% shade, which resulted in photosynthetically active radiation amounts equal to 662 µmol m-2 s-1, 401 µmol m-2 s-1, and 131 µmol m-2 s-1, respectively) to evaluate survival, growth, leaf photosynthesis, and the main pharmacological active ingredients (saponins) in response to shade. Our results revealed that the P. fallax Hemsl. plants in the different habitats consistently exhibited relatively high photosynthesis rates, biomass, survival rates and saponins under 662 µmol m-2 s-1 created by the 50% shade treatment. We concluded that photosynthetically active radiation of approximately 662 µmol m-2 s-1 is suitable for the cultivation of P. fallax Hemsl. plants.

Plant Metabolic Engineering by Multigene Stacking: Synthesis of Diverse Mogrosides.

Mogrosides are a group of health-promoting natural products that extracted from Siraitia grosvenorii fruit (Luo-han-guo or monk fruit), which exhibited a promising practical application in natural sweeteners and pharmaceutical development. However, the production of mogrosides is inadequate to meet the need worldwide, and uneconomical synthetic chemistry methods are not generally recommended for structural complexity. To address this issue, an in-fusion based gene stacking strategy (IGS) for multigene stacking has been developed to assemble 6 mogrosides synthase genes in pCAMBIA1300. Metabolic engineering of Nicotiana benthamiana and Arabidopsis thaliana to produce mogrosides from 2,3-oxidosqualene was carried out. Moreover, a validated HPLC-MS/MS method was used for the quantitative analysis of mogrosides in transgenic plants. Herein, engineered Arabidopsis thaliana produced siamenoside I ranging from 29.65 to 1036.96 ng/g FW, and the content of mogroside III at 202.75 ng/g FW, respectively. The production of mogroside III was from 148.30 to 252.73 ng/g FW, and mogroside II-E with concentration between 339.27 and 5663.55 ng/g FW in the engineered tobacco, respectively. This study provides information potentially applicable to develop a powerful and green toolkit for the production of mogrosides.

Graph-based structural knowledge-aware network for diagnosis assistant.

Diagnosis assistant is an effective way to reduce the workloads of professional doctors. The rich professional knowledge plays a crucial role in diagnosis. Therefore, it is important to introduce the relevant medical knowledge into diagnosis assistant. In this paper, diagnosis assistant is treated as a classification task, and a Graph-based Structural Knowledge-aware Network (GSKN) model is proposed to fuse Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and medical knowledge graph. Considering that different information in EMRs affects the diagnosis results differently, the information in EMRs is categorized into general information, key information and numerical information, and is introduced to GSKN by adding an enhancement layer to the Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers (BERT) model. The entities in EMRs are recognized, and Graph Convolutional Neural Networks (GCN) is employed to learn deep-level graph structure information and dynamic representation of these entities in the subgraphs. An interactive attention mechanism is utilized to fuse the enhanced textual representation and the deep representation of these subgraphs. Experimental results on Chinese Obstetric Electronic Medical Records (COEMRs) and open dataset C-EMRs demonstrate the effectiveness of our model.

Heterologous Biosynthesis of Health-Promoting Baicalein in Lycopersicon esculentum.

Baicalein is a valuable flavonoid isolated from the medicinal plant Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, which exhibits intensive biological activities, such as anticancer and antiviral activities. However, its production is limited in the root with low yield. In this study, In-Fusion and 2A peptide linker were developed to assemble SbCLL-7, SbCHI, SbCHS-2, SbFNSII-2 and SbCYP82D1.1 genes driven by the AtPD7, CaMV 35S and AtUBQ10 promoters with HSP, E9 and NOS terminators, and were used to engineer baicalein biosynthesis in transgenic tomato plants. The genetically modified tomato plants with this construct synthesized baicalein, ranging from 150 ng/g to 558 ng/g FW (fresh weight). Baicalein-fortified tomatoes have the potential to be health-promoting fresh vegetables and provide an alternative source of baicalein production, with great prospects for market application.

Genome-scale transcriptomic insights into the gene co-expression network of seed abortion in triploid Siraitia grosvenorii.

BACKGROUND: Siraitia grosvenorii (Swingle) C. Jeffrey, also known as Luohanguo or monk fruit, is a famous traditional Chinese medicine ingredient with important medicinal value and broad development prospects. Diploid S. grosvenorii has too many seeds, which will increase the utilization cost of active ingredients. Thus, studying the molecular mechanism of seed abortion in triploid S. grosvenorii, identifying the abortion-related genes, and regulating their expression will be a new direction to obtain seedless S. grosvenorii. Herein, we examined the submicroscopic structure of triploid S. grosvenorii seeds during abortion. RESULTS: Upon measuring the endogenous hormone content, we found that abscisic acid (ABA) and trans-zeatin (ZR) levels were significantly downregulated after days 15 and 20 of flowering. RNA sequencing of triploid seeds at different developmental stages was performed to identify key genes regulating abortion in triploid S. grosvenorii seeds. Multiple genes with differential expression between adjacent stages were identified; seven genes were differentially expressed across all stages. Weight gene co-expression network analysis revealed that the enhancement of monoterpene and terpene metabolic processes might lead to seed abortion by reducing the substrate flow to ABA and ZR. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide insights into the gene-regulatory network of seed abortion in triploid S. grosvenorii from different perspectives, thereby facilitating the innovation of the breeding technology of S. grosvenorii.

The complete chloroplast genome of Flemingia macrophylla (Willd.) Prain (Fabaceae) from Guangxi, China.

Flemingia macrophylla (Willd.) Prain is an ethnomedicinal plant with high nutritional and medicinal values. In this study, we report the complete chloroplast genome of F. macrophylla. The chloroplast genome has a typical quadripartite structure with a genome size of 152,988 bp, including a large single-copy (LSC) of 83,634 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) of 17,774 bp and two inverted repeats (IRs) of 25,790 bp. The genome contains 129 genes, including 84 protein-coding, 37 tRNA and 8 rRNA genes. The overall GC content is 35.1%. Phylogenetic analysis showed that F. macrophylla grouped with a clade containing the genera of Fagelia, Dolichos, Eriosema, Dunbaria and Cajanus in Fabaceae. This study provides essential data and insight for understanding the phylogenetic placement of Flemingia.

The complete chloroplast genome of Damnacanthus indicus C.F.Gaertn. (Rubiaceae).

Damnacanthus indicus C.F.Gaertn. is an understorey shrub widely distributed in East Asia. In this study, the complete chloroplast genome of D. indicus was assembled and annotated. The chloroplast genome is 153,997 bp in total length, consisting of a large single-copy region (LSC 85,159 bp), a small single-copy region (SSC 17,584 bp) and two inverted repeat regions (25,627 bp for IRA and IRB,respectively). It contains 134 genes, including 89 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, and 8 rRNA genes. The phylogenetic analysis indicated that D. indicus is sister to Mitchella repens, suggesting a close relationship of the two genera.

[Study on different ploidy Siraitia grosvenorii and their genetic relationship by FTIR].

Siraitia grosvenorii was an important Chinese traditional medicine. The spectra of leaf of diploid, triploid and tetraploid Siraitia grosvenorii were determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) with OMNI sampler directly, fast and accurately. And based on the indices of wave number-absorbance from different bands and through comparison of differences of these infrared spectra the ploidy difference and genetic relationship of Siraitia grosvenorii were studied by the methods of principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis. The results showed that for the ploidy, the position relationship of PCA three-dimensional-plot and the distance coefficient of clustering analysis plot between diploid and tetraploid were most remarkbly different, and the triploid was basically between diploid and tetraploid, so the ploidy was more different, the position relationship of PCA and the distance coefficient of clustering analysis were further, and the law was: 2 X < 3 X < 4 X. At the same time, the genetic relationship was further with each other while the position relationship of PCA and distance coefficient of clustering analysis was further too. And the genetic relationship of triploid was affected by the different male parent while their female parent was the same one. Therefore, using FTIR based on PCA and cluster analysis we could reveal the difference of ploidy and the genetic relationship between Siraitia grosvenorii to a certain extent. FTIR could be used for excellently polyploidy species breeding of Siraitia grosvenorii.

[Analysis and evaluation of taxol contents in different parts between Taxus media and Taxus mairei based on Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy].

In the present study, combined with external standard method, second derivative as well as curve-fitting equation, the infrared spectroscopy techniques were applied to research the discrepancy of paclitaxel content among different parts of them repectively as well as the differences of infrared spectral character between Taxus Media (T. Media) and Taxus Mairei (T. Mairei). The results showed: (1) The band around 1516, 1371, 1 244, 1109 and 773 cm(-1) was markedly enhanced when paclitaxel standard sample was added by more than 0. 004 5 mg to original traditional Chinese materials, in addition, in infrared fingerprint area, the second derivative spectra show that there was good corresponding peak between traditional Chinese materials and standard paclitaxel sample around 1371, 1315, 1244, 1143, 1106, 1070, 1022 and 773 cm(-1), furthermore, the intensity of above character band would increase accompanying with increased standard paclitaxel sample. So, the band character around 1371, 1315, 1244, 1143, 1106, 1070, 1022 and 773 cm(-1) could be used to evaluate paclitaxel content of T. media and T. mairei; (2) Around 1800-700 cm(-1), IR spectral features suggest that two kinds of Chinese yew had quite similar infrared vibration character, but when Gaussian function was applied to decompose the band around 1058 cm(-1), the result demonstrated that the T. media were decomposed with 8 while T. mairei were only decomposed with 7 component bands. (3) Second-derivative and curve-fitting equation analysis demonstrated that there were certain differences of paclitaxel content between T. media and T. mairei as well as different parts of them. Specifically, the paclitaxel content of T. media was higher than T. mairei, while the paclitaxel content in leaf of T. media was highest, on the contrary, the paclitaxel content in root of T. mairei was highest when comparing the content among the different parts of T. media and T. mairei respectively. Therefore, above methods could be quickly analyze and evaluate the differences of paclitaxel content between T. media and T. mairei as well as the different parts of them.