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Dehydrins (DHNs), which are stress-related proteins, are important for plant survival under various abiotic and biotic stresses. To elucidate the regulatory mechanisms of wheat-derived DHNs under these stresses, we characterized the DHN wzy2 promoter of the wheat cultivar Zhengyin 1 and studied its contribution to stress tolerance. Sequence analysis indicated that the wzy2 gene contains one 109-bp intron inserted in the nucleotide sequence encoding the S-motif and characterized by a GT-AG border. The wzy2 promoter was revealed to contain several potential stress-related cis-acting regulatory elements, including elements responsive to abscisic acid (ABA; ABREs), anoxia (GC motifs), low temperature (LTREs), auxin (TGA elements), methyl jasmonate (MeJA; TGACG motifs), and gibberellin (TATC boxes). Quantitative real-time PCR analysis showed that transcript accumulation occurred in response to low temperature, anoxia, indoleacetic acid, MeJA, ABA, and gibberellin (GA) treatments. Histochemical analysis of GUS expression demonstrated that wzy2 promoter activity could be upregulated by low temperature, anoxia, ABA, and GA treatments. Interestingly, wzy2 promoter element-driven β-glucuronidase expression was first observed in meristemoids rather than calli of wheat seeds subjected to anoxia. Taken together, these results indicate that YSK2-type wzy2 can be induced directly by ABA, low temperature, anoxia, and GA treatments and indirectly by drought, implying that different cis-acting elements interact in stress response cross talk.

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Although innovative technologies for somatic cell reprogramming and transdifferentiation provide new strategies for the research of translational medicine, including disease modeling, drug screening, artificial organ development, and cell therapy, recipient safety remains a concern due to the use of exogenous transcription factors during induction. To resolve this problem, new induction approaches containing clinically applicable small molecules have been explored. Small molecule epigenetic modulators such as DNA methylation writer inhibitors, histone methylation writer inhibitors, histone acylation reader inhibitors, and histone acetylation eraser inhibitors could overcome epigenetic barriers during cell fate conversion. In the past few years, significant progress has been made in reprogramming and transdifferentiation of somatic cells with small molecule approaches. In the present review, we systematically discuss recent achievements of pure chemical reprogramming and transdifferentiation.

To develop an easy and robust method for creating genetically stable and easily detectable Arabidopsis mutants, we adopted the polycistronic tRNA–gRNA CRISPR/Cas9 (PTG/Cas9) system, a multiplex gene-editing tool in rice, with PTOX as the reporter gene. The PTG/Cas9 system has a great potential in generating large deletions detectable by PCR, which greatly simplifies the laborious work of mutant screening. We constructed a PTOX–PTG/Cas9 system with five gRNAs and introduced it into Arabidopsis. At T1 generation, 24.4% of transgenic plants were chimeric with PCR-detectable deletions in PTOX locus, but no homozygous mutant was found, indicating that gene editing occurred predominantly in somatic cells. After a self-cross propagation, 60% of T1 chimeric plants were able to produce homozygous, heterozygous, or bi-allelic ptox offsprings. Inheritable homozygous ptox mutants without Cas9 gene can be obtained earliest at T2 generation. We further targeted five other genes using the same procedure and achieved homozygous Cas9-free mutants with large deletions for all genes within three generations. We established a standard and reliable protocol to generate stable inherited deletion mutants in 2–3 generations along with simple PCR screening methods. We conclude that the rice PTG/Cas9 system is an efficient, easy, and rapid tool to edit genes in Arabidopsis. We propose that it could be applied to other genes in Arabidopsis, and it might have the potential to edit genes in other plant species as well.

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PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate the hotspots and research trends of ophthalmology research.MethodOphthalmology research literature published between 2017 and 2021 was obtained in the Web of Science Core Collection database. The bibliometric analysis and network visualization were performed with the VOSviewer and CiteSpace. Publication-related information, including publication volume, citation counts, countries, journals, keywords, subject categories, and publication time, was analyzed.ResultsA total of 10,469 included ophthalmology publications had been cited a total of 7,995 times during the past 5 years. The top countries and journals for the number of publications were the United States and the Ophthalmology. The top 25 global high-impact documents had been identified using the citation ranking. Keyword co-occurrence analysis showed that the hotspots in ophthalmology research were epidemiological characteristics and treatment modalities of ocular diseases, artificial intelligence and fundus imaging technology, COVID-19-related telemedicine, and screening and prevention of ocular diseases. Keyword burst analysis revealed that “neural network,” “pharmacokinetics,” “geographic atrophy,” “implementation,” “variability,” “adverse events,” “automated detection,” and “retinal images” were the research trends of research in the field of ophthalmology through 2021. The analysis of the subject categories demonstrated the close cooperation relationships that existed between different subject categories, and collaborations with non-ophthalmology-related subject categories were increasing over time in the field of ophthalmology research.ConclusionsThe hotspots in ophthalmology research were epidemiology, prevention, screening, and treatment of ocular diseases, as well as artificial intelligence and fundus imaging technology and telemedicine. Research trends in ophthalmology research were artificial intelligence, drug development, and fundus diseases. Knowledge from non-ophthalmology fields is likely to be more involved in ophthalmology research.