Reservoir Characterization of Special Dolomite Rock of Fengcheng Formation in Junggar Basin, China

Dolomites and eruptive rocks are well-developed in the Permian Fengcheng Formation in Junggar Basin in China, in which oil and gas are accumulated extensively. Until now, high-yield industrial oil and gas flows have been obtained in the dolomitic tuff of the second unit of the Fengcheng Formation, which demonstrates the huge exploration potential of the thick layer of massive dolomitic tuff. The lithology of the second unit of the Fengcheng Formation in this area has gradually transformed from the dolomite, dolomitic tuff to siltstone from east to west. Moreover, the well testing shows that the reservoir is oil-saturated, and the production rate mainly depends on the reservoir’s physical properties and fracture development. In this study, different types of data including core data, well log and seismic data are used cooperatively to characterize the sedimentary, structure and fracture features of the Fengcheng Formation, and then characterize the promising target zone in the study area. The result indicates that hydrocarbons are most accumulated along the deep fault in the Wu-Xia fault zone, which will be the favorable zone for the next progressive exploration.

A Q-Learning Based Hybrid Meta-Heuristic for Integrated Scheduling of Disassembly and Reprocessing Processes Considering Product Structures and Stochasticity

Remanufacturing is regarded as a sustainable manufacturing paradigm of energy conservation and environment protection.To improve the efficiency of the remanufacturing process,this work investigates an integrated scheduling problem for disassembly and reprocessing in a remanufacturing process,where product structures and uncertainty are taken into account.First,a stochastic programming model is developed to minimize the maximum completion time(makespan).Second,a Q-learning based hybrid meta-heuristic(Q-HMH)is specially devised.In each iteration,a Q-learning method is employed to adaptively choose a premium algorithm from four candidate ones,including genetic algorithm(GA),artificial bee colony(ABC),shuffled frog-leaping algorithm(SFLA),and simulated annealing(SA)methods.At last,simulation experiments are carried out by using sixteen instances with different scales,and three state-of-the-art algorithms in literature and an exact solver CPLEX are chosen for comparisons.By analyzing the results with the average relative percentage deviation(RPD)metric,we find that Q-HMH outperforms its rivals by 9.79%-26.76%.The results and comparisons verify the excellent competitiveness of Q-HMH for solving the concerned problems.

A Multi-Objective Scheduling and Routing Problem for Home Health Care Services via Brain Storm Optimization

At present,home health care(HHC)has been accepted as an effective method for handling the healthcare problems of the elderly.The HHC scheduling and routing problem(HHCSRP)attracts wide concentration from academia and industrial communities.This work proposes an HHCSRP considering several care centers,where a group of customers(i.e.,patients and the elderly)require being assigned to care centers.Then,various kinds of services are provided by caregivers for customers in different regions.By considering the skill matching,customers’appointment time,and caregivers’workload balancing,this article formulates an optimization model with multiple objectives to achieve minimal service cost and minimal delay cost.To handle it,we then introduce a brain storm optimization method with particular multi-objective search mechanisms(MOBSO)via combining with the features of the investigated HHCSRP.Moreover,we perform experiments to test the effectiveness of the designed method.Via comparing the MOBSO with two excellent optimizers,the results confirm that the developed method has significant superiority in addressing the considered HHCSRP.

A Pid3 allele from rice cultivar Gumei2 confers resistance to Magnaporthe oryzae

Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, is one of the most devastating diseases. Using map-based strategy and in silico approach we isolated a new rice （Oryza sativa L.） blast resistance allele of Pid3, designated Pi25, from a stable blast resistance cultivar Gumei2. Overexpression analysis and complementation test showed that Pi25 conferred blast resistance to M. oryzae isolate js001-20. Sequence analysis showed that Pi25 was an intronless gene of 2772 nucleotides with single nucleotide substitution in comparison to Pid3 at the nucleotide position 459 and predicatively encoded a typical coiled coil-nucleotide binding site-leucine rich repeat （CC-NBS-LRR） protein of 924 amino acid residuals with 100% identity to Pid3 putative protein. The susceptible allele pi25 in Nipponbare contained a nonsense mutation at the nucleotide position 2209 resulting in a truncated protein with 736 amino acid residuals. In addition, 14 nucleotide substitutions resulting in 10 amino acid substitutions were identified between Pi25 and pi25 upstream the premature stop codon in the susceptible allele. Although the mechanism of Pi25/Pid3-mediated resistance needs to be further investigated, the isolation of the allele would facilitate the utilization of Pi25/Pid3 in rice blast resistance breeding program via transgenic approach and marker assisted selection.

A Simple CRISPR/Cas9 System for Multiplex Genome Editing in Rice

Generating mutants bearing multiple gene modifications is essential for determining the functions of gene family members with redundant functions, or for analyzing epistatic re- lationships in genetic pathways. Using conventional methods, mutants with multiple gene mutations are generated by several rounds of intercrossing plants carrying a single mutation and identification of the offspring. This process is both timeconsuming and labor-intensive. Moreover, if the genes of interest are closely linked, multiple mutations can not be generated （Wijnker and de Jong, 2008）.

Rapid generation of genetic diversity by multiplex CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in rice

The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats(CRISPR)-associated endonuclease 9(CRISPR/Cas9) system has emerged as a promising technology for specific genome editing in many species. Here we constructed one vector targeting eight agronomic genes in rice using the CRISPR/Cas9 multiplex genome editing system. By subsequent genetic transformation and DNA sequencing, we found that the eight target genes have high mutation efficiencies in the T_0 generation. Both heterozygous and homozygous mutations of all editing genes were obtained in T_0 plants. In addition, homozygous sextuple, septuple, and octuple mutants were identified. As the abundant genotypes in T_0 transgenic plants, various phenotypes related to the editing genes were observed. The findings demonstrate the potential of the CRISPR/Cas9 system for rapid introduction of genetic diversity during crop breeding.

Characterization and Fine Mapping of a Novel Rice Narrow Leaf Mutant nal9

A narrow leaf mutant was isolated from transgenic rice （Oryza sativa L.） lines carrying a T-DNA insertion. The mutant is characterized by narrow leaves during its whole growth period, and was named nal9 （narrow leaf 9）. The mutant also has other phenotypes, such as light green leaves at the seedling stage, reduced plant height, a small panicle and increased tillering. Genetic analysis revealed that the mutation is controlled by a single recessive gene. A hygromycin resistance assay showed that the mutation was not caused by T-DNA insertion, so a map-based cloning strategy was employed to isolate the nal9 gene. The mutant individuals from the F2 generations of a cross between the nal9mutant and Longtepu were used for mapping. With 24 F2 mutants, the nal9 gene was preliminarily mapped near the marker RM156 on the chromosome 3. New INDEL markers were then designed based on the sequence differences between japonica and indica at the region near RM156. The nal9 gene was finally located in a 69.3 kb region between the markers V239B and V239G within BAC OJ1212_C05 by chromosome walking. Sequence and expression analysis showed that an ATP-dependent CIp protease proteolytic subunit gene （CIpP） was most likely to be the nal9 gene. Furthermore, the nal9 mutation was rescued by transformation of the CIpP cDNA driven by the 35S promoter. Accordingly, the CIpP gene was identified as the NAL9 gene. Our results provide a basis for functional studies of NAL9 in future work.

Distributed Scheduling Problems in Intelligent Manufacturing Systems

Currently,manufacturing enterprises face increasingly fierce market competition due to the various demands of customers and the rapid development of economic globalization.Hence,they have to extend their production mode into distributed environments and establish multiple factories in various geographical locations.Nowadays,distributed manufacturing systems have been widely adopted in industrial production processes.In recent years,many studies have been done on the modeling and optimization of distributed scheduling problems.This work provides a literature review on distributed scheduling problems in intelligent manufacturing systems.By summarizing and evaluating existing studies on distributed scheduling problems,we analyze the achievements and current research status in this field and discuss ongoing studies.Insights regarding prior works are discussed to uncover future research directions,particularly swarm intelligence and evolutionary algorithms,which are used for managing distributed scheduling problems in manufacturing systems.This work focuses on journal papers discovered using Google Scholar.After reviewing the papers,in this work,we discuss the research trends of distributed scheduling problems and point out some directions for future studies.

Targeted mutagenesis in rice using CRISPR-Cpf1 system

Cpf1 is a class 2/type V CRISPR effector that has been recently harnessed for genome editing （Zetsche et al., 2015; Hut et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2016）. Cpff recognizes thymidine-rich sequence as the protospacer-adjacent motif （PAM） at the 5＇ end of target sequences. In addition, Cpfl requires only a single shorter crRNA and cleaves DNA in a staggered fashion with 5＇ overhangs （Zetsche et al., 2015）.

QTL editing confers opposing yield performance in different rice varieties

Grain yield is one of the most important and complex trait for genetic improvement in crops; it is known to be controlled by a number of genes known as quantitative trait loci（QTLs）. In the past decade, many yield-contributing QTLs have been identified in crops.However, it remains unclear whether those QTLs confer the same yield performance in different genetic backgrounds. Here, we performed CRISPR/Cas_9-mediated QTL editing in five widely-cultivated rice varieties and revealed that the same QTL can have diverse, even opposing, effects on grain yield in different genetic backgrounds.

Erratum to: Rapid generation of genetic diversity by multiplex CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in rice

The same figure was misused for the PCR/RE assay results of Gn1a and GW2 fragments in Figure 3,and the arrows in the graphicsal result of GW2 were not on the tape.The corrected Figure 3 is as follows.

Expanding the Range of CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing in Rice

Dear Editor The CRISPR/Cas9 system has emerged as a versatile molecular tool for genome editing in various organisms, including plants. In this system, the specificity of Cas9-directed DNA cleavage strictly requires the presence of a chimeric single guide RNA （sgRNA） and a short trinucleotide protospacer adjacent motif （PAM） in the genome （Anders et al., 2014; Sternberg et al., 2014）. To date, the Cas9 used in plants has only been shown to recognize PAM sequences in the canonical form NGG （Li et al., 2013; Miao et al., 2013; Shan et al., 2013; Ma et al., 2015b）. As such, the range of sequences for genome editing in plants is limited to sites containing an NGG motif. Many attempts have been made to overcome this constraint, and recent work has revealed that Cas9 can be modified to recognize alternative PAM sequences in zebrafish and human cells （Kleinstiver et al., 2015）. However, the targeting range limitations of the CRISPR/ Cas9 systems in plants have yet to be resolved. The widely cultivated plant rice is not only an important food crop but also a model crop plant because of its relatively small genome and relative ease of transformation. To expand the range of genome editing in rice, we generated two Cas9 variants as reported （Kleinstiver et al., 2015） and investigated their genome editing performance in rice. We demonstrate that Cas9 can be engineered to target sites containing alternative non-canonical PAMs in rice, which significantly broadens the range of genorne editing.

The Rice＇NUTRITION RESPONSE AND ROOT GROWTH＇ （NRR） Gene Regulates Heading Date

Dear Editor, As one of the most important developmental traits, flow-ering time has been extensively investigated in the long-day plant Arabidopsis. Multiple factors are involved, including photoperiod and/or temperature （Amasino, 2010）. Flowering locus T （FT） is known to be an important integrator of dif-ferent flowering pathways （Taoka et al., 2011）. Genes of the CONSTANS （CO） family also play key roles in regulating flow-ering time. The CO protein consists of a zinc finger and a CCT domain shared by a group of plant-specific transcription fac-tors that regulate photoperiodic flowering response and cir-cadian rhythms in Arabidopsis.