A suitable reference gene is an important prerequisite for guarantying accurate and reliable results in qPCR analysis. Celery is one of the representative vegetable in Apiaceae and is widely cultivated and consumed in the world. However, no reports have been previously published concerning reference genes in celery. In this study, the expression stabilities of nine candidate reference genes in leaf blade and petiole at different development stages were evaluated using three statistics algorithms geNorm, NormFinder, and BestKeeper. Our results showed that TUB-B, TUB-A, and UBC were the most reference genes among all tested samples. GAPDH represented the maximum stability for most individual sample, while the UBQ displayed the minimum stability. To further validate the stability of reference genes, the expression pattern of AgAP2-2 was calculated by using the selected genes for normalization. In addition, the expression patterns of several development-related genes were studied using the selected reference gene. Our results will be beneficial for further studies on gene transcription in celery.

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Photocatalysis is intensely employed to remove refractory organic pollutants in water but suffers from low efficiency due to the rapid recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes. Here, carbon-vacancy-modified g-C3N4 (VC-C3N4) is prepared via a handy two-step calcination method and first applied in the photocatalytic removal of bisphenol A (BPA). Compared to pristine g-C3N4, the photocatalytic degradation activity of VC-C3N4 for BPA is largely enhanced, in which the kinetic constant (k) of BPA degradation is 1.65 times that of pristine g-C3N4. The enhanced photocatalytic performance of VC-C3N4 is ascribed to the critical role of carbon vacancies. On the one hand, carbon vacancies serve as the reservoir of photogenerated electrons to inhibit the recombination of photogenerated holes and electrons. On the other hand, carbon vacancies as conversion centers transfer trapped photogenerated electrons to absorbed O2 for the generation of an abundant superoxide radical (•O2 –), which takes a dominant effect in the photocatalytic degradation process.

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