Development of plant cytosine base editors with the Cas12a system

Base editors of the Cas9 system have been widely used for precise nucleotide substitution in crops. In this study, Cas12a was applied to construct plant cytosine base editors(CBEs). The main elements of Cas12aCBEs were engineered and their efficiency was evaluated in stably transformed rice cells. An optimized ttCas12a-hyA3Bctd editor, consisting of a LbCas12a variant carrying catalytic inactive D832A and temperature-tolerance D156R double mutations, a truncated human APOBEC3B deaminase, a human RAD51 single-stranded DNA-binding domain, and double copies of UGI, outperformed other Cas12aCBEs in base editing efficiency. In T0transgenic rice plants, ttCas12a-hyA3Bctd edited an average of42.01% and a maximum of 68.75% of lines at six genomic targets. A-to-G conversions were generated in rice by an adenine base editor with a similar architecture to the optimized CBE. Our results provide preliminary evidence for the feasibility of robust and efficient plant Cas12a base editing systems, which could be useful for precise crop breeding.

Nonlocal thermoelastic analysis of a functionally graded material microbeam

In extreme heat transfer environments, functionally graded materials(FGMs)have aroused great concern due to the excellent thermal shock resistance. With the development of micro-scale devices, the size-dependent effect has become an important issue. However, the classical continuum mechanical model fails on the micro-scale due to the influence of the size-dependent effect. Meanwhile, for thermoelastic behaviors limited to small-scale problems, Fourier's heat conduction law cannot explain the thermal wave effect. In order to capture the size-dependent effect and the thermal wave effect, the nonlocal generalized thermoelastic theory for the formulation of an FGM microbeam is adopted in the present work. For numerical validation, the transient responses for a simply supported FGM microbeam heated by the ramp-type heating are considered.The governing equations are formulated and solved by employing the Laplace transform techniques. In the numerical results, the effects of the ramp-heating time parameter, the nonlocal parameter, and the power-law index on the considered physical quantities are presented and discussed in detail.

A modified fractional-order thermo-viscoelastic model and its application to a polymer micro-rod heated by a moving heat source

Classical thermo-viscoelastic models may be challenged to predict the precise thermo-mechanical behavior of viscoelastic materials without considering the memorydependent effect.Meanwhile,with the miniaturization of devices,the size-dependent effect on elastic deformation is becoming more and more important.To capture the memory-dependent effect and the size-dependent effect,the present study aims at developing a modified fractional-order thermo-viscoelastic coupling model at the microscale to account for two fundamentally distinct fractional-order models which govern the memory-dependent features of thermal conduction and stress-strain relation,respectively.Then,the modified theory is used to study the dynamic response of a polymer micro-rod heated by a moving heat source.The governing equations are obtained and solved by the Laplace transform method.In calculation,the effects of the fractional-order parameter,the fractional-order strain parameter,the mechanical relaxation parameter,and the nonlocal parameter on the variations of the considered variables are analyzed and discussed in detail.