Linkage and association mapping of wild soybean(Glycine soja)seeds germinating under salt stress

Salinity threatens soybean germination,growth and production.The germination stage is a key period in the life of soybean.Wild soybean contains many genes related to stress resistance that are valuable resources for the genetic improvement of soybean.To identify the genetic loci of wild soybean that are active during seed germination under salt stress,two populations,a soybean interspecific hybrid population comprising 142 lines and a natural population comprising 121 wild soybean accessions,were screened for three germination-related traits in this study.By using single-nucleotide polymorphism(SNP)markers with three salt tolerance indices,25 quantitative trait loci(QTLs),21 significant SNPs(–log_(10)(P)≥4.0)and 24 potential SNPs(3.5<–log_(10)(P)<4.0)were detected by linkage mapping and a genome-wide association study(GWAS)in two environments.The key genetic region was identified based on these SNPs and QTLs.According to the gene functional annotations of the W05 genome and salt-induced gene expression qRT-PCR analysis,GsAKR1 was selected as a candidate gene that responded to salt stress at the germination stage in the wild soybean.These results could contribute to determining the genetic networks of salt tolerance in wild soybean and will be helpful for molecular marker-assisted selection in the breeding of salt-tolerant soybean.

Use of Impella cardiac axial flow pump for cardiogenic shock(A newer alternative)-How good is the evidence?

The adverse outcomes of a ventricular heart failure(left,right or biventricular)caused by cardiogenic shock are aggravated by lung oedema and organ mal perfusion.Despite advances in medical sciences,revascularisation and mechanical hemodynamic support have proved ineffective in reducing the mortality rate in such patients.A thorough study of the data available about cardio-vascular diseases reveals that the application of conventional methods of treatment are least helpful to practically restore normal functions of heart when it experiences end-stage systolic ventricular failure.Thus,to overcome the challenges and find alternatives to address this issue,percutaneous ventricular support devices/machines were designed and successfully introduced.These devices have revolutionized the treatment of ventricular heart failures and are now in use all over the world.In this review paper a newer mechanical circulatory support(MCS)device,Impella,has been discussed and compared with a few other devices like Intra-aortic Balloon Pump(IABP),Extracorporeal Circulation(ECLS)and Veno-arterial Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation(VA-ECMO).This article studies the challenges being faced during the treatment of cardiogenic shock,and thoroughly discusses the use and effectiveness of Impella Cardiac Axial Pump in each emergency.It can be said that mechanical circulatory support(MCS)device use during percutaneous coronary intervention(PCI)should be individualized based on multiple factors with a recommended use in patients with the greatest potential benefit and a relatively low risk of device-related complications.The current literature suggests that the outcomes of use of Impella and other mechanical circulatory support devices like IABP and VA-ECMO are comparable.Though there seem to be a few advantages of Impella over the others,sufficiently powered,multi-centric,randomised control trials are needed to establish its superiority.

DEKR-SPrior:An Efficient Bottom-Up Keypoint Detection Model for Accurate Pod Phenotyping in Soybean

The pod and seed counts are important yield-related traits in soybean.High-precision soybean breeders face the major challenge of accurately phenotyping the number of pods and seeds in a high-throughput manner.Recent advances in artificial intelligence,especially deep learning(DL)models,have provided new avenues for high-throughput phenotyping of crop traits with increased precision.However,the available DL models are less effective for phenotyping pods that are densely packed and overlap in insitu soybean plants;thus,accurate phenotyping of the number of pods and seeds in soybean plant is an important challenge.To address this challenge,the present study proposed a bottom-up model,DEKR-SPrior(disentangled keypoint regression with structural prior),for insitu soybean pod phenotyping,which considers soybean pods and seeds analogous to human people and joints,respectively.In particular,we designed a novel structural prior(SPrior)module that utilizes cosine similarity to improve feature discrimination,which is important for differentiating closely located seeds from highly similar seeds.To further enhance the accuracy of pod location,we cropped full-sized images into smaller and high-resolution subimages for analysis.The results on our image datasets revealed that DEKR-SPrior outperformed multiple bottom-up models,viz.,Lightweight-Open Pose,OpenPose,HigherH R Net,and DEKR,reducing the mean absolute error from 25.81(in the original DEKR)to 21.11(in the DEKR-SPrior)in pod phenotyping.This paper demonstrated the great potential of DEKR-SPrior for plant phenotyping,and we hope that DEKR-SPrior will help future plant phenotyping.