Functional analysis of five trypsin-like protease genes in the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Diptera: Tephritidae).

Insect midgut proteases catalyze the release of free amino acids from dietary proteins and are essential for insect normal development. To date, digestive proteases as potential candidates have made great progress in pest control. To clarify the function of trypsin-like protease genes in the digestive system of Bactrocera dorsalis, a serious pest of a wide range of tropical and subtropical fruit and vegetable crops, five trypsin genes (BdTry1, BdTry2, BdTry3, BdTry4 and BdTry5) were identified from transcriptome dataset, and the effects of feeding condition on their expression levels were examined subsequently. RNA interference (RNAi) was applied to further explore their function on the growth of B. dorsalis. The results showed that all the BdTrys in starving midgut expressed at a minimal level but up-regulated upon feeding (except BdTry3). Besides, RNAi by feeding dsRNAs to larvae proved to be an effective method to cause gene silencing and the mixed dsRNAs of the five BdTrys slowed larvae growth of B. dorsalis. The current data suggest that trypsin genes are actively involved in digestion process of B. dorsalis larvae and thereafter play crucial roles in their development.

Characterization of Bactrocera dorsalis serine proteases and evidence for their indirect role in insecticide tolerance.

The oriental fruit fly Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) causes devastating losses to agricultural crops world-wide and is considered to be an economically important pest. Little is known about the digestive enzymes such as serine proteases (SPs) in B. dorsalis, which are important both for energy supply and mitigation of fitness cost associated with insecticide tolerance. In this study, we identified five SP genes in the midgut of B. dorsalis, and the alignments of their deduced amino acid sequences revealed the presence of motifs conserved in the SP superfamily. Phylogenetic analyses with known SPs from other insect species suggested that three of them were trypsin-like proteases. Analyses of the expression profiles among the different developmental stages showed that all five genes were most abundant in larvae than in other stages. When larvae were continuously fed on diet containing 0.33 µg/g ß-Cypermethrin, expression of all five genes were upregulated in the midgut but the larval development was delayed. Biochemical assays were consistent with the increased protease activity exhibited by SPs in the midgut after treatment with ß-Cypermethrin. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for the hypothesis that enhanced SP activity may play an indirect role in relieving the toxicity stress of insecticide in B. dorsalis.

Adaptive guaranteed cost control for nonlinear systems with unknown parameters and time delays based on fully actuated system approaches.

This paper investigates the adaptive guaranteed cost stabilization (AGCS) problems for two classes of high-order nonlinear systems with unknown parameters (vector) and time delays. Firstly, based on the high-order fully actuated (HOFA) system approaches, the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF) and the guaranteed cost control (GCC), a new AGCS strategy is proposed for HOFA nonlinear system with unknown parameter vector and time delays. Then, based on the above result, another AGCS controller for a class of strict-feedback systems (SFSs) with unknown parameters and time delays is obtained. Two designed controllers ensure that all of the states of two closed-loop systems are global boundedness, and preset arbitrarily the upper bound of cost functions (UBCFs) characterizing the output performance. More importantly, the UBCFs are independent of system initial values, unknown parameters (vector), and even time delays, which is difficult to achieve by using existing control methods. To do this, this paper introduces a local smooth nonlinear function (LSNF), and gives its corresponding lemma, which provide an important mathematical tool. Finally, three simulation examples, including an application in the electromechanical system, are given to prove the effectiveness and the practicability of our proposed control method.

Generalized proportional-integral extended state observer-based controller design for fully actuated systems.

In this paper, a feedback controller based on the extended state observer is proposed for fully actuated systems. First, a generalized proportional-integral observer is designed to estimate states and disturbances simultaneously. Using the linear parameter varying approach and the convexity principle, a linear matrix inequality condition is given to obtain the observer gains. Second, on the basis of the full-actuation property and the estimated states, a feedback controller, utilizing estimated disturbances to compensate for system disturbances, is designed to make all the states of the closed-loop system uniformly ultimately bounded. In addition, if disturbances are constant or slow time-varying, the observation errors and the states of closed-loop system are all exponentially convergent. Two illustrations are provided to show the validity and practicality of the proposed approach. Simulation results show that the estimated disturbances can follow the true values with relatively small errors, so compensating the system disturbances with estimated values can effectively reduce the ultimate bounds of states of the closed-loop system.

Control of Uncertain High-Order Fully Actuated Strict-Feedback Systems: A Backstepping Approach With High-Gain Observer-Based Derivative Approximation.

In this article, a high-gain observer (HGO)-based differentiator is proposed to approximate the derivatives of the virtual control to ease the "explosion of complexity" problem in backstepping for the second-order strict-feedback systems (SOSFSs) and high-order strict-feedback systems (HOSFSs). Unlike the existing high-order command-filtered backstepping or extended dynamic surface control that needs to tune a large number of parameters, this proposed high-order HGO-based backstepping (HOHGOB) scheme can improve the derivative approximation performance by only tuning a single parameter, i.e., the observer gain. A further advantage of the proposed HOHGOB scheme, in addition to its simplicity and ease of implementation, is that the estimation error of the derivatives shrinks to zero as the observer gain grows to infinity. We have also rigorously established that the states of the closed-loop system achieve uniform ultimate boundedness under the designed high-order backstepping controller. Additionally, the output tracking error can be made arbitrarily small by the designer. The efficacy of the proposed scheme is numerically validated through a benchmark application to a single-link robot arm.

Adaptive robust dynamic surface asymptotic tracking for uncertain strict-feedback nonlinear systems with unknown control direction.

For strict-feedback nonlinear systems (SFNSs) with unknown control direction, this paper synthesizes an asymptotic tracking controller by a combination of the dynamic surface control (DSC) technique, the Nussbaum gain technique (NGT) and fuzzy logic systems (FLSs). The SFNSs under study feature unknown nonlinear uncertainties and external disturbances. By utilizing the DSC technique with nonlinear filters, the issue of 'differential explosion' is obviated, in which the adaptive laws are constructed to conquer the effect of unknown functions. The FLSs are exploited to cope with uncertainties without any prior conditions of the ideal weight vectors and the approximation errors. In addition, by introducing the NGT, the unknown control direction problem is solved. Compared with the existing results, the proposed design procedure is able to simultaneously overcome the 'differential explosion' and the unknown control direction problems, and asymptotic tracking is accomplished. At the end, a second-order numerical system and a more realistic Norrbin nonlinear mathematical model are applied to confirm the feasibility of the design procedure.