Cold limits the growth and yield of maize in temperate regions, but the molecular mechanism of cold adaptation remains largely unexplored in maize. To identify early molecular events during cold shock, maize seedlings were treated under 4 °C for 30 min and 2 h, and analyzed at both the proteome and phosphoproteome levels. Over 8500 proteins and 19,300 phosphopeptides were quantified. About 660 and 620 proteins were cold responsive at protein abundance or site-specific phosphorylation levels, but only 65 proteins were shared between them. Functional enrichment analysis of cold-responsive proteins and phosphoproteins revealed that early cold response in maize is associated with photosynthesis light reaction, spliceosome, endocytosis, and defense response, consistent with similar studies in Arabidopsis. Thirty-two photosynthesis proteins were down-regulated at protein levels, and 48 spliceosome proteins were altered at site-specific phosphorylation levels. Thirty-one kinases and 33 transcriptional factors were cold responsive at protein, phosphopeptide, or site-specific phosphorylation levels. Our results showed that maize seedlings respond to cold shock rapidly, at both the proteome and phosphoproteome levels. This study provides a comprehensive landscape at the cold-responsive proteome and phosphoproteome in maize seedlings that can be a significant resource to understand how C4 plants respond to a sudden temperature drop.

Substantial emerging evidence supports that dysregulated RNA metabolism is associated with tumor initiation and development. Serine/Arginine-Rich proteins (SR) are a number of ultraconserved and structurally related proteins that contain a characteristic RS domain rich in arginine and serine residues. SR proteins perform a critical role in spliceosome assembling and conformational transformation, contributing to precise alternative RNA splicing. Moreover, SR proteins have been reported to participate in multiple other RNA-processing-related mechanisms than RNA splicing, such as genome stability, RNA export, and translation. The dysregulation of SR proteins has been reported to contribute to tumorigenesis through multiple mechanisms. Here we reviewed the different biological roles of SR proteins and strategies for functional rectification of SR proteins that may serve as potential therapeutic approaches for cancer.

The subfamily Bombycinae Latreille, [1802] is an important silk-producing group, including well-known economical insects. Although there are many studies on the development of these economic insects, the relationships between genera/species of this subfamily are still unclear. Two data sets of mitochondrial genomes, 13 protein-coding genes (13PCGs) and 13PCGs-AA, were used to estimate phylogenetic relationships based on the maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods. The results strongly support the subfamily Bombycinae as a monophyletic group divided into two clades.

Background: A robust and stable phylogenetic framework is a fundamental goal of evolutionary biology. As the third largest insect order following by Diptera and Coleoptera in the world, lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) play a central role in almost every terrestrial ecosystem as the indicators of environmental change and serve as important models for biologists exploring questions related to ecology and evolutionary biology. However, for such charismatic insect group, the higher-level phylogenetic relationships among its superfamilies are still poorly unresolved. Results: we increased taxon sampling among Lepidoptera (40 superfamilies and 76 families contained 286 taxa) and filtered the unqualified samples, then acquired a series of large amino-acid datasets from 69,680 to 400,330 for phylogenomic reconstructions. Using these datasets, we explored the effect of different taxon sampling on tree topology by considering a series of systematic errors using ML and BI methods. Moreover, we also tested the effectiveness in topology robustness among the three ML-based models. The results showed that taxon sampling is an important determinant in tree robustness of accurate lepidopteran phylogenetic estimation. Long-branch attraction (LBA) caused by site-wise heterogeneity is a significant source of bias given rise to topologies divergence of ditrysia in phylogenomic reconstruction. Phylogenetic inference showed a most comprehensive framework by far to reveal the relationships among lepidopteran superfamilies, but limited by taxon sampling, it could only represent the current understanding of the lepidopteran tree of life. The relationships within the species-rich and relatively rapid radiation Ditrysia and especially Apoditrysia remain poorly unresolved, which need to increase taxon sampling and adopt lineage-specific genes for further phylogenomic reconstruction. Conclusions: The present study further expands the taxon sampling of lepidopteran phylogeny and provides a potential phylogenomic foundation for further understanding its current higher-level relationships.