Cytokinin is a multifaceted plant hormone that plays major roles not only in diverse plant growth and development processes, but also stress responses. We summarize knowledge of the roles of its metabolism, transport, and signalling in responses to changes in levels of both macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur) and micronutrients (boron, iron, silicon, selenium). We comment on cytokinin’s effects on plants’ xenobiotic resistance, and its interactions with light, temperature, drought, and salinity signals. Further, we have compiled a list of abiotic stress-related genes and demonstrate that their expression patterns overlap with those of cytokinin metabolism and signalling genes.

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Necrotic lesion formation triggered by ipt activation closely resembles the hypersensitive response. Cytokinins may thus act as signals and/or mediators in plant defence against pathogen attack.

Objective. Off-loading is one of the crucial components of diabetic foot (DF) therapy. However, there remains a paucity of studies on the most suitable off-loading for DF patients under postoperative care. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of different protective off-loading devices on healing and postoperative complications in DF patients following limb preservation surgery. Methods. This observational study comprised 127 DF patients. All enrolled patients had undergone foot surgery and were off-loaded empirically as follows: wheelchair+removable contact splint (RCS) (group R: 29.2%), wheelchair only (group W: 48%), and wheelchair+removable prefabricated device (group WP: 22.8%). We compared the primary (e.g., the number of healed patients, healing time, and duration of antibiotic (ATB) therapy) and secondary outcomes (e.g., number of reamputations and number and duration of rehospitalizations) with regard to the operation regions across all study groups. Results. The lowest number of postoperative complications (number of reamputations: p=0.028; rehospitalizations: p=0.0085; and major amputations: p=0.02) was in group R compared to groups W and WP. There was a strong trend toward a higher percentage of healed patients (78.4% vs. 55.7% and 65.5%; p=0.068) over a shorter duration (13.7 vs. 16.5 and 20.3 weeks; p=0.055) in the R group, as well. Furthermore, our subanalysis revealed better primary outcomes in patients operated in the midfoot and better secondary outcomes in patients after forefoot surgery—odds ratios favouring the R group included healing at 2.5 (95% CI, 1.04-6.15; p=0.037), reamputations at 0.32 (95% CI, 0.12-0.84; p=0.018), and rehospitalizations at 0.22 (95% CI, 0.08-0.58; p=0.0013). Conclusions. This observational study suggests that removable contact splint combined with a wheelchair is better than a wheelchair with or without removable off-loading device for accelerating wound healing after surgical procedures; it also minimises overall postoperative complications, reducing the number of reamputations by up to 77% and the number of rehospitalizations by up to 66%.

In nature, root systems of most terrestrial plants are protected from light exposure by growing in a dark soil environment. Hence, in vitro cultivation in transparent Petri dishes leads to physiological perturbations, but the mechanisms underlying root-mediated light perception and responses have not been fully elucidated. Thus, we compared Arabidopsis thaliana seedling development in transparent and darkened Petri dishes at low light intensity (20 µmol m(-2) s(-1)), allowing us to follow (inter alia) hypocotyl elongation, which is an excellent process for studying interactions of signals involved in the regulation of growth and developmental responses. To obtain insights into molecular events underlying differences in seedling growth under these two conditions, we employed liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) shotgun proteomics (available via the PRIDE deposit PXD001612). In total, we quantified the relative abundances of peptides representing 1,209 proteins detected in all sample replicates of LC-MS analyses. Comparison of MS spectra after manual validation revealed 48 differentially expressed proteins. Functional classification, analysis of available gene expression data and literature searches revealed alterations associated with root illumination (inter alia) in autotrophic CO2 fixation, C compound and carbohydrate metabolism, and nitrogen metabolism. The results also indicate a previously unreported role for cytokinin plant hormones in the escape-tropism response to root illumination. We complemented these results with reverse transcription followed by quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR), chlorophyll fluorescence and detailed cytokinin signaling analyses, detecting in the latter a significant increase in the activity of the cytokinin two-component signaling cascade in roots and implicating the cytokinin receptor AHK3 as the major mediator of root to hypocotyl signaling in responses to root illumination.

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We use quantum-mechanical calculations to test a hypothesis of Glover et al. (J. Mag. Mag. Mater. 15 (1980) 699) that Co atoms in the Fe2AlCo compound have on average 3 Fe and 3 Co atoms in their second nearest neighbor shell. We have simulated four structural configurations of Fe2AlCo including the full Heusler structure, inverse Heusler polymorph and two other phases matching this idea. The highest thermodynamic stability at T = 0 K is indeed predicted for one of the phases with the distribution of atoms according to Glover and et al. However, small energy differences among three of the studied polymorphs lead to a disordered CsCl-structure-like (B2-like) phase at elevated temperatures. The fourth variant, the full Heusler phase, is predicted to be mechanically unstable. The global magnetic states are predicted to be ferromagnetic but local magnetic moments of Fe and Co atoms sensitively depend on the composition of the first and second coordination shells.