Promising Application of Automated Liquid Culture System and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi for Large-Scale Micropropagation of Red Dragon Fruit.

Red dragon fruit () is an economic and promising fruit crop in arid and semi-arid regions with water shortage. An automated liquid culture system using bioreactors is a potential tool for micropropagation and large-scale production. In this study, axillary cladode multiplication of was assessed using cladode tips and cladode segments in gelled culture versus continuous immersion air-lift bioreactors (with or without a net).

Vegetation and condition of arid rangeland ecosystem in Central Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia rangeland ecosystems have undergone intense processes of degradation for many decades because of extreme climate and human activities such as overgrazing and socioeconomic changes. In this study, Hail and Qassim Regions of Saudi Arabia covering an area about 79610.73 km were selected to study the rangeland vegetation and condition.

Evaluation of genetic diversity of Forssk from Saudi Arabia.

The genetic diversity of 177 accessions of Forssk, representing ten populations collected from four geographical regions in Saudi Arabia, was analyzed using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. A set of four primer-pairs with two/three selective nucleotides scored 836 AFLP amplified fragments (putative loci/genome landmarks), all of which were polymorphic. Populations collected from the southern region of the country showed the highest genetic diversity parameters, whereas those collected from the central regions showed the lowest values.

Systematic Evaluation of Pleiotropy Identifies 6 Further Loci Associated With Coronary Artery Disease.

Background: Genome-wide association studies have so far identified 56 loci associated with risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). Many CAD loci show pleiotropy; that is, they are also associated with other diseases or traits.

Objectives: This study sought to systematically test if genetic variants identified for non-CAD diseases/traits also associate with CAD and to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the extent of pleiotropy of all CAD loci.

Coding Variation in ANGPTL4, LPL, and SVEP1 and the Risk of Coronary Disease.

Background: The discovery of low-frequency coding variants affecting the risk of coronary artery disease has facilitated the identification of therapeutic targets.

Methods: Through DNA genotyping, we tested 54,003 coding-sequence variants covering 13,715 human genes in up to 72,868 patients with coronary artery disease and 120,770 controls who did not have coronary artery disease. Through DNA sequencing, we studied the effects of loss-of-function mutations in selected genes.