Cucumber glossy fruit 1 (CsGLF1) encodes the zinc finger protein 6 that regulates fruit glossiness by enhancing cuticular wax biosynthesis

Cucumber glossiness is an important visual quality trait that affects consumer choice.Accumulating evidence suggests that glossy trait is associated with cuticular wax accumulation.However,the molecular genetic mechanism controlling cucumber glossiness remains largely unknown.Here,we report the map-based cloning and functional characterization of CsGLF1,a locus that determines the glossy trait in cucumber.CsGLF1 encodes a homolog of the Cys_(2)His_(2)-like fold group(C2H2)-type zinc finger protein 6(ZFP6)and its deletion leads to glossier pericarp and decreased cuticular wax accumulation.Consistently,transcriptomic analysis demonstrated that a group of wax biosynthetic genes were downregulated when CsZFP6 was absent.Further,transient expression assay revealed that CsZFP6 acted as a transcription activator of cuticular wax biosynthetic genes.Taken together,our findings demonstrated a novel regulator of fruit glossiness,which will provide new insights into regulatory mechanism of fruit glossiness in cucumber.

Microfluidic methods for cell separation and subsequent analysis

Cell is the most basic unit of the morphological structure and life activity of an organism. Learning the composition, structure and function of cells, exploring the life activities of cells and studying the interaction between cells are of great significance for human cognition and control of the life activities of organisms. Therefore, rapid, convenient, inexpensive, high-precision and reliable methods of cell separation and analysis are being developed to obtain accurate information for the study of cytology and pathology.Microfluidic chip is a new emerging technology in recent years. It has a micromanufacturing structure,which can not only realize the precise space-time control of fluid and cells, but also reproduces the threedimensional dynamic microenvironment of cell growth in the body. In addition, the microfluidic chip has unique microphysical properties and facilitates the integration of microdevices, which provides the possibility of real-time monitoring, continuous culture, separation and enrichment, and even in situ analysis of cells. In this review, we summarized recent advances in the development of different techniques for cell isolation and analysis on microfluidic platforms. Focus was put on biochemical and physical methods for cell separation on microfluidic chips. Subsequent cell analysis depending on fluorescence, Raman, cytomicroscopic imaging, mass spectrometry and electrochemical methods also was remarked. Through analyzing and learning the advantages and disadvantages of different technologies, we hope that microfluidic chips will continue to be improved and expanded for medical and clinical applications.