Rapidly increasing industry has resulted in greater discharge of hazardous chemicals in the soil. In the current study, soil samples were collected from Nanjing mine (32°09′19.29″ N 118°56′57.04″ E) and subjected to heavy metal analysis and microbe isolation. A total of 460 fungi were isolated, and five of these were yeast strains. Most of the strains exhibited tolerance to one metal. Five multimetal tolerant strains were selected and identified as Aspergillus sclerotiorum, Aspergillus aculeatus, Komagataella phaffii, Trichoderma harzianum, and Aspergillus niger. Isolated strains were grown in high concentrations of cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr) and lead (Pb), for induced-tolerance training. The tolerance index (TI) revealed the highest Cd tolerance of novel K. phaffii strain at 5500 ppm (TI: 0.2). K. phaffii also displayed resistance at 4000 ppm against Cr (TI: 0.32) and Pb (TI: 0.32). In contrast, tolerance training for A. niger was not that successful. K. phaffii also displayed the highest bioaccumulation capacity for Cd (25.23 mg/g), Cu (21.63 mg/g), and Pb (20.63 mg/g) at 200 ppm. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) explored the morphological changes in the mycelia of stressed fungi. Results of this study describe this delicate approach to be species and metal dependent and suggest a potential utilization of this fungal strain for the bioremediation of contaminated soils.

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Abscisic acid (ABA) transport plays a crucial role in seed germination under unfavourable conditions such as cold stress. Both heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) and voltage‐dependent anion channel (VDAC) protein are involved in cold stress responses in Arabidopsis. However, their roles in seed germination with regard to ABA signaling remain unknown. Here we demonstrated that Arabidopsis HSP70‐16 and VDAC3 jointly suppress seed germination under cold stress conditions. At 4°C, both HSP70‐16 and VDAC3 facilitated the efflux of ABA from the endosperm to the embryo and thus inhibited seed germination. HSP70‐16 interacted with VDAC3 on the plasma membrane and in the nucleus, and the interplay between HSP70‐16 and VDAC3 activated the opening of the VDAC3 ion channel. Our work established a novel function of HSP70‐16 in seed germination under cold stress and a possible association of VDAC3 activity with ABA transportation from endosperm to embryo under cold stress conditions. This study reveals that HSP70‐16 interacts with VDAC3 and facilitates the opening of the VDAC3 ion channel, which influences ABA efflux from endosperm to embryo, thus negatively regulates seed germination under cold stress.

Aspergillus tubingensis is an important pathogen of economically important crops. Different biotic stresses strongly influence the balance of metabolites in plants. The aim of this study was to understand the function and response of resistance associated metabolites which, in turn are involved in many secondary metabolomics pathways to influence defense mechanism of cotton plant. Analysis of non-targeted metabolomics using ultra high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) revealed abundant accumulation of key metabolites including flavonoids, phenylpropanoids, terpenoids, fatty acids and carbohydrates, in response to leaf spot of cotton. The principal component analysis (PCA), orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) score plots illustrated the evidences of variation between two varieties of cotton under mock and pathogen inoculated treatments. Primary metabolism was affected by the up regulation of pyruvate and malate and by the accumulation of carbohydrates like cellobiose and inulobiose. Among 241 resistance related (RR) metabolites, 18 were identified as resistance related constitutive (RRC) and 223 as resistance related induced (RRI) metabolites. Several RRI metabolites, identified in the present study were the precursors for many secondary metabolic pathways. These included phenylpropanoids (stilbenes and furanocoumarin), flavonoids (phlorizin and kaempferol), alkaloids (indolizine and acetylcorynoline) and terpenoids (azelaic acid and oleanolic acid). Our results demonstrated that secondary metabolism, primary metabolism and energy metabolism were more active in resistant cultivar, as compared to sensitive cultivar. Differential protein and fatty acid metabolism was also depicted in both cultivars. Accumulation of these defense related metabolites in resistant cotton cultivar and their suppression in susceptible cotton cultivar revealed the reason of their respective tolerance and susceptibility against A. tubingensis.

Schima superba (Theaceae) is a subtropical evergreen tree and is used widely for forest firebreaks and gardening. It is a plant that tolerates salt and typically accumulates elevated amounts of manganese in the leaves. With large ecological amplitude, this tree species grows quickly. Due to its substantial biomass, it has a great potential for soil remediation. To evaluate the thorough framework of the mRNA, we employed PacBio sequencing technology for the first time to generate S. Superba transcriptome. In this analysis, overall, 511,759 full length non-chimeric reads were acquired, and 163,834 high-quality full-length reads were obtained. Overall, 93,362 open reading frames were obtained, of which 78,255 were complete. In gene annotation analyses, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), Clusters of Orthologous Genes (COG), Gene Ontology (GO), and Non-Redundant (Nr) databases were allocated 91,082, 71,839, 38,914, and 38,376 transcripts, respectively. To identify long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), we utilized four computational methods associated with protein families (Pfam), Cooperative Data Classification (CPC), Coding Assessing Potential Tool (CPAT), and Coding Non-Coding Index (CNCI) databases and observed 8,551, 9,174, 20,720, and 18,669 lncRNAs, respectively. Moreover, nine genes were randomly selected for the expression analysis, which showed the highest expression of Gene 6 (Na_Ca_ex gene), and CAX (CAX-interacting protein 4) was higher in manganese (Mn)-treated group. This work provided significant number of full-length transcripts and refined the annotation of the reference genome, which will ease advanced genetic analyses of S. superba.

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