Publications by authors named "Xiaofei Ling"
The white wax secreted by the male insects of the Chinese white wax scale (CWWS) is a natural high-molecular-weight compound with important economic value. However, its regulatory mechanism of wax biosynthesis is still unclear. In this study, a weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to analyze transcriptome data of first- and second-instar females, early and late female adults, and first- and second-instar males.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(Kerr) is an important lac insect extensively used in industrial products in the form of resin, wax and dye. The scarce knowledge on molecular markers for is a barrier in elucidating genetic information. Our study identified a total of 16,921 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and 6231 insertions and deletions (InDels)-of which, intergenic variation accounted for 41.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScale insects are hemimetabolous, showing "incomplete" metamorphosis and no true pupal stage. Ericerus pela, commonly known as the white wax scale insect (hereafter, WWS), is a wax-producing insect found in Asia and Europe. WWS displays dramatic sexual dimorphism, with notably different metamorphic fates in males and females.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReasonable design and development of a low-cost and high-efficiency bifunctional electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is essential for promoting the development of Zinc-air battery technology. Herein, we obtained an integrated catalytic electrode, NiFe nanoparticles supported on nitrogen-doped carbon (NC) directly grown on the carbon cloth (designated as NiFe@NC/CC), by pyrolysis of bimetallic NiFe metal-organic framework (MOF) precursor. There is a synergistic effect between nickel and iron component, which enhances the bifunctional catalytic activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLac is a type of natural resin secreted by lac insects and is widely used in the military and other industries because of its excellent adhesion and insulation properties. The main ingredients of lac are lactones and lactides, which are formed from hydroxy fatty acids and sesquiterpene esters. In this study, we measured lac secretion rates by the insect at different developmental stages and identified lac secretion-minimum and lac secretion-active stages of the insect.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe development of high-efficiency, low-cost, and earth-abundant electrocatalysts for overall water splitting remains a challenge. In this work, Ni-modified MoS hybrid catalysts are grown on carbon cloth (Ni-Mo-S@CC) through a one-step hydrothermal treatment. The optimized Ni-Mo-S@CC catalyst shows excellent hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity with a low overpotential of 168 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm in 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZinc-air battery has drawn increasing attention from the whole world owing to its large energy capacity, stable working voltage, environmentally friendship, and low price. A special porous Zn with three-dimensional (3D) network frame structure, whose multistage average pore sizes can be tuned from 300 to 8 um, is synthesized in this work. It is found that there is a competition between Zn and for their reduction on the supports.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith the inspiration of developing bifunctional electrode materials for reversible oxygen electrocatalysis, one strategy of heteroatom doping is proposed to fabricate dual metal single-atom catalysts. However, the identification and mechanism functions of polynary single-atom structures remain elusive. Atomically dispersed binary Co-Ni sites embedded in N-doped hollow carbon nanocubes (denoted as CoNi-SAs/NC) are synthesized via proposed pyrolysis of dopamine-coated metal-organic frameworks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInsect hormones regulate metamorphosis including that leading to sexual dimorphism. Using RNA-Seq, we discovered that the second-instar male larva (SM) of the white wax insect, Ericerus pela, have 5,968 and 8,620 differentially expressed transcripts compared with the second-instar female larva (SF) and the first-instar male larva (FM), respectively. The expression levels of genes involved in the apoptosis of old tissues and the reconstruction of new ones in the SM significantly enhanced, while the SF mainly has enhanced expression levels of anabolic genes such as chitin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe size effect of transition-metal nanoparticles on electrocatalytic performance remains ambiguous especially when decreasing the size to the atomic level. Herein, we report the spatial isolation of cobalt species on the atomic scale, which was achieved by tuning the zinc dopant content in predesigned bimetallic Zn/Co zeolitic imidazole frameworks (ZnCo-ZIFs), and led to the synthesis of nanoparticles, atomic clusters, and single atoms of Co catalysts on N-doped porous carbon. This synthetic strategy allowed an investigation of the size effect on electrochemical behavior from nanometer to Ångström dimensions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor galling aphids and their hosts, tannins are crucial for plant-insect interactions and for protecting the host plant from herbivory. Due to their peculiar chemical characteristics, tannins from plant galls have been used for medical and chemical purposes for more than 2000 years. In this study, hydrolyzable tannin concentrations in galls increased from gall initiation (38.
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