Search Results (29)

Developing early-heading wheat cultivars is an important breeding strategy to utilize light and heat resources, facilitate multiple-cropping systems, and enhance annual grain yield. Psathyrostachys huashanica Keng (2n = 2x = 14, NsNs) possesses numerous agronomically beneficial traits for wheat improvement, such as early maturity and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. In this study, we found that a cytogenetically stable wheat–P. huashanica 7Ns disomic addition line showed (9–11 days) earlier heading and (8–10 days) earlier maturation than its wheat parents. Morphological observations of spike differentiation revealed that the 7Ns disomic addition line developed distinctly faster than its wheat parents from the double ridge stage. To explore the potential molecular mechanisms underlying the early heading, we performed transcriptome analysis at four different developmental stages of the 7Ns disomic addition line and its wheat parents. A total of 10,043 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified during spike development. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis showed that these DEGs were linked to the carbohydrate metabolic process, photosynthesis, response to abscisic acid, and the ethylene-activated signaling pathway. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis showed that these DEGs were involved in plant hormone signal transduction (ARF, AUX/IAA, SAUR, DELLA, BRI1, and ETR), starch and sucrose metabolism (SUS1 and TPP), photosynthetic antenna proteins (Lhc), and circadian rhythm (PRR37, FT, Hd3a, COL, and CDF) pathways. In addition, several DEGs annotated as transcription factors (TFs), such as bHLH, bZIP, MADS-box, MYB, NAC, SBP, WRKY, and NF-Y, may be related to flowering time. Our findings reveal spike development-specific gene expression and critical regulatory pathways associated with early heading in the wheat–P. huashanica 7Ns addition line, and provide a new genetic resource for further dissection of the molecular mechanisms underlying the heading date in wheat. Full article

Introduction: The occurrence of a second primary lung cancer after head and neck cancer is a challenge for multidisciplinary teams, since the development of a second lung cancer negatively affects the survival rate of patients with head and neck cancer. Case Presentation: This article presents the case of a patient with a double location of cancer: inoperable stage III nasopharyngeal carcinoma, biopsied in December 2017 (non-keratinizing nasopharyngeal carcinoma), treated by means of radiotherapy and chemotherapy (2018–2021), and stage IV lung cancer (squamous carcinoma) with lung metastases, diagnosed in December 2021, treated using polychemotherapy, subsequent maintenance monochemotherapy, radiotherapy of the thorax, and subsequent maintenance monochemotherapy with a favorable result. The patient was still under treatment as of February 2025, the date of the preparation of the current article. Discussion and Literature Review: Regarding the location of the second metachronous cancer, studies show that the most frequent locations are the lungs and the esophagus, with the main causes being alcohol consumption and smoking. Therefore, these patients should be monitored by screening the respiratory and digestive tracts, especially in men, in order to identify a second cancer, either synchronous or metachronous, in an early stage. Conclusions: Educating the patient with head and neck cancer regarding quitting smoking and cutting out alcohol, as well as conducting a follow-up survey, may reduce the incidence of multiple primaries. Moreover, the multidisciplinary management of second primary lung malignancies in patients with head and neck cancer may lead to long-term disease monitoring. Full article

Text summarization plays a crucial role in processing extensive textual data, particularly in low-resource languages such as Korean. However, abstractive summarization faces persistent challenges, including semantic distortion and inconsistency. This study addresses these limitations by proposing a multi-knowledge-enhanced abstractive summarization model tailored for Korean texts. The model integrates internal knowledge, specifically keywords and topics that are extracted using a context-aware BERT-based approach. Unlike traditional statistical extraction methods, our approach utilizes the semantic context to ensure that the internal knowledge is both diverse and representative. By employing a multi-head attention mechanism, the proposed model effectively integrates multiple types of internal knowledge with the original document embeddings. Experimental evaluations on Korean datasets (news and legal texts) demonstrate that our model significantly outperforms baseline methods, achieving notable improvements in lexical overlap, semantic consistency, and structural coherence, as evidenced by higher ROUGE and BERTScore metrics. Furthermore, the method maintains information consistency across diverse categories, including dates, quantities, and organizational details. These findings highlight the potential of context-aware multi-knowledge integration in enhancing Korean abstractive summarization and suggest promising directions for future research into broader knowledge-incorporation strategies. Full article

Heading date 3a (Hd3a, a FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) ortholog from rice) is well known for its important role in rice (Oryza sativa L.), controlling floral transition under short-day (SD) conditions. Although the effect of Hd3a on promoting branching has been found, the underlying mechanism remains largely unknown. In this report, we overexpressed an Hd3a and BirAG (encoding a biotin ligase) fusion gene in rice, and found that early flowering and tiller bud outgrowth was promoted in BHd3aOE transgenic plants. On the contrary, knockout of Hd3a delayed flowering and tiller bud outgrowth. By using the BioID method, we identified multiple Hd3a proximal proteins. Among them, D14, D53, TPR1, TPR2, and TPRs are central components of the strigolactone signaling pathway, which has an inhibitory effect on rice tillering. The interaction between Hd3a, on the one hand, and D14 and D53 was further confirmed by the bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC), yeast two-hybrid (Y2H), and co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) methods. We also found that Hd3a prevented the degradation of D53 induced by rac-GR24 (a strigolactone analog) in rice protoplasts. RT-qPCR assay showed that the expression levels of genes involved in strigolactone biosynthesis and signal transduction were altered significantly between WT and Hd3a overexpression (Hd3aOE) or mutant (hd3a) plants. OsFC1, a downstream target of the strigolactone signaling transduction pathway in controlling rice tillering, was downregulated significantly in Hd3aOE plants, whereas it was upregulated in hd3a lines. Collectively, these results indicate that Hd3a promotes tiller bud outgrowth in rice by attenuating the negative effect of strigolactone signaling on tillering and highlight a novel molecular network regulating rice tiller outgrowth by Hd3a. Full article

Understanding genetic architectures of yield and yield-related traits of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grown under dryland or irrigated conditions is pivotal for developing modern high-yielding germplasm and cultivars. The objectives of this study were to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL) linked to yield and yield components using a mapping population derived from ‘TAM 113’/‘Gallagher’, including 191 recombinant inbred lines (RILs). The population was grown in McGregor, College Station, and Bushland, Texas, for three consecutive years from 2019 to 2021. A high-density genetic map covering all 21 chromosomes was constructed using a set of 8,075 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) obtained using genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS). A total of 147 QTLs for 16 yield-related traits were identified, which included 16 QTLs consistently detected in multiple experiments and 8 QTLs that showed pleiotropic effects. Of them, five pleiotropic QTLs overlapped with the consistent QTL. They increased grain yield (YLD) up to 37.64 g m⁻², thousand kernel weight (TKW) up to 1.33 g, harvest (HI) up to 0.97%, kernel length up to 0.08 mm, and kernel width up to 0.04 mm with Gallagher alleles and increased YLD up to 22.21 g m⁻², kernels spike⁻¹ up to 1.77, TKW up to 1.14 g, and HI up to 3.72% with TAM 113 alleles. One major and consistent QTL on chromosome 2D at 34.4 Mbp overlapped with the major photoperiod gene Ppd-D1 and was affected by multiple traits, including kernel diameter (DIAM), TKW, kernel hardness index (KHI), heading date (HD), and plant height (PH). Another QTL cluster region on 7D between 52 and 66 Mbp, encompassing one consistent and three pleiotropic QTLs. One of the pleiotropic QTLs at 52 Mbp increased YLD up to 24.16 g m⁻², HI up to 1%, and DIAM up to 0.03 mm. This study dissected genetic loci associated with yield and yield-related traits, providing valuable information on wheat improvement using marker-assisted selection (MAS). Full article

Studying the evolutionary patterns of rice agronomic traits in South China and analyzing the characteristics of rice improvement can provide insights into the developmental trajectory of rice breeding in South China and can guide further enhancement of variety yield. In this study, widely promoted varieties and core parents developed through dwarf breeding in the southern region, as well as landraces, were collected and planted in three different ecological regions. A total of 18 agronomic traits were investigated related to heading date, plant type, panicle type, grain type, and yield, and multiple comparisons, a correlation analysis, and a path analysis were conducted. The results indicate that dwarf breeding has significantly increased the yield of inbred indica rice varieties in South China. However, a reduction in plant height has also resulted in a reduction in flag leaf, shorter panicles, and decreased biomass, which have led to metabolic source and storage capacity deficiencies and limited yield potential. To address these limitations, breeders have employed strategies such as increasing flag leaf width, spikelet density, number of primary branches, and grain number per panicle. These measures have led to a gradual increase in yield. Additionally, starting from the 1980s, high-quality rice breeding has been pursued in South China, resulting in slender grain shape and reduced thousand grain weight. Given that total grain number per panicle has already increased significantly and the thousand grain weight cannot be reduced further, enhancing the effective tiller number, which decreases year by year, becomes an important approach to increasing the yield of inbred indica rice varieties in South China. Full article

Numerous studies have shown that under a limited water supply, a larger root biomass is associated with an increased above-ground biomass. Root biomass, while genetically controlled, is also greatly affected by the environment with varying plasticity levels. In this context, understanding the relationship between the biomass of shoots and roots appears prudent. In this study, we analyze this relationship in a large dataset collected from multiple experiments conducted up to different growth stages in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and its wild relatives. Four bread wheat mapping populations as well as wild and domesticated members of the Triticeae tribe were evaluated for the root and shoot biomass allocation patterns. In the analyzed dataset the root and shoot biomasses were directly related to each other, and to the heading date, and the correlation values increased in proportion to the length of an experiment. On average, 84.1% of the observed variation was explained by a positive correlation between shoot and root biomass. Scatter plots generated from 6353 data points from numerous experiments with different wheats suggest that at some point, further increases in root biomass negatively impact the shoot biomass. Based on these results, a preliminary study with different water availability scenarios and growth conditions was designed with two cultivars, Pavon 76 and Yecora Rojo. The duration of drought and water level significantly affected the root/shoot biomass allocation patterns. However, the responses of the two cultivars were quite different, suggesting that the point of diminishing returns in increasing root biomass may be different for different wheats, reinforcing the need to breed wheats for specific environmental challenges. Full article

Flowering time (in rice, termed the heading date), plant height, and grain number are crucial agronomic traits for rice productivity. The heading date is controlled via environmental factors (day length and temperature) and genetic factors (floral genes). TERMINAL FLOWER 1 (TFL1) encodes a protein that controls meristem identity and participates in regulating flowering. In this study, a transgenic approach was used to promote the heading date in rice. We isolated and cloned apple MdTFL1 for early flowering in rice. Transgenic rice plants with antisense MdTFL1 showed an early heading date compared with wild-type plants. A gene expression analysis suggested that introducing MdTFL1 upregulated multiple endogenous floral meristem identity genes, including the (early) heading date gene family FLOWERING LOCUS T and MADS-box transcription factors, thereby shortening vegetable development. Antisense MdTFL1 also produced a wide range of phenotypic changes, including a change in overall plant organelles that affected an array of traits, especially grain productivity. The transgenic rice exhibited a semi-draft phenotype, increased leaf inclination angle, restricted flag leaf length, reduced spikelet fertility, and fewer grains per panicle. MdTFL1 plays a central role in regulating flowering and in various physiological aspects. These findings emphasize the role of TFL1 in regulating flowering in shortened breeding and expanding its function to produce plants with semi-draft phenotypes. Full article

Based on functional magnetic resonance imaging and multilayer dynamic network model, the brain network’s quantified temporal stability has shown potential in predicting altered brain functions. This manuscript aims to summarize current knowledge, clinical research progress, and future perspectives on brain network’s temporal stability. There are a variety of widely used measures of temporal stability such as the variance/standard deviation of dynamic functional connectivity strengths, the temporal variability, the flexibility (switching rate), and the temporal clustering coefficient, while there is no consensus to date which measure is the best. The temporal stability of brain networks may be associated with several factors such as sex, age, cognitive functions, head motion, circadian rhythm, and data preprocessing/analyzing strategies, which should be considered in clinical studies. Multiple common psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder have been found to be related to altered temporal stability, especially during the resting state; generally, both excessively decreased and increased temporal stabilities were thought to reflect disorder-related brain dysfunctions. However, the measures of temporal stability are still far from applications in clinical diagnoses for neuropsychiatric disorders partly because of the divergent results. Further studies with larger samples and in transdiagnostic (including schizoaffective disorder) subjects are warranted. Full article

Wheat yield is highly correlated with plant height, heading date, spike characteristics, and kernel traits. In this study, we used the wheat55K single nucleotide polymorphism array to genotype a recombinant inbred line population of 165 lines constructed by crossing two tetraploid wheat materials, Icaro and Y4. A genetic linkage map with a total length of 6244.51 cM was constructed, covering 14 chromosomes of tetraploid wheat. QTLs for 12 important agronomic traits, including plant height (PH), heading date (HD), awn color (AC), spike-branching (SB), and related traits of spike and kernel, were mapped in multiple environments, while combined QTL-by-environment interactions and epistatic effects were analyzed for each trait. A total of 52 major or stable QTLs were identified, among which may be some novel loci controlling PH, SB, and kernel length-width ratio (LWR), etc., with LOD values ranging from 2.51 to 54.49, thereby explaining 2.40–66.27% of the phenotypic variation. Based on the ‘China Spring’ and durum wheat reference genome annotations, candidate genes were predicted for four stable QTLs, QPH.nwafu-2B.2 (165.67–166.99 cM), QAC.nwafu-3A.1 (419.89–420.52 cM), QAC.nwafu-4A.1 (424.31–447.4 cM), and QLWR.nwafu-7A.1 (166.66–175.46 cM). Thirty-one QTL clusters and 44 segregation distortion regions were also detected, and 38 and 18 major or stable QTLs were included in these clusters and segregation distortion regions, respectively. These results provide QTLs with breeding application potential in tetraploid wheat that broadens the genetic basis of important agronomic traits such as PH, HD, AC, SB, etc., and benefits wheat breeding. Full article

Congenital syngnathia is a very rare condition of unknown etiology with multiple clinical manifestations due to different combinations of bony or soft tissue adhesions between the mandible and maxilla. It shares possible association with other congenital anomalies in the head and neck region, or with other syndromes. The aims of the present work were: (1) to perform a literature review on bony syngnathia in order to obtain a general framework on epidemiology and management protocol; (2) to describe a case of a two-year-old boy with a left unilateral bony fusion treated with a distraction protocol of three months. Original articles were searched through PubMed, Cochrane Central database and Embase with a cut-off date of June 2022. In total, 94 articles were identified through database searching. After 39 exclusions, 55 articles were included in the review process. Eighty-seven cases of bony syngnathia have been reported from 1936 to 2022, and different classifications have been suggested in terms of location, extension, functional outcomes and management protocol. Complications may range from feeding difficulty to aspiration pneumonia and respiratory arrest. Early surgery is generally required to release the ankylosis and to establish good mandible function. Full article

In vivo doubled haploid (DH) production based on crossing heterozygous germplasm with mtl haploid inducer lines promises to transform modern rice (Oryza sativa) breeding. However, this technology is limited, as haploid inducers and pollen acceptors have asynchronous heading dates. To address this obstacle, we developed a panel of multiple-heading-date mtl haploid inducer lines that produce pollen for more than 35 days. We edited the MTL gene in a hybrid rice with the CRISPR-Cas9 system. We then selected transgene-free homozygous mutants in the T₁ generation and reproduced to T₄ generation by single-seed descent method. We obtained 547 mtl haploid inducers with diverse heading dates (from 73 to 110 days) and selected 16 lines comprising a core population with continuous flowering. The seed-setting rate and haploid induction rate (HIR) of the core panel were 4.0–12.7% and 2.8–12.0%, respectively. Thus, our strategy of using multiple-heading-date mtl haploid inducers could accelerate the use of in vivo DH technology in rice breeding. Full article

Evidence have indicated that RR-type MYB-related transcription factors (TFs) are functionally diverse in regulating floral development, fruit development, leaf senescence, ABA response, and drought and salt responses. Several RR-type MYB-related TFs in Arabidopsis, Antirrhinum and rice are identified and characterized. However, the complete RR-type MYB-related family in tomato has not been studied to date. Here, a genome-wide identification of tomato RR-type MYB-related TFs (SlMYBR) was performed by bioinformatics analysis, and their expression patterns were analyzed. A total of thirteen SlMYBR genes, which were mainly distributed in the head or tail of the chromosome, were identified from tomato and were divided into three groups. Group II was all MYBR genes from eudicots without genes from monocots. For Group I and Group III, the phylogenetic tree was in accord with the evolutionary relationship of these species. SlMYBR proteins were unstable proteins and located in the nucleus. The promoters of SlMYBR contained multiple important cis-acting elements related to abiotic stress or hormone responses. SlMYBR genes had various temporal and spatial expression patterns. Experiments of spraying exogenous hormone demonstrated that the expression of most genes containing hormone response elements was changed, indicating that the expression patterns were associated with the amount of cis-acting elements. The comprehensive investigation of tomato SlMYBR genes in the present study helps to clearly understand the evolution of RR-type MYB-related TFs and provides a useful reference for the further functional study of SlMYBR genes in tomato. Full article

Intraspecific rearrangements of mitochondrial genomes are rarely reported in reptiles, even in vertebrates. The sunwatcher toad-headed agama, Phryncoephalus helioscopus, can serve as an excellent model for investigating the dynamic mitogenome structure at intraspecific level. To date, seven subspecies of P. helioscopus are well recognized, but little is known about the mitogenomic evolution among different subspecies. In this study, complete mitogenomes of subspecies P. helioscopus varius II and P. helioscopus cameranoi were determined by next-generation sequencing, and another P. helioscopus varius I retrieved from GenBank was compiled for comparative analysis. The nucleotide composition and the codon usage are similar to those previously published from toad-headed agamas. P. helioscopus varius II and P. helioscopus cameranoi have 23 tRNA genes, including standard 22 tRNA genes and one extra tRNA-Phe (tRNA-Phe duplication). Gene order and phylogenetic analyses in the genus Phrynocephalus support prevalent intraspecific gene rearrangement in P. helioscopus and other congener species including P. erythrurus, P. vlangalii, and P. forsythii. Six different mitochondrial gene arrangements are observed in Phrynocephalus. Overall, the occurrence of rearrangements may result from multiple independent structural dynamic events. The split of the two subspecies in P. helioscopus was dated at approximately 2.34 million years ago (Ma). Two types of gene rearrangements are found in the three mitogenomes of P. helioscopus, and this intraspecific rearrangement phenomenon can be explained by the tandem duplication/random loss (TDRL) model. Post duplication, the alternative loss types can occur in 0.23–0.72 Ma, suggesting that the duplication and fixation of these rearrangements can occur quite quickly. These findings highlight the need for more mitogenomes at the population level in order to better understand the potentially rampant intraspecific mitogenomic reorganization in Phrynocephalus. Full article

Genetic studies have revealed that chromatin modifications affect flowering time, but the underlying mechanisms by which chromatin remodeling factors alter flowering remain largely unknown in rice (Oryza sativa). Here, we show that Rolled Fine Striped (RFS), a chromodomain helicase DNA-binding 3 (CHD3)/Mi-2 subfamily ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling factor, promotes flowering in rice. Diurnal expression of RFS peaked at night under short-day (SD) conditions and at dawn under long-day (LD) conditions. The rfs-1 and rfs-2 mutants (derived from different genetic backgrounds) displayed a late-flowering phenotype under SD and LD conditions. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR analysis revealed that among the flowering time-related genes, the expression of the major floral repressor Grain number and heading date 7 (Ghd7) was mainly upregulated in rfs mutants, resulting in downregulation of its downstream floral inducers, including Early heading date 1 (Ehd1), Heading date 3a (Hd3a), and Rice FLOWERING LOCUS T 1 (RFT1). The rfs mutation had pleiotropic negative effects on rice grain yield and yield components, such as plant height and fertility. Taking these observations together, we propose that RFS participates in multiple aspects of rice development, including the promotion of flowering independent of photoperiod. Full article