Recognizing Expression Variant and Occluded Face Images Based on Nested HMM and Fuzzy Rule Based Approach

The face recognition with expression and occlusion variation becomes the greatest challenge in biometric applications to recognize people. The proposed work concentrates on recognizing occlusion and seven kinds of expression variations such as neutral, surprise, happy, sad, fear, disgust and angry. During enrollment process, principle component analysis (PCA) detects facial regions on the input image. The detected facial region is converted into fuzzy domain data to make decision during recognition process. The Haar wavelet transform extracts features from the detected facial regions. The Nested Hidden markov model is employed to train these features and each feature of face image is considered as states in a Markov chain to perform learning among the features. The maximum likelihood for the input image was estimated by using Baum Welch algorithm and these features were kept on database. During recognition process, the expression and occlusion varied face image is taken as the test image and maximum likelihood for test image is found by following same procedure done in enrollment process. The matching score between maximum likelihood of input image and test image is computed and it is utilized by fuzzy rule based method to decide whether the test image belongs to authorized or unauthorized. The proposed work was tested among several expression varied and occluded face images of JAFFE and AR datasets respectively.

Genetic Transformation in Triticeae Crops

Wheat, triticale, tritordeum, barley, oat and rye are the most important crops in human consumptions and industry in the world. Transformation technology supplies a new source of improving Triticeae crops. In the past decade, transformation of wheat crops has considerably progressed. Many transgenic plants of Triticeae crops with various genes were produced via nricroprojectile bombardment, Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, PEG-uptake DNA technique, electroporation, microinjection, injection inflorescence and silicone carbide. Integration and expression of transgenes, inheritance and variation of transgenic plants have been studied. Technical improvements of genetic transformation for wheat crops will be extensively useful in commerce and benefit significantly to human being in the world.

Genetic dissection of glutathione S-transferase omega-1:identification of novel downstream targets and Alzheimer's disease pathways

Alzheimer's disease(AD)is affected by genetic factors.Polymorphisms in the glutathione S-transfe rase omega-1(Gsto1)gene have been shown by genetic correlation analyses performed in different ethnic populations to be genetic risk factors for AD.Gene expression profile data from BXD recombinant inbred mice were used in combination with genetic and bioinformatic analyses to chara cterize the mechanisms underlying regulation of Gstol variation regulation and to identify network membe rs that may contribute to AD risk or progression.Allele-specific assays confirmed that variation in Gstol expression is controlled by cis-expression quantitative trait loci.We found that Gstol mRNA levels were related to several central nervous system traits,such as glial acidic fibrillary protein levels in the caudate putamen,co rtical gray matter volume,and hippocampus mossy fiber pathway volume.We identified 2168 genes whose expression was highly correlated with that of Gsto1.Some genes were enriched for the most common neurodegenerative diseases.Some Gsto1-related genes identified in this study had previously been identified as susceptibility genes for AD,such as APP,Grin2 b,Ide,and Psenen.To evaluate the relationships between Gstol and candidate network members,we transfected astrocytes with Gstol siRNA and assessed the effect on putative downstream effecto rs.We confirmed that knockdown of Gstol had a significant influence on Pa2g4 expression,suggesting that Pa2g4 may be a downstream effector of Gstol,and that both genes intera ct with other genes in a network during AD pathogenesis.

Structural and Expressional Variation Analyses of Mitochondrial Genomes Reveal Candidate Transcripts for the S^V Cytoplasmic Male Sterility in Wheat(Triticum aestivum L.)

Common wheat （Triticum aestivum L.） is one of the most important crops, and intra-specific wheat hybrids have obvious heterosis in yield and protein quality. Therefore, utilization of hybrid wheat varieties offers an effective way to increase yield and nutrition. Cytoplasmic male sterility （CMS） systems are a useful genetic tool for hybrid crop breeding, and are ideal models for studying the genetic interaction and cooperative function of mitochondrial and nuclear genomes in plants （Schnable and Wise, 1998; Hanson and Bentolila, 2004）.

Microsatellite Analysis of Expressed Sequence Tags and Development of EST-SSR Markers for Melampsora spp.

In this study,64 498 ESTs of Melampsoraspp.was assembled into 1 998 contigs,and 604SSR loci were detected on these contigs,with 736.6 bp containing one SSR on average.Among these SSRs,trinucleotide repeats were the most abundant repeats（44.70%）.As for the composition of microsatellites, AC and AT repeats were the richest motif in dinucleotide repeats,and AGT and AAG repeats were the most frequent motifs in trinucleotide repeats,whereas（AAAN） n and（AAAAN） n repeats were dominant in tetranucleotide and pentanucleotide repeats,respectively.All the dominant repeat motifs of different types of SSRs were rich in A and T.In EST sequences of Melampsoraspp.genome,microsatellites longer than 20 bp accounted for about 15.07%.It was noticeable that microsatellites were highly rich in the expressed sequences of Melampsoraspp.genome,which implied that SSRs played a significant role in triggering the gene mutation in Melampsoraspp.genome.A total of 455 SSR primers were designed according to the detected microsatellites using Primer 5.0 and Oligo 6. 0,and 30 primer pairs were randomly selected for amplification test.Among these primer pairs,27 primer pairs succeed in amplification,with a successful rate of 90%.Eight primer pairs generated polymorphic fingerprints in Melampsoraspp.collected from different poplar genotypes,accounting for 26.7% of the total primer pairs.The EST-SSR markers developed fromMelampsoraspp.EST sequences provided important marker resources for studying Melampsoraspp.from the aspects of pathogen identification and survey of genetic variation.

Natural Variation in the Sequence of SNAC1 and Its Expression Level Polymorphism in Rice Germplasms under Drought Stress

Water is a major limiting factor for food production and many countries fail to produce sufficient food for their population due to severe water scarcity （Jury and Vaux, 2005）. Rice is the main staple food worldwide. More than 50% of rice in the world is rain-fed and drought causes severe reduction in rice grain yield in rain-fed environments （Venuprasad et al., 2007; Zhang, 2007; Sandhu et al., 2014）. Therefore, enhancing drought resistance （DR） of rice is important for food security. However, DR is a complex trait, which is controlled by a large number of loci with small effect and is also affected by different genetic background, genotype-by-environment interaction and other stresses such as heat （Hu and Xiong, 2014）.

Population transcriptomics reveals a potentially positive role of expression diversity in adaptation

While it is widely accepted that genetic diversity determines the potential of adaptation,the role that gene expression variation plays in adaptation remains poorly known.Here we show that gene expression diversity could have played a positive role in the adaptation of Miscanthus lutarioriparius.RNA-seq was conducted for 80 individuals of the species,with half planted in the energy crop domestication site and the other half planted in the control site near native habitats.A leaf reference transcriptome consisting of 18,503 high-quality transcripts was obtained using a pipeline developed for de novo assembling with population RNA-seq data.The population structure and genetic diversity of M.lutarioriparius were estimated based on 30,609 genic single nucleotide polymorphisms.Population expression（Ep） and expression diversity（Ed）were defined to measure the average level and the magnitude of variation of a gene expression in the population,respectively.It was found that expression diversity increased while genetic Resediversity decreased after the species was transplanted from the native habitats to the harsh domestication site,especially for genes involved in abiotic stress resistance,histone methylation,and biomass synthesis under water limitation.The increased expression diversity could have enriched phenotypic variation directly subject to selections in the new environment.

Sources of transcription variation in Plasmodium falciparum

Variation in transcript abundance can contribute to both short-term environmental response and long-term evolutionary adaptation.Most studies are designed to assess differences in mean transcription levels and do not consider other potentially important and confounding sources of transcriptional variation.Detailed quantification of variation sources will improve our ability to detect and identify the mechanisms that contribute to genome-wide transcription changes that underpin adaptive responses.To quantify innate levels of expression variation,we measured m RNA levels for more than 5000 genes in the malaria parasite,Plasmodium falciparum,among clones derived from two parasite strains across biologically and experimentally replicated batches.Using a mixed effects model,we partitioned the total variation among four sources—between strain,within strain,environmental batch effects,and stochastic noise.We found 646 genes with significant variation attributable to at least one of these sources.These genes were categorized by their predominant variation source and further examined using gene ontology enrichment analysis to associate function with each source of variation.Genes with environmental batch effect and within strain transcript variation may contribute to phenotypic plasticity,while genes with between strain variation may contribute to adaptive responses and processes that lead to parasite strain-specific survival under varied conditions.