The emergence of Alibaba's Taobao (e-commerce) Villages in remote China has challenged the assumption that rural, underserved communities must always be the recipients of aid to stimulate ICT-enabled development. Based on an indepth case study of two remote villages in China, this research note shows how ICT (e-commerce) can empower a marginalized community, giving rise to a rural e-commerce ecosystem that can aid self-development. We propose the concept of digital empowerment to explicate our findings in the exploration of community-driven development: first, we identify the critical actors of a rural e-commerce ecosystem and how ICT is used by them; second, we illustrate how the same ICT can be used for different affordances by the actors in the evolution of a rural e-commerce ecosystem. The paper also presents unintended consequences of rural e-commerce development. We conclude with suggestions on how to make ICT useful for rural development, and in doing this challenge some of the prevailing theoretical arguments about this process.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have recently emerged as fundamental post-transcriptional regulators inhibit gene expression linked to various biological processes. MiR-206 is one of the most studied and best characterized miRNA to date, which specifically expressed in skeletal muscle. In this review, we summarized the results of studies of miR-206 with emphasis on its function in skeletal muscle development. Importantly, dysregulation of miR-206 has been linked to many disorders in skeletal muscle such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and circulating miR-206 has highlighted its potential as a diagnose biomarker. In addition, a mutation in the 3' untranslated region (3'-UTR) of the myostatin gene in the Texel sheep creating a target site for the miR-206 and miR-1 leads to inhibition of myostatin expression, which likely to cause the muscular hypertrophy phenotype of this breed of sheep. Therefore, miR-206 may become novel target for ameliorating skeletal muscle-related disorders and optimization of muscle quantity of domestic animals.

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Over the past few years, three photorespiratory bypasses have been introduced into plants, two of which led to observable increases in photosynthesis and biomass yield. However, most of the experiments were carried out using Arabidopsis under controlled environmental conditions, and the increases were only observed under low-light and short-day conditions. In this study, we designed a new photorespiratory bypass (called GOC bypass), characterized by no reducing equivalents being produced during a complete oxidation of glycolate into CO 2 catalyzed by three rice-self-originating enzymes, i.e., glycolate oxidase, oxalate oxidase, and catalase. We successfully established this bypass in rice chloroplasts using a multi-gene assembly and transformation system. Transgenic rice plants carrying GOC bypass (GOC plants) showed significant increases in photosynthesis efficiency, biomass yield, and nitrogen content, as well as several other CO 2 -enriched phenotypes under both greenhouse and field conditions. Grain yield of GOC plants varied depending on seeding season and was increased significantly in the spring. We further demonstrated that GOC plants had significant advantages under high-light conditions and that the improvements in GOC plants resulted primarily from a photosynthetic CO 2 -concentrating effect rather than from improved energy balance. Taken together, our results reveal that engineering a newly designed chloroplastic photorespiratory bypass could increase photosynthetic efficiency and yield of rice plants grown in field conditions, particularly under high light.

The effects of foliar-applied ZnO nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) and ZnSO on the winter wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) grain yield and grain quality were studied under field conditions, with the distribution and speciation of Zn within the grain examined using synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence microscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Although neither of the two Zn compounds improved the grain yield or quality, both increased the grain Zn concentration (average increments were 5 and 10 mg/kg for ZnSO and ZnO NP treatments, respectively). Across all treatments, this Zn was mainly located within the aleurone layer and crease of the grain, although the application of ZnO NPs also slightly increased Zn within the endosperm. This Zn within the grain was found to be present as Zn phosphate, regardless of the form in which Zn was applied. These results indicate that the foliar application of ZnO NPs appears to be a promising approach for Zn biofortification, as required to improve human health.