Explore the vast range of titles available.

Heart disease, including myocardial infarction (MI), remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, necessitating the development of more effective regenerative therapies. Direct reprogramming of cardiomyocyte-like cells from resident fibroblasts offers a promising avenue for myocardial regeneration, but its efficiency and consistency in generating functional cardiomyocytes remain limited. Alternatively, reprogramming induced cardiac progenitor cells (iCPCs) could generate essential cardiac lineages, but existing methods often involve complex procedures. These limitations underscore the need for advanced mechanistic insights and refined reprogramming strategies to improve reparative outcomes in the heart. Partial cellular fate transitions, while still a relatively less well-defined area and primarily explored in longevity and neurobiology, hold remarkable promise for cardiac repair. It enables the reprogramming or rejuvenation of resident cardiac cells into a stem or progenitor-like state with enhanced cardiogenic potential, generating the reparative lineages necessary for comprehensive myocardial recovery while reducing safety risks. As an emerging strategy, partial cellular fate transitions play a pivotal role in reversing myocardial infarction damage and offer substantial potential for therapeutic innovation. This review will summarize current advances in these areas, including recent findings involving two transcription factors that critically regulate stemness and cardiogenesis. It will also explore considerations for further refining these approaches to enhance their therapeutic potential and safety.

Sall4 as a pivotal transcription factor has been extensively studied across diverse biological processes, including stem cell biology, embryonic development, hematopoiesis, tissue stem/progenitor maintenance, and the progression of various cancers. Recent research highlights Sall4’s emerging roles in modulating cardiac progenitors and cellular reprogramming, linking its functions to early heart development and regenerative medicine. These findings provide new insights into the critical functions of Sall4 in cardiobiology. This review explores Sall4’s complex molecular mechanisms and their implications for advancing cardiac regenerative medicine.

A major challenge in rice (Oryza sativa L.) production is to enhance water use efficiency (WUE) and maintain or even increase grain yield. WUE, if defined as the biomass accumulation over water consumed, may be fairly constant for a given species in given climate. WUE can be enhanced by less irrigation. However, such enhancement is largely a trade-off against lower biomass production. If WUE is defined as the grain production per unit amount of water irrigated, it would be possible to increase WUE without compromising grain yield through the manipulation of harvest index. Harvest index has been shown to be a variable factor in crop production, and in many situations, it is closely associated with WUE and grain yield in cereals. Taking rice as an example, this paper discussed crop management techniques that can enhance harvest index. Several practices such as post-anthesis controlled soil drying, alternate wetting and moderate soil drying regimes during the whole growing season, and non-flooded straw mulching cultivation, could substantially enhance WUE and maintain or even increase grain yield of rice, mainly via improved canopy structure, source activity, sink strength, and enhanced remobilization of pre-stored carbon reserves from vegetative tissues to grains. All the work has proved that a proper crop management holds great promise to enhance harvest index and, consequently, achieve the dual goal of increasing grain production and saving water.

In recent years, there has been substantial progress in our knowledge of the molecular pathways by which stem cell factor SALL4 regulates the embryonic stem cell (ESC) properties, developmental events, and human cancers. This review summarizes recent advances in the biology of SALL4 with a focus on its regulatory functions in normal and leukemic hematopoiesis. In the normal hematopoietic system, expression of SALL4 is mainly enriched in the bone marrow hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSCs/HPCs), but is rapidly silenced following lineage differentiation. In hematopoietic malignancies, however, SALL4 expression is abnormally re-activated and linked with deteriorated disease status in patients. Further, SALL4 activation participates in the pathogenesis of tumor initiation and disease progression. Thus, a better understanding of SALL4’s biologic functions and mechanisms will facilitate development of advanced targeted anti-leukemia approaches in future.

Increasing leaf transpiration efficiency (TE) may provide leads for growing rice like dryland cereals such as wheat (Triticum aestivum). To explore avenues for improving TE in rice, variations in stomatal conductance (gs ) and mesophyll conductance (gm ) and their anatomical determinants were evaluated in two cultivars from each of lowland, aerobic, and upland groups of Oryza sativa, one cultivar of O. glaberrima, and two cultivars of T. aestivum, under three water regimes. The TE of upland rice, O. glaberrima, and wheat was more responsive to the gm/gs ratio than that of lowland and aerobic rice. Overall, the explanatory power of the particular anatomical trait varied among species. Low stomatal density mostly explained the low gs in drought-tolerant rice, whereas rice genotypes with smaller stomata generally responded more strongly to drought. Compared with rice, wheat had a higher gm , which was associated with thicker mesophyll tissue, mesophyll and chloroplasts more exposed to intercellular spaces, and thinner cell walls. Upland rice, O. glaberrima, and wheat cultivars minimized the decrease in gm under drought by maintaining high ratios of chloroplasts to exposed mesophyll cell walls. Rice TE could be improved by increasing the gm/gs ratio via modifying anatomical traits.

Aims To face the challenge of decreasing freshwater availability for agriculture, it is important to explore avenues for developing rice genotypes that can be grown like dryland cereals. Roots play a key role in plant adaptation to dry environments. Methods We examined anatomical and histochemical root traits that affect water acquisition in rice ( Oryza sativa ) and wheat ( Triticum aestivum ). These traits and root growth were measured at two developmental stages for three rice and two wheat cultivars that were grown in pots under three water regimes. Results Wheat roots had larger xylem sizes than rice roots, which potentially led to a higher axial conductance, especially under water-deficit conditions. Suberization, lignification and thickening of the endodermis in rice roots increased with increasing water deficit, resulting in stronger radial barriers for water flow in rice than in wheat, especially near the root apex. In addition, water deficit strongly impeded root growth and lateral root proliferation in rice, but only slightly in wheat, and cultivars within a species differed little in these responses. The stress sensitivity of rice attributes was slightly more prominent at vegetative than at flowering stages. Conclusions Rice root characteristics, which are essential for growth under inundated conditions, are not conducive to growth under water deficit. Although rice roots show considerable plasticity under different watering regimes, improving root xylem size and reducing the radial barriers would be required if rice is to grow like dryland cereals.

Science and technology （S＆T） are the first productivity, However, S＆T must be mastered by users and then can become the practical productivity. Annually there are about 25,000 registered S＆T achievements in China, but the trans- formation efficiency from these achievements into practical productivity is less than 50% （Zhang and Guo, 2010）. In the rural areas of China, the transformation efficiency from agricultural S＆T achievements into farmers＇ productivity is lower, due to the small size of farms, lack of knowledge, information and resources and other factors.

Monocarpic plants require the initiation of whole-plant senescence to remobilize and transfer assimilates pre-stored in vegetative tissues to grains. Delayed whole-plant senescence caused by either heavy use of nitrogen fertilizer or adoption of lodging-resistant cultivars/hybrids that remain green when the grains are due to ripen results in a low harvest index with much nonstructural carbohydrate (NSC) left in the straw. Usually, water stress during the grain-filling period induces early senescence, reduces photosynthesis, and shortens the grain-filling period; however, it increases the remobilization of NSC from the vegetative tissues to the grain. If mild soil drying is properly controlled during the later grain-filling period in rice (Oryza sativa) and wheat (Triticum aestivum), it can enhance whole-plant senescence, lead to faster and better remobilization of carbon from vegetative tissues to grains, and accelerate the grain-filling rate. In cases where plant senescence is unfavorably delayed, such as by heavy use of nitrogen and the introduction of hybrids with strong heterosis, the gain from the enhanced remobilization and accelerated grain-filling rate can outweigh the loss of reduced photosynthesis and the shortened grain-filling period, leading to an increased grain yield, better harvest index and higher water-use efficiency.

Rice is one of the most important food crops in the world, and amino acids in rice grains are major nutrition sources for the people in countries where rice is the staple food. Phytohormones and plant growth regulators play vital roles in regulating the biosynthesis of amino acids in plants. This paper reviewed the content and compositions of amino acids and their distribution in different parts of ripe rice grains, and the biosynthesis and metabolism of amino acids and their regulation by polyamines (PAs) and phytohormones in filling grains, with a focus on the roles of higher PAs (spermidine and spermine), ethylene, and brassinosteroids (BRs) in this regulation. Recent studies have shown that higher PAs and BRs (24-epibrassinolide and 28-homobrassinolide) play positive roles in mediating the biosynthesis of amino acids in rice grains, mainly by enhancing the activities of the enzymes involved in amino acid biosynthesis and sucrose-to-starch conversion and maintaining redox homeostasis. In contrast, ethylene may impede amino acid biosynthesis by inhibiting the activities of the enzymes involved in amino acid biosynthesis and elevating reactive oxygen species. Further research is needed to unravel the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of the content and compositions of amino acids in the filling grain and their relationship with the content and compositions of amino acids in different parts of a ripe grain, to elucidate the cross-talk between or among phytohormones in mediating the anabolism of amino acids, and to establish the regulation techniques for promoting the biosynthesis of amino acids in rice grains.

Light is the driving force of plant growth, providing the energy required for photosynthesis. However, photosynthesis is also vulnerable to light-induced damage caused by the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Plants have therefore evolved various protective mechanisms such as non-photochemical quenching ( ) to dissipate excessively absorbed solar energy as heat; however, photoinhibition and represent a significant loss in solar energy and photosynthetic efficiency, which lowers the yield potential in crops. To estimate light capture and light energy conversion in rice, a genotype with pale green leaves ( ) and a normally pigmented control (Z802) were subjected to high (HL) and low light (LL). Chlorophyll content, light absorption, chloroplast micrographs, abundance of light-harvesting complex (LHC) binding proteins, electron transport rates (ETR), photochemical and non-photochemical quenching, and generation of ROS were subsequently examined. had a smaller size of light-harvesting chlorophyll antenna and absorbed less photons than Z802. and the generation of ROS were also low, while photosystem II efficiency and ETR were high, resulting in improved photosynthesis and less photoinhibition in than Z802. Chlorophyll synthesis and solar conversion efficiency were higher in under HL compared to LL treatment, while Z802 showed an opposite trend due to the high level of photoinhibition under HL. In Z802, excessive absorption of solar energy not only increased the generation of ROS and , but also exacerbated the effects of increases in temperature, causing midday depression in photosynthesis. These results suggest that photosynthesis and yield potential in rice could be enhanced by truncated light-harvesting chlorophyll antenna size.