BES1 and BZR1 were originally identified as two key transcription factors specifically regulating brassinosteroid (BR)-mediated gene expression. They belong to a family consisting of six members, BES1, BZR1, BEH1, BEH2, BEH3, and BEH4. bes1 and bzr1 single mutants do not exhibit any characteristic BR phenotypes, suggesting functional redundancy of these proteins. Here, by generating higher order mutants, we show that a quintuple mutant is male sterile due to defects in tapetum and microsporocyte development in anthers. Our genetic and biochemical analyses demonstrate that BES1 family members also act as downstream transcription factors in the EMS1-TPD1-SERK1/2 pathway. Ectopic expression of both TPD1 and EMS1 in bri1-116, a BR receptor null mutant, leads to the accumulation of non-phosphorylated, active BES1, similar to activation of BES1 by BRI1-BR-BAK1 signaling. These data suggest that two distinctive receptor-like kinase-mediated signaling pathways share BES1 family members as downstream transcription factors to regulate different aspects of plant development.

Scintillators that exhibit X-ray-excited luminescence have great potential in radiation detection, X-ray imaging, radiotherapy, and non-destructive testing. However, most reported scintillators are limited to inorganic or organic crystal materials, which have some obstacles in repeatability and processability. Here we present a facile strategy to achieve the X-ray-excited organic phosphorescent scintillation from amorphous copolymers through the copolymerization of the bromine-substituted chromophores and acrylic acid. These polymeric scintillators exhibit efficient X-ray responsibility and decent phosphorescent quantum yield up to 51.4% under ambient conditions. The universality of the design principle was further confirmed by a series of copolymers with multi-color radioluminescence ranging from green to orange-red. Moreover, we demonstrated their potential application in X-ray radiography. This finding not only outlines a feasible principle to develop X-ray responsive phosphorescent polymers, but also expands the potential applications of polymer materials with phosphorescence features.

Abstract DNA N4-methylcytosine (4mC) is an important epigenetic modification that plays a vital role in regulating DNA replication and expression. However, it is challenging to detect 4mC sites through experimental methods, which are time-consuming and costly. Thus, computational tools that can identify 4mC sites would be very useful for understanding the mechanism of this important type of DNA modification. Several machine learning-based 4mC predictors have been proposed in the past 3 years, although their performance is unsatisfactory. Deep learning is a promising technique for the development of more accurate 4mC site predictions. In this work, we propose a deep learning-based approach, called DeepTorrent, for improved prediction of 4mC sites from DNA sequences. It combines four different feature encoding schemes to encode raw DNA sequences and employs multi-layer convolutional neural networks with an inception module integrated with bidirectional long short-term memory to effectively learn the higher-order feature representations. Dimension reduction and concatenated feature maps from the filters of different sizes are then applied to the inception module. In addition, an attention mechanism and transfer learning techniques are also employed to train the robust predictor. Extensive benchmarking experiments demonstrate that DeepTorrent significantly improves the performance of 4mC site prediction compared with several state-of-the-art methods.

Motivation Proteases are enzymes that cleave target substrate proteins by catalyzing the hydrolysis of peptide bonds between specific amino acids. While the functional proteolysis regulated by proteases plays a central role in the ‘life and death’ cellular processes, many of the corresponding substrates and their cleavage sites were not found yet. Availability of accurate predictors of the substrates and cleavage sites would facilitate understanding of proteases’ functions and physiological roles. Deep learning is a promising approach for the development of accurate predictors of substrate cleavage events. Results We propose DeepCleave, the first deep learning-based predictor of protease-specific substrates and cleavage sites. DeepCleave uses protein substrate sequence data as input and employs convolutional neural networks with transfer learning to train accurate predictive models. High predictive performance of our models stems from the use of high-quality cleavage site features extracted from the substrate sequences through the deep learning process, and the application of transfer learning, multiple kernels and attention layer in the design of the deep network. Empirical tests against several related state-of-the-art methods demonstrate that DeepCleave outperforms these methods in predicting caspase and matrix metalloprotease substrate-cleavage sites. Availability and implementation The DeepCleave webserver and source code are freely available at http://deepcleave.erc.monash.edu/. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The correlation between hydrogenation-induced surface sulfur vacancies and photocatalytic activity of hydrogenated ZnIn2S4 is tentatively proposed in this work.

lasers, [5] single-mode lasers, [6] continuouswave lasers, [7] polariton lasers, [8] and laser arrays. [9] Halide perovskites have also been widely studied in photocatalytic organic reaction, [10] photocatalytic CO 2 reduction, [11] and photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. [12] Due to their broad technological importance, halide perovskites have become the focus of current research.Recently, ferroelectricity has been detected in halide perovskites and quickly attracted widespread interest. [13] Ferroelectricity is a characteristic of spontaneous polarization in certain materials, which can be reversed by applying an external electric field. The discovery of ferroelectricity can be traced back to 1920 [14] (Figure 1a), when Valasek measured the polarization of Rochelle Salt as a function of the applied electric field. Perovskite ferroelectric first appeared on the scene in the early 1940s [15] (Figure 1b). Up to now, perovskite oxides (e.g., BaTiO 3 , [16] PbZr x Ti 1−x O 3 , [17] Bi 4−x La x Ti 3 O 12 , [18] LiNbO 3 , [19] and LiTaO 3 [20] ) as main ferroelectric materials have been widely applied to supercapacitors, [21] memories, [22] sensors, [23] and actuators, [24] which play key roles in modern technologies benefiting human lives. Nevertheless, the fatal weakness of brittleness for most perovskite oxides limits their application in flexible devices. [25] Therefore, perovskite oxide ferroelectrics are losing competitiveness in future technologies pursuing device miniaturization and flexibility. The emergence of halide perovskite ferroelectrics that feature the natural advantages of structural softness and lightweight has thus opened a new chapter in ferroelectric research.Since ferroelectricity was recognized in halide perovskites, the research activities have mainly focused on designing novel halide perovskite ferroelectrics. [35] In the past few years, the collective efforts from interdisciplinary communities have made available a collection of halide perovskite ferroelectrics with distinct compositions and structures (Figure 1c-i), such as 0D (NMP) 3 Sb 2 Cl 9 (NMP = N-methylpyrrolidinium) , [31] 1D (3-pyrrolinium)CdCl 3 , [28] 2D (BEA) 2 PbCl 4 (BEA = benzylammonium), [29] and 3D organometal (AP)RbBr 3 (AP = 3-ammoniopyrrolidinium). [30] Preliminary experiments have revealed the great promise of these materials for applications in ferroelectric photovoltaics, [36] self-powered photodetection, [37] and X-ray detection. [38] On a separate note, the development of halide perovskite ferroelectrics also raises important issues in the mechanistic investigation of halide perovskite in optoelectronics. For example, the possible existence of ferroelectricity was proposed to explain the superior optoelectronic Halide perovskites have gained tremendous attention in the past decade owing to their excellent properties in optoelectronics. Recently, a fascinating property, ferroelectricity, has been discovered in halide perovskites and quickly attracted widespread interest. Compared with traditional perovskite oxide fe...

Thermal quenching that is characterized by loss of light emission with increasing temperature is widely observed in luminescent materials including upconversion nanoparticles, causing problems in technological applications such as lighting,...

Objective To observe whether metformin (MET) plays a protective role in acute lung injury (ALI) induced by paraquat (PQ) poisoning in rats by activating the AMPK/NF-κB signaling pathway. Methods PQ exposure was used to construct a rat model of ALI and a model of acute type II alveolar epithelial cell (RLE-6TN) injury, and MET intervention was performed. Rat lung tissue samples were collected to evaluate pathological changes in rat lung tissue, the oxidation index, and inflammatory factors; cell viability was detected by CCK-8 assays, and the protein expression levels of phospho-AMPK and phospho-NF-κBp65 in rat lung tissue and RLE-6TN cells were observed by Western blotting. Results Compared with the PQ group, the MET treatment group showed significantly (1) reduced lung wet/dry ratio (W/D: 4.67 ± 0.31 vs. 5.45 ± 0.40, P < 0.001), (2) reduced pathological changes in lung tissue, (3) decreased MDA levels (nmol/mg prot: 2.70 ± 0.19 vs. 3.08 ± 0.15, P < 0.001) and increased SOD and GSH-Px activities (U/mg prot: 76.17 ± 5.22 vs. 45.23 ± 6.58, 30.40 ± 2.84 vs. 21.00 ± 3.20; all P < 0.001) in lung tissue homogenate, (4) reduced levels of IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α in lung tissue homogenates (pg/mL: 47.87 ± 5.06 vs. 66.77 ± 6.55; 93.03 ± 7.41 vs. 107.39 ± 9.81; 75.73 ± 6.08 vs. 89.12 ± 8.94; all P < 0.001), (5) increased activity of RLE-6TN cells (%: 0.69 ± 0.09, 0.76 ± 0.06, and 0.58 ± 0.03 vs. 0.50 ± 0.05; all P < 0.05), (6) decreased protein levels of phospho-NF-κBp65 in lung homogenates and RLE-6TN cells (p-NF-κB/NF-κB: 0.47 ± 0.09 vs. 0.81 ± 0.13; 0.26 ± 0.07 vs. 0.79 ± 0.13; all P < 0.01), and (7) upregulated protein expression of phospho-AMPK in lung homogenates and RLE-6TN cells (p-AMPK/AMPK: 0.88 ± 0.05 vs. 0.36 ± 0.12; 0.93 ± 0.03 vs. 0.56 ± 0.15; all P < 0.01). After the addition of the AMPK inhibitor Compound C (Com C), the protein expression levels of phospho-AMPK and phospho-NF-κBp65 returned to baseline. Conclusion MET can effectively alleviate ALI induced by paraquat poisoning and increase the viability of cells exposed to paraquat. The mechanism may be related to the activation of the AMPK/NF-κB pathway, downregulation of inflammatory mediators such as IL-6 and TNF-α, and upregulation of the SOD and GSH-Px oxidation index, and these effects can be inhibited by the AMPK inhibitor Com C.