Genome-wide analysis of nuclear factor Y genes and functional investigation of watermelon ClNF-YB9 during seed development

The nuclear factor Y(NF-Y) gene family is a class of transcription factors that are widely distributed in eukaryotes and are involved in various biological processes. However, the NF-Y gene family members in watermelon, a valued and nutritious fruit, remain largely unknown and their functions have not been characterized. In the present study, 22 ClNF-Y genes in watermelon, 29 CsNF-Y genes in cucumber, and 24CmNF-Y genes in melon were identified based on the whole-genome investigation and their protein properties, gene location, gene structure, motif composition, conserved domain, and evolutionary relationship were investigated. ClNF-YB9 from watermelon and its homologs in cucumber and melon were expressed specifically in seeds. Its expression remained low in the early stages of watermelon seed development,increased at 20 days after pollination(DAP), and peaked at 45–50 DAP. Moreover, the knockout mutant Clnf-yb9 exhibited abnormal leafy cotyledon phenotype, implying its critical role during seed formation.Finally, protein interaction assays showed that ClNF-YB9 interacts with all ClNF-YCs and the ClNF-YB9-YC4 heterodimer was able to recruit a ClNF-YA7 subunit to assemble a complete NF-Y complex, which may function in seed development. This study revealed the structure and evolutionary relationships of the NF-Y gene family in Cucurbitaceae and the novel function of ClNF-YB9 in regulating seed development in watermelon.

Identification of unstable individuals in dynamic networks

To identify the unstable individuals of networks is of great importance for information mining and security management.Exploring a broad range of steady-state dynamical processes including biochemical dynamics,epidemic processes,birth-death processes and regulatory dynamics,we propose a new index from the microscopic perspective to measure the stability of network nodes based on the local correlation matrix.The proposed index describes the stability of each node based on the activity change of the node after its neighbor is disturbed.Simulation and comparison results show our index can identify the most unstable nodes in the network with various dynamical behaviors,which would actually create a richer way and a novel insight of exploring the problem of network controlling and optimization.

Energy saving and environment-friendly element-transfer reactions with industrial application potential

Herein we wish to propose the concept of"element-transfer reaction",which may afford the access to elemental compounds by transferring certain elements from easily available resources efficiently,concisely and precisely.A good element-transfer reaction with industrial application potential shall not generate waste and is performed under energy-saving and environment-friendly conditions.During the past decade,we have developed a series of methods for the synthesis of fluorine-and seleniumcontaining compounds via the fluorine-and selenium-transfer reactions,while the redox reactions we re considered to be the oxygen-and hydrogen-transfer reactions as well and were also widely studied by our group for producing the high-value-added fine chemicals.Some of these technologies have been successfully industrialized.This review summarizes our staged research results on fluorine-,oxygen-,hydrogen-and selenium-transfer reactions and makes a prospect on the developing trend in the field.

Novel interpretable mechanism of neural networks based on network decoupling method

The lack of interpretability of the neural network algorithm has become the bottleneck of its wide application.We propose a general mathematical framework,which couples the complex structure of the system with the nonlinear activation function to explore the decoupled dimension reduction method of high-dime sional system and reveal the calculation mechanism of the neural network.We apply our framework to some network models and a real system of the whole neuron map of Caenorhabditis elegans.Result shows that a simple linear mapping relationship exists between network structure and network behavior in the neural network with highdimensional and nonlinear characteristics.Our simulation and theoretical results fully demonstrate this interesting phenomenon.Our new interpretation mechanism provides not only the potential mathematical calculation principle of neural network but also an effective way to accurately match and predict human brain or animal activities,which can further expand and enrich the interpretable mechanism of artificial neural network in the future.