Genome-wide identification of Shaker K+ channel family in Nicotiana tabacum and functional analysis of NtSKOR1B in response to salt stress.

Soil salinization poses a mounting global ecological and environmental threat. The identification of genes responsible for negative regulation of salt tolerance and their utilization in crop improvement through gene editing technologies emerges as a swift strategy for the effective utilization of saline-alkali lands. One efficient mechanism of plant salt tolerance is maintaining the proper intracellular K+/Na+ ratio. The Shaker K+ channels play a crucial role in potassium absorption, transport, and intracellular potassium homeostasis in plant cells. Here, the study presents the first genome-wide identification of Shaker K+ channels in Nicotiana tabacum L., along with a detailed bioinformatic analysis of the 20 identified members. Transcriptome analysis revealed a significant up-regulation of NtSKOR1B, an outwardly-rectifying member predominantly expressed in the root tissue of tobacco seedlings, in response to salt stress. This finding was then confirmed by GUS staining of ProNtSKOR1B::GUS transgenic lines and RT-qPCR analysis. Subsequently, NtSKOR1B knockout mutants (ntskor1) were then generated and subjected to salt conditions. It was found that ntskor1 mutants exhibit enhanced salt tolerance, characterized by increased biomass, higher K+ content and elevated K+/Na+ ratios in both leaf and root tissues, compared to wild-type plants. These results indicate that NtSKOR1B knockout inhibits K+ efflux in root and leaf tissues of tobacco seedlings under salt stress, thereby maintaining higher K+/Na+ ratios within the cells. Thus, our study identifies NtSKOR1B as a negative regulator of salt tolerance in tobacco seedlings.

NL2Color: Refining Color Palettes for Charts with Natural Language.

Choice of color is critical to creating effective charts with an engaging, enjoyable, and informative reading experience. However, designing a good color palette for a chart is a challenging task for novice users who lack related design expertise. For example, they often find it difficult to articulate their abstract intentions and translate these intentions into effective editing actions to achieve a desired outcome. In this work, we present NL2Color, a tool that allows novice users to refine chart color palettes using natural language expressions of their desired outcomes. We first collected and categorized a dataset of 131 triplets, each consisting of an original color palette of a chart, an editing intent, and a new color palette designed by human experts according to the intent. Our tool employs a large language model (LLM) to substitute the colors in original palettes and produce new color palettes by selecting some of the triplets as few-shot prompts. To evaluate our tool, we conducted a comprehensive two-stage evaluation, including a crowd-sourcing study ( N=71) and a within-subjects user study ( N=12). The results indicate that the quality of the color palettes revised by NL2Color has no significantly large difference from those designed by human experts. The participants who used NL2Color obtained revised color palettes to their satisfaction in a shorter period and with less effort.

The Roles of Calcineurin B-like Proteins in Plants under Salt Stress.

Salinity stands as a significant environmental stressor, severely impacting crop productivity. Plants exposed to salt stress undergo physiological alterations that influence their growth and development. Meanwhile, plants have also evolved mechanisms to endure the detrimental effects of salinity-induced salt stress. Within plants, Calcineurin B-like (CBL) proteins act as vital Ca2+ sensors, binding to Ca2+ and subsequently transmitting signals to downstream response pathways. CBLs engage with CBL-interacting protein kinases (CIPKs), forming complexes that regulate a multitude of plant growth and developmental processes, notably ion homeostasis in response to salinity conditions. This review introduces the repercussions of salt stress, including osmotic stress, diminished photosynthesis, and oxidative damage. It also explores how CBLs modulate the response to salt stress in plants, outlining the functions of the CBL-CIPK modules involved. Comprehending the mechanisms through which CBL proteins mediate salt tolerance can accelerate the development of cultivars resistant to salinity.

Determination of optimal NH4+/K + concentration and corresponding ratio critical for growth of tobacco seedlings in a hydroponic system.

Inherently, ammonium (NH4 +) is critical for plant growth; however, its toxicity suppresses potassium (K+) uptake and vice-versa. Hence, attaining a nutritional balance between these two ions (NH4 + and K+) becomes imperative for the growth of tobacco seedlings. Therefore, we conducted a 15-day experimental study on tobacco seedlings exposed to different concentrations (47 treatments) of NH4 +/K+ at different corresponding 12 ratios simultaneously in a hydroponic system. Our study aimed at establishing the optimal NH4 +-K+ concentration and the corresponding ratio required for optimal growth of different tobacco plant organs during the seedling stage. The controls were the baseline for comparison in this study. Plants with low or excessive NH4 +-K+ concentration had leaf chlorosis or dark greenish colouration, stunted whole plant part biomass, and thin roots. We found that adequate K+ supply is a pragmatic way to mitigate NH4 +-induced toxicity in tobacco plants. The optimal growth for tobacco leaf and root was attained at NH4 +-K+ concentrations 2-2 mM (ratio 1:1), whereas stem growth was optimal at NH4 +-K+ 1-2 mM (1:2). The study provided an insight into the right combination of NH4 +/K+ that could mitigate or prevent NH4 + or K+ stress in the tobacco seedlings.

MedChemLens: An Interactive Visual Tool to Support Direction Selection in Interdisciplinary Experimental Research of Medicinal Chemistry.

Interdisciplinary experimental science (e.g., medicinal chemistry) refers to the disciplines that integrate knowledge from different scientific backgrounds and involve experiments in the research process. Deciding "in what direction to proceed" is critical for the success of the research in such disciplines, since the time, money, and resource costs of the subsequent research steps depend largely on this decision. However, such a direction identification task is challenging in that researchers need to integrate information from large-scale, heterogeneous materials from all associated disciplines and summarize the related publications of which the core contributions are often showcased in diverse formats. The task also requires researchers to estimate the feasibility and potential in future experiments in the selected directions. In this work, we selected medicinal chemistry as a case and presented an interactive visual tool, MedChemLens, to assist medicinal chemists in choosing their intended directions of research. This task is also known as drug target (i.e., disease-linked proteins) selection. Given a candidate target name, MedChemLens automatically extracts the molecular features of drug compounds from chemical papers and clinical trial records, organizes them based on the drug structures, and interactively visualizes factors concerning subsequent experiments. We evaluated MedChemLens through a within-subjects study (N=16). Compared with the control condition (i.e., unrestricted online search without using our tool), participants who only used MedChemLens reported faster search, better-informed selections, higher confidence in their selections, and lower cognitive load.