A callus transformation system for gene functional studies in soybean

Obtaining transgenic plants is a common method for analyzing gene function. Unfortunately, stable genetic transformation is difficult to achieve, especially for plants（e.g., soybean）, which are recalcitrant to genetic transformation. Transient expression systems, such as Arabidopsis protoplast, Nicotiana leaves, and onion bulb leaves are widely used for gene functional studies. A simple method for obtaining transgenic soybean callus tissues was reported recently. We extend this system with simplified culture conditions to gene functional studies, including promoter analysis, expression and subcellular localization of the target protein, and protein-protein interaction. We also evaluate the plasticity of this system with soybean varieties, different vector constructs, and various Agrobacterium strains. The results indicated that the callus transformation system is efficient and adaptable for gene functional investigation in soybean genotype-, vector-, and Agrobacterium strain-independent modes. We demonstrated an easy set-up and practical homologous strategy for soybean gene functional studies.

Integrating Gene Ontology and Blast to predict gene functions

A GoBlast system was built to predict gene function by integrating Blast search and Gene Ontology (GO) annotations together. The operation system was based on Debian Linux 3.1, with Apache as the web server and Mysql database as the data storage system. FASTA files with GO annotations were taken as the sequence source for blast alignment, which were formatted by wu-formatdb program. The GoBlast system includes three Bioperl modules in Perl:a data input module, a data process module and a data output module. A GoBlast query starts with an amino acid or nucleotide sequence. It ends with an output in an html page, presenting high scoring gene products which are of a high homology to the queried sequence and listing associated GO terms beside respective gene poducts. A simple click on a GO term leads to the detailed explanation of the specific gene function. This avails gene function prediction by Blast. GoBlast can be a very useful tool for functional genome research and is available for free at http://bioq.org/goblast.

Regulatory potential of soil available carbon,nitrogen,and functional genes on N_(2)O emissions in two upland plantation systems

Dynamic nitrification and denitrification processes are affected by changes in soil redox conditions,and they play a vital role in regulating soil N_(2)O emissions in rice-based cultivation.It is imperative to understand the influences of different upland crop planting systems on soil N_(2)O emissions.In this study,we focused on two representative rotation systems in Central China:rapeseed–rice(RR)and wheat–rice(WR).We examined the biotic and abiotic processes underlying the impacts of these upland plantings on soil N_(2)O emissions.The results revealed that during the rapeseed-cultivated seasons in the RR rotation system,the average N_(2)O emissions were 1.24±0.20 and 0.81±0.11 kg N ha^(–1)for the first and second seasons,respectively.These values were comparable to the N_(2)O emissions observed during the first and second wheat-cultivated seasons in the WR rotation system(0.98±0.25 and 0.70±0.04 kg N ha^(–1),respectively).This suggests that upland cultivation has minimal impacts on soil N_(2)O emissions in the two rotation systems.Strong positive correlations were found between N_(2)O fluxes and soil ammonium(NH_(4)^(+)),nitrate(NO_(3)^(–)),microbial biomass nitrogen(MBN),and the ratio of soil dissolved organic carbon(DOC)to NO_(3)^(–)in both RR and WR rotation systems.Moreover,the presence of the AOA-amoA and nirK genes were positively associated with soil N_(2)O fluxes in the RR and WR systems,respectively.This implies that these genes may have different potential roles in facilitating microbial N_(2)O production in various upland plantation models.By using a structural equation model,we found that soil moisture,mineral N,MBN,and the AOA-amoA gene accounted for over 50%of the effects on N_(2)O emissions in the RR rotation system.In the WR rotation system,soil moisture,mineral N,MBN,and the AOA-amoA and nirK genes had a combined impact of over 70%on N_(2)O emissions.These findings demonstrate the interactive effects of functional genes and soil factors,including soil physical characteristics,available carbon and nitrogen,and their ratio,on soil N_(2)O emissions during upland cultivation seasons under rice-upland rotations.

A Nimble Cloning-compatible vector system for high-throughput gene functional analysis in plants

Plant expression vectors are essential tools for gene functional analysis and molecular plant breeding.The gene of interest is transferred to the vector by molecular cloning technology.Nimble Cloning is a newly developed molecular cloning method with the advantages of simplicity,efficiency,and standardization.In this study,we developed a"pNC"vector system that contains 55 Nimble Cloning-compatible vectors for functional analysis of genes in plants.These vectors contain the NC frame flanked by unique adapters for one-step and standardized Nimble Cloning.We demonstrate that the pNC vectors are convenient and effective for the functional analysis of plant genes,including the study of gene ectopic expression,protein subcellular localization,protein-protein interaction,gene silencing(RNAi),virus-induced gene silencing,promoter activity,and CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome editing.The"pNC"vector system represents a high-throughput toolkit that can facilitate the large-scale analysis of plant functional genomics.

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.

Development of a rapid and efficient system for CR genes identification based on hairy root transformation in Brassicaceae

Many economically important crops and vegetables belonging to the cruciferous family are heavily endangered by clubroot disease caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae infection.Breeding of clubroot resistant cultivars based on mapping and cloning of resistant genes is commonly regarded as the most cost-effective and efficient way to fight against this disease.The traditional way of R gene functional validation requires stable transformation that is both time-and labor-consuming.In this study,a rapid and efficient hairy-root transgenic protocol mediated by Agrobacterium rhizogenes was developed.The transformation positive rate was over 80%in Brassica napus showed by GUS reporter gene and this transformation only took 1/6 of the time compared with stable transformation.The system was applicable to different B.napus varieties and other cruciferous crops including Brassica rapa and Brassica oleracea.In particular,two known CR genes,CRA3.7.1 and CRA8.2.4 were used respectively,as example to show that the system works well for CR gene study combined with subsequent P.brassicae infection in B.napus.Most importantly,it works both in over-expression that led to disease resistance,as well as in RNAi which led to disease susceptible phenotype.Therefore,this system can be used in batch-wise identification of CR genes,and also offered the possibility of manipulating key genes within the P.brassicae genome that could improve our knowledge on host-pathogen interaction.

Research Progress on Functional Analysis of Rice WRKY Genes

Rice is a model plant for genomic study of grass species. Functional identification and definition of rice genes becomes the object of its functional genomics research. WRKY gene superfamily, one of the transcription factor gene families, was recently suggested to play important roles in plant development and stress response. In rice, the results of analyses of expression pattern and ectopic overexpressor lines also support this viewpoint, and the evidences implicate rice WRKY proteins in transcriptional reprogramming during biotic or abiotic stresses, senescence, sugar metabolites, and morphological architecture. In this paper, we review the advance in study of rice WRKY gene family and also propose unified nomenclature for rice WRKY factors to eliminate confusion.

A Method of Gene-Function Annotation Based on Variable Precision Rough Sets

It is very important in the field of bioinformatics to apply computer to perform the function annotation for new sequenced bio-sequences. Based on GO database and BLAST program, a novel method for the function annotation of new biological sequences is presented by using the variable-precision rough set theory. The proposed method is applied to the real data in GO database to examine its effectiveness. Numerical results show that the proposed method has better precision, recall-rate and harmonic mean value compared with existing methods.

Application of Functional Markers to Identify Genes for Bacterial Blight Resistance in Oryza rufipogon

Field resistances of nine accessions of common wild rice （Oryza rufipogon Griff.） and one rice variety （IR24） were evaluated by using nine strains of bacterial blight pathogen （Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae） from the Philippines. IR24 was highly susceptible to all the strains, and six common wild rice accessions resisted all the nine strains, with a resistance frequency of 67%. The accessions Yulin and Wanning were only susceptible to PXO280 and PXO71, respectively. The accession Gaozhou was susceptible to the three strains PXO79, PXO99 and PXO339, whereas resistant to the other six strains. It could be concluded that there is at least one resistance gene in each common wild rice accession. The functional markers of the genes xa5, xa13, Xa21 and Xa27 were used to detect the presence of these resistance genes in the nine tested wild rice accessions, and it was found that four wild rice accessions contained heterozygous xa13. Among the nine common wild rice accessions, five were homozygous for Xa27 and three homozygous for xa27, and the accession Laibin contained neither xa27 nor Xa27. In addition, there were no xa5 and Xa21 in all of these accessions.

Expression pattern and function analyses of the MADS thranscription factor genes in wheat(Triticum aestivum L.) under phosphorusstarvation condition

supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China （31201674 and 31371618）;the National Transgenic Major Program, China （2011ZX08008）

TripletGO: Integrating Transcript Expression Profiles with Protein Homology Inferences for Gene Function Prediction

Gene Ontology(GO)has been widely used to annotate functions of genes and gene products.Here,we proposed a new method,Triplet GO,to deduce GO terms of protein-coding and noncoding genes,through the integration of four complementary pipelines built on transcript expression profile,genetic sequence alignment,protein sequence alignment,and naīve probability.Triplet GO was tested on a large set of 5754 genes from 8 species(human,mouse,Arabidopsis,rat,fly,budding yeast,fission yeast,and nematoda)and 2433 proteins with available expression data from the third Critical Assessment of Protein Function Annotation challenge(CAFA3).Experimental results show that Triplet GO achieves function annotation accuracy significantly beyond the current state-of-the-art approaches.Detailed analyses show that the major advantage of Triplet GO lies in the coupling of a new triplet network-based profiling method with the feature space mapping technique,which can accurately recognize function patterns from transcript expression profiles.Meanwhile,the combination of multiple complementary models,especially those from transcript expression and protein-level alignments,improves the coverage and accuracy of the final GO annotation results.The standalone package and an online server of Triplet GO are freely available at https://zhanggroup.org/Triplet GO/.

Applications of virus-induced gene silencing for identification of gene function in fruit

With the development of bioinformatics,it is easy to obtain information and data about thousands of genes,but the determi nation of the functions of these genes depends on methods for rapid and effective functi on al identification.Virus-induced gene sile ncing(VIGS)is a mature method of gene functional identification developed over the last 20 years,which has been widely used in many research fields involving many species.Fruit quality formation is a complex biological process,which is closely related to ripening.Here,we review the progress and contribution of VIGS to our understanding of fruit biology and its advantages and disadvantages in determining gene function.

Association of polymorphisms of Nramp1 gene with immune function and production performance of large white pig

The present research was designed to study the association of polymorphism of natural resistance-associated macrophage proteinl （Nrampl） with some immune function and the production performance in Large White pig. The PCR-RFLP technique was applied to analyze the correlation between the polymorphisms of Nrampl gene and immune function [value of Polymorphonuclear Leukocytes （PMN） obtained by Nitroblue Tetrazolium （NBT） Reduction and effect of Cytotoxin in Monocyte] and production performance in 165 Large White pigs. The results showed that there was one Nde I restriction locus in Large White pig, and both values of PMN by NBT Reduction and effect of Cytotoxin in Monocyte in genotype BB were higher than those in genotype AB （P〈0.05）. Simultaneously, the weight of 180-day-old pigs with genotype BB was higher than that with genotype AB （P〈0.05）. The results indicated that there was a significant correlation between different genotypes of Nrampl gene and Immune function and production performance, and it can be regarded as a candidate gene of disease resistance. All these results provide valuable reference to further studies of pig disease resistance.

Cloning and Functional Analysis of Lycopene ε-Cyclase (IbLCYe) Gene from Sweetpotato, Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.

This paper reported firstly successful cloning of lycopene ε-cyclase （lbLCYe） gene from sweetpotato, lpomoea batatas （L.） Lam. Using rapid amplification of cDNA ends （RACE）, lbLCYe gene was cloned from sweetpotato cv. Nongdafu 14 with high carotenoid content. The 1 805 bp cDNA sequence oflbLCYe gene contained a 1236 bp open reading frame （ORF） encoding a 411 amino acids polypeptide with a molecular weight of 47 kDa and an isoelectric point （pI） of 6.95. IbLCYe protein contained one potential lycopene ε-cyclase domain and one potential FAD （flavinadenine dinucleotide）/NAD（P） （nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate）-binding domain, indicating that this protein shares the typical characteristics of LCYe proteins. The gDNA oflbLCYe gene was 4 029 bp and deduced to contain 5 introns and 6 exons. Real-time quantitative PCR analysis revealed that the expression level of IbLCYe gene was significantly higher in the storage roots of Nongdafu 14 than those in the leaves and stems. Transgenic tobacco （cv. Wisconsin 38） expressing [bLCYe gene accumulated significantly more ^-carotene compared to the untransformed control plants. These results showed that lbLCYe gene has an important function for the accumulation of carotenoids of sweetpotato.

Development and application of functional gene arrays for microbial community analysis

功能的基因标记能关于功能的基因差异和微生物引起的社区的潜在的活动提供重要信息。尽管 microarray 技术成功地被使用了为纯文化学习基因表示，简单、人工的微生物引起的社区，改编如此的一种技术分析复杂微生物引起的社区仍然以设计，样品准备，和数据分析提出很多挑战。这个工作集中于功能的基因数组(FGA ) 的开发和应用程序为微生物引起的社区研究指向关键功能的基因标记。一些与 FGA 有关明确地给问题调音，例如 oligonucleotide 探查设计， nucleic 酸抽取和纯化，数据分析，特性，敏感，和量的能力详细被讨论。最近的研究证明了 FGA 能从许多自然环境关于微生物引起的社区提供特定、敏感、潜在地量的信息并且控制生态系统。这种技术被期望革命化微生物引起的社区的分析，并且连接微生物引起的结构到生态系统工作。

Identifying disease feature genes based on cellular localized gene functional modules and regulation networks

Identifying disease-relevant genes and functional modules, based on gene expression pro- files and gene functional knowledge, is of high im- portance for studying disease mechanisms and sub- typing disease phenotypes. Using gene categories of biological process and cellular component in Gene Ontology, we propose an approach to selecting func- tional modules enriched with differentially expressed genes, and identifying the feature functional modules of high disease discriminating abilities. Using the differentially expressed genes in each feature module as the feature genes, we reveal the relevance of the modules to the studied diseases. Using three data- sets for prostate cancer, gastric cancer, and leukemia, we have demonstrated that the proposed modular approach is of high power in identifying functionally integrated feature gene subsets that are highly rele- vant to the disease mechanisms. Our analysis has also shown that the critical disease-relevant genes might be better recognized from the gene regulation network, which is constructed using the characterized functional modules, giving important clues to the concerted mechanisms of the modules responding to complex disease states. In addition, the proposed approach to selecting the disease-relevant genes byjointly considering the gene functional knowledge suggests a new way for precisely classifying disease samples with clear biological interpretations, which is critical for the clinical diagnosis and the elucidation of the pathogenic basis of complex diseases.

Changes in bacterial community and abundance of functional genes in paddy soil with cry1Ab transgenic rice

A field experiment involving cry1Ab transgenic rice(GM) and its parental non-cry1Ab rice(M) has been on-going since 2014. The diversity of the bacterial communities and the abundance of the microbial functional genes which drive the conversion of nitrogen in paddy soil were analyzed during the growth period of rice in the fifth year of the experiment, using 16 S rRNAbased Illumina Mi Seq and real-time PCR on the amoA, nirS and nirK genes. The results showed no differences in the alpha diversity indexes of the bacterial communities, including Chao1, Shannon and Simpson, between the fields cultivated with line GM and cultivar M at any of the growth stages of rice. However, the bacterial communities in the paddy soil with line GM were separated from those of paddy soil with cultivar M at each of the growth stages of rice, based on the unweighted Uni Frac NMDS or PCoA. In addition, the analyses of ADONIS and ANOSIM, based on the unweighted Uni Frac distance, indicated that the above separations between line GM and cultivar M were statistically significant(P<0.05) during the growth season of rice. The increases in the relative abundances of Acidobacteria or Bacteroidetes, in the paddy soils with line GM or cultivar M, respectively, led to the differences in the bacterial communities between them. At the same time, functional gene prediction based on Illumina Mi Seq data suggested that the abundance of many functional genes increased in the paddy soil with line GM at the maturity stage of rice, such as genes related to the metabolism of starch, amino acids and nitrogen. Otherwise, the copies of bacterial amo A gene, archaeal amo A gene and denitrifying bacterial nir K gene significantly increased(P<0.05 or 0.01) in the paddy soil with line GM. In summary, the release of cry1Ab transgenic rice had effects on either the composition of bacterial communities or the abundance of microbial functional genes in the paddy soil.

Gene polymorphisms associated with functional dyspepsia

Functional dyspepsia(FD) is a constellation of functional upper abdominal complaints with poorly elucidated pathophysiology. However, there is increasing evidence that susceptibility to FD is influenced by hereditary factors. Genetic association studies in FD have examined genotypes related to gastrointestinal motility or sensation, as well as those related to inflammation or immune response. G-protein b3 subunit gene polymorphisms were first reported as being associated with FD. Thereafter, several gene polymorphisms including serotonin transporter promoter, interlukin-17 F, migration inhibitory factor, cholecystocynine-1 intron 1, cyclooxygenase-1, catechol-o-methyltransferase, transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 receptor, regulated upon activation normal T cell expressed and secreted, p22 PHOX, Toll like receptor 2, SCN10 A, CD14 and adrenoreceptors have been investigated in relation to FD; however, the results are contradictory. Several limitations underscore the value of current studies. Among others, inconsistencies in the definitions of FD and controls, subject composition differences regarding FD subtypes, inadequate samples, geographical and ethnical differences, as well as unadjusted environmental factors. Further well-designed studies are necessary to determine how targeted genes polymorphisms, influence the clinical manifestations and potentially the therapeutic response in FD.

Analysis of the diversity and function of the alleles of the rice blast resistance genes Piz-t, Pita and Pik in 24 rice cultivars

Understanding the sequence diversity of rice blast resistance genes is important for breeding new resistant rice cultivars against the rice blast fungusMagnaporthe oryzae. In this study, we selected 24 rice cultivars with different genetic back-grounds to study the alelic diversity of rice blast resistance genesPiz-t, Pitaand Pik. For Piz-t, a total of 17 alelic types were found within the 24 cultivars. Blast inoculations showed that most of the mutations can affect the function of the resistance gene. For Pita, except for the difference at the 918th amino acid, a majority of the 21 mutations were detected among the cultivars. Inoculations with blast isolates carryingAvr-Pita revealed that cultivars with mutations in other sites except for the 918th amino acid did not affect the function of thePita gene. ForPik, a total of six alelic types were found within the 24 cultivars, but ifve of them lost the function of the resistance gene. In addition, we found thatPiz-t, Pita and Pik were expressed constitutively in the 24 rice cultivars and the expression level was not related to resistance. Our results have provided the sequence diversity information of the resistance genesPiz-t, Pita and Pik among the popular rice cultivars grown in the northeast region of China. Keywords：resistance gene, avirulence gene, aleles, function, genetic evolution zae（M. oryzae）, is one of the most destructive diseases in rice production worldwide. Over the years, comprehensive studies on rice blast resistance have been conducted （Silue et al. 1992）. The resistance in newly cultivated rice cultivars to M. oryzae can be lost quickly due to the high level of instability in the genome of the fungus （Bonmanet al. 1992）. Previous studies show that cultivars with durable and broad-spectrum resistance againstM. oryzae carry multiple major resistance （R） and minor resistance genes （Liuet al. 2014）. An effective way to control rice blast disease is, therefore, to breed rice cultivars with multiple R and QTL genes. To date, over 83 rice blast R genes have been identiifed, and are distributed on 11 rice chromosomes except Received 22 May, 2015 Accepted 26 October, 2015 WANG Yan, E-mail： 8806wy@163.com; Correspondence LIU Zhi-heng, Tel： ＋86-24-23738857, E-mail： lzhh1954@163.com; ZHENG Wen-jing, Tel： ＋86-24-31021081, E-mail： zwj27@126. com ＊These authors contributed equaly to this study. ？ 2016, CAAS. Al rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi： 10.1016/S2095-3119（15）61207-2 1. Introduction Rice blast disease, caused by the fungusMagnaporthe ory-