An Arabidopsis Rab18 GTPase promotes autophagy by tethering ATG18a to the ER in response to nutrient starvation.

The expansion of autophagosomes requires a controlled association with the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). However, the mechanisms governing this process are not well defined. In plants, ATG18a plays a key role in autophagosome formation in response to stress, yet the factors regulating the process are unknown. This study finds that ATG18a acts as a downstream effector of RABC1, a member of the poorly characterized Rab18/RabC GTPase subclass in plants. Active RABC1 interacts with ATG18a on the ER, particularly under nutrient starvation. In rabc1 mutants, autophagy is compromised, especially under nutrient deprivation, affecting the ER association and expansion of ATG18a-positive autophagosomes. Furthermore, both dominant-negative and constitutively active RABC1 forms inhibit autophagy. The dominant inactive RABC1 impedes the ER association of ATG18a, whereas the constitutively active RABC1 delays ATG18a detachment from the ER. Collectively, RABC1 regulates the ER association and the subsequent detachment of ATG18a-positive autophagosomes during nutrient starvation.

A preliminary screening system for diabetes based on in-car electronic nose.

Studies have found differences in the concentration of volatile organic compounds in the breath of diabetics and healthy people, prompting attention to the use of devices such as electronic noses to detect diabetes. In this study, we explored the design of a non-invasive diabetes preliminary screening system that uses a homemade electronic nose sensor array to detect respiratory gas markers. In the algorithm part, two feature extraction methods were adopted, gradient boosting method was used to select promising feature subset, and then particle swarm optimization algorithm was introduced to extract 24 most effective features, which reduces the number of sensors by 56% and saves the system cost. Respiratory samples were collected from 120 healthy subjects and 120 diabetic subjects to assess the system performance. Random forest algorithm was used to classify and predict electronic nose data, and the accuracy can reach 93.33%. Experimental results show that on the premise of ensuring accuracy, the system has low cost and small size after the number of sensors is optimized, and it is easy to install on in-car. It provides a more feasible method for the preliminary screening of diabetes on in-car and can be used as an assistant to the existing detection methods.

Transcriptome-Wide Characterization of Seed Aging in Rice: Identification of Specific Long-Lived mRNAs for Seed Longevity.

Various long-lived mRNAs are stored in seeds, some of which are required for the initial phase of germination and are critical to seed longevity. However, the seed-specific long-lived mRNAs involved in seed longevity remain poorly understood in rice. To identify these mRNAs in seeds, we first performed aging experiment with 14 rice varieties, and categorized them as higher longevity (HL) and lower longevity (LL) rice varieties in conventional rice and hybrid rice, respectively. Second, RNA-seq analysis showed that most genes showed similar tendency of expression changes during natural and artificial aging, suggesting that the effects of these two aging methods on transcription are comparable. In addition, some differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the HL and LL varieties differed after natural aging. Furthermore, several specific long-lived mRNAs were identified through a comparative analysis of HL and LL varieties after natural aging, and similar sequence features were also identified in the promoter of some specific long-lived mRNAs. Overall, we identified several specific long-lived mRNAs in rice, including gibberellin receptor gene GID1, which may be associated with seed longevity.

Visualization study of outdoor activities affecting the development of children’s myopia / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#To explore the international development trends and research hotspots of outdoor activities affecting the progression of children’s myopia, and to provide a reference for researching on effective ways to prevent children’s myopia.@*Methods@#Totally 291 relevant documents included in the "Web of Science" core set database were used as research objects, and CiteSpace software was used for visual analysis.@*Results@#At present, the publications in this field were mainly in the United States(81), China(80), Australia(76), and Singapore(33); the top three research institutions were "Natl Univ Singapore"(29), "Australian Natl Univ"(27), "Capital Med Univ"(25); the main authors were "Saw SM", "Morgan IG", "Mitchell P". The field has been developed on the basis of "Ophthalmology", "Public, Environmental and Occupational Health", and has been integrated into 32 disciplines. The research content included "exploration of high risk factors for the progression of children’s myopia" and "outdoor activities", "intervention in children’s progression of myopia" and "longitudinal tracking of children’s vision development". Randomized clinical trials that longitudinally track the correlation between changes in eyeballs and the progression of myopia and the effects of outdoor activities on the biological characteristics of children’s eyeballs have become a hot topic in this field.@*Conclusion@#Research on the effects of outdoor activities on the progression of myopia in children has increased dramatically. The study of increasing outdoor activities to interfere with the progression of myopia in children and the vertical tracking of key factors affecting the biological characteristics of children’s eyeballs have become the current international trends.

Controllable Epitaxial Growth of Core-Shell PbSe@CsPbBr3 Wire Heterostructures.

1D semiconductor core-shell wire heterostructures are crucial for high-performance optical and optoelectronic device applications, but they are limited to the traditional semiconductor families. Here, the conformal epitaxy of CsPbBr3 shell on PbSe wire core is realized to form the core-shell PbSe@CsPbBr3 wire heterostructures via a chemical vapor deposition route. The Pb-particle catalysts at the tips of the PbSe wires grown by vapor-liquid-solid provide the nucleation sites for the in situ rapid growth of CsPbBr3 cube crystals, which serve as the adatom collector for the following shell growth due to the faster adsorption of the evaporated source atoms on them than on the sidewalls of PbSe wires. This determines the directional growth of the shell along the PbSe wires from the tip to bottom. The spectral and transient photoluminescence reveals the efficient photogenerated carrier transfer from the shell to the core. Importantly, the photodetectors (PDs) based on the heterostructures show responsivity up to 4.7 × 104 A W-1 under 405 nm light illumination, and a wavelength-dependent photocurrent polarity with the excitation of the light from near- to mid-infrared (IR), which indicates potential applications in IR PDs and novel optoelectronic logical circuits.