Competitiveness of alga Microcystis aeruginosa co-cultivated with cyanobacterium Raphidiopsis raciborskii confirms its dominating position

Microcystis aeruginosa has always been regarded as the main culprit of cyanobacterial blooms in freshwater.However,in recent years,Raphidiopsis raciborskii has gradually replaced M.aeruginosa as the culprit of cyanobacterial blooms in some tropical and subtropical shallow lakes.To reveal which one plays a more dominant role,interactions between cylindrospermospin(CYN)-producing R.raciborskii and microcystins(MCs)-producing or non-MCs-producing M.aeruginosa strains were studied using bialgal cultures at different initial ratios of biomasses of the two species at 25℃.During the co-cultivation,the M.aeruginosa strains inhibited the growth and heterocyst formation of R.raciborskii filaments,and thus occupied a dominant position during the co-cultivation regardless of the initial biomass ratios in the cultures.In addition,the MCs-producing M aeruginosa strain contributed to a higher portion of the total biomass and exerted a stronger inhibitory effect on R.raciborskii compared with the non-MCs-producing strain.However,the growth of both MCs-producing and non-MCs-producing M.aeruginosa strains was stimulated by R.raciborskii in the co-cultures compared with M.aeruginosa monoculture,indicating that M.aeruginosa could outcompete R.raciborskii if given enough time,enabling it to develop into the dominant species even in very low initial concentration.To our best knowledge,this is the first report on the loss of heterocyst formation by a species of cyanobacteria that resulted from interactions between two different species of cyanobacteria.These findings indicate that it is difficult for R.raciborskii to replace the dominant position of M.aeruginosa under the experimental environmental condition,and the allelopathic effects of M.aeruginosa on R.raciborskii could significantly contribute to the success of M.aeruginosa.

Harmful algal bloom-forming dinofl agellate Prorocentrum donghaiense inhibits the growth and photosynthesis of seaweed Sargassum fusiformis embryos

Harmful algal bloom(HAB)is an ecological disaster to local mariculture.At present,its impact on macrophytes has not been well studied.In this study,we cultivated sexually propagated embryos of S argassum fusiformis-an edible seaweed-in Prorocentrum donghaiense suspensions at different cell densities(0,0.50×10^(5),0.75×10^(5),1.00×10^(5),and 1.50×10^(5) cells/mL)for 10 days,during which growth and photosynthetic activities of the embryos were determined,and a monocultivation was set up for comparison.Results show that the relative growth rate and photosynthetic activities of the embryos co-cultivated with P.donghaiense were inhibited mostly and significantly in the cell densities of 0.75×10^(5),1.00×10^(5),and 1.50×10^(5) cells/mL,and the inhibitory effects increased in overall with increased cell densities.The maximum relative electron transport rates(rETR max)and apparent photosynthetic efficiency(a)of co-cultivated embryos were all significantly lower than monocultivation ones on the 10 th day.Furthermore,the photosynthetic activity detected by chlorophyll-a fluorescence transient(i.e.,OJIP),the electron transport among electron transfer accepters of PSII(photosystem II)and that from PSII to PSI(photosystem I)was restricted,which is probably responsible for the decreases of rETR max andain the co-cultivated embryos.In addition,parts of the photosynthetic reaction centers of PSII in the co-cultivated embryos were inactivated.Therefore,P.donghaiense bloom could restrain the development and photosynthetic activities of S.fusiformis embryos,reduce the seedlings stock,and eventually hinder the development of S.fusiformis production industry.

Tidal water exchanges can shape the phytoplankton community structure and reduce the risk of harmful cyanobacterial blooms in a semi-closed lake

For estuaries,inland lakes play a vital role in the ecological balance under the impact of tide s.The effect of tides-induced water exchange on phytoplankton community in a semi-closed lake was studied and compared with that of an adjacent closed lake in the Oujiang River mouth in Zhejiang,East China Sea,from June 29,2020 to June 14,2021.Results show that the dominant species,abundance,dominance,and diversity of the phytoplankton species between the two lakes were significantly different.In the closed lake,cyanobacteria were the dominant species during the study period.However.in the semi-closed lake,the diversification of the dominant species was greater,and some species of diatoms and green algae became dominant.The average phytoplankton abundance in the closed lake was 6 times of that in the semi-closed lake.The average dominance of cyanobacteria in the closed lake was 0.96,and those in the semi-closed lake and the Oujiang River were 0.51 and 0.22,respectively.Cyanobacterial blooms occurred throughout the study time in the closed lake but not in the semi-closed one.Furthermore,the species diversity richness of the phytoplankton in the semi-closed lake was higher than that of the closed one,and the phytoplankton community between the closed lake and semi-closed lake could be divided into distinctly different groups based on non-metic multidimensional scaling analysis(NMDS)and analysis of similarities(ANOSIM)analysis.The salinity of the water was significantly greater and the transparency significantly smaller in the semi-closed lake than those in the closed lake.Therefore,water exchange driven by local tidal movement increased salinity and decreased transparency of water,which consequently shaped the community structures of different phytoplankton and reduced the risk of a cyanobacterial bloom outbreak in the semi-closed lake.

Using the improved position specific scoring matrix and ensemble learning method to predict drug-binding residues from protein sequences

Identification of the drug-binding residues on the surface of proteins is a vital step in drug discovery and it is important for understanding protein function. Most previous researches are based on the structural information of proteins, but the structures of most proteins are not available. So in this article, a sequence-based method was proposed by combining the support vector machine (SVM)-based ensemble learning and the improved position specific scoring matrix (PSSM). In order to take the local environment information of a drug-binding site into account, an improved PSSM profile scaled by the sliding window and smoothing window was used to improve the prediction result. In addition, a new SVM-based ensemble learning method was developed to deal with the imbalanced data classification problem that commonly exists in the binding site predictions. When performed on the dataset of 985 drug-binding residues, the method achieved a very promising prediction result with the area under the curve (AUC) of 0.9264. Furthermore, an independent dataset of 349 drug- binding residues was used to evaluate the pre- diction model and the prediction accuracy is 84.68%. These results suggest that our method is effective for predicting the drug-binding sites in proteins. The code and all datasets used in this article are freely available at http://cic.scu.edu.cn/bioinformatics/Ensem_DBS.zip.

Improving water use ef fi ciency in grain production of winter wheat and summer maize in the North China Plain: a review

Reducing irrigation water use by improving water use ef ficiency(WUE) in grain production is critical for the development of sustainable agriculture in the North China Plain(NCP). This article summarizes the research progresses in WUE improvement carried out at the Luancheng station located in the Northern part of NCP for the past three decades. Progresses in four aspects of yield and WUE improvement are presented, including yield and WUE improvement associated with cultivar selection, irrigation management for improving yield and WUE under limited water supply, managing root system for ef ficient soil water use and reducing soil evaporation by straw mulch. The results showed that annual average increase of 0.014 kg$m^(–3)for winter wheat and 0.02 kg$m^(–3)in WUE were observed for the past three decades, and this increase was largely associated with the improvement in harvest index related to cultivar renewal and an increase in chemical fertilizer use and soil fertility. The results also indicated that de ficit irrigation for winter wheat could signi ficantly reduce the irrigation water use, whereas the seasonal yield showed a smaller reduction rate and WUE was signi ficantly improved. Straw mulching of summer maize using the straw from winter wheat could reduce seasonal soil evaporation by 30–40 mm. With new cultivars and improved management practices it was possible to further increase grain production without much increase in water use. Future strategies to further improve WUE are also discussed.