Neddylation inhibition affects early embryonic development by disrupting maternal-to-zygotic transition and mitochondrial function in mice.

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) are critical for early development in mice because early cleavage-stage embryos are characterized by transcriptional inactivity. Neddylation is an important ubiquitin-like PTM that regulates multiple biophysical processes. However, the exact roles of neddylation in regulating early embryonic development remain largely unknown. In the present study, we found that inhibition of neddylation by specific inhibitor MLN4924 led to severe arrest of early embryonic development. Transcriptomic analysis showed that neddylation inhibition changed the expression of 3959 genes at the 2-cell stage. Importantly, neddylation inhibition blocked zygotic genome activation and maternal mRNA degradation, thus disrupting the maternal-to-zygotic transition. Moreover, inhibition of neddylation induced mitochondrial dysfunction including aberrant mitochondrial distribution, decreased mitochondrial membrane potential, and reduced ATP content. Further analysis showed that inhibition of neddylation resulted in the accumulation of reactive oxygen species and superoxide anion, thereby resulting in oxidative stress and severe DNA damage at the 2-cell stage. Overall, this study demonstrates that neddylation is vital for early embryonic development in mice. Our findings suggest that proper neddylation regulation is essential for the timely inter-stage transition during early embryonic development.

Lactational exposure to Deoxynivalenol causes mammary gland injury via inducing inflammatory response and impairing blood-milk barrier integrity in mice.

Lactation is a unique physiological process to produce and secrete milk. Deoxynivalenol (DON) exposure during lactation has been demonstrated to affect adversely the growth development of offspring. However, the effects and potential mechanism of DON on maternal mammary glands remain largely unknown. In this study, we found the length and area of mammary glands were significantly reduced after DON exposure on lactation day (LD) 7 and LD 21. RNA-seq analysis results showed that the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were significantly enriched in acute inflammatory response and HIF-1 signaling pathway, which led to an increase of myeloperoxidase activity and inflammatory cytokines. Furthermore, lactational DON exposure increased blood-milk barrier permeability by reducing the expression of ZO-1 and Occludin, promoted cell apoptosis by upregulating the expression of Bax and cleaved Caspase-3 and downregulating the expression of Bcl-2 and PCNA. Additionally, lactational DON exposure significantly decreased serum concentration of prolactin, estrogen, and progesterone. All these alterations eventually resulted in a decrease of ß-casein expression on LD 7 and LD 21. In summary, our findings indicated that lactational exposure to DON caused lactation-related hormone disorder and mammary gland injury induced by inflammatory response and blood-milk barrier integrity impairment, ultimately resulting in lower production of ß-casein.

Margin-Based Modal Adaptive Learning for Visible-Infrared Person Re-Identification.

Visible-infrared person re-identification (VIPR) has great potential for intelligent transportation systems for constructing smart cities, but it is challenging to utilize due to the huge modal discrepancy between visible and infrared images. Although visible and infrared data can appear to be two domains, VIPR is not identical to domain adaptation as it can massively eliminate modal discrepancies. Because VIPR has complete identity information on both visible and infrared modalities, once the domain adaption is overemphasized, the discriminative appearance information on the visible and infrared domains would drain. For that, we propose a novel margin-based modal adaptive learning (MMAL) method for VIPR in this paper. On each domain, we apply triplet and label smoothing cross-entropy functions to learn appearance-discriminative features. Between the two domains, we design a simple yet effective marginal maximum mean discrepancy (M3D) loss function to avoid an excessive suppression of modal discrepancies to protect the features' discriminative ability on each domain. As a result, our MMAL method could learn modal-invariant yet appearance-discriminative features for improving VIPR. The experimental results show that our MMAL method acquires state-of-the-art VIPR performance, e.g., on the RegDB dataset in the visible-to-infrared retrieval mode, the rank-1 accuracy is 93.24% and the mean average precision is 83.77%.

Effects of IL-11/IL-11 Receptor Alpha on Proliferation and Steroidogenesis in Ovarian Granulosa Cells of Dairy Cows.

Granulosa cells (GCs) are essential for follicular growth, oocyte maturation, and steroidogenesis in the ovaries. Interleukin (IL)-11 is known to play a crucial role in the decidualization of the uterus, however, the expression of the IL-11 system (IL-11, IL-11Rα, and gp130) in the bovine ovary and its exact role in GCs have not been extensively studied. In this study, we identified the IL-11 signaling receptor complex in the bovine ovary and investigated the regulatory effects and underlying mechanism of IL-11Rα on the proliferation and steroidogenesis of GCs. We observed that the IL-11 complex was highly expressed in the GCs of large follicles. IL-11Rα knockdown significantly inhibited GC proliferation by inducing cell cycle arrest at the G1 phase, along with a significant downregulation of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and Cyclin D1 (CCND1) protein, and induced GC apoptosis by significantly upregulating the ratio of BCL-2-associated X protein (BAX) and B-cell lymphoma-2 (BCL-2). In addition, IL-11Rα knockdown attenuated the Janus kinase (JAK) 1-signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling, which is related to cell proliferation and apoptosis. Furthermore, the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) indicated that IL-11Rα silencing decreased the basal and forskolin (FSK)-stimulated secretions of estradiol and progesterone in GC culture medium concomitantly with a remarkable decrease in cytochrome P450 family 19 subfamily A member 1 (CYP19A1) and steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR). We subsequently determined that this reduction in steroidogenesis was in parallel with the decrease in phosphorylations of protein kinase A (PKA) substrates, cAMP-response element binding protein (CREB), extracellular regulated protein kinase (ERK) 1/2, and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). Taken together, these data indicate that the effects of IL-11/IL-11Rα on the proliferation and steroidogenesis in bovine GCs is mediated by the JAK1-STAT3, PKA-CREB, p38MAPK, and ERK1/2 signaling pathways. Our findings provide important insights into the local action of the IL-11 system in regulating ovarian function.

Dietary naringin supplementation on laying performance and antioxidant capacity of Three-Yellow breeder hens during the late laying period.

In this study, the effects of 3 graded dietary levels (0.1%, 0.2%, and 0.4%) of naringin were studied in Three-Yellow breeder hens during the late laying period (55-62 wk). A total of 480 Three-Yellow breeder hens (54-wk-old) were randomly divided into 4 groups (6 replicates of 20 hens): basal diet group (C), and basal diets supplemented with 0.1%, 0.2%, and 0.4% of naringin (N1, N2, and N3), respectively. Results showed that dietary supplementation with 0.1%, 0.2%, and 0.4% of naringin for 8 wk increased the laying rate and egg mass, enhanced egg yolk color, and decreased the feed egg ratio (P < 0.05). Meanwhile, compared with hens in C group, there were more preovulatory follicles and higher ovarian index as well as an enhanced ovarian somatic cell proliferation in hens of N2 and N3 groups (P < 0.05). With 0.2% and 0.4% naringin, glutathione concentration, the activity of catalase and total superoxide dismutase, and the total antioxidant capacity of ovarian tissues and serum increased (P < 0.05), while the contents of malondialdehyde and hydrogen peroxide decreased (P < 0.05). Moreover, compared to C group, the transcription levels of antioxidant genes in ovarian tissues increased in hens from N2 and N3 groups (P < 0.05). In conclusion, supplementation with 0.2% and 0.4% naringin both could improve the laying rate, ovarian and serum antioxidant capacity of Three-Yellow breeder hens during the late laying period.

Deoxynivalenol exposure inhibits biosynthesis of milk fat and protein by impairing tight junction in bovine mammary epithelial cells.

Deoxynivalenol (DON) is one of the most common feed contaminants, and it poses a serious threat to the health of dairy cows. The existing studies of biological toxicity of DON mainly focus on the proliferation, oxidative stress, and inflammation in bovine mammary epithelial cells, while its toxicity on the biosynthesis of milk components has not been well documented. Hence, we investigated the toxic effects and the underlying mechanism of DON on the bovine mammary alveolar cells (MAC-T). Our results showed that exposure to various concentrations of DON significantly inhibited cell proliferation, induced apoptosis, and altered the cell morphology which was manifested by cell distortion and shrinkage. Moreover, the transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) values of MAC-T cells exposed to DON were gradually decreased in a time- and concentration- dependent manner, but lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) leakage was significantly increased with the maximum increase of 2.4-fold, indicating the cell membrane and tight junctions were damaged by DON. Importantly, DON significantly reduced the synthesis of ß-casein and lipid droplets, along with the significantly decreases of phospho-mTOR, phospho-4EBP1, phospho-JAK2, and phospho-STAT5. Gene expression profiles showed that the expressions of several genes related to lipid synthesis and metabolism were changed, including acyl-CoA synthetase short-chain family member 2 (ACSS2), fatty acid binding protein 3 (FABP3), 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA synthase 1 (HMGCS1), and insulin-induced gene 1 (INSIG1). GO and KEGG enrichment analyses revealed that the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were significantly enriched in ribosome, glutathione metabolism, and lipid biosynthetic process, which play important roles in the toxicological process induced by DON. Taken together, DON affects the proliferation and functional differentiation of MAC-T cells, which might be related to the cell junction disruption and morphological alteration. Our data provide new insights into functional differentiation and transcriptomic alterations of MAC-T cells after DON exposure, which contributes to a comprehensive understanding of DON-induced toxicity mechanism.

Novel functional mutation of the PDIA3 gene affects milk composition traits in Chinese Holstein cattle.

Protein disulfide isomerase family A member 3 (PDIA3) is a multifunctional protein, and it plays a vital role in modulating various cell biological functions under physiological and pathological conditions. Our previous study on Mediterranean buffalo demonstrated that PDIA3 is a potential candidate gene associated with milk yield based on genome-wide association study analysis. However, the genetic effects of the PDIA3 gene on milk performance in dairy cattle and the corresponding mechanism have not been documented. This study aims to explore the genetic effects of PDIA3 polymorphisms on milk production traits in 362 Chinese Holstein cattle. The results showed that 4 SNPs were identified from the 5' untranslated region of the PDIA3 gene in the studied population, of which 2 SNPs (g.-1713 C>T and g.-934 G>A) were confirmed to be significantly associated with milk protein percentage, whereas g.-434 C>T was significantly associated with milk fat percentage. Notably, linkage disequilibrium analysis indicated that 3 SNPs (g.-1713 C>T, g.-934 G>A, and g.-695 A>C) formed one haplotype block, which was found to be significantly associated with milk protein percentage. The luciferase assay demonstrated that allele C of g.-434 C>T exhibited a higher promotor activity compared with allele T, suggesting that g.-434 C>T might be a potential functional mutation affecting PDIA3 expression. Furthermore, overexpression of the PDIA3 gene was found to induce higher levels of triglyceride and BODIPY fluorescence intensity. In addition, PDIA3 overexpression was also found to positively regulate the synthesis and secretion of α-casein, ß-casein, and κ-casein, whereas knockdown of this gene showed the opposite effects. In summary, our findings revealed significant genetic effects of PDIA3 on milk composition traits, and the identified SNP and the haplotype block might be used as genetic markers for dairy cow selected breeding.

Hepatic glycerolipid metabolism is critical to the egg laying rate of Guangxi Ma chickens.

Yolk formation in liver is an important process for egg production in hens. The correlations between egg laying rate decline and liver function changes in Guangxi Ma chickens remain unclear. In this study, a total of 21,750 genes and 76,288 transcripts were identified in the RNA expression profiles isolated from liver tissues of 5 groups of Guangxi Ma chickens divided according to the age and egg laying rate. Numerous differential genes (DEGs) were identified after pairwise comparison among samples, and time series analysis categorization (age-related factors) revealed that down-regulated DEGs with aging were predominantly involved in lipid transportation and metabolic processes in the low egg laying rate groups. Notably, functional enrichment analysis confirmed that DGAT2, LIPG, PNPLA2, LPL, CEL, LIPC, DGKD, AGPAT2, AGPAT1 and AGPAT3 were highlighted as hub genes in glycerolipid metabolism pathway, which may be an essential non-age related factors of egg laying rate by regulating the synthesis of triacylglycerol (TAG) in liver. Finally, we categorized DEGs in Guangxi Ma chickens with different egg laying rate caused by age-related factors and found that DEGs with different expression patterns performing different biological functions. The analysis of DEGs with lower egg laying rate caused by non-age related factors and showed that the transportation of TAG was suppressed. Furthermore, critical genes and pathways involved in the synthesis of TAG in livers were identified, which dynamically regulated the formation of yolk precursors. Our results expanded the knowledge of the molecular mechanisms of the yolk precursor synthesis in chicken livers. The results will be helpful to explore the factors that affect egg laying rate from the perspective of yolk synthesis and provide a theoretical basis for improving the egg production of Guangxi Ma chickens.

Differences in egg yolk precursor formation of Guangxi Ma chickens with dissimilar laying rate at the same or various ages.

Egg yolk formation and deposition are quite vital for oocyte maturation and egg production in hens. There are great differences in egg production and number of preovulatory follicles among individuals in Guangxi Ma chickens at the same or various ages, however, the causes of this phenomenon remain unclear. This study aimed to elucidate the differences in yolk precursors formation among Guangxi Ma hens at the same or various ages with dissimilar egg laying rate via comparing the synthesis and transportation of yolk precursors, serum estradiol (E2) levels, as well as the antioxidant capacity of the liver and serum from hens of 32-week-old (32W), 50-week-old with higher laying rate (50WH), 50-week-old with lower laying rate (50WL), 72-week-old with higher laying rate (72WH), and 72-week-old with lower laying rate (72WL). The results showed that the contents of triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (T-CHO), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and very low density lipoprotein cholesterol (VLDL-C) in the liver, serum and ovarian stroma, serum E2 levels, expression levels of proteins and genes related to yolk precursors formation, and the antioxidant capacity of liver and serum decreased significantly during aging process. TG, HDL-C and VLDL-C contents in serum and ovarian stroma, as well as HDL-C and VLDL-C levels in liver tissues of hens in 50WL and 72WL were significantly lower compared to hens in 50WH and 72WH, respectively. Meanwhile, expression levels of estrogen receptor ɑ and transcription levels of genes related to lipid transportation in liver tissues, and the antioxidant capacity of livers were remarkably lower in hens in 50WL and 72WL than those in 50WH and 72WH, respectively. However, no significant difference was detected in liver TG levels, serum E2 levels, genes related to fatty acids synthesis and serum antioxidant capacity between hens in 50WL and 50WH. In conclusion, the age-related decline of egg production in Guangxi Ma chicken maybe related to the age-related decreases in the synthesis and transportation of liver yolk precursor as well as the antioxidant capacity of liver and hens. And the non-age related decline of egg production may mainly attribute to the decreases in yolk precursors transportation ability and hepatic antioxidant capacity.

Endoplasmic reticulum stress is involved in small white follicular atresia in chicken ovaries.

During the hierarchical development of follicles in laying hens, a large number of small white follicles (SWFs) undergo atresia caused by apoptosis rather than growing into large white follicles (LWFs), which reduces the number of follicles developing into hierarchical preovulatory follicles and results in declines in egg production. Therefore, figuring out factors responsible for SWFs atresia is necessary to improve egg production of laying hens. Endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) is one of the possible causes of cell apoptosis. However, the association between SWFs atresia and ERS in hens is yet to be answered. In this study, cell proliferation and apoptosis, expression levels of proteins and genes related to ERS, and cell ultrastructure were compared to elucidate whether ERS occurred in atretic small white follicles (ASWFs). Subsequently, a tunicamycin-induced ERS model and a serum withdrawal-induced atresia model of SWFs in vitro were established to investigate whether ERS could lead to follicular atresia. The results showed that the cell apoptosis increased significantly while the cell proliferation decreased evidently in ASWFs compared with SWFs. Meanwhile, swollen and vacuolization deformation of ERs was observed in the GCs but not TCs of ASWFs. Results of experiments in vitro demonstrated that treatment with serum withdrawal or tunicamycin inhibited cell proliferation and promoted cell apoptosis in SWFs, and the adverse effects of tunicamycin on SWFs manifested a dose-dependent increase. In comparison with the controls, treatment with serum withdrawal or tunicamycin upregulated expression levels of proteins and genes in ERS pathway. Moreover, the dose of 5 µg/mL tunicamycin seemed to be the optimal concentration for establishing the tunicamycin-induced ERS model. Meanwhile, the results of cell ultrastructure observation showed that ERs in GCs of SWFs of serum withdrawal group and treatment with 5 µg/mL tunicamycin group became swollen, dilatation and vacuolization. In conclusion, the data of this study indicated that ERS is involved in SWF atresia in laying hens, and ERS in GCs might be more severe than that in TCs.

PSA density in the diagnosis of prostate cancer in the Chinese population: results from the Chinese Prostate Cancer Consortium.

We performed this study to investigate the diagnostic performance of prostate-specific antigen density (PSAD) in a multicenter cohort of the Chinese Prostate Cancer Consortium. Outpatients with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels ≥4.0 ng ml-1 regardless of digital rectal examination (DRE) results or PSA levels <4.0 ng ml-1 and abnormal DRE results were included from 18 large referral hospitals in China. The diagnostic performance of PSAD and the sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of prostate cancer (PCa) and high-grade prostate cancer (HGPCa) at different cutoff values were evaluated. A total of 5220 patients were included in the study, and 2014 (38.6%) of them were diagnosed with PCa. In patients with PSA levels ranging from 4.0 to 10.0 ng ml-1, PSAD was associated with PCa and HGPCa in both univariate (odds ratio [OR] = 45.15, P < 0.0001 and OR = 25.38, P < 0.0001, respectively) and multivariate analyses (OR = 52.55, P < 0.0001 and OR = 26.05, P < 0.0001, respectively). The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) of PSAD in predicting PCa and HGPCa were 0.627 and 0.630, respectively. With the PSAD cutoff of 0.10 ng ml-2, we obtained a sensitivity of 88.7% for PCa, and nearly all (89.9%) HGPCa cases could be detected and biopsies could be avoided in 20.2% of the patients (359/1776 cases). Among these patients who avoided biopsies, only 30 cases had HGPCa. We recommend 0.10 ng ml-2 as the proper cutoff value of PSAD, which will obtain a sensitivity of nearly 90% for both PCa and HGPCa. The results of this study should be validated in prospective, population-based multicenter studies.

A novel miRNA inhibits metastasis of prostate cancer via decreasing CREBBP-mediated histone acetylation.

BACKGROUND: To identify novel miRNAs implicated in prostate cancer metastasis. METHODS: Sixty-five prostate cancer tissues and paired pan-cancer tissues were sequenced. Novel miRNAs were re-analyzed by MIREAP program. Biological functions of miR-N5 were transwell experiment and colony formation. Target genes of miR-N5 were analyzed by bioinformatic analysis. Downstream of target gene was analyzed by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) databases and confirmed by CHIP experiment. RESULTS: We identified a novel miRNA-miR-N5, which was downregulated in PCa cells, PCa tissue, and in the serum of patients with PCa. Knockout of miR-N5 enhanced migration and invasiveness in vitro. miR-N5 specified targeted CREBBP 3'-UTR and inhibited CREBBP expression, which mediated H3K56 acetylation at the promoter of EGFR, ß-catenin and CDH1. CONCLUSION: This study may shed the light on miR-N5 which influences metastasis via histone acetylation.

Faster R-CNN with improved anchor box for cell recognition.

As the basic units of the human body structure and function, cells have a considerable influence on maintaining the normal work of the human body. In medical diagnosis, cell examination is an important part of understanding the human function. Incorporating cell examination into medical diagnosis would greatly improve the efficiency of pathological research and patient treatment. In addition, cell segmentation and identification technology can be used to quantitatively analyze and study cellular components at the molecular level. It is conducive to the study of the pathogenesis of diseases and to the formulation of highly effective disease treatment programs. However, because cells are of diverse types, their numbers are huge, and they exist in the order of micrometers, detecting and identifying cells without using a deep learning-based computer program are extremely difficult. Therefore, the use of computers to study and analyze cells has a certain practical value. In this work, target detection theory using deep learning is applied to cell detection. A target recognition network model is built based on the faster region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) algorithm, and the anchor box is designed in accordance with the characteristics of the data set. Different design methods influence cell detection results. Using the object detection method based on our novel faster R-CNN framework to detect the cell image can help improve the speed and accuracy of cell detection. The method has considerable advantages in dealing with the identification of flowing cells.

Broadband Lumped-Element Parameter Extraction Method of Two-Port 3D MEMS In-Chip Solenoid Inductors Based on a Physics-Based Equivalent Circuit Model.

Integrated 2D spiral inductors possess low inductance per unit area, which limits their application range. However, the state of investigation into the lumped-element parameter extraction method for integrated 3D in-chip multi-turn solenoid inductors, which possess higher inductance per unit area, is inadequate. This type of inductor can thus not be incorporated into fast computer-aided design (CAD)-assisted circuit design. In this study, we propose a broadband two-port physics-based equivalent circuit model for 3D microelectromechanical system (MEMS) in-chip solenoid inductors that are embedded in silicon substrates. The circuit model was composed of lumped elements with specific physical meanings and incorporated complicated parasitics resulting from eddy currents, skin effects, and proximity effects. Based on this model, we presented a lumped-element parameter extraction method using the electronic design automation software package, Agilent Advanced Design System (ADS). This method proved to be consistent with the results of two-port testing at low to self-resonant frequencies and could thus be used in CAD-assisted circuit design. The lumped element value variations were analyzed based on the physical meaning of the elements with respect to variations in structures and the substrate resistivity of inductors. This provided a novel perspective in terms of the design of integrated in-chip solenoid inductors.

Polyphenol oxidase plays a critical role in melanin formation in the fruit skin of persimmon (Diospyros kaki cv. 'Heishi').

In this study, the melanin in persimmon and its formation were investigated. Melanin was found to be deposited on the cell walls of the upper epidermis and subepidermal cells in persimmon skin and the isolated pigment appears to have lamellar structures. Diagnostic analysis of the isolated pigment showed results that were similar to those of melanin from other sources. Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy revealed that the extracted skin pigment displayed a broadband, structureless absorption profile that increased progressively towards shorter wavelengths. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy assay revealed that melanin in persimmon skin exhibits many characteristic absorption peaks. The phenolic profile analysis suggested that the precursors of this pigment may include gallic acid, procyanidin B1, procyanidin B2, ferulic acid and epigallocatechin gallate. The PPO activity and DkPPO expression significantly increased during melanin formation, and transient overexpression of DkPPO promoted melanin synthesis. These results indicate that the isolated pigment was a type of melanin and that PPO plays a critical role in its formation.

Molecular cloning and functional characterization of AcGST1, an anthocyanin-related glutathione S-transferase gene in kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis).

KEY MESSAGE: AcGST1, an anthocyanin-related GST, may functions as a carrier to transport anthocyanins from ER to tonoplast in kiwifruit. It was positively regulated by AcMYBF110 through directly binding to its promoter. Anthocyanins are synthesized in the cytoplasmic surface of the endoplasmic reticulum but accumulate predominantly in the vacuole. Previous studies in model and ornamental plants have suggested that a member of the glutathione S-transferase (GST) gene family is involved in sequestration of anthocyanins into the vacuole. However, little is known about anthocyanin-related GST protein in kiwifruit. Here, four putative AcGSTs were identified from the genome of the red-fleshed Actinidia chinensis cv 'Hongyang'. Expression analyses reveal only the expression of AcGST1 was highly consistent with anthocyanin accumulation. Molecular complementation of Arabidopsis tt19 demonstrates AcGST1 can complement the anthocyanin-less phenotype of tt19. Transient expression in Actinidia arguta fruits further confirms that AcGST1 is functional in anthocyanin accumulation in kiwifruit. In vitro assays show the recombinant AcGST1 increases the water solubility of cyanidin-3-O-galactoside (C3Gal) and cyanidin-3-O-xylo-galactoside (C3XG). We further show that AcGST1 protein is localized not only in the ER but also on the tonoplast, indicating AcGST1 (like AtTT19) may functions as a carrier protein to transport anthocyanins to the tonoplast in kiwifruit. Moreover, the promoter of AcGST1 can be activated by AcMYBF110, based on results from transient dual-luciferase assays and yeast one-hybrid assays. EMSAs show that AcMYBF110 binds directly to CAGTTG and CCGTTG motifs in the AcGST1 promoter. These results indicate that AcMYBF110 plays an important role in transcriptional regulation of AcGST1 and, therefore, in controlling accumulation of anthocyanins in kiwifruit.

Anti-Reflectance Optimization of Secondary Nanostructured Black Silicon Grown on Micro-Structured Arrays.

Owing to its extremely low light absorption, black silicon has been widely investigated and reported in recent years, and simultaneously applied to various disciplines. Black silicon is, in general, fabricated on flat surfaces based on the silicon substrate. However, with three normal fabrication methods-plasma dry etching, metal-assisted wet etching, and femtosecond laser pulse etching-black silicon cannot perform easily due to its lowest absorption and thus some studies remained in the laboratory stage. This paper puts forward a novel secondary nanostructured black silicon, which uses the dry-wet hybrid fabrication method to achieve secondary nanostructures. In consideration of the influence of the structure's size, this paper fabricated different sizes of secondary nanostructured black silicon and compared their absorptions with each other. A total of 0.5% reflectance and 98% absorption efficiency of the pit sample were achieved with a diameter of 117.1 µm and a depth of 72.6 µm. In addition, the variation tendency of the absorption efficiency is not solely monotone increasing or monotone decreasing, but firstly increasing and then decreasing. By using a statistical image processing method, nanostructures with diameters between 20 and 30 nm are the majority and nanostructures with a diameter between 10 and 40 nm account for 81% of the diameters.

Anti-reflectance investigation of a micro-nano hybrid structure fabricated by dry/wet etching methods.

Black silicon fabrication and manipulation have been well reported by institutes around the world and are quite useful for solar absorption and photovoltaic conversion. In this study, silicon micro-nano hybrid structures were fabricated, and the morphologies of the hybrid structures were analyzed. This paper studied nanostructures formed on tips, pits and a flat surface using a dry etching method and a wet etching method. In terms of nanostructure morphology, nanostructures etched by the wet etching method (13 µm) were taller than those etched by the dry etching method (1 µm), but the wet etched morphology was less organized. After the nanostructures were grown, six samples with nano sturctures and three samples with micro sturctures were measured by a photometer for reflectivity testing. The nine samples were compared and analyzed using the integral of reflectivity and solar emissivity at the earth's surface. The results show that the nanostructures grown on a tip surface using the wet etching method had the minimum reflectivity in the wavelength range of 300 nm-1100 nm, in consideration of the forbidden energy gap of silicon.

A coded aperture compressive imaging array and its visual detection and tracking algorithms for surveillance systems.

In this paper, we propose an application of a compressive imaging system to the problem of wide-area video surveillance systems. A parallel coded aperture compressive imaging system is proposed to reduce the needed high resolution coded mask requirements and facilitate the storage of the projection matrix. Random Gaussian, Toeplitz and binary phase coded masks are utilized to obtain the compressive sensing images. The corresponding motion targets detection and tracking algorithms directly using the compressive sampling images are developed. A mixture of Gaussian distribution is applied in the compressive image space to model the background image and for foreground detection. For each motion target in the compressive sampling domain, a compressive feature dictionary spanned by target templates and noises templates is sparsely represented. An l(1) optimization algorithm is used to solve the sparse coefficient of templates. Experimental results demonstrate that low dimensional compressed imaging representation is sufficient to determine spatial motion targets. Compared with the random Gaussian and Toeplitz phase mask, motion detection algorithms using a random binary phase mask can yield better detection results. However using random Gaussian and Toeplitz phase mask can achieve high resolution reconstructed image. Our tracking algorithm can achieve a real time speed that is up to 10 times faster than that of the l(1) tracker without any optimization.