Remodeling of the cell wall as a drought-tolerance mechanism of a soybean genotype revealed by global gene expression analysis.

Unlabelled: Drought stress is major abiotic stress that affects soybean production. Therefore, it is widely desirable that soybean becomes more tolerant to stress. To provide insights into regulatory mechanisms of the stress response, we compared the global gene expression profiles from leaves of two soybean genotypes that display different responses to water-deficit (BR 16 and Embrapa 48, drought-sensitive and drought-tolerant, respectively).

GmNAC81 Inversely Modulates Leaf Senescence and Drought Tolerance.

NAC81 (GmNAC81) is a downstream effector of the DCD/NRP-mediated cell death signaling, which interacts with GmNAC30 to fully induce the caspase 1-like vacuolar processing enzyme (VPE) expression, the executioner of the cell death program. GmNAC81 has been previously shown to positively modulate leaf senescence via the NRP/GmNAC81/VPE signaling module. Here, we examined the transcriptome induced by overexpression and leaf senescence and showed that GmNAC81 further modulates leaf senescence by regulating an extensive repertoire of functionally characterized senescence-associated genes (SAGs).

The receptor-like kinase NIK1 targets FLS2/BAK1 immune complex and inversely modulates antiviral and antibacterial immunity.

Plants deploy various immune receptors to recognize pathogens and defend themselves. Crosstalk may happen among receptor-mediated signal transduction pathways in the same host during simultaneous infection of different pathogens. However, the related function of the receptor-like kinases (RLKs) in thwarting different pathogens remains elusive.

Revisiting the Soybean GmNAC Superfamily.

The (NAM, ATAF, and CUC) genes encode transcription factors involved with the control of plant morph-physiology and stress responses. The release of the last soybean genome assembly (Wm82.a2.

E2F1 somatic mutation within miRNA target site impairs gene regulation in colorectal cancer.

Background: Genetic studies have largely concentrated on the impact of somatic mutations found in coding regions, and have neglected mutations outside of these. However, 3' untranslated regions (3' UTR) mutations can also disrupt or create miRNA target sites, and trigger oncogene activation or tumor suppressor inactivation.

Methods: We used next-generation sequencing to widely screen for genetic alterations within predicted miRNA target sites of oncogenes associated with colorectal cancer, and evaluated the functional impact of a new somatic mutation.

Tissue-Associated Bacterial Alterations in Rectal Carcinoma Patients Revealed by 16S rRNA Community Profiling.

Sporadic and inflammatory forms of colorectal cancer (CRC) account for more than 80% of cases. Recent publications have shown mechanistic evidence for the involvement of gut bacteria in the development of both CRC-forms. Whereas, colon and rectal cancer have been routinely studied together as CRC, increasing evidence show these to be distinct diseases.

Functional and regulatory conservation of the soybean ER stress-induced DCD/NRP-mediated cell death signaling in plants.

Background: The developmental and cell death domain (DCD)-containing asparagine-rich proteins (NRPs) were first identified in soybean (Glycine max) as transducers of a cell death signal derived from prolonged endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, osmotic stress, drought or developmentally-programmed leaf senescence via the GmNAC81/GmNAC30/GmVPE signaling module. In spite of the relevance of the DCD/NRP-mediated signaling as a versatile adaptive response to multiple stresses, mechanistic knowledge of the pathway is lacking and the extent to which this pathway may operate in the plant kingdom has not been investigated.

Results: Here, we demonstrated that the DCD/NRP-mediated signaling also propagates a stress-induced cell death signal in other plant species with features of a programmed cell death (PCD) response.

The Stress-Induced Soybean NAC Transcription Factor GmNAC81 Plays a Positive Role in Developmentally Programmed Leaf Senescence.

The onset of leaf senescence is a highly regulated developmental change that is controlled by both genetics and the environment. Senescence is triggered by massive transcriptional reprogramming, but functional information about its underlying regulatory mechanisms is limited. In the current investigation, we performed a functional analysis of the soybean (Glycine max) osmotic stress- and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-induced NAC transcription factor GmNAC81 during natural leaf senescence using overexpression studies and reverse genetics.

ICRmax: an optimized approach to detect tumor-specific interchromosomal rearrangements for clinical application.

Somatically acquired chromosomal rearrangements occur at early stages during tumorigenesis and can be used to indirectly detect tumor cells, serving as highly sensitive and tumor-specific biomarkers. Advances in high-throughput sequencing have allowed the genome-wide identification of patient-specific chromosomal rearrangements to be used as personalized biomarkers to efficiently assess response to treatment, detect residual disease and monitor disease recurrence. However, sequencing and data processing costs still represent major obstacles for the widespread application of personalized biomarkers in oncology.