SummaryDrought is one of the major abiotic stresses that directly implicate plant growth and crop productivity. Although many genes in response to drought stress have been identified, genetic improvement to drought resistance especially in food crops is showing relatively slow progress worldwide. Here, we reported the isolation of abscisic acid, stress and ripening (ASR) genes from upland rice variety, IRAT109 (Oryza sativa L. ssp. japonica), and demonstrated that overexpression of OsASR5 enhanced osmotic tolerance in Escherichia coli and drought tolerance in Arabidopsis and rice by regulating leaf water status under drought stress conditions. Moreover, overexpression of OsASR5 in rice increased endogenous ABA level and showed hypersensitive to exogenous ABA treatment at both germination and postgermination stages. The production of H2O2, a second messenger for the induction of stomatal closure in response to ABA, was activated in overexpression plants under drought stress conditions, consequently, increased stomatal closure and decreased stomatal conductance. In contrast, the loss‐of‐function mutant, osasr5, showed sensitivity to drought stress with lower relative water content under drought stress conditions. Further studies demonstrated that OsASR5 functioned as chaperone‐like protein and interacted with stress‐related HSP40 and 2OG‐Fe (II) oxygenase domain containing proteins in yeast and plants. Taken together, we suggest that OsASR5 plays multiple roles in response to drought stress by regulating ABA biosynthesis, promoting stomatal closure, as well as acting as chaperone‐like protein that possibly prevents drought stress‐related proteins from inactivation.

This study investigated the protective effect of β-1,3/1,6-glucan on gut morphology, intestinal epithelial tight junctions, and bacterial translocation of broiler chickens challenged with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. Ninety Salmonella-free Arbor Acre male broiler chickens were randomly divided into 3 groups: negative control group (NC), Salmonella Typhimurium-infected positive group (PC), and the Salmonella Typhimurium-infected group with dietary 100 mg/kg of β-1,3/1,6-glucan supplementation (T) to determine the effect of β-1,3/1,6-glucan on intestinal barrier function. Salmonella Typhimurium challenge alone significantly decreased villus height (P < 0.001), villus height/crypt depth ratio (P < 0.05), and the number of goblet cells (P < 0.001) in the jejunum at 14 d postinfection (dpi), but significantly increased the number of intestinal secretory IgA (sIgA)-expressing cells at 14 dpi (P < 0.01) and total sIgA levels in the jejunum at 7 (P < 0.05) and 14 dpi (P < 0.01) compared with the unchallenged birds (NC). Dietary β-1,3/1,6-glucan supplementation not only significantly increased villus height, villus height/crypt depth ratio, and the number of goblet cells (P < 0.01), but also increased the number of sIgA-expressing cells (P < 0.05) and sIgA content in the jejunum at 14 dpi (P < 0.01) in birds challenged with Salmonella Typhimurium in comparison with Salmonella Typhimurium challenge alone. β-1,3/1,6-Glucan addition had significant inhibitory effects (P < 0.05) on cecal Salmonella colonization levels and liver Salmonella invasion of the Salmonella Typhimurium-infected birds compared with the PC group. Intestinal tight junction proteins claudin-1, claudin-4, and occludin mRNA expression in the jejunum at 14 dpi was significantly decreased by Salmonella Typhimurium challenge alone (P < 0.01) compared with that of the NC group, whereas β-1,3/1,6-glucan supplementation significantly increased claudin-1 and occludin mRNA expression (P < 0.01) at 14 dpi in the jejunum of the Salmonella Typhimurium-infected birds in comparison with the PC group. Our results indicate that dietary β-1,3/1,6-glucan can alleviate intestinal mucosal barrier impairment in broiler chickens challenged with Salmonella Typhimurium.

BackgroundThe poultry industry is in need of effective antibiotic alternatives to control outbreaks of necrotic enteritis (NE) due to Clostridium perfringens.MethodsThis study was conducted to investigate the effects of feeding Bacillus coagulans on the growth performance and gut health of broiler chickens with C. perfringens-induced NE. Two hundred and forty 1-day-old broiler chicks were randomly assigned to a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement with two dietary B. coagulans levels (0 or 4 × 109 CFU/kg of diet) and two disease challenge statuses (control or NE challenged).ResultsNE-induced reduction in body weight gain was relieved by the addition of B. coagulans into broiler diets compared with the NE-infected birds. NE infection damaged intestinal morphological structure, promoted intestinal C. perfringens growth and liver invasion, and enhanced anti-C. perfringens specific sIgA concentrations in the gut and specific IgG levels in serum compared with the uninfected birds. NE infection significantly (P < 0.05) decreased mucin-2 (at 14 d post-infection (DPI), toll -like receptor 2 (TLR2, at 7 and 14 DPI), TLR4 (at 7 and 14 DPI), tumor necrosis factor super family 15 (TNFSF15, at 7 and 14 DPI), lysozyme (LYZ, at 14 DPI) and fowlicidin-2 (at 7 and 14 DPI) mRNA levels, whereas it dramatically (P = 0.001) increased IFN-γ mRNA levels at 7 DPI. However, challenged birds fed diets supplemented with B. coagulans showed a significant (P < 0.01) decrease in gut lesion scores, decreased C. perfringens numbers in the cecum and liver, and an increase in fowlicidin-2 mRNA levels in compared with the uninfected birds. In addition, compared with the non-supplemented group, dietary inclusion of B. coagulans improved intestinal barrier structure, further increased specific sIgA levels and alkaline phosphatase (IAP) activity in the jejunum, enhanced the expression of jejunum lysozyme mRNA, and inhibited the growth, colonization, and invasion of C. perfringens; in contrast, it reduced serum-specific IgG concentrations and jejunum IFN-γ mRNA levels.ConclusionThese results indicated that dietary B. coagulans supplementation appeared to be effective in preventing the occurrence and reducing the severity of C. perfringens-induced NE in broiler chickens.

This study was conducted to evaluate the protective efficacy of dietary Bacillus coagulans (B. coagulans) supplementation in birds receiving Salmonella enteritidis (SE). Two hundred and forty 1-day-old Cobb broilers were randomly assigned to 2 × 2 factorial arrangements of treatments with 2 levels of dietary B. coagulans (0 or 400 mg/kg) and 2 levels of SE challenge (0 or 1 × 109 SE between d 9 to 11). Results showed that SE infection did not affect growth performance, but caused intestinal inflammation and barrier function impairment by reducing intestinal goblet cells and beneficial bacteria numbers, increasing cecal Salmonella colonization and liver Salmonella invasion, downregulating jejunal mucin-2 (at 7 and 17 d post-infection, DPI), TLR2 (at 7 and 17 DPI), TLR4 (at 17 DPI), TNFSF15 (at 7 and 17 DPI) gene mRNA levels, and upregulating jejunal IFN-γ mRNA levels (at 17 DPI) compared to uninfected birds. Moreover, SE infection also elevated the concentration of jejunal anti-Salmonella IgA and sera anti-Salmonella IgG compared to uninfected birds. However, chickens received B. coagulans diets showed significant increase in body weight gain and weight gain to feed intake ratio from d 15 to 21, alkaline phosphatase activity (at 7 DPI), cecal Lactobacilli and Bifidobacterium numbers (at 7 DPI; at 17 DPI), villous height: crypt ratio (at 17 DPI), and goblet cell numbers (at 7 and 17 DPI), whereas exhibiting reduced jejunal crypt depth (at 17 DPI), cecal Escherichia coli (at 7, 17, and 31 DPI), and Salmonella (at 7 and 17 DPI) levels compared with the non-supplemented birds, regardless of SE infection. In addition, B. coagulans supplement upregulated lysozyme mRNA levels (at 17 DPI), downregulated IFN-γ mRNA levels (at 7 and 17 DPI), showed an increased trend in Fowlicidin-2 mRNA levels (at 7 DPI) and a reduced trend in liver Salmonella load compared to the non-supplemented control. These data indicated that B. coagulans has a protective effect in SE infected broilers.

The twin support vector machine (TWSVM) is one of the powerful classification methods. In this brief, a TWSVM-type clustering method, called twin support vector clustering (TWSVC), is proposed. Our TWSVC includes both linear and nonlinear versions. It determines k cluster center planes by solving a series of quadratic programming problems. To make TWSVC more efficient and stable, an initialization algorithm based on the nearest neighbor graph is also suggested. The experimental results on several benchmark data sets have shown a comparable performance of our TWSVC.

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