Longan (Dimocarpus longan Lour.), an important subtropical fruit in the family Sapindaceae, is grown in more than 10 countries. Longan is an edible drupe fruit and a source of traditional medicine with polyphenol-rich traits. Tree size, alternate bearing, and witches' broom disease still pose serious problems. To gain insights into the genomic basis of longan traits, a draft genome sequence was assembled. The draft genome (about 471.88 Mb) of a Chinese longan cultivar, “Honghezi,” was estimated to contain 31 007 genes and 261.88 Mb of repetitive sequences. No recent whole-genome-wide duplication event was detected in the genome. Whole-genome resequencing and analysis of 13 cultivated D. longan accessions revealed the extent of genetic diversity. Comparative transcriptome studies combined with genome-wide analysis revealed polyphenol-rich and pathogen resistance characteristics. Genes involved in secondary metabolism, especially those from significantly expanded (DHS, SDH, F3΄H, ANR, and UFGT) and contracted (PAL, CHS, and F3΄5΄H) gene families with tissue-specific expression, may be important contributors to the high accumulation levels of polyphenolic compounds observed in longan fruit. The high number of genes encoding nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat (NBS-LRR) and leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase proteins, as well as the recent expansion and contraction of the NBS-LRR family, suggested a genomic basis for resistance to insects, fungus, and bacteria in this fruit tree. These data provide insights into the evolution and diversity of the longan genome. The comparative genomic and transcriptome analyses provided information about longan-specific traits, particularly genes involved in its polyphenol-rich and pathogen resistance characteristics.

The changes in betacyanin levels among various tissues and following phytohormone treatments were related to the differences in betalain biosynthesis gene expression levels.

Amaranth plants contain large amounts of betalains, including betaxanthins and betacyanins. Amaranthin is a betacyanin, and its molecular structure and associated metabolic pathway differ from those of betanin in beet plants. The chlorophyll, carotenoid, betalain, and flavonoid contents in amaranth leaves were analyzed. The abundance of betalain, betacyanin, and betaxanthin was 2–5-fold higher in the red leaf sectors than in the green leaf sectors. Moreover, a transcriptome database was constructed for the red and green sectors of amaranth leaves harvested from 30-day-old seedlings. 22 unigenes were selected to analyze the expression profiles in the two leaf sectors. The RNA-sequencing data indicated that many unigenes are involved in betalain metabolic pathways. The potential relationships between diverse metabolic pathways and betalain metabolism were analyzed. The validation of the expression of 22 selected unigenes in a qRT-PCR assay revealed the genes that were differentially expressed in the two leaf sectors. Betalains were biosynthesized in specific tissues of the red sectors of amaranth leaves. Almost all of the genes related to betalain metabolism were identified in the transcriptome database, and the expression profiles were different between the red sectors and green sectors in the leaf. Amaranth plants consist of diverse metabolic pathways, and the betalain metabolic pathway is linked to a group of other metabolic pathways.

Although the response rates of chemotherapy in patients with acute T-lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) have improved significantly, the outcome of these patients is still poor. Previous studies suggested that baicalein could inhibit the growth of several cancers, while its effect on T-ALL cells remains unclear. We used Jurkat cells as an in vitro model of T-ALL. Cell counting kit-8 assay and cytometric analysis with Annexin V-FITC/PI double staining were used to investigate the proliferation and apoptosis of Jurkat cells treated with increasing concentration of baicalein for indicated time. RT-PCR and western blotting was used to test the expression of Wnt/β-catenin associated genes and proteins. In cell viability assay, baicalein could inhibit the proliferation of Jurkat cells both in dose- and time-dependent manners. In cell apoptosis assay, baicalein could stimulate apoptosis of Jurkat cells both in dose- and time-dependent manners. Moreover, we demonstrated that baicalein could down-regulated the mRNA and protein levels of β-catenin and its widely accepted downstream targets (c-Myc, cyclin D1, and Axin2) in dose-dependent manners. These results proved that baicalein might be a potential choice for the treatment of T-ALL.

Simultaneously utilizing several complementary solvers is a simple yet effective strategy for solving computationally hard problems. However, manually building such solver portfolios typically requires considerable domain knowledge and plenty of human effort. As an alternative, automatic construction of parallel portfolios (ACPP) aims at automatically building effective parallel portfolios based on a given problem instance set and a given rich design space. One promising way to solve the ACPP problem is to explicitly group the instances into different subsets and promote a component solver to handle each of them. This paper investigates solving ACPP from this perspective, and especially studies how to obtain a good instance grouping. The experimental results showed that the parallel portfolios constructed by the proposed method could achieve consistently superior performances to the ones constructed by the stateof-the-art ACPP methods, and could even rival sophisticated hand-designed parallel solvers.