Explore the vast range of titles available.

Crop wild relatives (CWR) provide a valuable resource for improving crops. They possess desirable traits that confer resilience to various environmental stresses. To fully utilize crop wild relatives in breeding and conservation programs, it is important to understand the genetic basis of their adaptation. Landscape genomics associates environments with genomic variation and allows for examining the genetic basis of adaptation. Our study examined the differences in allele frequency of 15,416 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) generated through genotyping by sequencing approach among 153 accessions of 15 wild eggplant relatives and two cultivated species from Africa, the principal hotspot of these wild relatives. We also explored the correlation between these variations and the bioclimatic and soil conditions at their collection sites, providing a comprehensive understanding of the genetic signals of environmental adaptation in African wild eggplant. Redundancy analysis (RDA) results showed that the environmental variation explained 6% while the geographical distances among the collection sites explained 15% of the genomic variation in the eggplant wild relative populations when controlling for population structure. Our findings indicate that even though environmental factors are not the main driver of selection in eggplant wild relatives, it is influential in shaping the genomic variation over time. The selected environmental variables and candidate SNPs effectively revealed grouping patterns according to the environmental characteristics of sampling sites. Using four genotype–environment association methods, we detected 396 candidate SNPs (2.5% of the initial SNPs) associated with eight environmental factors. Some of these SNPs signal genes involved in pathways that help adapt to environmental stresses such as drought, heat, cold, salinity, pests, and diseases. These candidate SNPs will be useful for marker‐assisted improvement and characterizing the germplasm of this crop for developing climate‐resilient eggplant varieties. The study provides a model for applying landscape genomics to other crops' wild relatives. Environmental selection plays a key role in the genetic variation within African wild relative populations that are both widespread and diverse for climate and soil conditions.

Respect for patient autonomy is paramount in resolving ethical tensions in end-of-life care. The concept of relational autonomy has contributed to this debate; however, scholars often use this concept in a fragmented manner. This leads to partial answers on ascertaining patients’ true wishes, meaningfully engaging patients’ significant others, balancing interests among patients and significant others, and determining clinicians’ obligations to change patients’ unconventional convictions to enhance patient autonomy. A satisfactory solution based on relational autonomy must incorporate patients’ competence (apart from decisional capacity), authenticity (their true desires or beliefs) and the involvement level of their significant others. To that end, we argue that John Christman’s procedural approach to relational autonomy provides critical insights, such as the diachronic or socio-historical personhood, sustained critical reflection and his recent explication of the nature of asymmetrical relationships and helpful interlocutors. This study reviews Christman’s account, proposes minor modifications and advocates for an integrated three-dimensional model for medical decision-making. Clarifying the relationship among the three elements promotes an ethical framework with a coherent understanding of relational autonomy. This model not only provides a descriptive and normative framework for end-of-life care practice but also reconsiders the nature of the clinician–patient relationship and its normative implications. We further present a case study to illustrate the merits of our proposed model. Altogether, our proposal will help navigate complex medical decision-making, foster trust and negotiate shared values between patients and their significant others, particularly in end-of-life care.

Amaranth species (Amaranthus spp.) serve as pseudo cereals and also as traditional leafy vegetables worldwide. In addition to high vigor and richness in nutrients, drought and salinity tolerance makes amaranth a promising vegetable to acclimatize to the effects of global climate change. The World Vegetable Center gene bank conserves ∼1,000 amaranth accessions, and various agronomic properties of these accessions were recorded during seed regeneration over decades. In this study, we verified the taxonomic annotation of the germplasm based on a 15K single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) set. Given that the yield components of grain amaranth are different from those of leaf amaranth, we observed that grain amaranth species presented larger inflorescences and earlier flowering than leaf amaranth species. Dual‐purpose amaranth showed larger leaves than leaf amaranth and later flowering than grain amaranth, which seemed reasonable because farmers can harvest more leaves during the prolonged vegetable stage, which also provides recovery time to enrich grain production. Considering frequent interspecific hybridization among species of the grain amaranth complex, we performed an interspecific genome‐wide association study (GWAS) for days to flowering, identifying a AGL20/SOC1 homolog. Another GWAS using only A. tricolor L. accessions revealed six candidate genes homologous to lba1, bri1, sgs1, and fca. These homologous genes were involved in the regulation of flowering time in Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. This study revealed the usefulness of genotypic data for species demarcation in the genus Amaranthus and the potential of interspecific GWAS to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL) across different species, opening up the possibility of targeted introduction of specific genetic variants into different Amaranthus species. Core Ideas De novo single‐nucleotide polymorphism calling is able to reduce unmapped reads across multiple species. Amaranthus species can be clarified through genotypes. Phenotypic divergence reflects domestication of crop for different purposes. Genome‐wide association study reveals candidate genes for flowering time among different‐purpose amaranth species.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) involves transforming growth factor‐beta, a key factor that drives biochemical signaling pathways, inducing cellular transdifferentiation and excessive extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition. Increased ECM stiffness alters the mechanical microenvironment of the lung, exacerbating pulmonary dysfunction through mechanical signaling transduction. Here, persistent malignant mechanical and biochemical signaling crosstalk in IPF is demonstrated that drives the relentless progression of the disease. Therefore, inhalable lung‐targeted lipid nanoparticles (VB‐RT NPs) are developed for co‐delivering verteporfin and berbamine to effectively treat IPF by interrupting pulmonary mechanical‐biochemical signaling malignant crosstalk. Specifically, VB‐RT NPs are modified with tannic acid to scavenge reactive oxygen species and enhance lung targeting, and with L‐arginine to penetrate dense ECM and reach deeper lung regions. After being inhaled in a bleomycin model, VB‐RT NPs inhibited fibroblast activation and promoted the transition of endothelial cell (EC)‐like myofibroblasts to ECs, reducing endothelial‐to‐mesenchymal transition and fibrotic progression. Additionally, VB‐RT NPs blocked the nuclear translocation of the mechanotransducers Yes‐associated protein, interrupting fibrosis‐related mechanotransduction pathways. The results demonstrate that VB‐RT NPs effectively reversed dysregulated mechanical‐biochemical signaling crosstalk in fibrotic lungs and halted fibrosis progression, offering a promising therapeutic approach for IPF. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) progression is driven by TGF‐β induced biochemical signals and mechanical signals from increased ECM stiffness. Pulmonary‐targeted VB‐RT NPs not only eliminate excessive ROS and penetrate the dense ECM collagen barrier via NO release, but also simultaneously interrupt the persistent malignant between mechanical and biochemical signaling crosstalk, significantly enhancing therapeutic efficacy in IPF treatment.

While the domestication process has been investigated in many crops, the detailed route of cultivation range expansion and factors governing this process received relatively little attention. Here, using mungbean ( Vigna radiata var. radiata ) as a test case, we investigated the genomes of more than 1000 accessions to illustrate climatic adaptation’s role in dictating the unique routes of cultivation range expansion. Despite the geographical proximity between South and Central Asia, genetic evidence suggests mungbean cultivation first spread from South Asia to Southeast, East and finally reached Central Asia. Combining evidence from demographic inference, climatic niche modeling, plant morphology, and records from ancient Chinese sources, we showed that the specific route was shaped by the unique combinations of climatic constraints and farmer practices across Asia, which imposed divergent selection favoring higher yield in the south but short-season and more drought-tolerant accessions in the north. Our results suggest that mungbean did not radiate from the domestication center as expected purely under human activity, but instead, the spread of mungbean cultivation is highly constrained by climatic adaptation, echoing the idea that human commensals are more difficult to spread through the south-north axis of continents. Mungbean, also known as green gram, is an important crop plant in China, India, the Philippines and many other countries across Asia. Archaeological evidence suggests that humans first cultivated mungbeans from wild relatives in India over 4,000 years ago. However, it remains unclear how cultivation has spread to other countries and whether human activity alone dictated the route of the cultivated mungbean’s expansion across Asia, or whether environmental factors, such as climate, also had an impact. To understand how a species of plant has evolved, researchers may collect specimens from the wild or from cultivated areas. Each group of plants of the same species they collect in a given location at a single point in time is known collectively as an accession. Ong et al. used a combination of genome sequencing, computational modelling and plant biology approaches to study more than 1,000 accessions of cultivated mungbean and trace the route of the crop’s expansion across Asia. The data support the archaeological evidence that mungbean cultivation first spread from South Asia to Southeast Asia, then spread northwards to East Asia and afterwards to Central Asia. Computational modelling of local climates and the physical characteristics of different mungbean accessions suggest that the availability of water in the local area likely influenced the route. Specifically, accessions from arid Central Asia were better adapted to drought conditions than accessions from wetter South Asia. However, these drought adaptations decreased the yield of the plants, which may explain why the more drought tolerant accessions have not been widely grown in wetter parts of Asia. This study shows that human activity has not solely dictated where mungbean has been cultivated. Instead, both human activity and the various adaptations accessions evolved in response to their local environments shaped the route the crop took across Asia. In the future these findings may help plant breeders to identify varieties of mungbean and other crops with drought tolerance and other potentially useful traits for agriculture.

Recently, there has been a substantial increase in high‐throughput technologies that generate highly complex large datasets for use in the sciences. Plant breeding and genetics have benefited from this data explosion where many public and private institutions now implement genomic and phenomic data to predict performance thus informing germplasm selection. However, the multitude of methodologies and data generates a situation of strategic uncertainty. We set out to compare different methods of genomic and phenomic selection in the Capsicum core collection, developed through the G2P‐SOL project, producing a combination of unique and similar selected genotypes for heat tolerance. Combined, the methods tested identified a total of 33 genotypes that show tremendous promise for use as parents in heat tolerance breeding: with 13 of these being present in more than 1 selection method. Combining classical and multispectral phenotyping methods produced better selection results than either method alone. When each method was conducted without being informed by the other, similar results were obtained. Our weighted rank‐sum selection index identified 10 entries across environments that show heat tolerance, 8 of which are also selected within heat environments. This suggests that different breeding programs can reach similar results despite having different logistical constraints. Our case study within pepper germplasm using phenomic and genomic data exhibits the potential to compensate for the dearth of germplasm knowledge with high‐throughput data as well as the converse, to compensate for logistical or financial constraint to new technologies with breeder knowledge. Core Ideas Combining classical phenotyping and multispectral phenotyping performed better than either method alone. Selection Indices combining genomic and phenomic data provided increased prediction accuracy in stress environments. There was overlap between selection methods, indicating progress can be made by using new technologies.

Background This study used a scenario- and discussion-based approach to teach preclinical medical students the socio-philosophical aspects of psychiatry and qualitatively evaluated the learning outcomes in a medical humanities course in Taiwan. Methods The seminar session focused on three hypothetical psychiatry cases. Students discussed the cases in groups and were guided by facilitators from multiple disciplines and professions. At the end of the semester, students submitted a narrative report comprising their reflections on the cases and discussions. The authors utilized content analysis to categorize students’ narratives into three facets, namely, the philosophical, social and individual. Results In total 163 preclinical medical students participated in the class; 150 of them mentioned the scenario-based lesson in their reports; 33.3% of these reports discussed the case at the philosophical dimension ( n  = 50), 45.3% at the social dimension ( n  = 68), and 26.6% at the individual dimension ( n  = 40). Four major themes emerged: (1) a psychiatric diagnosis has far-reaching consequences for an individual’s life, (2) the social structure affects how patients experience psychiatric disorders, (3) students related personal experience or those of friends and family to understand psychiatric disorders, and (4) medical humanities are of particular importance in psychiatric education. Conclusions This study demonstrated that the scenario-based discussions led by a multidisciplinary team of facilitators can benefit medical students with limited clinical experience to contemplate the socio-philosophical aspects of psychiatry. The authors suggest that this pedagogical model during preclinical education should be encouraged.

Grown on 7 million ha, mungbean is a warm‐season grain legume with regional importance in parts of Asia and Africa. Under forecasted climate change, due to its tolerance to drought and heat, the short crop duration, and its nutritional properties, mungbean could serve to fill an important need for human diets. However, selection of accessions becomes difficult where plant and consumer market variation is large. We performed selection on genebank accessions, specifically the mini‐core collection at the World Vegetable Center, for yield and yield component traits. Our selection index uses refined accuracy by leveraging genomics, phenomics, and genotype‐by‐environment interactions. Best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) is used to predict the genotypic effects of the 292 mini‐core accessions toward seed yield based on genomic relationships formed from ∼200,000 SNPs. We expanded BLUP analysis to predict phenotypic effects based on the phenomic relationships formed from ∼75,000 measurements from three‐dimensional multispectral data. While this method is restricted to a single environment, our multi‐environment trials across eight countries and 4 years serve to quantify the genotype‐by‐environment effect. K‐fold cross‐validation finds predictive ability to vary by methods but to be related to the narrow‐sense heritability of the yield component trait. Our weighted rank sum index (WRSI) linearly combines yield component traits to proxy yield within our single environment phenomics trial by first ranking genomic and/or phenomic BLUPs, then weighting by predictive accuracy from the cross‐validated model, and then summing the component weighted ranks for each accession. Selections were made from the predicted random effects in each location, identifying three accessions overlapping across both methodologies: PI 369787 (VI001339A‐G) and EG‐MD‐6D (VI000380A‐G) from the Philippines, and PI 363534 (VI003220A‐G) from India. Core Ideas Core collections are key place to identify useful variation for crop improvement. Combining genomic and phenomic information improves prediction accuracy. Selection indices from single‐environment trials show overlaps with selection in multi‐environment trials.

More than 1.5 million people suffer from Retinitis Pigmentosa, with many experiencing partial to complete vision loss. Regenerative therapies offer some hope, but their development is challenged by the limited regenerative capacity of mammalian model systems. As a step toward investigating regenerative therapies, we developed a zebrafish model of Retinitis Pigmentosa that displays ongoing regeneration. We used Tol2 transgenesis to express mouse rhodopsin carrying the P23H mutation and an epitope tag in zebrafish rod photoreceptors. Adult and juvenile fish were examined by immunofluorescence, TUNEL and BrdU incorporation assays. P23H transgenic fish expressed the transgene in rods from 3 days post fertilization onward. Rods expressing the mutant rhodopsin formed very small or no outer segments and the mutant protein was delocalized over the entire cell. Adult fish displayed thinning of the outer nuclear layer (ONL) and loss of rod outer segments, but retained a single, sparse row of rods. Adult fish displayed ongoing apoptotic cell death in the ONL and an abundance of proliferating cells, predominantly in the ONL. There was a modest remodeling of bipolar and Müller glial cells. This transgenic fish will provide a useful model system to study rod photoreceptor regeneration and integration.