Modeling plant phenotypic plasticity and its underlying genetic architecture: a comparative study.

Phenotypic plasticity can contribute to crop adaptation to challenging environments. Plasticity indices are potentially useful to identify the genetic basis of crop phenotypic plasticity. Numerous methods exist to measure phenotypic plasticity.

Quantitative trait loci for grain mineral element accumulation in Vietnamese rice landraces.

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a staple food for half of the world's population, and its biofortification is a key factor in fighting micronutrient malnutrition. However, harmful heavy metals tend to accumulate in rice grains due to soil and water contamination.

[Using metaphor and art to talk about death with occupational therapy students].

Addressing the topic of death is essential to empower healthcare professionals to work with people, but there is a lack of training in this area. This study presents the perceptions of students and educators regarding the use of metaphor and artistic creation to explore values, prejudices, emotions, and experiential knowledge related to death. The pedagogical innovation allowed students to reflect on and express their perceptions of death, while also experiencing a listening posture, thereby contributing to the development of communication skills, among others.

Comprehensive mass spectrometric metabolomic profiling of a chemically diverse collection of plants of the Celastraceae family.

Natural products exhibit interesting structural features and significant biological activities. The discovery of new bioactive molecules is a complex process that requires high-quality metabolite profiling data to properly target the isolation of compounds of interest and enable their complete structural characterization. The same metabolite profiling data can also be used to better understand chemotaxonomic links between species.

Integration of Wnt-inhibitory activity and structural novelty scoring results to uncover novel bioactive natural products: new Bicyclo[3.3.1]non-3-ene-2,9-diones from the leaves of .

In natural products (NPs) research, methods for the efficient prioritization of natural extracts (NEs) are key for discovering novel bioactive NPs. In this study a biodiverse collection of 1,600 NEs, previously analyzed by UHPLC-HRMS metabolite profiling was screened for Wnt pathway regulation. The results of the biological screening drove the selection of a subset of 30 non-toxic NEs with an inhibitory IC ≤ 5 g/mL.

A Case Study from the Overexpression of OsTZF5, Encoding a CCCH Tandem Zinc Finger Protein, in Rice Plants Across Nineteen Yield Trials.

Background: Development of transgenic rice overexpressing transcription factors involved in drought response has been previously reported to confer drought tolerance and therefore represents a means of crop improvement. We transformed lowland rice IR64 with OsTZF5, encoding a CCCH-tandem zinc finger protein, under the control of the rice LIP9 stress-inducible promoter and compared the drought response of transgenic lines and nulls to IR64 in successive screenhouse paddy and field trials up to the T generation.

Results: Compared to the well-watered conditions, the level of drought stress across experiments varied from a minimum of - 25 to - 75 kPa at a soil depth of 30 cm which reduced biomass by 30-55% and grain yield by 1-92%, presenting a range of drought severities.

A Sample-Centric and Knowledge-Driven Computational Framework for Natural Products Drug Discovery.

The ENPKG framework organizes large heterogeneous metabolomics data sets as a knowledge graph, offering exciting opportunities for drug discovery and chemodiversity characterization.

Keep in touch: the soil-root hydraulic continuum and its role in drought resistance in crops.

Drought is a major threat to food security worldwide. Recently, the root-soil interface has emerged as a major site of hydraulic resistance during water stress. Here, we review the impact of soil drying on whole-plant hydraulics and discuss mechanisms by which plants can adapt by modifying the properties of the rhizosphere either directly or through interactions with the soil microbiome.

Paraben exposure through drugs in the neonatal intensive care unit: a regional cohort study.

Environmental factors influence the development of very preterm infants (VPIs, born at less than 32 weeks of gestation). It is important to identify all potential sources of paraben exposure in these vulnerable infants. We aimed to quantify paraben exposure via drug administration in a cohort of VPI cared for in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).

Water use efficiency across scales: from genes to landscapes.

Water scarcity is already set to be one of the main issues of the 21st century, because of competing needs between civil, industrial, and agricultural use. Agriculture is currently the largest user of water, but its share is bound to decrease as societies develop and clearly it needs to become more water efficient. Improving water use efficiency (WUE) at the plant level is important, but translating this at the farm/landscape level presents considerable challenges.

Open and reusable annotated mass spectrometry dataset of a chemodiverse collection of 1,600 plant extracts.

As privileged structures, natural products often display potent biological activities. However, the discovery of novel bioactive scaffolds is often hampered by the chemical complexity of the biological matrices they are found in. Large natural extract collections are thus extremely valuable for their chemical novelty potential but also complicated to exploit in the frame of drug-discovery projects.

Profiling of pyrrolizidine alkaloids using a retronecine-based untargeted metabolomics approach coupled to the quantitation of the retronecine-core in medicinal plants using UHPLC-QTOF.

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA) are secondary metabolites of high toxicological relevance. Several PA quantitative methodologies were developed based on a limited number of certified standards, including time consuming solid phase extraction (SPE) purification steps. Herein, we shed light on the variability of PA in herbal extracts and propose a quantification methodology based on ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) for the evaluation of the total PA content as retronecine-equivalents (RE) directly from crude matrices.

Social capital II: determinants of economic connectedness.

Low levels of social interaction across class lines have generated widespread concern and are associated with worse outcomes, such as lower rates of upward income mobility. Here we analyse the determinants of cross-class interaction using data from Facebook, building on the analysis in our companion paper. We show that about half of the social disconnection across socioeconomic lines-measured as the difference in the share of high-socioeconomic status (SES) friends between people with low and high SES-is explained by differences in exposure to people with high SES in groups such as schools and religious organizations.

Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility.

Social capital-the strength of an individual's social network and community-has been identified as a potential determinant of outcomes ranging from education to health. However, efforts to understand what types of social capital matter for these outcomes have been hindered by a lack of social network data. Here, in the first of a pair of papers, we use data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook to study social capital.

Genetic control of rhizosheath formation in pearl millet.

The rhizosheath, the layer of soil that adheres strongly to roots, influences water and nutrients acquisition. Pearl millet is a cereal crop that plays a major role for food security in arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa and India. We previously showed that root-adhering soil mass is a heritable trait in pearl millet and that it correlates with changes in rhizosphere microbiota structure and functions.

Optimizing Crop Water Use for Drought and Climate Change Adaptation Requires a Multi-Scale Approach.

Selection criteria that co-optimize water use efficiency and yield are needed to promote plant productivity in increasingly challenging and variable drought scenarios, particularly dryland cereals in the semi-arid tropics. Optimizing water use efficiency and yield fundamentally involves transpiration dynamics, where restriction of maximum transpiration rate helps to avoid early crop failure, while maximizing grain filling. Transpiration restriction can be regulated by multiple mechanisms and involves cross-organ coordination.

Physiological and genetic control of transpiration efficiency in African rice, Oryza glaberrima Steud.

Improving crop water use efficiency, the amount of carbon assimilated as biomass per unit of water used by a plant, is of major importance as water for agriculture becomes scarcer. In rice, the genetic bases of transpiration efficiency, the derivation of water use efficiency at the whole-plant scale, and its putative component trait transpiration restriction under high evaporative demand remain unknown. These traits were measured in 2019 in a panel of 147 African rice (Oryza glaberrima) genotypes known to be potential sources of tolerance genes to biotic and abiotic stresses.

Root traits for low input agroecosystems in Africa: Lessons from three case studies.

In many regions across Africa, agriculture is largely based on low-input and small-holder farming systems that use little inorganic fertilisers and have limited access to irrigation and mechanisation. Improving agricultural practices and developing new cultivars adapted to these environments, where production already suffers from climate change, is a major priority for food security. Here, we illustrate how breeding for specific root traits could improve crop resilience in Africa using three case studies covering very contrasting low-input agroecosystems.

Tracking domestic wastewater and road de-icing salt in a municipal drinking water reservoir: Acesulfame and chloride as co-tracers.

Developing strategies to identify the origins of contaminants in watersheds is crucial for source water protection. The use of multiple tracers improves the ability to identify contamination events originating from various land use activities. The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of acesulfame and chloride as co-tracers to represent the impact of pollution originating from wastewater and road de-icing on water quality in a municipal drinking water source.

Aquaporins are main contributors to root hydraulic conductivity in pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L) R. Br.].

Pearl millet is a key cereal for food security in arid and semi-arid regions but its yield is increasingly threatened by water stress. Physiological mechanisms relating to conservation of soil water or increased water use efficiency can alleviate that stress. Aquaporins (AQP) are water channels that mediate root water transport, thereby influencing plant hydraulics, transpiration and soil water conservation.

Leveraging genome-enabled growth models to study shoot growth responses to water deficit in rice.

Elucidating genotype-by-environment interactions and partitioning its contribution to phenotypic variation remains a challenge for plant scientists. We propose a framework that utilizes genome-wide markers to model genotype-specific shoot growth trajectories as a function of time and soil water availability. A rice diversity panel was phenotyped daily for 21 d using an automated, high-throughput image-based, phenotyping platform that enabled estimation of daily shoot biomass and soil water content.

Effect of Meniscal Repair on Joint Loading in Athletes With Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction at 3 Months Following Surgery.

Context: Joint loading following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACL-R) is thought to influence long-term outcomes. However, our understanding of the role of meniscus repair at the time of ACL-R on early joint loading is limited.

Objective: To assess if differences in total energy absorption and energy absorption contribution of the hip, knee, and ankle exist in the early stages of rehabilitation between patients who received an isolated ACL-R and those with concomitant meniscal repairs.

Neonatal Herpes Simplex Virus-1 Recurrence with Central Nervous System Disease in Twins after Completion of a Six-Month Course of Suppressive Therapy: Case Report.

Seventeen-day-old twins were hospitalized for neonatal herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) with central nervous system disease and internal capsule and thalamic lesions on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They were treated with the usual intravenous (IV) treatment and oral therapy for 6 months. The clinical course was good in both children with negative HSV polymerase chain reaction on completion of IV therapy.

Development of a model estimating root length density from root impacts on a soil profile in pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br). Application to measure root system response to water stress in field conditions.

Pearl millet is able to withstand dry and hot conditions and plays an important role for food security in arid and semi-arid areas of Africa and India. However, low soil fertility and drought constrain pearl millet yield. One target to address these constraints through agricultural practices or breeding is root system architecture.