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Morel mushrooms (Morchella spp.), a globally distributed edible and medicinal fungus, possess significant economic and nutritional values. This study investigated rhizosphere soil samples collected from wild Morchella esculenta in three regions of Jilin Province. Metagenome sequencing technology was employed to analyze the structure and function of the rhizosphere microbial communities. The results indicated significant differences in microbial community composition among the samples, with the bacterial community being dominant, followed by the archaeal community. Pseudomonadota and Nitrospirae emerged as the dominant phyla, while Bradyrhizobium and Nitrospira were the co-dominant genera. A correlation analysis of environmental factors revealed that the genera Luteibacter, Streptomyces, Micromonospora, Nocardia, Actinomadura, and Paenibacillus were positively correlated with soil total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and organic matter content. In contrast, Candidatus Nitrosocosmicus showed a significant positive correlation with rapidly available nutrients. The functional annotation analysis of soil microorganisms, based on the KEGG database, revealed that within level A (highest tier), metabolic activities were the most prominent. In contrast, at level B (secondary tier), global and overview maps, carbohydrate metabolism, and amino acid metabolism were dominant. Among the top 10 pathway-level annotations, metabolic pathways, the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, and microbial metabolism in diverse environments were significant. Environmental factors and KEGG gene network maps indicated that the available potassium, available phosphorus, and pH were closely related to level A genes, which exhibited a higher abundance of metabolism genes. This study was dedicated to deepening the understanding of the structure and function of the rhizosphere microbial community of Morchella esculenta, and providing new perspectives and insights for habitat investigations, the development of biomimetic cultivation techniques, and the domestication of wild strains to Morchella esculenta in Jilin Province. Full article

Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer is a perennial herb that is used worldwide for a number of medical purposes. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a crucial role in diverse biological processes but still remain poorly understood in ginseng, which has limited the application of molecular breeding in this plant. In this study, we identified 17,478 lncRNAs and 3106 novel mRNAs from ginseng by high-throughput illumine sequencing. 50 and 257 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and DE lncRNAs (DELs) were detected under drought + ABA vs. drought conditions, respectively. The DEGs and DELs target genes main enrichment is focused on the “biosynthesis of secondary metabolites”, “starch and sucrose metabolism”, and “carbon metabolism” pathways under drought + ABA vs. drought conditions according to KEGG pathway enrichment analysis, suggesting that these secondary metabolites biosynthesis pathways might be crucial for ABA-mediated drought stress response in ginseng. Together, we identified drought stress response lncRNAs in ginseng for the first time and found that the target genes of these lncRNAs mainly regulate the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites pathway to response to drought stress. These findings also open up a new visual for molecular breeding in ginseng. Full article

Wild fish are often considered more nutritionally valuable than cultured fish. This study aimed to elucidate the relationship between the gut microbiota and meat quality through the gut–muscle axis. Therefore, cultured and wild bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis, Richardson 1845) from the Yangtze River were investigated to compare the differences in the meat quality and gut microbiota composition. Cultured bighead carp were collected from four intensive ponds along the Yangtze River area, while wild bighead carp were obtained from three different sites in the Yangtze River. The results showed that wild bighead carp muscle had significantly higher total saturated fatty acid (∑SFA) and total ω − 3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (∑n − 3 PUFA) content and water-holding capacity and lower lipid, histidine, and total ω − 6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (∑n − 6 PUFA) content than cultured bighead carp, while the muscle texture was not significantly different between the two groups, with the exception of the resilience. Moreover, the hindgut microbiota was analyzed using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing. The alpha and beta diversity differences between the cultured and wild groups were significant. The LEfSe analysis revealed Mycobacterium, Longivirga, and Acetobacteroides as biomarkers in cultured bighead carp, while Clostridium_T and other Firmicutes-associated genera were predominant in wild bighead carp. Regarding the relationship between the hindgut microbiota and meat quality, Mycobacterium exhibited a positive correlation with the muscle n-6 PUFA content and a negative correlation with muscle n − 3 PUFAs, while Clostridium_T exhibited the opposite pattern. According to the ecological network, the abundance of Actinobacteria could serve as a significant indicator of variations in the abundance of Mycobacterium and Clostridium_T. Consequently, differences in meat quality, particularly in the fatty acid composition, were observed between wild and cultured bighead carp. These differences may be associated with variations in the hindgut microbiota, shedding light on the gut–muscle axis. Full article

White clover (Trifolium repens) is vulnerable to drought stress. In response to abiotic stress, plants are regulated by NAC transcription factors. The NAC in white clover has not been thoroughly documented until recently. We have identified one white clover NAC transcription factor called TrNAC002. TrNAC002’s coding sequence is localized to specific regions on the 3P and 5O chromosomes of white clover and is part of a single-copy nuclear gene. Subcellular localization demonstrates that TrNAC002 is located in the nucleus, while the transcriptional activity assay indicates its transcriptional activity. Arabidopsis plants overexpressing TrNAC002 (OE) exhibit enlarged leaves and increased lateral root growth compared to the wild type (WT). Additionally, the expression levels of the shoot apical meristem (SAM), WUSCHEL (WUS), DNA-binding protein (DBP), and auxin-induced in root cultures3 (AIR3) genes are significantly higher in OE as compared to WT. These findings imply that TrNAC002 could promote vegetative growth by increasing the expression of these genes. Under natural drought stress, OE can survive in dry soil for a longer period of time than WT. Furthermore, OE exhibits a lower level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) level and a higher content of flavonoids than WT. This is also positively correlated with an increased flavonoid content. In white clover, the expression of TrNAC002, chalcone synthase (CHS), and chalcone isomerase (CHI) in leaves demonstrates significant upregulation after drought stress and ABA treatment, as does the flavonoid content. However, the pTRV-VIGS experiment suggests that pTRV2-TrNAC002 white clover shrinks compared to the Mock and Water controls. Additionally, pTRV2-TrNAC002 white clover displays a statistically higher malondialdehyde (MDA) content than the Mock and Water controls, and a significantly lower level of total antioxidant activities, flavonoid content, CHS and CHI relative expression than that of the Mock and Water controls. These findings indicate that TrNAC002 responds to drought and modulates flavonoid biosynthesis in white clover. This study is the first to suggest that TrNAC002 likely responds to drought via ABA and enhances plant drought resistance by synthesizing flavonoids. Full article

Concerning the problem that the coupling relationship in substation scenarios is complex and the Transformer model makes it difficult to capture the correlation between multiple variables of grounding current, resulting in low accuracy of grounding current prediction, a ground current prediction method based on frequency-enhanced Transformer is proposed. Firstly, in the data preprocessing stage, the best frequency domain decomposition algorithm is designed to obtain the high-frequency and low-frequency component data containing different component features so as to enhance the initial features that the model focuses on. Secondly, the data slicing and embedding module is designed to replace the original embedding module of the Transformer to realize the enhanced extraction of local features of the data. Finally, in the feature extraction stage, an enhanced attention mechanism is introduced to replace the standard attention mechanism to capture the intrinsic features of the sequence time dimension and the variable dimension in parallel so as to improve the extraction ability of Transformer multivariate features. Experimental results on the self-built grounding current dataset and the public dataset show that the proposed method outperforms existing advanced methods, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed method. Full article

The growth stage of wheat is key information for critical decision-making related to cultivar screening of wheat and farming activities. In order to solve the problem that it is difficult to determine the growth stages of a large number of wheat breeding materials grown in an artificial climate room accurately and quickly, the first attempt was made to determine the growth stages of wheat using image sequences of growth and development. A hybrid model (DenseNet–BiLSTM) based on the DenseNet and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory was proposed for determining the growth stage of wheat. The spatiotemporal characteristics of wheat growth and development were modeled by DenseNet–BiLSTM synthetically to classify the growth stage of each wheat image in the sequence. The determination accuracy of the growth stages obtained by the proposed DenseNet–BiLSTM model was 98.43%. Of these, the determination precisions of the tillering, re-greening, jointing, booting, and heading period were 100%, 97.80%, 97.80%, 85.71%, and 95.65%, respectively. In addition, the accurate determination of the growth stages and further analysis of its relationship with meteorological conditions will help biologists, geneticists, and breeders to breed, screen, and evaluate wheat varieties with ecological adaptability. Full article

Waterlogging is becoming a global issue, affecting crop growth and yield in low-lying rainfed areas. A DH line, TamF169, showing superior waterlogging tolerance, and its waterlogging-sensitive parent, Franklin, were used to conduct transcriptome analyses. The results showed that 2209 and 2578 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in Franklin and 1997 and 1709 DEGs in TamF169 were detected by comparing gene expression levels under control and waterlogging after 4 and 8 days, respectively, with 392 and 257 DEGs being specific to TamF169 after 4 and 8 days under waterlogging, respectively. KEGG analysis showed that glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, the MAPK signaling pathway, plant hormone signaling, and galactose metabolism pathways were significantly enriched in the waterlogging-tolerant genotype TamF169 four days after waterlogging. The qPCR results were consistent with the transcriptome data, suggesting the reliability of the transcriptome sequencing. A total of 13 genes in the mapping region of a QTL for root cortical aerenchyma (RCA) showed different expression levels in Franklin or TamF169, and the potential candidate genes for RCA−QTL are discussed. This study offers valuable information on the mechanism of tolerance to waterlogging stress in the DH line TamF169 and provides the candidate genes for RCA−QTL. Full article

Single-molecule sequencing technology, a novel method for gene sequencing, utilizes nano-sized materials to detect electrical and fluorescent signals. Compared to traditional Sanger sequencing and next-generation sequencing technologies, it offers significant advantages, including ultra-long read lengths, rapid sequencing, and the absence of amplification steps, making it widely applicable across various fields. By examining the development and components of single-molecule sequencing technology, it becomes clear that its unique characteristics provide new opportunities for advancing metrological traceability. Notably, its direct detection capabilities offer a novel approach to nucleic acid metrology. This paper provides a detailed overview of library construction, signal generation and detection, and data analysis methods in single-molecule sequencing and discusses its implications for nucleic acid metrology. Full article

In this paper, we propose a method for applying the p-ary m-sequence as a channel-searching pattern for rendezvous in the asymmetric channel model of cognitive radio. We mathematically analyzed and calculated the ETTR when the m-sequence is applied to the conventional scheme, and our simulation results demonstrated that the ETTR performance is significantly better than that of the JS algorithm. Furthermore, we introduced a new channel-searching scheme that maximizes the benefits of the m-sequence and proposed a method to adapt the generation of the m-sequence for use in the newly proposed scheme. We also derived the ETTR mathematically for the new scheme with the m-sequence and showed through simulations that the performance of the new scheme with the m-sequence is superior to that of the conventional scheme with the m-sequence. Notably, when there is only one common channel, the new scheme with the m-sequence achieved approximately four times the improvement in the ETTR compared to the conventional scheme. Full article

Scorpion venom contains various bioactive peptides, many of which exhibit insecticidal activity. The majority of these peptides have a cystine-stabilized α-helix/β-sheet (CSαβ) motif. In addition to these peptides, scorpion venom also contains those with a cystine-stabilized α-helix/α-helix (CSαα) motif, which are known as κ-KTx peptides. Some of these peptides show weak inhibitory activity on mammal potassium channels, but, in many cases, their biological activity remained unknown. In this study, with the aim of discovering novel insecticidal peptides, we synthesized five peptides, which were predicted to adopt a CSαα motif, identified from the venom of the scorpion Liocheles australasiae, and measured their insecticidal activity. As a result, one of the peptides, named LaIT5, exhibited significant insecticidal activity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of insecticidal peptides with a CSαα motif. Furthermore, we synthesized its analogs based on sequence comparisons with other inactive CSαα-motif peptides to identify amino acid residues important for its insecticidal activity. The results indicate that two consecutive His residues at the central region of LaIT5 are particularly important for the activity. Since LaIT5 did not show any toxicity against mice, it was concluded that its action is selective for insects. Full article

Anthocyanins are responsible for grape (Vitis vinifera L.) skin color. To obtain a more detailed understanding of the anthocyanin regulatory networks across’ the summer and winter seasons in grapes under a double-cropping viticulture system, the transcriptomes of ‘Summer Black’ grapes were analyzed using RNA sequencing. The average daily temperature during the harvest stage in the summer crop, ranging from 26.18 °C to 32.98 °C, was higher than that in the winter crop, ranging from 11.03 °C to 23.90 °C. Grapes from the winter crop accumulated a greater content of anthocyanins than those from the summer crop, peaking in the harvest stage (E-L38) with 207.51 mg·100 g⁻¹. Among them, malvidin-3-O-glucoside (Mv-3-G) had the highest monomer content, accounting for 32%. The content of Cy-3-G during winter increased by 55% compared to summer. KEGG analysis indicated that the flavonoid biosynthesis and circadian rhythm—plant pathways are involved in the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis during fruit development. Pearson’s coefficient showed significant positive correlations between anthocyanin content and the VvDFR, VvUFGT, VvOMT, VvMYB, and VvbHLH genes in the winter crop; at full veraison stage, their expressions were 1.34, 1.98, 1.28, 1.17, and 1.34 times greater than in summer, respectively. The higher expression of VvUFGT and VvOMT led to higher contents of Cy-3-G and Mv-3-G in the winter berries, respectively. Full article

Influenza is an acute respiratory infectious disease marked by its high contagiousness and rapid spread, caused by influenza viruses. Accurate influenza prediction is a critical issue in public health and serves as an essential tool for epidemiological studies. This paper seeks to improve the prediction accuracy of influenza-like illness (ILI) proportions by proposing a novel predictive model that integrates a data decomposition technique with the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) algorithm, aiming to overcome the limitations of current prediction methods. Firstly, the most suitable indicators were selected using Spearman correlation coefficient. Secondly, a GWO-LightGBM model was established to obtain the residuals between the predicted and actual values. The residual sequence from the GWO-LightGBM model was then decomposed and corrected using the Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (CEEMDAN) method, which led to the development of the GWO-LightGBM-CEEMDAN model. The incorporation of the Baidu Index was shown to enhance the precision of the proposed model’s predictions. The proposed model outperforms comparison models in terms of evaluation metrics such as RMSE and MAPE. Additionally, our study found that the revised Baidu Index indicators show a notable association with ILI trends. Full article

Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) remains a significant global health threat, particularly for vulnerable populations. Despite extensive research, effective antiviral therapies are still limited. To address this urgent need, we present AVP-GPT2, a deep-learning model that significantly outperforms its predecessor, AVP-GPT, in designing and screening antiviral peptides. Trained on a significantly expanded dataset, AVP-GPT2 employs a transformer-based architecture to generate diverse peptide sequences. A multi-modal screening approach, incorporating Star-Transformer and Vision Transformer, enables accurate prediction of antiviral activity and toxicity, leading to the identification of potent and safe candidates. SHAP analysis further enhances interpretability by explaining the underlying mechanisms of peptide activity. Our in vitro experiments confirmed the antiviral efficacy of peptides generated by AVP-GPT2, with some exhibiting EC50 values as low as 0.01 μM and CC50 values > 30 μM. This represents a substantial improvement over AVP-GPT and traditional methods. AVP-GPT2 has the potential to significantly impact antiviral drug discovery by accelerating the identification of novel therapeutic agents. Future research will explore its application to other viral targets and its integration into existing drug development pipelines. Full article

For a longer endurance of vertical and level cruise flight, an electro-gasoline hybrid power system is introduced on a compound-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). After discharging during vertical flight, the battery pack is charged by a piston engine-driven generator, which simultaneously powers the UAV for level cruise flight. A charging model is established based on the configuration of the hybrid power system. Considering fuel consumption and battery attenuation within the typical flight profile of a compound-wing UAV, an optimized charging plan is developed using dynamic programming to determine the trajectory of the generated power sequence. To address deviations between ideal and practical flight conditions in terms of charging performance, a feedforward compensation is introduced to improve optimal tracking control within the dynamic programming framework. Simulations validate the effectiveness of the optimized charging plan, while testbench experiments confirm improvements achieved through compensation enhancement. The results demonstrate practicality with minimal overall cost compared to other conventional control plans. Full article

Invertebrate tropomyosins belong to the key food allergens. Several peptides likely to be released during proteolysis can be found in many sequences of proteins from this family. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the possibility of identifying tropomyosins with known and unknown amino acid sequences in unheated, boiled and fried seafoods. The workflow included in silico proteolysis simulation of tropomyosin sequences and analysis of the distribution of resulting peptides among proteins. The experiment entailed the proteolysis of unheated, boiled and fried products, containing crustaceans or mollusks, and the identification of resulting peptides using LC-MS/MS. Finally, taxonomic lineages of identified peptides were determined. Predicted peptides were identified in unheated samples. The boiling of seafoods resulted in an increase in the length of peptides containing predicted sequences. Some peptides from the boiled samples contained entire linear epitopes. The prediction of tropomyosin cleavage sites failed in the case of fried products. Peptides from the unheated and boiled samples were attributed to crustacean, arthropod or molluscan tropomyosins. In turn, peptides from the fried samples possessed inconclusive taxonomic lineages. Our results show that bioinformatics analysis (especially using Unipept program) may be a viable tool supporting LC-MS/MS experiments aimed at the detection of allergens. Full article