Search

Multi-action dialog policy, which generates multiple atomic dialog actions per turn, has been widely applied in task-oriented dialog systems to provide expressive and efficient system responses. Existing policy models usually imitate action combinations from the labeled multi-action dialog examples. Due to data limitations, they generalize poorly toward unseen dialog flows. While reinforcement learning-based methods are proposed to incorporate the service ratings from real users and user simulators as external supervision signals, they suffer from sparse and less credible dialog-level rewards. To cope with this problem, we explore to improve multi-action dialog policy learning with explicit and implicit turn-level user feedback received for historical predictions (i.e., logged user feedback) that are cost-efficient to collect and faithful to real-world scenarios. The task is challenging since the logged user feedback provides only partial label feedback limited to the particular historical dialog actions predicted by the agent. To fully exploit such feedback information, we propose BanditMatch, which addresses the task from a feedback-enhanced semi-supervised learning perspective with a hybrid objective of semi-supervised learning and bandit learning. BanditMatch integrates pseudo-labeling methods to better explore the action space through constructing full label feedback. Extensive experiments show that our BanditMatch outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by generating more concise and informative responses. The source code and the appendix of this paper can be obtained from https://github.com/ShuoZhangXJTU/BanditMatch., AAAI 2023

Autocrine signaling pathways regulated by RAPID ALKALINIZATION FACTORs (RALFs) control cell wall integrity during pollen tube germination and growth in Arabidopsis. To investigate the role of pollen-specific RALFs in another plant species, we combined gene expression data with phylogenetic and biochemical studies to identify candidate orthologs in maize. We show that Clade IBZmRALF2/3mutants, but not that of Clade IIIZmRALF1/5caused cell wall instability in the sub-apical region of the growing pollen tube. ZmRALF2/3 are mainly located to the cell wall and are partially able to complement the pollen germination defect of their Arabidopsis orthologs AtRALF4/19. Mutations inZmRALF2/3compromise pectin distribution pattern leading to altered cell wall thickness, hyperphosphorylation of ZmPEX cell wall proteins and pollen tube burst. Clade IB, but not Clade III ZmRALFs are capable to interact with pollen-specific CrRLK1L receptor kinases ZmFERL4/7/9 and GPI-anchored co-receptors ZmLLG1/2 at similar binding affinities. In contrast, binding affinity to ZmPEX2/4 cell wall proteins is about five times higher. Based on these data, we now propose a dosage-dependent model showing how Clade IB RALFs act as extracellular sensors to regulate cell wall integrity and thickness during pollen tube growth in plants.One sentence summaryPollen-specific RALFs interact at different binding affinities with receptor kinases, GPI-anchored proteins and cell wall proteins to regulate cell wall integrity during pollen tube growth in maize.

Recent years have seen increasing concerns about the unsafe response generation of large-scale dialogue systems, where agents will learn offensive or biased behaviors from the real-world corpus. Some methods are proposed to address the above issue by detecting and replacing unsafe training examples in a pipeline style. Though effective, they suffer from a high annotation cost and adapt poorly to unseen scenarios as well as adversarial attacks. Besides, the neglect of providing safe responses (e.g. simply replacing with templates) will cause the information-missing problem of dialogues. To address these issues, we propose an unsupervised pseudo-label sampling method, TEMP, that can automatically assign potential safe responses. Specifically, our TEMP method groups responses into several clusters and samples multiple labels with an adaptively sharpened sampling strategy, inspired by the observation that unsafe samples in the clusters are usually few and distribute in the tail. Extensive experiments in chitchat and task-oriented dialogues show that our TEMP outperforms state-of-the-art models with weak supervision signals and obtains comparable results under unsupervised learning settings.

Recent years have seen increasing concerns about the private inference of NLP services and Transformer models. However, existing two-party privacy-preserving methods solely consider NLU scenarios, while the private inference of text generation such as translation, dialogue, and code completion remains unsolved. Besides, while migrated to NLG models, existing privacy-preserving methods perform poorly in terms of inference speed, and suffer from the convergence problem during the training stage. To address these issues, we propose MERGE, a fast private text generation framework for Transformer-based language models. Specifically, MERGE reuse the output hidden state as the word embedding to bypass the embedding computation, and reorganize the linear operations in the Transformer module to accelerate the forward procedure. Based on these two optimizations, extensive experiments show that MERGE can achieve a 26.5x speedup under the sequence length 512, and reduce 80\% communication bytes, with an up to 10x speedup to existing state-of-art models.

BackgroundCuproptosis is a new modality of cell death regulation that is currently considered as a new cancer treatment strategy. Nevertheless, the prognostic predictive value of cuproptosis-related lncRNAs in breast cancer (BC) remains unknown. Using cuproptosis-related lncRNAs, this study aims to predict the immune microenvironment and prognosis of BC patients. and develop new therapeutic strategies that target the disease.MethodsThe Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database provided the RNA-seq data along with the corresponding clinical and prognostic information. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed to acquire lncRNAs associated with cuproptosis to establish predictive features. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to calculate the overall survival rate (OS) in the high-risk and low-risk groups. High risk and low risk gene sets were enriched to explore functional discrepancies among risk teams. The mutation data were analyzed using the “MAFTools” r-package. The ties of predictive characteristics and immune status had been explored by single sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA). Last, the correlation between predictive features and treatment condition in patients with BC was analyzed. Based on prognostic risk models, we assessed associations between risk subgroups and immune scores and immune checkpoints. In addition, drug responses in at-risk populations were predicted.ResultsWe identified a set of 11 Cuproptosis-Related lncRNAs (GORAB-AS1, AC 079922.2, AL 589765.4, AC 005696.4, Cytor, ZNF 197-AS1, AC 002398.1, AL 451085.3, YTH DF 3-AS1, AC 008771.1, LINC 02446), based on which to construct the risk model. In comparison to the high-risk group, the low-risk patients lived longer (p < 0.001). Moreover, cuproptosis-related lncRNA profiles can independently predict prognosis in BC patients. The AUC values for receiver operating characteristics (ROC) of 1-, 3-, and 5-year risk were 0.849, 0.779, and 0.794, respectively. Patients in the high-risk group had lower OS than those in the low-risk group when they were divided into groups based on various clinicopathological variables. The tumor burden mutations (TMB) correlation analysis showed that high TMB had a worse prognosis than low-TMB, and gene mutations were found to be different in high and low TMB groups, such as PIK3CA (36% versus 32%), SYNE1 (4% versus 6%). Gene enrichment analysis indicated that the differential genes were significantly concentrated in immune-related pathways. The predictive traits were significantly correlated with the immune status of BC patients, according to ssGSEA results. Finally, high-risk patients showed high sensitivity in anti-CD276 immunotherapy and conventional chemotherapeutic drugs such as imatinib, lapatinib, and pazopanib.ConclusionWe successfully constructed of a cuproptosis-related lncRNA signature, which can independently predict the prognosis of BC patients and can be used to estimate OS and clinical treatment outcomes in BRCA patients. It will serve as a foundation for further research into the mechanism of cuproptosis-related lncRNAs in breast cancer, as well as for the development of new markers and therapeutic targets for the disease.

In the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, we investigated the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of a young patient infected by avian influenza A (H5N6) virus in Anhui Province, East China, and analyzed genomic features of the pathogen in 2020. Through the cross‐sectional investigation of external environment monitoring (December 29–31, 2020), 1909 samples were collected from Fuyang City. It was found that the positive rate of H5N6 was higher than other areas obviously in Tianma poultry market, where the case appeared. In addition, dual coinfections were detected with a 0.057% polymerase chain reaction positive rate the surveillance years. The virus was the clade 2.3.4.4, which was most likely formed by genetic reassortment between H5N6 and H9N2 viruses. This study found that the evolution rates of the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase genes of the virus were higher than those of common seasonal influenza viruses. The virus was still highly pathogenic to poultry and had a preference for avian receptor binding., Highlights Various avian influenza virus (AIV) subtypes naturally have caused zoonotic infections, but the subtypes H5N1 and H7N9 have caused a prominent impact.At present, the outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia (coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID‐19]) has caused a worldwide pandemic.To our knowledge, this is the youngest child infected with H5N6 subtype avian influenza in Anhui Province.Herein, we analyzed the epidemiology of the case and the characteristics of the pathogen genome, to find out the possible evolution of the virus.

Accurate communication at the stigma surface is required to promote plants' own pollen and reject foreign pollen. Liu et al. have now discovered an autocrine signaling pathway at the surface of arabidopsis stigmatic papillae, accumulating ROS. Downregulation of ROS production via an antagonistic peptide from the pollen coat promotes pollen hydration and germination.

Establishing a fast and effective extraction method for herbs is beneficial for the determination of their main compounds and estimating their quality. In this study, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) were optimized to simultaneously extract three main types of phenolic acids, i.e., regaloside B, regaloside C, and regaloside E, and polysaccharides from the bulbs of Lilium lancifolium Thunb. Based on the optimized extraction conditions, i.e., an extraction temperature of 50 °C, an extraction time of 40 min, a solid–liquid ratio of 1 : 25, and a ratio of water in the DES of 20%, the extracted amounts of regaloside B, regaloside C, and regaloside E reached 0.31 ± 0.06 mg g−1, 0.29 ± 0.03 mg g−1, and 3.04 ± 0.38 mg g−1, respectively. The extraction efficiencies were higher than those obtained using conventional organic solvents. Next, the polysaccharide levels were measured and compared with those obtained using a conventional hot water extraction method, and equivalent extraction efficiencies were obtained with the conventional hot water extraction method. This study provides a new application of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) for simultaneously extracting phenolic acids and polysaccharides from the bulbs of L. lancifolium Thunb. Considering the biodegradability and pharmaceutical acceptability, DESs as a class of green solvents could have wide applications in the extraction of natural products.

The development of infrared photodetectors is mainly limited by the choice of available materials and the intricate crystal growth process. Moreover, thermally activated carriers in traditional III-V and II-VI semiconductors enforce low operating temperatures in the infrared photodetectors. Here we demonstrate infrared photodetection enabled by interlayer excitons (ILEs) generated between tungsten and hafnium disulfide, WS2/HfS2. The photodetector operates at room temperature and shows an even higher performance at higher temperatures owing to the large exciton binding energy and phonon-assisted optical transition. The unique band alignment in the WS2/HfS2 heterostructure allows interlayer bandgap tuning from the mid- to long-wave infrared spectrum. We postulate that the sizeable charge delocalization and ILE accumulation at the interface result in a greatly enhanced oscillator strength of the ILEs and a high responsivity of the photodetector. The sensitivity of ILEs to the thickness of two-dimensional materials and the external field provides an excellent platform to realize robust tunable room temperature infrared photodetectors. Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Ministry of Education (MOE) National Research Foundation (NRF) Accepted version The work is supported by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) under the 2D Materials Pharos Program (grant no. 152 700014 and grant no. 152 700017). Q.J.W. acknowledges funding from the National Research Foundation Competitive Research Program (NRF-CRP18-2017-02 and NRF–CRP19–2017–01). K.S.T. acknowledges support from the Center for Nanostructured Graphene (CNG) under the Danish National Research Foundation (project DNRF103) and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant no. 773122, LIMA). G.L. acknowledges the supported under the grant MOE2017-T2-1-114. H.L. acknowledges the support by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) in Taiwan under grant no. MOST 109-2112-M-001-014-MY3. J.T. and S. Lukman thank C. W. Lee, A. Ngo and M. Zhao for their valuable inputs and K Hippalgaonkar for sharing tools in the device fabrication.

Lilium, a perennial crop with great ornamental, medicinal and edible value, has been frequently used as functional food and medicine. Lilium lancifolium Thunb. (L. lancifolium) and Lilium brownii F.E.Brown var.viridulum Baker (L. brownii) are the most used medicinal species in China. However, the flavor compounds of these two species have not yet been clear. Here, metabolomics and transcriptome analysis were used to reveal the difference of the bitter substances of L. lancifolium and L. brownii. Qualitative results indicated that nine compounds are commonly existed in L. lancifolium and L. brownii, while nine compounds are unique in L. lancifolium and eight compounds are unique in L. brownii. Furthermore, quantitative results revealed that the content of regaloside A in L. lancifolium was nearly 2-7 folds higher than that of L. brownii, and the content of regaloside B in L. lancifolium was about 4-16 folds higher than that of L. brownii. Regaloside C and E were not detected in L. brownii. Transcriptome analysis showed that there were 90 unique genes up-regulated in L. lancifolium samples in the pathway of phenylpropanoid biosynthesis and 75 unique genes up-regulated in L. brownii samples, which could be related to the different content and chemical structure specificity of phenylpropanoid glycerol glucosides in L. lancifolium and L. brownii. The results of our in-deep research provide new insights into the bitter substances of L. lancifolium and L. brownii, and a further consideration for the chemical consistency and quality evaluation for Lilii bulbus.

Shifts in the duration and intensity of ambient temperature impair plant development and reproduction, particularly male gametogenesis. Stress exposure causes meiotic defects or premature spore abortion in male reproductive organs, leading to male sterility. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying stress and male sterility. To elucidate these mechanisms, we imposed a moderate transient heat stress on maize (Zea mays) plants at the tetrad stage of pollen development. After completion of pollen development at optimal conditions, stress responses were assessed in mature pollen. Transient heat stress resulted in reduced starch content, decreased enzymatic activity, and reduced pollen germination, resulting in sterility. A transcriptomic comparison pointed toward misregulation of starch, lipid, and energy biosynthesis-related genes. Metabolomic studies showed an increase of Suc and its monosaccharide components, as well as a reduction in pyruvate. Lipidomic analysis showed increased levels of unsaturated fatty acids and decreased levels of saturated fatty acids. In contrast, the majority of genes involved in developmental processes such as those required for auxin and unfolded protein responses, signaling, and cell wall biosynthesis remained unaltered. It is noteworthy that changes in the regulation of transcriptional and metabolic pathway genes, as well as heat stress proteins, remained altered even though pollen could recover during further development at optimal conditions. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate that a short moderate heat stress during the highly susceptible tetrad stage strongly affects basic metabolic pathways and thus generates germination-defective pollen, ultimately leading to severe yield losses in maize.

Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursors with different orientation behaviors were prepared by changing the coagulation bath conditions such as concentration and temperature. The orientation structure of the PAN precursor was determined by the method of sound velocity. X-ray diffraction and optical microscopy were used to investigate the crystalline structure and morphological characterization of nascent fiber, and the correlation between orientation of precursor and structure of nascent fiber was established. The molecular chain orientation ability “a” was defined as the slope of the logarithmic fitting curve of the degree of orientation varying with the drafting ratio, and the relationship between “a” and the crystallinity of nascent fiber was studied. The results show that the higher crystallinity nascent fiber has, the lower drawing ability PAN precursor has, and the higher degree of orientation has under the same drafting ratios. The maximum drafting factor of polyacrylonitrile precursor is significantly affected by radial structure of nascent fiber, it reaches the local maximum when the coagulation bath concentration is 74%. The fiber with high solvent content has higher molecular chain orientation ability than the fiber with low solvent content. The molecular chain orientation ability of precursor increases with the crystallinity of nascent fiber.

Establishing a fast and effective extraction method for herbs is beneficial for the determination of their main compounds and estimating their quality. In this study, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) were optimized to simultaneously extract three main types of phenolic acids, i.e., regaloside B, regaloside C, and regaloside E, and polysaccharides from the bulbs of Lilium lancifolium Thunb. Based on the optimized extraction conditions, i.e., an extraction temperature of 50 °C, an extraction time of 40 min, a solid-liquid ratio of 1 : 25, and a ratio of water in the DES of 20%, the extracted amounts of regaloside B, regaloside C, and regaloside E reached 0.31 ± 0.06 mg g-1, 0.29 ± 0.03 mg g-1, and 3.04 ± 0.38 mg g-1, respectively. The extraction efficiencies were higher than those obtained using conventional organic solvents. Next, the polysaccharide levels were measured and compared with those obtained using a conventional hot water extraction method, and equivalent extraction efficiencies were obtained with the conventional hot water extraction method. This study provides a new application of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) for simultaneously extracting phenolic acids and polysaccharides from the bulbs of L. lancifolium Thunb. Considering the biodegradability and pharmaceutical acceptability, DESs as a class of green solvents could have wide applications in the extraction of natural products.

Additional file 6: Table S2. The amino acid sequences and conservation of selected THB epitopes.

Additional file 5: Table S1. The amino acid sequences and conservation of selected CTL epitopes.

The simultaneous anammox and denitrification (SAD) process is an emerging treatment for wastewaters containing nitrogen pollution and organics. However, there is little research on the effect of organic matter types on the SAD process. In this study, two reactors, one with glucose (R1) and the other with acetate (R2), were used to investigate the effects of different carbon sources and C/N ratios on the SAD process. The nitrogen removal performance, functional gene abundance, biomass activity and microbial community structures of the two reactors were analyzed and compared. Results showed that a desirable nitrogen removal efficiency (NRE) was obtained at the C/N ratio of 1.2 in R1, whereas a similar NRE could be achieved at a C/N ratio of 0.8 in R2, which was more susceptible to a high C/N ratio. Moreover, at high C/N ratios, the microbial species diversity of R1 was higher than that of R2. High-throughput sequencing analysis revealed that anammox bacteria predominated at low COD, but denitrifying bacteria grew rapidly at high C/N ratio. Removal of NO3−-N in the glucose-driven reactor appeared to be more depended on other heterotrophic bacteria other than denitrification bacteria. In general, the glucose-driven reactor was more stable and resistant to high C/N ratios during the SAD process than the acetate-driven one. Results of this study provide information for practical treatment of wastewater with high nitrogen contents.

Ammonia is widely distributed in sulfate-reducing bioreactor dealing with sulfate wastewater, which shows potential effect on the metabolic pathway of sulfate and ammonia. This study investigates the sulfate-reducing efficiency and microbial community composition in the sulfate-reducing EGSB reactor with the increasing ammonia loading. Results indicated that, compared with low ammonia loading (166–666 mg/L), the sulfate and organic matter removal efficiencies were improved gradually with the appropriate ammonia loading (1000–2000 mg/L), which increased from 63.58 ± 3.81 to 71.08 ± 1.36% and from 66.24 ± 1.32 to 81.88 ± 1.83%, respectively. Meanwhile, with the appropriate ratio of ammonia and sulfate (1.5–3.0) and hydraulic retention time (21 h), the sulfate-reducing anaerobic ammonia oxidation (SRAO) process was occurred efficiently, inducing the accumulation of S0 (270 mg/L) and the simultaneous ammonia removal (70.83%) in EGSB reactor. Moreover, the key sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) (Desulfovibrio) and denitrification bacteria (Pseudomonas and Alcaligenes) were responsible for the sulfate and nitrogen removal in these phases, which accounted for 3.66–5.54 and 3.85–9.13%, respectively. However, as the ammonia loading higher than 3000 mg/L (phases 9 and 10), the sulfate-reducing efficiency was decreased to only 28.3 ± 1.26% with the ammonia removal rate of 18.4 ± 3.37% in the EGSB reactor. Meanwhile, the predominant SRB in phases 9 and 10 were Desulfomicrobium (1.22–1.99%) and Desulfocurvus (4.0–5.46%), and the denitrification bacteria accounted for only 0.88% (phase 10), indicating the low nitrogen removal rate.

Black phosphorus (BP) has been proposed as the channel material in the next generation ultrascaled CMOS devices. In order to gain insight into the current characteristics in 2-D layered materials, the current distribution of a few-layer BP Schottky barrier FET is investigated via state-of-the-art quantum device simulations. Approximately 40% of the total current was found to be concentrated in the top layer when the device was switched on, with the remaining current distributed among the other layers. In comparison, ~80% of the current concentrated below the surface in a Si device with the same structure. These features are related to the strength of the intra/interlayer interaction in few-layer BP and are unique to 2-D layered materials. Moreover, the current distribution and the device performance were different for the top- and side-contacted devices, with the side-contacted devices yielding lower resistance compared with the top-contacted devices.

In angiosperms, two sperm cells are transported and delivered by the pollen tube to the ovule to achieve double fertilization. Extensive communication takes place between the pollen tube and the female tissues until the sperm cell cargo is ultimately released. During this process, a pollen tube surface-located receptor complex composed of ANXUR1/2 (ANX1/2) and Buddha's Paper Seal 1/2 (BUPS1/2) was reported to control the maintenance of pollen tube integrity by perceiving the autocrine peptide ligands rapid alkalinization factor 4 and 19 (RALF4/19). It was further hypothesized that pollen-tube rupture to release sperm is caused by the paracrine RALF34 peptide from the ovule interfering with this signaling pathway. In this study, we identified two Arabidopsis pollen-tube-expressed glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored proteins (GPI-APs), LORELEI-like-GPI-anchored protein 2 (LLG2) and LLG3, as co-receptors in the BUPS-ANX receptor complex. llg2 llg3 double mutants exhibit severe fertility defects. Mutant pollen tubes rupture early during the pollination process. Furthermore, LLG2 and LLG3 interact with ectodomains of both BUPSs and ANXURs, and this interaction is remarkably enhanced by the presence of RALF4/19 peptides. We further demonstrate that the N terminus (including a YISY motif) of the RALF4 peptide ligand interacts strongly with BUPS-ANX receptors but weakly with LLGs and is essential for its biological function, and its C-terminal region is sufficient for LLG binding. In conclusion, we propose that LLG2/3 serve as co-receptors during BUPS/ANX-RALF signaling and thereby further establish the importance of GPI-APs as key regulators in plant reproduction processes.

Zi-Hong Liang,1Yan-Bo Jia,2Mei-Ling Wang,1Zi-Ru Li,1Min Li,1Yong-Li Yun,1Run-Xiu Zhu1 1Department of Neurology, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region People’s Hospital, Huhhot, Inner Mongolia, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Orthopaedics, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Inner Mongolia Medical University, Huhhot, Inner Mongolia, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Run-Xiu ZhuDepartment of Neurology, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region People’s Hospital, No. 20 Zhaowuda Road, Huhhot, Inner Mongolia010017, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 0 471 328 3999Fax +86 0 471 328 3999Email xcinhah-21@foxmail.comBackground: Post-stroke depression (PSD) is one of the most common psychiatric diseases afflicting stroke survivors. This study was conducted to assess the efficacy of ginkgo biloba extract as augmentation of venlafaxine in treating PSD.Methods: The included PSD patients were randomly assigned into the experiment group (receiving ginkgo biloba extract plus venlafaxine) and control group (receiving venlafaxine alone). The treatment was continued for eight weeks. The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) and the Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) were used to assess the depressivesymptoms. The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) was used to assess the neurological defect, and the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) was used to assess recovery of abilities of patients after stroke. Meanwhile, the levels of serum 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) were measured before and after treatment. The dose of venlafaxine used and adverse events were also recorded.Results: Each group had 40 PSD patients. After treatment, the depressive symptoms, neurological defect and living function were significantly improved in both groups. But the patients receiving ginkgo biloba extract plus venlafaxine had the significantly lower average HDRS score (p=0.0008), SDS score (p

Since the first description of double fertilization 120 years ago, the processes of pollen tube growth and guidance, sperm cell release inside the receptive synergid cell, as well as fusion of two sperm cells to the female gametes (egg and central cell) have been well documented in many flowering plants. Especially microscopic techniques, including live cell imaging, were used to visualize these processes. Molecular as well as genetic methods were applied to identify key players involved. However, compared to the first 11 decades since its discovery, the past decade has seen a tremendous advancement in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms regulating angiosperm fertilization. Whole signaling networks were elucidated including secreted ligands, corresponding receptors, intracellular interaction partners, and further downstream signaling events involved in the cross-talk between pollen tubes and their cargo with female reproductive cells. Biochemical and structural biological approaches are now increasingly contributing to our understanding of the different signaling processes required to distinguish between compatible and incompatible interaction partners. Here, we review the current knowledge about signaling mechanisms during above processes with a focus on the model plants Arabidopsis thaliana and Zea mays (maize). The analogy that many of the identified "reproductive signaling mechanisms" also act partly or fully in defense responses and/or cell death is also discussed.

Figure S1. Structural domain analysis of BmOVOs. A represents acidic domain. B represents alkaline domain. Z represents zinc-finger domain. Number on domain means number of amino acid residues in a domain. Figure S2. Transcriptional Regulatory activity of BmOVO could be regulated by Dpp, Daw, Ror2, STAT and BBx-B8.The mixture of pFast-potu5-Luc-ie1-Bmovo2(1 × 1011 copies) and pRL-TK (1 × 1010 copies) plasmids was respectively co-transfected with pIZT/V5-His, pIZT/V5-His-STAT, pIZT/V5-His-DPP, pIZT/V5-His-Daw, pIZT/V5-His-Ror2 and pIZT/V5-His-BBX-B8 plasmids (1 × 1011 copies) into BmN cells (105), and the co-transfected BmN cells with pFast-potu5-ie1-Bmovo2 (1 × 1011 copies) and pRL-TK (1 × 1010 copies) plasmids was used as a control. Luciferase activities in the cells were determined at 60 h post-transfection, 100 μg protein from the lysed cells was used for luciferase assay (*p

Since the first description of double fertilization 120 years ago, the processes of pollen tube growth and guidance, sperm cell release inside the receptive synergid cell, as well as fusion of two sperm cells to the female gametes (egg and central cell) have been well documented in many flowering plants. Especially microscopic techniques, including live cell imaging, were used to visualize these processes. Molecular as well as genetic methods were applied to identify key players involved. However, compared to the first 11 decades since its discovery, the past decade has seen a tremendous advancement in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms regulating angiosperm fertilization. Whole signaling networks were elucidated including secreted ligands, corresponding receptors, intracellular interaction partners, and further downstream signaling events involved in the cross-talk between pollen tubes and their cargo with female reproductive cells. Biochemical and structural biological approaches are now increasingly contributing to our understanding of the different signaling processes required to distinguish between compatible and incompatible interaction partners. Here, we review the current knowledge about signaling mechanisms during above processes with a focus on the model plants Arabidopsis thaliana and Zea mays (maize). The analogy that many of the identified "reproductive signaling mechanisms" also act partly or fully in defense responses and/or cell death is also discussed.

ACP100 NPP designed by CNNC (China National Nuclear Corporation) is a 125MWe, multi-purpose small modular reactor based on pressurized water reactor technology; it adopts the integrated reactor technology. Different application scenarios bring up different design requirements: some require high compactness, but others care more about a longer cycle length, and some may require a fully mature and conservative design; thus, multiple design choices need to be proposed. Also, the same and most important thing cared by all users is that, the design needs to be validated to satisfy the current nuclear safety standards, and lower cost would be always preferred. Core nuclear design is a key part of the whole NPP design. Basically, nuclear design target of ACP100 is to achieve a reasonable good balance during longer cycle length, larger discharge exposure for fuel assemblies, and maximally using the mature technologies, and of course, with sufficient reactivity control ability for safety assurance. Aiming at satisfying all these different needs maximally, a strategy of supplying multiple nuclear design choices is proposed for ACP100: choice 1. Boron-free plan, this is a compact design with no need for chemistry and volume system, no need for daily boron adjustment and relative waste storage; choice 2. Boron and rod co-controlled plan, this is similar with large commercial PWRs, with a lower power peak factor and suitable for broad location sites. Both choices load 57 units of the same type fuel assemblies CF3S (with height reduced from CF3 fuel assemblies) per cycle, and both adopt partial reload and shuffle fuel management strategy to achieve larger discharge exposure. Gd is loaded in the fuel rods in both choices to help control reactivity. Choice 1 loads much more control rod clusters than choice 2, and of course, reactivity adjustment and compensation during operation is totally different between them. Using suitable and reliable software to simulate the core, through large amount of optimization, both choices achieve a 24-month fuel cycle length; the average discharge exposure of fuel assemblies reach about 40000MWd/tU, which is competitive among SMRs, especially for boron-free ones; and sufficient reactivity control ability and safety margin is validated to fully meet the reactor safety requirements.

Flowering time (FTi) control is well examined in the long-day plant Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), and increasing knowledge is available for the short-day plant rice (Oryza sativa). In contrast, little is known in the day-neutral and agronomically important crop plant maize (Zea mays). To learn more about FTi and to identify novel regulators in this species, we first compared the time points of floral transition of almost 30 maize inbred lines and show that tropical lines exhibit a delay in flowering transition of more than 3 weeks under long-day conditions compared with European flint lines adapted to temperate climate zones. We further analyzed the leaf transcriptomes of four lines that exhibit strong differences in flowering transition to identify new key players of the flowering control network in maize. We found strong differences among regulated genes between these lines and thus assume that the regulation of FTi is very complex in maize. Especially genes encoding MADS box transcriptional regulators are up-regulated in leaves during the meristem transition. ZmMADS1 was selected for functional studies. We demonstrate that it represents a functional ortholog of the central FTi integrator SUPPRESSOR OF OVEREXPRESSION OF CONSTANS1 (SOC1) of Arabidopsis. RNA interference-mediated down-regulation of ZmMADS1 resulted in a delay of FTi in maize, while strong overexpression caused an early-flowering phenotype, indicating its role as a flowering activator. Taken together, we report that ZmMADS1 represents a positive FTi regulator that shares an evolutionarily conserved function with SOC1 and may now serve as an ideal stating point to study the integration and variation of FTi pathways also in maize.

CEP cell death markers. Programmed cell death (PCD) is essential for proper plant growth and development. Plant-specific papain-type KDEL-tailed cysteine endopeptidases (KDEL-CysEPs or CEPs) have been shown to be involved in PCD during vegetative development as executors for the last step in the process. The Arabidopsis genome encodes three KDEL-CysEPs: AtCEP1, AtCEP2 and AtCEP3. With the help of fluorescent fusion reporter lines, we report here a detailed expression analysis of KDEL-CysEP (pro)proteins during reproductive processes, including flower organ and germline development, fertilization and seed development. AtCEP1 is highly expressed in different reproductive tissues including nucellus cells of mature ovule and the connecting edge of anther and filament. After fertilization, AtCEP1 marks integument cell layers of the seeds coat as well as suspensor and columella cells of the developing embryo. Promoter activity of AtCEP2 is detected in the style of immature and mature pistils, in other floral organs including anther, sepal and petal. AtCEP2 mainly localizes to parenchyma cells next to xylem vessels. Although there is no experimental evidence to demonstrate that KDEL-CysEPs are involved in PCD during fertilization, the expression pattern of AtCEPs, which were previously shown to represent cell death markers during vegetative development, opens up new avenues to investigate PCD in plant reproduction.

A Gram-staining-negative bacterial strain (termed CZ-AZ5(T)) was isolated from a biological filter in a marine recirculating aquaculture system in Tianjin, China. Its taxonomic status was determined using a polyphasic approach. CZ-AZ5(T) cells were non-spore-forming, non-motile rods, 0.6-0.7 mm wide and 3.0-3.7 mm long. CZ-AZ5(T) was strictly heterotrophic, aerobic, oxidase-negative and catalase-positive. Growth occurred in the temperature range 20-40 degrees C (optimal: 30 degrees C), pH range 6.0-8.5 (optimal: pH 7.5) and salinity range 0-5 % (w/v) NaCl (optimal: 1 %). In phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, CZ-AZ5(T) was assigned to the family Saprospiraceae (phylum Bacteroidetes) and was clustered with the genera Saprospira and Aureispira within this family. It showed highest sequence similarity to 'Candidatus Haliscomenobacter calcifugiens' (86.2 %), followed by Saprospira grandis ATCC 23119(T) (85.7 %) and Lewinella persica T-3T (85.6 %). DNA G + C content was 40.1 mol%, the major menaquinone was MK-7, and the major cellular fatty acids (>10 %) were C-16 : 1 omega 7c and iso-C-15 : 0. Our phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic observations, taken together, led us to conclude that strain CZ-AZ5(T) represents a novel species and genus of the family Saprospiraceae, for which the name Membranicola marinus gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is CZ-AZ5(T) (=CGMCC 1.13179(T)=JCM 18886(T)).

A large gap two-dimensional (2D) topological insulator (TI), also known as a quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator, is highly desirable for low-power-consuming electronic devices owing to its spin-polarized backscattering-free edge conducting channels. Although many freestanding films have been predicted to harbor the QSH phase, band topology of a film can be modified substantially when it is placed or grown on a substrate, making the materials realization of a 2D TI challenging. Here we report a first-principles study of possible QSH phases in 75 binary combinations of group III (B, Al, Ga, In, and Tl) and group V (N, P, As, Sb, and Bi) elements in the 2D buckled honeycomb structure, including hydrogenation on one or both sides of the films to simulate substrate effects. A total of six compounds (GaBi, InBi, TlBi, TlAs, TlSb, and TlN) are identified to be nontrivial in unhydrogenated case; whereas for hydrogenated case, only four (GaBi, InBi, TlBi, and TlSb) remains nontrivial. The band gap is found to be as large as 855 meV for the hydrogenated TlBi film, making this class of III-V materials suitable for room temperature applications. TlBi remains topologically nontrivial with a large band gap at various hydrogen coverages, indicating the robustness of its band topology against bonding effects of substrates.

We use first-principles electronic structure calculations to predict a new class of two-dimensional (2D) topological insulators (TIs) in binary compositions of group III elements (B, Al, Ga, In, and Tl) and bismuth (Bi) in a buckled honeycomb structure. We identify band inversions in pristine GaBi, InBi, and TlBi bilayers, with gaps as large as 560 meV, making these materials suitable for room-temperature applications. Furthermore, we demonstrate the possibility of strain engineering in that the topological phase transition in BBi and AlBi could be driven at ∼6.6% strain. The buckled structure allows the formation of two different topological edge states in the zigzag and armchair edges. More importantly, isolated Dirac-cone edge states are predicted for armchair edges with the Dirac point lying in the middle of the 2D bulk gap. A room-temperature bulk band gap and an isolated Dirac cone allow these states to reach the long-sought topological spin-transport regime. Our findings suggest that the buckled honeycomb structure is a versatile platform for hosting nontrivial topological states and spin-polarized Dirac fermions with the flexibility of chemical and mechanical tunability.

Maize is the most important agricultural crop used for food, feed, and biofuel as well as a raw material for industrial products such as packaging material. To increase yield and to overcome hybridization barriers, studies of maize gamete development, the pollen tube journey, and fertilization mechanisms were initiated more than a century ago. In this review, we summarize and discuss our current understanding of the regulatory components for germline development including sporogenesis and gametogenesis, the progamic phase of pollen germination and pollen tube growth and guidance, as well as fertilization mechanisms consisting of pollen tube arrival and reception, sperm cell release, fusion with the female gametes, and egg cell activation. Mechanisms of asexual seed development are not considered here. While only a few molecular players involved in these processes have been described to date and the underlying mechanisms are far from being understood, maize now represents a spearhead of reproductive research for all grass species. Recent development of essentially improved transformation and gene-editing systems may boost research in this area in the near future.

A Gram-positive, strictly aerobic and heterotrophic, non-spore-forming actinobacterium (strain B2T) isolated from a recirculating aquaculture system was studied for its taxonomic position. Strain B2T formed a rudimentary substrate-mycelium that fragmented into short rod-shaped to coccoid cells (0.5 µm×0.5–2.2 µm or 0.5–1.0 µm in diameter). Colonies were yellow, smooth, circular and 1.5–2.0 mm in diameter after incubation on TSA for 3 days at 30 °C. Strain B2T grew at 20–40 °C (optimal, 30 °C) and pH 5.5–9.5 (optimal, 6.5–7.0) and in the presence of 0–9 % (w/v) NaCl (optimal, 1 %). The predominant menaquinone of strain B2T was MK-8(H4). The cell-wall peptidoglycan of strain B2T contained the amino acids ornithine, glutamic acid, alanine, glycine and aspartic acid. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol. The major fatty acids were iso-C15 : 0, iso-C16 : 0 and summed feature 9. Its DNA G+C content was 68.3 mol% (T m). Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain B2T was related phylogenetically to members of the genus Ornithinimicrobium with highest similarity (96.6 %) to Ornithinimicrobium kibberense DSM 17687T, followed by Ornithinimicrobium humiphilum DSM 12362T (96.3 %), Ornithinimicrobium pekingense LW6T (96.2 %) and Ornithinimicrobium murale 01-Gi-040T (94.8 %). On basis of phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic data, it was concluded that strain B2T represents a novel species of the genus Ornithinimicrobium , for which the name Ornithinimicrobium tianjinense sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is B2T ( = CGMCC 1.12160T = JCM 18464T).

Polarized growth of pollen tubes is a critical step for successful reproduction in angiosperms and is controlled by ROP GTPases. Spatiotemporal activation of ROP (Rho GTPases of plants) necessitates a complex and sophisticated regulatory system, in which guanine nucleotide exchange factors (RopGEFs) are key components. It was previously shown that a leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase, Arabidopsis pollen receptor kinase 2 (AtPRK2), interacted with RopGEF12 for its membrane recruitment. However, the mechanisms underlying AtPRK2-mediated ROP activation in vivo are yet to be defined. It is reported here that over-expression of AtPRK2 induced tube bulging that was accompanied by the ectopic localization of ROP-GTP and the ectopic distribution of actin microfilaments. Tube depolarization was also induced by a potentially kinase-dead mutant, AtPRK2K366R, suggesting that the over-expression effect of AtPRK2 did not require its kinase activity. By contrast, deletions of non-catalytic domains in AtPRK2, i.e. the juxtamembrane (JM) and carboxy-terminal (CT) domains, abolished its ability to affect tube polarization. Notably, AtPRK2K366R retained the ability to interact with RopGEF12, whereas AtPRK2 truncations of these non-catalytic domains did not. Lastly, it has been shown that the JM and CT domains of AtPRK2 were not only critical for its interaction with RopGEF12 but also critical for its distribution at the plasma membrane. These results thus provide further insight into pollen receptor kinase-mediated ROP activation during pollen tube growth.

The success of a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) greatly depends on the structure, dynamics and activities of microbial community. Heterotrophic bacteria as the major members play various roles. The heterotrophic bacterial community structure in threestaged biofilters was studied using four different media. 228 isolates belonging to 77species were obtained and affiliated toGammaproteobacteria,Alphaproteobacteria,Bacteroidetes,Firmicutes,ActinobacteriaandBetaproteobacteria.Gammaproteobacteriawas the predominant group. The concurrence was found between potential pathogens (VibrioandShewanella) and probiotics (BacillusandPseudomonas). On the basis of community diversity index, we could infer that differences existed between stages, and the diversity index increased along the biofilters. A comprehensive understanding of microbial community in RAS will be in favor of utilization of microbial resources and optimizing the culture systems' operation.

In plant cells, secretory and endocytic routes intersect at the trans-Golgi network (TGN)/early endosome (EE), where cargos are further sorted correctly and in a timely manner. Cargo sorting is essential for plant survival and therefore necessitates complex molecular machinery. Adaptor proteins (APs) play key roles in this process by recruiting coat proteins and selecting cargos for different vesicle carriers. The µ1 subunit of AP-1 in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) was recently identified at the TGN/EE and shown to be essential for cytokinesis. However, little was known about other cellular activities affected by mutations in AP-1 or the developmental consequences of such mutations. We report here that HAPLESS13 (HAP13), the Arabidopsis µ1 adaptin, is essential for protein sorting at the TGN/EE. Functional loss of HAP13 displayed pleiotropic developmental defects, some of which were suggestive of disrupted auxin signaling. Consistent with this, the asymmetric localization of PIN-FORMED2 (PIN2), an auxin transporter, was compromised in the mutant. In addition, cell morphogenesis was disrupted. We further demonstrate that HAP13 is critical for brefeldin A-sensitive but wortmannin-insensitive post-Golgi trafficking. Our results show that HAP13 is a key link in the sophisticated trafficking network in plant cells.

A Legendre–Gauss–Lobatto spectral collocation method is introduced for the numerical solutions of a class of nonlinear delay differential equations. An efficient algorithm is designed for the single-step scheme and applied to the multiple-domain case. As a theoretical result, we obtain a general convergence theorem for the single-step case. Numerical results show that the suggested algorithm enjoys high-order accuracy both in time and in the delayed argument and can be implemented in a robust and efficient manner. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The purpose of this study was to separate lumbrokinase in Pheretima praepinguis and examine its enzymatic properties. With P. praepinguis as material, lumbrokinase was separated with the salting out method. Lumbrokinase activity was measured with casein medium plate method. Effect of pH and temperature on lumbrokinase activity was studied. Results of lumbrokinase separated from P. praepinguis was relatively high. Lumbrokinase activity in neutral or slightly alkaline environment was higher. Lumbrokinase had tolerance ability to high temperature, with highly enzymatic activity under 60°C and wide range of temperature adaptation.

In today's production-grade cloud datacenter, cloud service providers do not offer any bandwidth guarantees between VMs, which results in unpredictable performance of tenants' applications. To address this issue, we present SpongeNet, a solution that provides bandwidth guarantees for tenants with a novel network abstraction model and a two-phase VM placement algorithm. Prior solutions have significant limitations: 1) the existing coarse-grained network abstraction models cannot fully express tenants' network requirements and waste a lot of bandwidth resources in demand level; 2) the prior VM placement algorithms, take neither the two scheduling phases nor the tenants' requirements into consideration. As an extension of the existing studies, the proposed network abstraction model in this paper, called Fine-grained Virtual Cluster or FGVC, provides a more precise and flexible way for tenants to specify network requirements and realizes bandwidth saving. SpongeNet also proposes a novel two-phase VM placement algorithm that provides the optimal combinations of ordering policies and dispatching policies in consideration of different goals. Extensive simulations based on real application traces and 3-level tree topology show that SpongeNet provides 48% bandwidth saving than the state-of-art solutions (e.g., the Oktopus system), while significantly improving the throughput rates by 18% and response times by 92%.

We predict planar Sb/Bi honeycomb to harbor a two-dimensional (2D) topological crystalline insulator (TCI) phase based on first-principles computations. Although buckled Sb and Bi honeycombs support 2D topological insulator (TI) phases, their structure becomes planar under tensile strain. The planar Sb/Bi honeycomb structure restores the mirror symmetry and is shown to exhibit non-zero mirror Chern numbers, indicating that the system can host topologically protected edge states. Our computations show that the electronic spectrum of a planar Sb/Bi nanoribbon with armchair or zigzag edges contains two Dirac cones within the band gap and an even number of edge bands crossing the Fermi level. Lattice constant of the planar Sb honeycomb is found to nearly match that of hexagonal-BN. The Sb nanoribbon on hexagonal-BN exhibits gapped edge states, which we show to be tunable by an out-of-the-plane electric field, providing controllable gating of edge state important for device applications.

Summary Autophagy is a pathway in eukaryotes by which nutrient remobilization occurs through bulk protein and organelle turnover. Autophagy not only aides cells in coping with harsh environments but also plays a key role in many physiological processes that include pollen germination and tube growth. Most autophagic components are conserved among eukaryotes, but phylum-specific molecular components also exist. We show here that Arabidopsis thaliana PTEN, a protein and lipid dual phosphatase homologous to animal PTENs (phosphatase and tensin homologs deleted on chromosome 10), regulates autophagy in pollen tubes by disrupting the dynamics of phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate (PI3P). The pollen-specific PTEN bound PI3P in vitro and was localized at PI3P-positive vesicles. Overexpression of PTEN caused accumulation of autophagic bodies and resulted in gametophytic male sterility. Such an overexpression effect was dependent upon its lipid phosphatase activity and was inhibited by exogenous PI3P or by expression of a class III phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) that produced PI3P. Overexpression of PTEN disrupted the dynamics of autophagosomes and a subpopulation of endosomes, as shown by altered localization patterns of respective fluorescent markers. Treatment with wortmannin, an inhibitor of class III PI3K, mimicked the effects by PTEN overexpression, which implied a critical role for PI3P dynamics in these processes. Despite sharing evolutionarily conserved catalytic domains, plant PTENs contain regulatory sequences that are distinct from those of animal PTENs, which might underlie their differing membrane association and thereby function. Our results show that PTEN regulates autophagy through phylum-specific molecular mechanisms.

Arabidopsis thaliana phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (AtVPS34) functions in the development and germination of pollen by catalyzing the biosynthesis of phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate (PI3P). In yeast, Vps15p is required for the membrane targeting and activity of Vps34. The expression of Arabidopsis thaliana VPS15 (AtVPS15), an ortholog of yeast Vps15, is mainly detected in pollen grains and pollen tubes. To determine its role in pollen development and pollen tube growth, we attempted to isolate the T-DNA insertion mutants of AtVPS15; however, homozygous lines of atvps15 were not obtained from the progeny of atvps15/+ heterozygotes. Genetic analysis revealed that the abnormal segregation is due to the failure of transmission of the atvps15 allele through pollen. Most pollen grains from the atvps15/+ genotype are viable, with normal exine structure and nuclei, but some mature pollen grains are characterized with unusual large vacuoles that are not observed in pollen grains from the wild AtVPS15 genotype. The germination ratio of pollen from the atvps15/+ genotype is about half when compared to that from the wild AtVPS15 genotype. When supplied with PI3P, in vitro pollen germination of the atvps15/+ genotype is greatly improved. Presumably, AtVPS15 functions in pollen development and germination by regulating PI3P biosynthesis in Arabidopsis. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11103-011-9806-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The Rashba effect gives rise to the key feature of chiral spin texture. Recently it was demonstrated that the orbital angular momentum (OAM) texture forms the underlying basis for Rashba spin texture. Here we solve a model Hamiltonian of a generic p-orbital system in the presence of crystal field, internal spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and inversion symmetry breaking (ISB), and demonstrate, in addition to OAM and spin texture, the existence of orbital projection (OP) of the spin texture in a general Rashba system. The unique form of the OP pattern follows from the same condition for the existence of chirality of the spin texture. From the analytical results, we obtained the spin polarization as a function of parameters such as the SOC strength, crystal field splitting and degree of ISB, and compare them with those from numerical solutions and ab initio calculations. All three methods yield highly consistent results. Our results suggest means of external modulation, and elucidate the multi-orbital nature of the Rashba effect and the underlying OP of the spin texture. The understanding has potential applications in fields such as spin-orbitronics that requires delicate control between orbital occupancy and spin momentum.

Based on the generalized vector meson dominance model in QCD, we study photoproduction of vector meson γ off the proton by use of the QCD inspired model in which the contributions from quark-quark, gluon-gluon, and quark-gluon interference term to observable are taken into consideration. Calculations are performed for total cross section σtot, differential cross section dσ/dt, ratio of the real part to imaginary part of forward scattering amplitude ρ, and nuclear slop parameter function β. The mediators of interactions between projectiles (the quark and antiquark pair fluctuated from the real the photon) and the proton target (three-quark system) are the tensor Glueball and Odderon instead of using the usual Pomeron exchange. The theoretical predictions for σtot (s) are consistent with the experimental data within error bars of the data. The data for dσ/dt, ρ, and β are urgently needed.

We have carried out systematic first-principles electronic structure computations of growth of ultrathin films of compounds of group III (B, Al, In, Ga and Tl) with group V (N, P, As, Sb and Bi) elements on Si(111) substrate, including effects of hydrogenation. Two bilayers (BLs) of AlBi, InBi, GaBi, TlAs and TlSb are found to support a topological phase over a wide range of strains, in addition to BBi, TlN and TlBi which can be driven into the nontrivial phase via strain. A large band gap of 134 meV is identified in hydrogenated 2 BL film of InBi. One and two BL films of GaBi and 2 BL films of InBi and TlAs on Si(111) surface possess nontrivial phases with a band gap as large as 121 meV in the case of 2 BL film of GaBi. Persistence of the nontrivial phase upon hydrogenations in the III-V thin films suggests that these films are suitable for growing on various substrates.

A Gram-staining-negative, heterotrophic, facultatively anaerobic bacterium, designated S1T, was isolated from the Cynoglossus semilaevis culture pond in a recirculating mariculture system in Tianjin, China. The taxonomy of strain S1T was studied by using a polyphasic approach. Cells of strain S1T were non-spore-forming, curved rods, 0.4–0.6 µm wide and 1.2–2.0 µm long, and motile by means of a single polar flagellum. The strain was positive for oxidase and catalase activities. Strain S1T was able to grow at 4–30 °C (optimum, 25 °C), at pH 5.5–10.0 (optimum, pH 6.5–7.5) and in the presence of 1–5 % (w/v) NaCl (optimum, 2 %). Strain S1T contained Q-8 as the sole respiratory quinone and C16 : 1ω7c/C16 : 1ω6c and C16 : 0 as the predominant cellular fatty acids. The genomic DNA G+C content was 40.1 mol% (T m). Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences placed strain S1T in the genus Colwellia , and it formed a distinct lineage in the phylogenetic tree together with Colwellia meonggei MA1-3T, Colwellia aestuarii SMK-10T, Colwellia polaris 537T and Colwellia chukchiensis BCw111T, with 97.7, 96.1, 95.9 and 95.0 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to these strains, respectively. DNA–DNA relatedness of strain S1T to Colwellia meonggei MA1-3T was 23.5±3.6 %. On the basis of the phylogenetic and phenotypic evidence, strain S1T is considered to represent a novel species of the genus Colwellia , for which the name Colwellia aquaemaris sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is S1T ( = CGMCC 1.12165T = JCM 18479T).