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In recent years, the rapid development of exoplanet research has provided us with an opportunity to better understand planetary systems in the universe and to search for signs of life. In order to further investigate the prevalence of habitable exoplanets and to validate planetary formation theories, as well as to comprehend planetary evolution, we have utilized confirmed exoplanet data obtained from the NASA Exoplanet Archive database, including data released by telescopes such as Kepler and TESS. By analyzing these data, we have selected a sample of planets around F, G, K, and M-type stars within a radius range of 1 to 20 R⊕ and with orbital periods ranging from 0.4 days to 400 days. Using the IDEM method based on these data, we calculated the overall formation rate, which is estimated to be 2.02%. Then, we use these data to analyze the relationship among planet formation rates, stellar metallicity, and stellar gravitational acceleration (logg). We firstly find that the formation rate of giant planets is higher around metal-rich stellars, but it inhibits the formation of gas giants when logg > 4.5, yet the stellar metallicity seems to have no effect on the formation rate of smaller planets. Secondly, the host stellar gravitational acceleration affects the relationship between planet formation rate and orbital period. Thirdly, there is a robust power-law relationship between the orbital period of smaller planets and their formation rate. Finally, we find that, for a given orbital period, there is a positive correlation between the planet formation rate and the logg.

Although person re-identification has made great progress, unsupervised cross-domain adaptive person re-identification is still a challenging problem. With no labeled data in target domain, the performance may have a significant drop. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised cross-domain adaptive person re-identification framework based on horizontal pyramid similarity learning (UHPS). Firstly, horizontal pyramid features are extracted by dividing the deep feature maps into different number of partial feature bins. These feature bins with diverse scales can incorporate not only the global information but also local information in different spatial scales, making the framework more robust in complex environment. Then, horizontal pyramid similarity learning is proposed with the mechanism of fusing together the internal similarity of the target domain and the similarity between the source domain and target domain. Finally, the unsupervised clustering algorithm DBSCAN embeded with the horizontal pyramid similarity is employed to select training data in the target domain and estimate the pseudo labels in each training iteration, for the purpose of adapting the framework to the target domain. The results on Market1501 and DukeMTMC-reID confirm that the proposed framework can adapt to the target domain effectively and outperforms the state-of-the-art unsupervised cross domain person re-identification approaches.

Key message: MdbHLH51 played a positive regulatory role in the coloration and the accumulation of anthocyanins. Red coloring of fruit skin is an important trait of apple, mainly attributed to the accumulation of anthocyanins, which is a class of plant flavonoid metabolites widely found in plants. Our previous study carried out transcriptome sequencing in fruit skin of apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) cv. 'Red Delicious' and corroborated that bHLH members bHLH51 showed a notable positive correlation with anthocyanin content at color break stage. To our knowledge, the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis by MdbHLH51 in apple fruits has not been reported so far. Therefore, it is of great significance to isolate this gene and perform further functional verification. The function of MdbHLH51 was investigated based on the Agrobacterium-mediated method. In this study, MdbHLH51 was cloned from 'Red Delicious' fruit skin. MdbHLH51 protein was localized to the nucleus of onion epidermal cells. Transient expression of the bHLH51-GFP in fruit skin and 'Gala' apple callus indicated that MdbHLH51 promoted anthocyanin accumulation. In addition, the overexpression of MdbHLH51 in Arabidopsis thaliana also could enhance the anthocyanins content and up-regulate the expression levels of the structural genes related to anthocyanins biosynthesis. Overall, these results suggested that MdbHLH51 played a positive regulatory role in the coloration and the accumulation of anthocyanins. Our results provide a useful information for understanding the function of MdbHLH51. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritable DNA methylation is a highly conserved epigenetic mark that is important for many biological processes. In a previous transcriptomic study on the fruit skin pigmentation of apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) cv. 'Red Delicious' (G0) and its four continuous-generation bud sport mutants including 'Starking Red' (G1), 'Starkrimson' (G2), 'Campbell Redchief' (G3) and 'Vallee spur' (G4), we identified MYB transcription factors (TFs) MdLUX and MdPCL-like involved in regulating anthocyanin synthesis. However, how these TFs ultimately determine the fruit skin color traits remains elusive. Here, bioinformatics analysis revealed that MdLUX and MdPCL-like contained a well-conserved motif SH[AL]QKY[RF] in their C-terminal region and were located in the nucleus of onion epidermal cells. Overexpression of MdLUX and MdPCL-like in 'Golden Delicious' fruits, 'Gala' calli and Arabidopsis thaliana promoted the accumulation of anthocyanin, whereas MdLUX and MdPCL - like suppression inhibited anthocyanin accumulation in 'Red Fuji' apple fruit skin. Yeast one-hybrid assays revealed that MdLUX and MdPCL-like may bind to the promoter region of the anthocyanin biosynthesis gene MdF3H. Dual-luciferase assays indicated that MdLUX and MdPCL-like activated MdF3H. The whole-genome DNA methylation study revealed that the methylation levels of the mCG context at the upstream (i.e. promoter region) of MdLUX and MdPCL-like were inversely correlated with their mRNA levels and anthocyanin accumulation. Hence, the data suggest that MYB_SH[AL]QKY[RF] TFs MdLUX and MdPCL-like promote anthocyanin biosynthesis in apple fruit skins through the DNA hypomethylation of their promoter regions and the activation of the structural flavonoid gene MdF3H. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Functional TRIB3 Q84R polymorphism has been associated with insulin resistance. Obestatin, improving insulin resistance, exerts obscure effects on metabolic syndrome (MetS) and carotid atherosclerosis. Aims to investigate whether the prevalent TRIB3 Q84R polymorphism has profound implications for alterations of serum obestatin and what effect obestatin exerts on carotid atherosclerosis. Methods: A total of 518 unrelated Chinese subjects consisted of control (n = 258) and MetS (n = 260) groups. Clinical and biochemical characteristics were collected. The level of serum obestatin was measured. Genotype the functional TRIB3 Q84R polymorphism. All subjects underwent ultrasonography to determine carotid intima-media thickness (IMT). Results: Serum obestatin was significantly decreased in MetS as compared with the control group (P = 0.042). Among the MetS group participants possessing RR84 genotype had significantly lower levels of serum obestatin than those with QQ84 or QR84 genotypes (P = 0.008, P = 0.043) with similar significant difference among the control group. Factorial analyses showed statistically significant interactions between MetS and RR84 genotype (P = 0.009 for interaction for obestatin). On correlation analysis, obestatin correlated negatively with homeostasis model assessment insulin resistance (r = -0.163, P = 0.010) and IMT (r = -0.256, P = 0.011). On partial analyses, obestatin negatively correlated with IMT(r = -0.259, P = 0.024) after controlling for the confounding factors. Conclusion: MetS individuals with TRIB3 RR84 genotype demonstrated further decreased serum obestatin. Decreased serum obestatin might in part exacerbate insulin resistance and carotid atherosclerosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]