The Impact of Climate Change on the Resistance of Rice Near-Isogenic Lines with Resistance Genes Against Brown Planthopper.

Background: The impact of climate change on insect resistance genes is elusive. Hence, we investigated the responses of rice near-isogenic lines (NILs) that carry resistance genes against brown planthopper (BPH) under different environmental conditions.

Results: We tested these NILs under three environmental settings (the atmospheric temperature with corresponding carbon dioxide at the ambient, year 2050 and year 2100) based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prediction.

Confidence limits for conformance proportions in normal mixture models.

Conformance proportions are important numerical indices for quality assessments. When the population is characterized by a normal mixture model, estimating conformance proportions can be a practical issue. To account for the inherent structure of normal mixture models, universal and individual conformance proportions are first defined for the purpose of evaluating the overall population and specific subpopulations of interest, respectively.

The Role of Plant Abiotic Factors on the Interactions Between Cnaphalocrocis medinalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) and its Host Plant.

Atmospheric temperature increases along with increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration. This is a major concern for agroecosystems. Although the impact of an elevated temperature or increased CO2 has been widely reported, there are few studies investigating the combined effect of these two environmental factors on plant-insect interactions.

An Exhaustive Scan Method for SNP Main Effects and SNP × SNP Interactions Over Highly Homozygous Genomes.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been a powerful tool for exploring potential relationships between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and biological traits. For screening out important genetic variants, it is desired to perform an exhaustive scan over a whole genome. However, this is usually a challenging and daunting task in computation, due mainly to the large number of SNPs in GWAS.

Statistical designs for two-color spotted microarray experiments.

Two-color cDNA or oligonucleotide-based spotted microarrays have been commonly used in measuring the expression levels of thousands of genes simultaneously. To realize the immense potential of this powerful new technology, budgeted within limited resources or other constraints, practical designs with high efficiencies are in demand. In this study, we address the design issue concerning the arrangement of the mRNA samples labeled with fluorescent dyes and hybridized on the slides.