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Background Medicago ruthenica , a wild and perennial legume forage widely distributed in semi-arid grasslands, is distinguished by its outstanding tolerance to environmental stress. It is a close relative of commonly cultivated forage of alfalfa ( Medicago sativa ). The high tolerance of M. ruthenica to environmental stress makes this species a valuable genetic resource for understanding and improving traits associated with tolerance to harsh environments. Results We sequenced and assembled genome of M. ruthenica using an integrated approach, including PacBio, Illumina, 10×Genomics, and Hi-C. The assembled genome was 904.13 Mb with scaffold N50 of 99.39 Mb, and 50,162 protein-coding genes were annotated. Comparative genomics and transcriptomic analyses were used to elucidate mechanisms underlying its tolerance to environmental stress. The expanded FHY3/FAR1 family was identified to be involved in tolerance of M. ruthenica to drought stress. Many genes involved in tolerance to abiotic stress were retained in M. ruthenica compared to other cultivated Medicago species. Hundreds of candidate genes associated with drought tolerance were identified by analyzing variations in single nucleotide polymorphism using accessions of M. ruthenica with varying tolerance to drought. Transcriptomic data demonstrated the involvements of genes related to transcriptional regulation, stress response, and metabolic regulation in tolerance of M. ruthenica. Conclusions We present a high-quality genome assembly and identification of drought-related genes in the wild species of M. ruthenica , providing a valuable resource for genomic studies on perennial legume forages.

Light fields contain a wealth of information about real-world scenes and can be easily acquired by commercial light field cameras. However, the trade-off between angular and spatial resolution is inevitable. This paper proposes an end-to-end light field angular super-resolution network by exploiting structure and scene information to mitigate this problem. First, a Light Field ResBlock is proposed to explicitly extract epipolar plane image features and scene features. The epipolar plane image features with obvious directionality represent light field structure information that contains correlations among different views, such as the intensity and depth consistencies. The scene features express scene information that depicts local details and global information and describes individual objects in a scene. The exploitation of light field structure and scene information can gather the intrinsic characteristics of light fields. Then, 4D deconvolution is employed to upsample the angular resolution based on the extracted features related to light field structure and scene. The utilization of 4D deconvolution preserves the connections among sparse views and generates new views with high correlations. Last but not least, the refinement network further exploiting LF structure and scene information is employed to alleviate the artifacts induced by too little angular information during the early stage of the model. Experiments on two different angular super-resolution tasks demonstrate that our method can achieve the best angular resolution enhancement performance on different datasets.

Key message All ten dehydrin genes from three Medicago species are responsive to different kinds of abiotic stress, and CAS31 confers transgenic plants salt tolerance by down-regulating HKT1 expression. Dehydrins are protective proteins playing crucial roles in the tolerance of plants to abiotic stresses. However, a full-scale and systemic analysis of total dehydrin genes in Medicago at the genome level is still lacking. In this study, we identified ten dehydrin genes from three Medicago species ( M . truncatula , M . ruthenica , and M . sativa ), categorizing the coding proteins into four types. Genome collinearity analysis among the three Medicago species revealed six orthologous gene pairs. Promoter regions of dehydrin genes contained various phytohormone- and stress-related cis -elements, and transcriptome analysis showed up-regulation of all ten dehydrin genes under different stress conditions. Transformation of dehydrin gene CAS31 increased the tolerance of transgenic seedlings compared with wild-type seedlings under salt stress. Our study demonstrated that transgenic seedlings maintained the more chlorophyll, accumulated more proline and less hydrogen peroxide and malondialdehyde than wild-type seedlings under salt stress. Further study revealed that CAS31 reduced Na + accumulation by down-regulating HKT1 expression under salt stress. These findings enhance our understanding of the dehydrin gene family in three Medicago species and provide insights into their mechanisms of tolerance.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are important components of grassland ecosystems and are sensitive to enhanced atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition. Enhanced N deposition has been widely reported to reduce species richness and alter species composition across different types of grasslands world‐wide. Despite extensive studies on effects of N deposition on AM fungal communities of grasslands, few studies have specifically focused on effects of N deposition on AM fungi associated with dominant species in grasslands. We investigated long‐term (12‐year) effects of N addition (80 kg ha−1 year−1) on AM fungal community richness in roots and rhizosphere biomass of two dominant plant species (forb Artemisia frigida and grass Stipa krylovii) in temperate steppes of northern China. We found that AM fungi associated with the two dominant plant species differed in their responses to N addition. Nitrogen addition led to a significant reduction in AM fungal richness colonized in roots, and biomass in the rhizosphere of A. frigida, while N addition had little impacts on AM fungi colonized in roots and rhizosphere of S. krylovii. Nitrogen addition significantly reduced AM fungal colonization in roots and AM fungal spore density in the rhizosphere soils of A. frigida. In contrast, N addition had no effect on AM fungal colonization in roots and spore density in the rhizosphere of S. krylovii. Nitrogen addition markedly suppressed photosynthetic rates in A. frigida due to excessive foliar accumulation of manganese. The N‐induced reduction in photosynthetic rates reduced allocation of C into roots in A. frigida, leading to a lower root/shoot ratio, and suppression of AM fungal community associated with A. frigida. The inhibition of AM fungi would render A. frigida less competitive in terms of acquisition of mineral nutrients in soils, thus contributing to its loss in the steppe community under conditions of elevated N deposition. These findings provide a mechanistic explanation for N‐evoked differential responses of AM fungal communities associated with A. frigida and S. krylovii by linking soil properties and host plants to AM fungal communities. A plain language summary is available for this article. Plain Language Summary

PurposeGrazing is a traditional way of grassland management in Inner Mongolia of China. Despite important roles of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) communities in grassland ecosystems, few studies have specifically focused on the effects of grazing on AMF communities in grassland, particularly at regional level.MethodsHigh-throughput sequencing technology was used to evaluate the effects of grazing on AMF communities along a 700-km transect that was characterized by a precipitation gradient and comprised of 10 pairs of ungrazed and grazed sites in temperate grasslands along the China-Mongolia border.ResultsGrazing significantly altered α and β diversity of AMF community along the precipitation gradient from southwest to northeast. α diversity of AMF community was positively correlated with plant species richness and percentage cover. Furthermore, α diversity of AMF community displayed a positive correlation with soil moisture and organic carbon but a negative correlation with pH. The response ratio of α diversity of AMF community displayed positive correlation with the response ratio of percentage cover. Analyses by db-RDA (distance-based redundancy analysis) and VPA (variance partitioning analysis) revealed that both vegetation and abiotic properties were involved in the grazing-induced changes in AMF communities.ConclusionsAMF communities exhibited distinct biogeographical patterns across a precipitation gradient from southwest to northeast in northern China. Grazing led to significant changes in the diversity of AMF communities at regional level. Both vegetation and abiotic attributes were linked to grazing-induced changes in AMF community of the temperate steppes.

The interleukin-1β-mitogen-activated protein kinase （MAPK） and NF-κB signaling pathways are involved in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis. Ebosin, a novel exopolysaccharide （EPS）, exhibits anti-inflammatory activity in rat collagen-induced arthritis by suppressing the production of tumor necrosis factor-s, interleukin-6 and interleukin-1β. The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of ebosin on NF-KB and MAPK signaling pathways mediated through interleukin-1β. in rat fibroblast-like synoviocytes （FLSs）. Western blotting showed decreased production of phosphorylated p38, JNK1, JNK2, IKKa, IKKa, and IκB in the cytoplasm and NF-κB in the nucleus upon ebosin treatment. The DNA-binding activity of NF-KB in the cell nucleus was also inhibited by ebosin treatment, as demonstrated using an electrophoresis mobility gel shift assay. Analysis of the results of the immunofluorescence assay also showed a reduced amount of NF-KB in the nucleus of cells affected by ebosin. These results provided evidence for the effects of ebosin on both interleukin-1β-mediated MAPK and NF-κB signaling pathways in rat FLSs. In addition, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay demonstrated that ebosin reduces the levels of matrix metalloproteinases MMP-1 and MMP-3 and the chemokines, interleukin-8 and RANTES. Thus, the results of the present study provide further evidence for understanding the medicinal activity of ebosin at a molecular level, therefore nominating this EPS as a potential therapeutic candidate for the treatment of rheumatic arthritis.

With the goal of achieving “carbon peak in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060”, as clearly proposed by China, the transportation sector will face long–term pressure on carbon emissions, and the application of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will usher in a rapid growth period. However, true “zero carbon” emissions cannot be separated from “green hydrogen”. Therefore, it is of practical significance to explore the feasibility of renewable energy hydrogen production in the context of hydrogen refueling stations, especially photovoltaic hydrogen production, which is applied to hydrogen refueling stations (hereinafter referred to “photovoltaic hydrogen refueling stations”). This paper takes a hydrogen refueling station in Shanghai with a supply capacity of 500 kg/day as the research object. Based on a characteristic analysis of the hydrogen demand of the hydrogen refueling station throughout the day, this paper studies and analyzes the system configuration, operation strategy, environmental effects, and economics of the photovoltaic hydrogen refueling station. It is estimated that when the hydrogen price is no less than 6.23 USD, the photovoltaic hydrogen refueling station has good economic benefits. Additionally, compared with the conventional hydrogen refueling station, it can reduce carbon emissions by approximately 1237.28 tons per year, with good environmental benefits.

A strain SDU10 was isolated from swine manure compost and identified as Pseudomonas stutzeri SDU10. It demonstrated excellent capability in NH4+-N removal. Optimal conditions of NH4+-N removal were determined, which were sodium acetate as the optimal carbon source, carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratio of 10, temperature of 30 °C, pH of 7.0. Especially, P. stutzeri SDU10 could remove high concentration NH4+-N of 1500.0 and 2000.0 mg/l in 120 h with the NH4+-N removal rates of 91.1% and 61.6%, respectively. In batch experiments, the highest NH4+-N removal rate of 97.6% and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal rate of 94.2% were obtained at initial C/N ratio 10 during piggery wastewater treatment using P. stutzeri SDU10. Results showed that P. stutzeri SDU10 had the potential for treatment of wastewater of high NH4+-N concentration.

Although previous studies demonstrated that elevated C-reactive protein to albumin ratio (CAR) predicted poor prognosis in various solid tumors, little was known about the prognostic value of CAR in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer (APC). The aim of the present study was to assess CAR as one independent prognostic factor in predicting overall survival (OS) in APC patients who had received palliative chemotherapy. Data of 142 APC patients who received palliative chemotherapy between 2009 and 2014 were retrospectively documented. We classified the patients into two groups based on the optimal cutoff value of CAR identified by generating receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve. The clinicopathological parameters were compared between two CAR groups. Pearson correlation test showed that the level of C-reactive protein (CRP) was inversely correlated with albumin (r = −0.387; P < 0.001). Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated overall survival (OS) was significantly longer in CAR < 0.156 group than CAR ≥ 0.156 group (11.2 vs 5.9 months, P < 0.001). CAR was an independent prognostic factor for OS in the Cox regression model (HR, 1.623; 95% CI, 1.093–2.410; P = 0.016). Furthermore, the discrimination ability of CAR (AUC = 0.648, P = 0.025) was slightly higher than that of other inflammation-based factors. Therefore, pretreatment CAR could be an independent prognostic biomarker for APC patients.

A new heterotrophic nitrifying bacterium was isolated from the compost of swine manure and rice husk and identified as Alcaligenes faecalis SDU20. Strain SDU20 had heterotrophic nitrification potential and could remove 99.7% of the initial NH4+–N. Nitrogen balance analysis revealed that 15.9 and 12.3% of the NH4+–N were converted into biological nitrogen and nitrate nitrogen, respectively. The remaining 71.44% could be converted into N2 or N2O. Single-factor experiments showed that the optimal conditions for ammonium removal were the carbon source of sodium succinate, C/N ratio 10, initial pH 8.0, and temperature 30 °C. Nitrification genes were determined to be upregulated when sodium succinate was used as the carbon source analyzed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Strain SDU20 could tolerate 4% salinity and show resistance to some heavy metal ions. Strain SDU20 removed 72.6% high concentrated NH4+–N of 2000 mg/L within 216 h. In a batch experiment, the highest NH4+–N removal efficiency of 98.7% and COD removal efficiency of 93.7% were obtained in the treatment of unsterilized swine wastewater. Strain SDU20 is promising in high-ammonium wastewater treatment.