A constitutive serine protease inhibitor suppresses herbivore performance in tea(Camellia sinensis)

Protease inhibitors promote herbivore resistance in diverse plant species.Although many inducible protease inhibitors have been identified,there are limited reports available on the biological relevance and molecular basis of constitutive protease inhibitors in herbivore resistance.Here,we identified a serine protease inhibitor,CsSERPIN1,from the tea plant(Camellia sinensis).Expression of CsSERPIN1 was not strongly affected by the assessed biotic and abiotic stresses.In vitro and in vivo experiments showed that CsSERPIN1 strongly inhibited the activities of digestive protease activities of trypsin and chymotrypsin.Transient or heterologous expression of CsSERPIN1 significantly reduced herbivory by two destructive herbivores,the tea geometrid and fall armyworm,in tea and Arabidopsis plants,respectively.The expression of CsSERPIN1 in Arabidopsis did not negatively influence the growth of the plants under the measured parameters.Our findings suggest that CsSERPIN1 can inactivate gut digestive proteases and suppress the growth and development of herbivores,making it a promising candidate for pest prevention in agriculture.

Death Characteristics of Neurological Diseases in Inner Mongolia between 2008 and 2015

Background: There are no studies of death from neurological diseases found, however, neurological diseases were the leading cause of disability-adjusted life years in 2015 worldwide. Aim: The scientific aim of this study is to analyze the death characteristics of neurological diseases in Inner Mongolia occurring between 2008 and 2015. Methods: The data collected from Death Registry System (DRS) were categorized by gender, ethnicity, age, and death location. The subjects were divided into age groups for every 10 years from the age of 20. Mortality and gender: age-specific mortality was calculated for every 100,000 people from 2008 to 2015. Results: We found that Alzheimer’s disease has the highest proportion which equated to over one-fifth of all neurological diseases. Males displayed a higher mortality rate than females in all neurological diseases. The neurological diseases mortality showed a total potential year of life lost (PYLL) of about 20,151 years, and it was 2.03 times higher for male than that for female. The average potential years of life lost (APYLL) showed 17.72 years, and APYLL in males was 3.34 years longer than in females. More than 60% of the deaths resulting from the neurological disease occur at home for both males and females. Conclusion: Alzheimer disease is the most serious disease of all neurological diseases, however, cerebral palsy and epilepsy also displayed the highest loss of life for residents. Mortality of neurological diseases was generally higher in males than in females, and this increased with age.

Sensitive electrochemical DNA sensor for the detection of HIV based on a polyaniline/graphene nanocomposite

A nanocomposite of polyaniline/graphene(PAN/GN)was prepared using reverse-phase polymerization.The nanocomposite material was dropcast onto a glassy carbon electrode(GCE).Then,a single-stranded DNA(ssDNA)probe for HIV-1 gene detection was immobilized on the modified electrode,and the negative charged phosphate backbone of the HIV-1 was bound to the modified electrode surface via p-p*stacking interactions.The hybridization between the ssDNA probe and the target HIV-1 formed doublestranded DNA(dsDNA),and the electron transfer resistance of the electrode was measured using impedimetric studies with a[Fe(CN)6]^(3-/4-)redox couple.Under the optimized experimental conditions,the change of the impedance value was linearly related to the logarithm of the concentration of HIV genes in the range from 5.0×10^(-16)M to 1.0×10^(-10)M(R=0.9930),and the HIV sensor exhibited a lower detection limit of 1.0×10^(-16)M(S/N=3).The results show that this biosensor presented wonderful selectivity,sensitivity and specificity for HIV-1 gene detection.Thus,this biosensor provides a new method for the detection of HIV gene fragments.

Recent Advances in Mathematical Programming with Semi-continuous Variables and Cardinality Constraint

Mathematical programming problems with semi-continuous variables and cardinality constraint have many applications,including production planning,portfolio selection,compressed sensing and subset selection in regression.This class of problems can be modeled as mixed-integer programs with special structures and are in general NP-hard.In the past few years,based on new reformulations,approximation and relaxation techniques,promising exact and approximate methods have been developed.We survey in this paper these recent developments for this challenging class of mathematical programming problems.