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Insects that feed on various host plants possess diverse xenobiotic adaptations; however, the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. In the present study, we used Grapholita molesta, which shifts feeding sites from peach shoots to apple fruits, as a model to explore the effects of shifts in host plant diet on the profiles of cytochrome P450s and the gut bacteria microbiome, as well as their effects on biopesticide adaptation. We found that the sensitivity of the fruit-feeding G. molesta to emamectin benzoate biopesticide was significantly lower than that of the shoot-feeding larvae. We also found that the P450 enzyme activity and the expression of nine cytochrome P450s were enhanced in G. molesta fed on Fuji apples compared to those fed on peach shoots. The survival rates of G. molesta exposed to emamectin benzoate significantly decreased as each of three of four emamectin benzoate-inducted cytochrome P450 genes were silenced. Furthermore, we discovered the gut bacteria dynamics of G. molesta changed with the host shift and the structure of the gut bacteria microbiome was determined by the final diet ingested; additionally, the dysbiosis of the gut microbiota induced by antibiotics could significantly increase the sensitivity to emamectin benzoate. Taken together, our results suggest that the expression of P450s and the composition of the gut bacteria microbiome promote adaptation to emamectin benzoate in G. molesta, providing new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying xenobiotic adaptation in this notorious pest.

Intensive culturing of hybrid yellow catfish (Pseudobagrus vachellii ♂ × Tachysurus fulvidraco ♀) has increased their mortality. Astragalus membranaceus has been used as an immune stimulant and antioxidant in fish for several years. A. membranaceus was decocted and mixed with the diet. After feeding for 28 d, the hybrid yellow catfish were challenged with Aeromonas hydrophila. To better understand the function of A. membranaceus in the defense of hybrid yellow catfish against A. hydrophila, we analyzed the spleen transcriptome data and relative percentage survival (RPS). There were 396 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the A. membranaceus and control groups at 24 h after A. hydrophila stimulation, including 263 upregulated and 133 downregulated DEGs. A significant enrichment of DEGs was found in the A. membranaceus group when the GO enrichment terms in the spleen were analyzed. The qRTPCRresults for the five upregulated and two downregulated DEGs from the spleen, intestine, and liver were consistent with the transcriptome data. The relative percentage survival of A. membranaceus was 85.71% after the fish were challenged with A. hydrophila.

With the vigorous development of the global economy, the demand for electricity quality from all walks of life is also increasing, so it is essential to ensure the electric power grid’s safe, stable, and efficient operation. Multi-source electric power information fusion, as the core technology of electric power grid data processing, has become the foundation to promote the intelligent and automatic development of the electric power grid. This paper presents the first work on the survey of the methods of electricity information fusion. It first gives an overview of the process of electricity information fusion and shows the types of electricity data. Then, we provide different classifications of existing methods in view of communication annotation and electric power data, and conduct a thorough comparison and analysis of them. Moreover, we introduce the relevant data sets and evaluation criteria of electric power information and summarize the corresponding evaluation scenarios. Finally, we conclude the maturity of existing works and provide an outlook on future multi-source electric power information fusion methods.

Early repolarization syndrome is rare in children. Mutation of genes encoding ion channels could display mixed electrophysiological phenotype of Kv4.3 including both cardiac phenotype (early repolarization syndrome, atrial fibrillation) and cerebral phenotype (epilepsy, intellectual disability). This situation is rare and was named as cardiocerebral channelopathy. Here, we report a case of an 11-year-old-girl with cardiocerebral channelopathy caused by KCND3 mutation, who was successfully treated with oral quinidine, metoprolol and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. Clinicians should be vigilant on the risk of cardiogenic syncope and sudden cardiac death in a patient with epilepsy, intellectual disability and early repolarization pattern.

Backgroundparenchymal hematoma (PH) is a severe complication of endovascular treatment (EVT) for acute basilar artery occlusion (ABAO). This study aimed to evaluate the incidence and predictors of PH after EVT for ABAO.MethodsUsing data from the Endovascular Treatment for Acute Basilar Artery Occlusion Study, we enrolled patients treated with mechanical thrombectomy from the BASILAR registry. PH was assessed in accordance with the Heidelberg Bleeding Classification. Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of PH.ResultsA total of 639 patients were included. Forty-eight patients (7.5%) were diagnosed with PH within 48 h of EVT. Ninety-day mortality was higher in patients with PH compared with those without (81.3 vs. 42.8%, P < 0.001). Favorable neurological outcomes (modified Rankin scale score, 0–3) rates was lower in patients with PH compared with those without (6.3 vs. 34.5%, P < 0.001). With a multivariate analysis, hypertension [odds ratio (OR) = 2.30, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.04–5.08], pre-treatment National Institutes of Health Stroke Score (NIHSS, >25; OR = 3.04, 95% CI 1.43–6.45), and Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR, >10; OR = 1.88, 95% CI 1.02–3.48) were associated with PH after EVT.ConclusionsPH occurred at a rate of 7.5% after EVT in patients with ABAO. Hypertension, higher baseline NIHSS, and higher NLR value increase the risk of PH after EVT for ABAO.

PurposeThis study was conducted in order to properly understand whether prior seasonal human coronavirus (HCoV) immunity could impact the potential cross-reactivity of humoral responses induced by SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, thereby devising universal coronavirus vaccines for future outbreaks.MethodsWe performed enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to quantify the immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody levels to spike (S) protein and S1 subunit of HCoVs (HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-NL63, and HCoV-229E), and ELISA [anti-RBD and anti-nucleoprotein (N)], chemiluminescence immunoassay assays (anti-RBD), pseudovirus neutralization test, and authentic viral neutralization test to detect the binding and neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in the vaccinees.ResultsWe found that the antibody of seasonal HCoVs did exist before vaccination and could be boosted by SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. A further analysis demonstrated that the prior S and S1 IgG antibodies of HCoV-OC43 were positively correlated with anti-RBD and neutralization antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 at 12 and 24 weeks after the second vaccination, and the correlation is more statistically significant at 24 weeks. The persistent antibody levels of SARS-CoV-2 were observed in vaccinees with higher pre-existing HCoV-OC43 antibodies.ConclusionOur data indicate that inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccination may confer cross-protection against seasonal coronaviruses in most individuals, and more importantly, the pre-existing HCoV-OC43 antibody was associated with protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2, supporting the development of a pan-coronavirus vaccine.

Foreign bodies often cause belt scratching and tearing, coal stacking, and plugging during the transportation of coal via belt conveyors. To overcome the problems of large parameters, heavy computational complexity, low classification accuracy, and poor processing speed in current classification networks, a novel network based on ESCBAM and multichannel feature fusion is proposed in this paper. Firstly, to improve the utilization rate of features and the network’s ability to learn detailed information, a multi-channel feature fusion strategy was designed to fully integrate the independent feature information between each channel. Then, to reduce the computational amount while maintaining excellent feature extraction capability, an information fusion network was constructed, which adopted the depthwise separable convolution and improved residual network structure as the basic feature extraction unit. Finally, to enhance the understanding ability of image context and improve the feature performance of the network, a novel ESCBAM attention mechanism with strong generalization and portability was constructed by integrating space and channel features. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method has the advantages of fewer parameters, low computational complexity, high accuracy, and fast processing speed, which can effectively classify foreign bodies on the belt conveyor.

This study aims to investigate the impact of musicokinetic and exercise therapies on the depression level of elderly patients undergoing post-stroke rehabilitation and its possible moderators, the promotion focus (i.e., achieve gains) and prevention focus (i.e., avoid losses or non-gains), which are the two motivational orientations of health regulatory focus. An eight-week randomized controlled trial was employed. Sixty-five elderly patients undergoing post-stroke rehabilitation in a hospital in Shanghai, China. Patients were randomly assigned to the musicokinetic (n = 32) therapy group or the exercise (n = 33) therapy group. The Mini-mental State Examination Scale measuring the patients’ cognitive functions was used to screen participants. The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the Health Regulatory Focus Scale were applied to assess their levels of depression and health regulatory focus on weeks 0, 4, and 8, respectively. The musicokinetic therapy had a significantly better effect than the exercise therapy for individuals who had a lower level of prevention focus, whereas the exercise therapy had a significantly better effect than the musicokinetic therapy for individuals who had a higher level of prevention focus. Musicokinetic therapy and exercise therapy were both effective in decreasing post-stroke depression for elderly patients. But it is important to choose an appropriate type of therapy per the health regulatory focus of elderly patients with post-stroke rehabilitation.

BackgroundFerroptosis plays an important role in the development of acute myeloid leukemia (AML); however, the exact role of ferroptosis-related genes in the prognosis of AML patients is unclear.MethodsRNA sequencing data and the clinicopathological characteristics of AML patients were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, and ferroptosis-related genes were obtained from the FerrDb database. Cox regression analysis and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator analysis were performed to identify ferroptosis-related gene signatures. Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) were performed to explore the biological functions of the ferroptosis-related genes. Finally, ferroptosis of AML cells was induced by erastin and sulfasalazine to detect the changes in the expression of relevant prognostic genes and explore the underlying mechanisms using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR).ResultsSeven ferroptosis-related gene signatures (SOCS1, ACSF2, MYB, EIF2AK4, AIFM2, SLC7A11, and GPX4) were identified in the training group. Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses confirmed that risk score was an independent prognostic predictor of AML in the training and validation groups (P

Surfactants play a vital role in the delignification and saccharification of lignocellulosic biomass. A strategy for coupling surfactant-assisted alkaline pretreatment (SAP) with surfactant-assisted enzymatic hydrolysis (SEH) has been proposed for improving sugar recovery from a potential energy crop, Miscanthus sinensis. Poly (ethylene glycol) 2000 (PEG 2000) was found to be more efficient in SAP than in other tested surfactants. Compositional and structural analysis revealed that the SAP process with 1% of PEG 2000 produced more efficient lignin removal and microstructure disruption of the pretreated sample, thus indicating much higher reducing sugar yields of 544.4–601.2 mg/g compared to the samples that were untreated or pretreated by alkali alone. Moreover, SEH with 1% Tween 80, which could block the lignin-enzyme interactions, produced a substantial reduction of 33.3% in the enzyme loading to achieve a higher sugar recovery from the SAP sample.

Red fluorescent proteins (RFPs) have broad applications in life science research, and the manipulation of RFPs using nanobodies can expand their potential uses. However, the structural information available for nanobodies that bind with RFPs is still insufficient. In this study, we cloned, expressed, purified, and crystallized complexes formed by mCherry with LaM1, LaM3, and LaM8. Then, we analyzed the biochemical properties of the complexes using mass spectrometry (MS), fluorescence-detected size exclusion chromatography (FSEC), isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC), and bio-layer interferometry (BLI) technology. We determined the crystal structure of mCherry-LaM1, mCherry-LaM3, and mCherry-LaM8, with resolutions of 2.05 Å, 3.29 Å, and 1.31 Å, respectively. In this study, we systematically compared various parameters of several LaM series nanobodies, including LaM1, LaM3, and LaM8, with previously reported data on LaM2, LaM4, and LaM6, specifically examining their structural information. After designing multivalent tandem LaM1-LaM8 and LaM8-LaM4 nanobodies based on structural information, we characterized their properties, revealing their higher affinity and specificity to mCherry. Our research provides novel structural insights that could aid in understanding nanobodies targeting a specific target protein. This could provide a starting point for developing enhanced mCherry manipulation tools.

In clustering algorithm research, objects, attributes and other aspects of data sets are usually considered to be independent and identically distributed; that is, each object is assumed to be an independent and uniformly distributed individual with no impacts between objects. However, objects in real life are often neither independently nor identically distributed; that is, they are non-IID, leading to a complex coupling relationship between objects, and objects interact with each other. The results of a clustering algorithm under an independent and identical distribution may be incomplete or even misleading. To make the results of the DBSCAN algorithm as accurate as possible, an improved numerical DBSCAN algorithm based on non-IIDness learning is proposed in this paper. The algorithm calculates the coupling relationship between objects to obtain the potential relationship between objects and determines the parameters Eps and MinPts by the distribution characteristics of the data. Experiments on large-scale real and synthetic data sets show that the algorithm achieves a higher accuracy than the original DBSCAN algorithm and the main algorithms that improved upon it.

BackgroundThis study aimed to investigate the association between the hyperdense basilar artery sign (HBAS) on non-enhanced computed tomography (CT) and clinical outcomes in patients with acute basilar artery occlusion (BAO) who underwent endovascular treatment (EVT).MethodsEligible patients who underwent EVT due to acute BAO between January 2014 and May 2019 were divided into two groups based on HBAS. HBAS was assessed by two neuroradiologists using five grades on nonenhanced CT. The primary outcome was a favorable functional outcome (defined as a modified Rankin Scale [mRS] of 0–3) at 90 days. Secondary outcomes included successful recanalization and mortality within 90 days.ResultsAmong 829 patients with BAO as assessed with CT angiography, magnetic resonance angiography, or digital subtraction angiography, 643 patients were treated with EVT. Of these, 51.32% (330/643) had HBAS. Patients with HBAS were older and had more severe neurological deficits and a higher frequency of atrial fibrillation than those without HBAS. There was no significant difference in favorable outcome (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 1.354, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.906–2.024; p = 0.14), successful recanalization (aOR: 0.926, 95% CI: 0.616-−1.393; p = 0.71), and mortality (aOR: 1.193, 95% CI: 0.839–1.695; p = 0.33) between patients with or without HBAS. Subgroup analysis showed that the HBAS predicted a favorable outcome in patients aged

Drought is occurring recurrently in various climatic zones around the world. Therefore, accurate and continuous drought monitoring are essential for reliable drought mitigation policies. In past research, several drought monitoring indicators have been developed. Regardless of their scopes and applicabilities, every indicator has certain amount of error regarding accurate determination of drought classes. In addition, climate change and complex features of meteorological variables also reduce the performance of each indicator. Consequently, accurate drought monitoring is a challenging task in hydrology and water management research. The objective of this research is to enhance the accuracies in drought characterization by employing multiple drought indicators, simultaneously. This article proposes a new aggregative index – the Seasonal Mixture Standardized Drought Index (SMSDI). The procedure of SMSDI is mainly based on the integration of Principle Component Analysis (PCA) and K- Component Gaussian Mixture Distribution (K-CGMD). In preliminary analysis, aggregation of three multi-scalar Standardized Drought Indices (SDIs) is made for three meteorological gauge stations of Pakistan. For comparative assessment, individual SDI has used to investigate the association and consistency with SMSDI. Outcome associated with this research shows that the SMSDI have significant correlation with individual SDIs. We conclude that instead of using individual indicator, the proposed aggregative approach enhances the scope and capacity of drought indicators for extracting reliable information related to future drought.

High-temperature calcination was used to modify garnet media. Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) measurements, X-ray diffractometer (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), zeta potential analysis, and a static adsorption experiment on humic acid removal were carried out to compare unmodified garnet and traditional quartz sand. Fitting adsorption isotherm of the media before and after modification was conducted to determine the adsorption type, and a dynamic filtration experiment was performed to treat micro-polluted water. Results of the characterization analysis and the static adsorption experiment revealed that, compared with the smooth surface of unmodified garnet, the surface of modified garnet media was covered with Fe2O3, which showed a rough concave-convex structure with a specific area that was 2.44 times larger than that of unmodified garnet. The removal efficiency of organic matter after modification increased from 2.5–4.5% to 51.7–63.1%, and the adsorption capacity increased 11–24 times. The adsorption type of the modified garnet media belongs to the Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption mode, while that of the original media belongs to the Freundlich adsorption mode. Results of the dynamic filtration experiment revealed that the effect of modified garnet media on turbidity, CODMn, and UV254 removal was better than that of unmodified garnet and traditional quartz sand.

Lubrication and cooling are two important issues in the current industrial field. The former is of great significance to the energy consumption caused by friction, which is directly related to the service reliability and life of the components in the mechanical field. The latter is very important for the management and application of the final generation of thermal energy in the process of energy conversion.Combination of them exists widely in fields such as aerospace, automobile machinery, etc.Addition of nano-materials into working fluid can not only significantly improve the thermal conductivity of heat transfer fluids, but also achieve anti-wear and lubrication of mechanical parts, showing excellent mechanical and thermal comprehensive properties. Nanofluids are a good working medium for both aspects.In this paper, in view of the hotspot of graphene nanofluids, the theoretical basis and method of dispersion of graphene nanofluids were reviewed, and the factors affecting the suspension stability of graphene nanofluids were investigated.The thermal conductivity mechanism, the influencing factors and the current progress of graphene nanofluids were analyzed. The main reasons for the non-large-scale application of nanofluids were analyzed. The progress of graphene as an additive in the field of lubrication was reviewed. Finally, the application design of graphene nanofluid synergistically enhanced heat transfer and antifriction lubrication was proposed. In the current spacecraft and other applications, due to the lack of extensive research on the thermal mechanical coupling performance of graphene nanofluids and the stability of spacecraft and long-term operational reliability, future research should be based on the current aerospace heat transfer medium and focus on the targeted design of nanoparticles.The research on dynamic flow heat transfer performance and loop life based on space environment should be carried out, which will lay a theoretical foundation and provide technical support for the future application of nanofluids in the spacecrafts.

The development of organic afterglow materials that do not contain heavy metals is of interest for biological applications. Here, the authors report on the development of a thermally activated organic molecule with tri-mode afterglow and an afterglow efficiency of up to 45%.

Changes in the climate and weather conditions, as well as rising earth’s average temperature are likely to escalate deterioration of global drought occurrence. Drought is considered an interwoven natural disaster composed by a number of different factors, as for example agricultural, meteorological or hydrological. Hydrological drought estimation with regional accuracy is the most problematic and challenging issue. In order to monitor and characterize drought conditions, using Standardized Drought Indices (SDI) is recently the most frequently used practice. In this research article, we suggest an improved hydrological drought index that incorporates upgraded monthly rainfall estimation records, which play an important role in defining regional drought conditions, with regard to the global temperature rise. Rainfall is highly changeable even at a low distance and therefore should be also considered in precipitation estimation records because temporal rainfall records play a significant role in determining long-term rainfall shortages. Thus, the integration of regional aspect to the amount of rainfall is essential for accurate regional drought assessment. This research article proposes adding auxiliary data such as regional weights in order to make monthly rainfall records more accurate in relation to the dependency characteristics of temperature and rainfall records under regression and product estimation settings. Subsequently, we propose an innovative method of hydrological drought evaluation, a so-called Regionally Improved Weighted Standardized Drought Index (RIWSDI). We evaluated hydrological drought with the usage of RIWSDI at seven various meteorological regions situated in climatologically different areas in Pakistan. We assessed and compared the results using RIWSDI, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) on 3 and 12-month interval period on the basis of Pearson correlation. Under both parametric and non-parametric standardization, we discovered that there is a high positive correlation between RIWSDI and current methodology (SPI). To sum up, we proved that the upgraded estimations of rainfall are able to improve systems for monitoring droughts.

Abstract Purpose To investigate the clinical characteristics of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and a concomitant hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, as well as the potential effects of HBV infection and antiviral therapy on prognosis. Methods We conducted a retrospective chart review of all NPC patients from December 2010 to December 2014. After collecting medical records and conducting follow‐ups on patients, a total of 876 eligible NPC patients were included. For each patient, medical records were reviewed. Factors predictive of outcome were compared using the log‐rank test and Cox regression analysis. Results Among the 876 participants, 106 (12.1%) patients were HBV‐infected patients. The hepatitis B surface antigen‐positive [HBsAg(+)] group had a lower CD4+ T cell count than the HBsAg(−) group (P = .048). Among patients with stage I/II NPC, 5‐year overall survival (OS), disease‐free survival (DFS), relapse‐free survival, and distant metastasis‐free survival (DMFS) of the HBsAg(+) group were 82.5%, 70.7%, 87.7%, and 76.6%, respectively, whereas those of the HBsAg(−) group were 91.4%, 86.0%, 93.8%, and 92.1%, respectively. Statistically significant differences in OS, DFS, and DMFS existed between both groups (P = .017, .018, and .004, respectively). The multivariate analysis indicated that HBsAg status and N stage are independent risk factors affecting OS, DFS, and DMFS of NPC patients. A statistically significant difference in 5‐year DMFS existed between the antivirus (90.0%) and no‐antivirus groups (70.0%) (P = .043). Conclusions Hepatitis B virus infection is an independent risk factor for early stage NPC, which may be associated with its reduced immune functions compared to the HBsAg(−) group. Anti‐HBV treatment may improve the prognosis of HBV‐infected NPC patients.

In practice, classification problems have appeared in many scientific fields, including finance, medicine and industry. It is critically important to develop an effective and accurate classification model. Although numerous useful classifiers have been proposed, they are unstable, sensitive to noise and slow in computation. To overcome these drawbacks, the combination of feature selection techniques with traditional machine learning models is of great help. In this paper, a novel feature selection method called the opposition-based seagull optimization algorithm (OSOA) is proposed and studied. The OSOA is constructed based on an SOA whose population is determined by the opposition-based learning (OBL) algorithm. To evaluate its overall classification performance, some measures, including classification accuracy, number of selected features, receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), and computation time, are adopted. The empirical results indicate that the suggested method exhibits higher or similar accuracy and computational efficiency in comparison with genetic algorithm (GA)-, simulated annealing (SA)-, and Fisher score (FS)-based classification models. The experimental results show that the OSOA is a computationally efficient feature selection technique that has the ability to select relevant variables. Furthermore, it performs well with high-dimensional data whose number of variables exceeds the number of samples. Thus, the OSOA is an effective approach for the enhancement of classification performance.

This case report describes a 22-year-old man with a pharyngeal foreign body sensation arising from the left side of the postpharyngeal wall. Histological examination showed a biphasic pattern of epithelioid and spindle cells including glandular differentiation. The tumour was positive for vimentin and SS18-SSX, and the spindle cells were positive for bcl-2; in contrast, the epithelioid tumour cells were positive for pan-cytokeratin, epithelial membrane antigen and CD99. There was no INI-loss in tumour cells. Then, the presence of the SYT-SSX gene fusion was demonstrated by fluorescence in situ hybridization. In addition, androgen receptor gene somatic mutations were detected by next-generation sequencing. However, 6 months postoperatively, the patient had neither developed a recurrence nor received adjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Accurate diagnosis depends on morphological and immunohistochemical examination and a proper molecular analysis, and novel technologies can detect a wide variety of genetic alterations. Although androgen receptor somatic mutations cannot provide addition treatment at present, surgical resection with a clean margin and follow-up is an appropriate approach.

Pathogenic variants in ACTN2, coding for alpha-actinin 2, are known to be rare causes of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. However, little is known about the underlying disease mechanisms. Adult heterozygous mice carrying the Actn2 p.Met228Thr variant were phenotyped by echocardiography. For homozygous mice, viable E15.5 embryonic hearts were analysed by High Resolution Episcopic Microscopy and wholemount staining, complemented by unbiased proteomics, qPCR and Western blotting. Heterozygous Actn2 p.Met228Thr mice have no overt phenotype. Only mature males show molecular parameters indicative of cardiomyopathy. By contrast, the variant is embryonically lethal in the homozygous setting and E15.5 hearts show multiple morphological abnormalities. Molecular analyses, including unbiased proteomics, identified quantitative abnormalities in sarcomeric parameters, cell-cycle defects and mitochondrial dysfunction. The mutant alpha-actinin protein is found to be destabilised, associated with increased activity of the ubiquitin-proteasomal system. This missense variant in alpha-actinin renders the protein less stable. In response, the ubiquitin-proteasomal system is activated; a mechanism that has been implicated in cardiomyopathies previously. In parallel, a lack of functional alpha-actinin is thought to cause energetic defects through mitochondrial dysfunction. This seems, together with cell-cycle defects, the likely cause of the death of the embryos. The defects also have wide-ranging morphological consequences.

Mutations in CD40 have been widely reported to be risk factors for Graves’ disease (GD). The gene, along with its cognate ligand CD40L, may regulate pro-inflammatory and immune responses. Rs1883832, located at the -1 position of the Kozak sequence, is the most well-studied single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of CD40, and has been confirmed to predispose those with the alteration to GD, regardless of ethnicity. Our genome-wide association study (GWAS) indicated that several SNPs, including rs1883832 located within the vicinity of CD40 were associated with GD in the Han Chinese population. Aiming at identifying the most consequential SNP and its underlying pathogenic mechanism, we performed a two-stage refined study on 8,171 patients with GD and 7,906 controls, and found rs1883832 was the most significantly GD-associated SNP in the CD40 gene region (PCombined = 9.17×10-11, OR = 1.18). Through searching the cis-expression quantitative trait locus database and using quantitative RT-PCR, we further discovered that the rs1883832 genotype can influence CD40 gene transcription. Furthermore, we demonstrated that rs1883832 is a susceptibility locus for pTRAb+ GD patients. In conclusion, the current study provides robust evidence that rs1883832 can regulate CD40 gene expression and affect serum TRAb levels, which ultimately contributes to the development of GD.

Immobilized enzymes are a significant technological approach to retain enzyme activity and reduce enzyme catalytic cost. In this work, trypsin-incorporated Zn3(PO4)2 hybrid nanoflowers were prepared via mild precipitation and coordination reactions. The controllable preparation of hybrid nanoflowers was achieved by systematically investigating the effects of the raw-material ratio, material concentration and reaction temperature on product morphology and physicochemical properties. The enzyme content of hybrid nanoflowers was about 6.5%, and the maximum specific surface area reached 68.35 m2/g. The hybrid nanoflowers exhibit excellent catalytic activity and environmental tolerance compared to free trypsin, which was attributed to the orderly accumulation of nanosheets and proper anchoring formation. Further, the enzyme activity retention rate was still higher than 80% after 12 repeated uses. Therefore, trypsin/Zn3(PO4)2 hybrid nanoflowers—which combine functionalities of excellent heat resistance, storage stability and reusability—exhibit potential industrial application prospects.

Sliding mode control can restrain the perturbations generated from the intermittence of the renewable energy generation and the randomness of local loads when microgrids are operating in islanded mode. However, the microgrid consists of several subsystems and the interactions among them will cause the chattering problems under the overall sliding mode control. In this paper, the chattering restraint issues for voltage control of the islanded microgrid with a ring topology structure are investigated based on the decentralized adaptive sliding mode control strategies. Firstly, we construct a tracking error system with interconnections considering the power transmission among subsystems and nominal values of system states. Secondly, we design linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) according to the H∞ attenuation performance of the system external disturbances. Then, the tracking error performance and the control precision are guaranteed via the asymptotic stabilities of integral sliding mode surfaces. Adaptive laws are utilized to address the chattering problems of the sliding mode control. Finally, simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed decentralized control methods.

Laboratory toxicity test and field control effect test are important experiments to evaluate the effect of pesticides on disease control. The safety of pesticide application depends on whether the pesticide residue on the fruit complies with the limits related to the good agricultural practices which were assessed by the legislative framework. In addition, many factors may affect the control effect of fungicides in the field experiment, among which one of the most important factors is the precipitation during the application process in the growing season. In this study, raw data of the laboratory toxicity of different fungicides to Colletotrichum fructicola, disease severity after treatment with different agents, the pesticide residue on the fruit after preharvest application, and the precipitation in the growing season are provided. In addition, this study also introduced the method and calculation process of raw data processing. We hope that these raw data will serve as a reference for other researchers who are studying the prevention and control of Glomerella leaf spot (GLS).

In this work, the precipitation of μ phase is detected in alloy 617B during 720 °C aging for 10 000 h. The lattice parameters of μ phase is determined as a = 0.4720–0.4760 nm and c = 2.5394–2.5656 nm in this work. The μ phase in alloy 617B is mainly composed of Mo and Cr, in accompany with Ni and Co. The chemical formula of μ phase in samples aged for 5000 h and 10 000 h is (Ni0.031Co0.084Cr0.885)2.34Mo and (Ni0.030Co0.091Cr0.879)2.30Mo, respectively. The precipitation of μ phase competes with M23C6 carbide for Cr and Mo elements. Keywords: Nickel-base superalloy, Alloy 617B, μ phase

Human milk contains numerous free low molecular weight peptides (LMWPs), which may play an important role in infant health and growth. The bioactivities of LMWPs are determined by their structures, especially the amino acid sequences. In the present study, 81 human milk samples were collected and purified by cation-exchange solid-phase extraction (SPE). Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF-MS) was used for the separation and detection of free LMWPs in human milk. A total of 56 LMWPs were identified and quantified. These LMWPs were mainly derived from 3 regions of β-casein, which were the amino acid fragments of 16–40, 85–110, and 205–226. The predominant LMWPs were RETIESLSSSEESITEYK, RETIESLSSSEESITEYKQKVEKVK, ETIESLSSSEESITEYK, TQPLAPVHNPIS, and QPLAPVHNPISV with molecular weights of 2247.9573, 2860.2437, 2091.8591, 1372.7666, and 1271.7212, respectively. The results indicated that the technique based on SPE and UPLC-QTOF-MS might greatly facilitate the analysis of LMWPs in human milk.

Lactate elevation is a well-characterized biomarker of mitochondrial dysfunction, but its role in diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is not well defined. Urine lactate was measured in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) in 3 cohorts (HUNT3, SMART2D, CRIC). Urine and plasma lactate were measured during euglycemic and hyperglycemic clamps in participants with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Patients in the HUNT3 cohort with DKD had elevated urine lactate levels compared with age- and sex-matched controls. In patients in the SMART2D and CRIC cohorts, the third tertile of urine lactate/creatinine was associated with more rapid estimated glomerular filtration rate decline, relative to first tertile. Patients with T1D demonstrated a strong association between glucose and lactate in both plasma and urine. Glucose-stimulated lactate likely derives in part from proximal tubular cells, since lactate production was attenuated with sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibition in kidney sections and in SGLT2-deficient mice. Several glycolytic genes were elevated in human diabetic proximal tubules. Lactate levels above 2.5 mM potently inhibited mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation in human proximal tubule (HK2) cells. We conclude that increased lactate production under diabetic conditions can contribute to mitochondrial dysfunction and become a feed-forward component to DKD pathogenesis.

BackgroundHepatitis B virus-related acute-on-chronic liver failure (HBV-ACLF) is a life-threatening disease with a high mortality rate; the systemic inflammatory response plays a vital role in disease progression. We aimed to determine if a miRNA–mRNA co-regulatory network exists in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of HBV-ACLF patients, which might be important for prognosis.MethodsTranscriptome-wide microRNA (miRNA) and mRNA microarrays were used to define the miRNA and mRNA expression profiles of the PBMCs of HBV-ACLF patients in a discovery cohort. The targets of the miRNAs were predicted. We built a miRNA-mRNA regulatory network through bioinformatics analysis, and used quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) to assess the importance of candidate miRNAs and mRNAs. We also assessed the direct and transcriptional regulatory effects of miRNAs on target mRNAs using a dual-luciferase reporter assay.ResultsThe miRNA/mRNA PBMC expression profiles of the discovery cohort, of whom eight survived and eight died, revealed a prognostic interactive network involving 38 miRNAs and 313 mRNAs; this was constructed by identifying the target genes of the miRNAs. We validated the expression data in another cohort, of whom 43 survived and 35 died; miR-6840-3p, miR-6861-3p, JADE2, and NR3C2 were of particular interest. The levels of miR-6840-3p and miR-6861-3p were significantly increased in the PBMCs of the patients who died, and thus predicted prognosis (areas under the curve values = 0.665 and 0.700, respectively). The dual-luciferase reporter assay indicated that miR-6840-3p directly targeted JADE2.ConclusionWe identified a prognostic miRNA-mRNA co-regulatory network in the PBMCs of HBV-ACLF patients. miR-6840-3p-JADE2 is a potential miRNA–mRNA pair contributing to a poor prognosis.

Organic semiconductors with bipolar transporting character are highly attractive as they offer the possibility to achieve high optoelectronic performance in simple device structures. However, the continual efforts in preparing bipolar materials are focusing on donor-acceptor (D-A) architectures by introducing both electron-donating and electron-withdrawing units into one molecule in static molecular design principles. Here, we report a dynamic approach to construct bipolar materials using only electron-donating carbazoles connected by N-P=X resonance linkages in a donor-resonance-donor (D-r-D) structure. By facilitating the stimuli-responsive resonance variation, these D-r-D molecules exhibit extraordinary bipolar properties by positively charging one donor of carbazole in enantiotropic N+=P-X- canonical forms for electron transport without the involvement of any acceptors. With thus realized efficient and balanced charge transport, blue and deep-blue phosphorescent organic light emitting diodes hosted by these D-r-D molecules show high external quantum efficiencies up to 16.2% and 18.3% in vacuum-deposited and spin-coated devices, respectively. These results via the D-r-D molecular design strategy represent an important concept advance in constructing bipolar organic optoelectronic semiconductors dynamically for high-performance device applications.

The geometric distribution of initial damages has a great influence on the strength and progressive failure characteristics of the fractured rock mass. Initial damages of the fractured rock were simplified as parallel cracks in different geometric distributions, and then, the progressive failure and acoustic emission (AE) characteristics of specimens under the uniaxial compression loading were analyzed. The red sandstone (brittle materials) specimens with the parallel preexisting cracks by water jet were used in the tests. The energy peak and stress attenuation induced by the energy release of crack initiation were intuitively observed in the test process. Besides, three modes of rock bridge coalescence were obtained, and wing crack was the main crack propagation mode. The wing crack and other cracks were initiated in different loading stages, which were closely related to the energy level of crack initiation. The propagation of wing crack (stable crack) consumed a large amount of energy, and then, the propagation of shear crack, secondary crack, and anti-wing crack (unstable crack) was inhibited. The relationship between the crack propagation mode and the geometric distribution of existing cracks in the specimen was revealed. Meanwhile, the strength characteristic and failure mode of fractured rock with the different geometric distributions of preexisting crack were also investigated. The energy evolution characteristics and crack propagation were also analyzed by numerical modeling (PFC2D).

In order to study the instantaneous mechanical properties of rock mass discontinuities with different 3D morphologies during the shear process, the Brazilian splitting method is used to prepare natural rock mass discontinuities, and the high-precision 3D scanning test of discontinuities is carried out. The Z2 is selected as the evaluation parameter of the discontinuities. Based on the graded cyclic shear test results of discontinuities, the influence of the morphology characteristics on the strength and deformation characteristics is analyzed. With the increase of shear times, the 3D morphology characteristic parameters of the structural plane decrease steadily after the graded cyclic shear. Based on the test curve, the graded cyclic shear characteristics of rock mass discontinuities are analyzed from the shear deformation, and the shear process of the discontinuities is finely divided by combining with the variation characteristics of shear stiffness. Combined with the 3D morphology parameters, an empirical formula for the shear strength of discontinuities is proposed. Through verification, the effect of the new model is better than that of the classical JRC-JCS model.

Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] was domesticated from wild soybean (G. soja Sieb. and Zucc.) and has been further improved as a dual-use seed crop to provide highly valuable oil and protein for food, feed, and industrial applications. However, the underlying genetic and molecular basis remains less understood. Having combined high-confidence bi-parental linkage mapping with high-resolution association analysis based on 631 whole sequenced genomes, we mapped major soybean protein and oil QTLs on chromosome15 to a sugar transporter gene (GmSWEET39). A two-nucleotide CC deletion truncating C-terminus of GmSWEET39 was strongly associated with high seed oil and low seed protein, suggesting its pleiotropic effect on protein and oil content. GmSWEET39 was predominantly expressed in parenchyma and integument of the seed coat, and likely regulates oil and protein accumulation by affecting sugar delivery from maternal seed coat to the filial embryo. We demonstrated that GmSWEET39 has a dual function for both oil and protein improvement and undergoes two different paths of artificial selection. A CC deletion (CC-) haplotype H1 has been intensively selected during domestication and extensively used in soybean improvement worldwide. H1 is fixed in North American soybean cultivars. The protein-favored (CC+) haplotype H3 still undergoes ongoing selection, reflecting its sustainable role for soybean protein improvement. The comprehensive knowledge on the molecular basis underlying the major QTL and GmSWEET39 haplotypes associated with soybean improvement would be valuable to design new strategies for soybean seed quality improvement using molecular breeding and biotechnological approaches.

Enhancement of blood–brain barrier (BBB) permeability is necessary for clearing virus in the central nervous system (CNS). It has been reported that only laboratory-attenuated rabies virus (RABV) induces inflammatory response to lead BBB transient breakdown rather than wild-type (wt) strains. As a component of ribonucleoprotein (RNP), phosphoprotein (P) of RABV plays a key role in viral replication and pathogenicity. To our knowledge, the function of RABV P gene during RABV invasion was unclear so far. In order to determine the role of RABV P gene during RABV infection, we evaluated the BBB permeability in vivo after infection with wt RABV strain (GD-SH-01), a lab-attenuated RABV strain (HEP-Flury), and a chimeric RABV strain (rHEP-SH-P) whose P gene cloned from GD-SH-01 was expressed in the genomic backbone of HEP-Flury. We found that rHEP-SH-P caused less enhancement of BBB permeability and was less pathogenic to adult mice than GD-SH-01 and HEP-Flury. In an effort to investigate the mechanism, we found that the replication of rHEP-SH-P has been limited due to the suppressed P protein expression and induced less response to maintain BBB integrity. Our data indicated that the P gene of wt RABV was a potential determinant in hampering viral replication in vivo, which kept BBB integrity. These findings provided an important foundation for understanding the viral invasion and development of novel vaccine.

The accurate, efficient, and reliable forecasting of wind speed is a hot research topic in wind power generation and integration. However, available forecasting models focus on forecasting the wind speed using historical wind speed data and ignore multidimensional meteorological variables. The objective is to develop a hybrid model with multidimensional meteorological variables for forecasting the wind speed accurately. The complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) is applied to handle the nonlinearity of the wind speed. Then, the original wind speed will be decomposed into a series of intrinsic model functions with specified numbers of frequencies. A quadratic model that considers the two-way interactions between factors is used to pursue accurate forecasting. To reduce the model complexity, Gram–Schmidt-based feature selection (GSFS) is applied to extract the important meteorological factors. Finally, all the forecasting values of IMFs will be summed by assigning weights that are carefully determined by the whale optimization algorithm (WOA). The proposed forecasting approach has been applied on six datasets that were collected in Qinghai province and is compared with several state-of-the-art wind speed forecasting models. The forecasting results demonstrate that the proposed model can represent the nonlinearity of the wind speed and deliver better results than the competitors.

System security is essential for the operation of the island microgrid. However, the system security is generally threatened due to the presence of physical uncertainties and cyber attacks. In this article, a novel sliding mode load control strategy is proposed for the microgrid to mitigate cyber attacks and physical uncertainties. Firstly, a high-order disturbance observer (HODO) is designed to estimate the unmeasurable factors in the microgrid. Secondly, a HODO-based sliding mode control (SMC) strategy is proposed where the estimated value observed by the HODO is applied to the sliding mode surface and control law. It can better guarantee the security of the isolated microgrid. Then, the stability of the HODO-based SMC is demonstrated by Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed control strategy has excellent control performance.

The swamp eel (Monopterus albus) is a typical sex reversal fish with high economic value. Several phylogeographic studies have been performed using various markers but comparative research between mitochondrial and nuclear markers is rare. Here, a fine-scale study was performed across six sites along the Yangtze River including three sites on the main stem and three sites from tributaries. A total of 180 swamp eel individuals were collected. Genetic structure and demographic history were explored using data from two mitochondrial genes and eight microsatellite loci. The results revealed the samples from tributary sites formed three separate clades which contained site-specific lineages. Geographic isolation and the habitat patchiness caused by seasonal cutoff were inferred to be the reasons for this differentiation. Strong gene flow was detected among the sites along the main stem. Rapid flow of the river main stem may provide the dynamic for the migration of swamp eel. Interestingly, the comparative analyses between the two marker types was discordant. Mitochondrial results suggested samples from three tributary sites were highly differentiated. However, microsatellite analyses indicated the tributary samples were moderately differentiated. We conclude this discordance is mainly caused by the unique life history of sex reversal fish. Our study provides novel insights regarding the population genetics of sex reversal fish.

Application programming interface (API)-related questions are increasingly posted and discussed by developers in popular question and answer forums, such as Stack Overflow. However, their extremely long resolution time seriously delays the working schedules of developers. Despite researchers have investigated how to automatically resolve API-related questions by recommending correct APIs for them, there is still much room for additional improvement. In this paper, we propose a novel approach of recommending APIs for API-related questions based on API specifications and historical resolved questions (RASH). Given a new API-related question, RASH recommends APIs for it guided by two central observations. First, the more lexically similar the functional description in an API's specification is to the new question, the more likely that the API can resolve the new question. Second, the APIs that have resolved more historical similar questions can also help to resolve the new question. To verify the effectiveness of RASH, we construct and publish a corpus containing 1234 API-related questions with their correct APIs from Stack Overflow, and conduct extensive experiments over it. The experimental results show that RASH is relatively stable and robust to a different quality of questions. In addition, RASH hits nearly 70% correct APIs and outperforms the state-of-the-art approach by 15.64% when recommending 15 APIs for each question.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is one of the most commonly used network architectures in recent years. With the substantial increase in the number of Internet users, network security threats appear more frequently, which brings more concerns to SDN. Distributed denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are one of the most dangerous and frequent attacks in software defined networks. The traditional attack detection method using entropy has some defects such as slow attack detection and poor detection effect. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposed a method of fusion entropy, which detects attacks by measuring the randomness of network events. This method has the advantages of fast attack detection speed and obvious decrease in entropy value. The complementarity of information entropy and log energy entropy is effectively utilized. The experimental results show that the entropy value of the attack scenarios 91.25% lower than normal scenarios, which has greater advantages and significance compared with other attack detection methods.

PurposeMultiple myeloma is a plasma cell malignancy with an unmet clinical need for improved imaging methods and therapeutics. Recently, we identified CD46 as an overexpressed therapeutic target in multiple myeloma and developed the antibody YS5, which targets a cancer-specific epitope on this protein. We further developed the CD46-targeting PET probe [89Zr]Zr-DFO-YS5 for imaging and [225Ac]Ac-DOTA-YS5 for radiopharmaceutical therapy of prostate cancer. These prior studies suggested the feasibility of the CD46 antigen as a theranostic target in multiple myeloma. Herein, we validate [89Zr]Zr-DFO-YS5 for immunoPET imaging and [225Ac]Ac-DOTA-YS5 for radiopharmaceutical therapy of multiple myeloma in murine models.Experimental designIn vitro saturation binding was performed using the CD46 expressing MM.1S multiple myeloma cell line. ImmunoPET imaging using [89Zr]Zr-DFO-YS5 was performed in immunodeficient (NSG) mice bearing subcutaneous and systemic multiple myeloma xenografts. For radioligand therapy, [225Ac]Ac-DOTA-YS5 was prepared, and both dose escalation and fractionated dose treatment studies were performed in mice bearing MM1.S-Luc systemic xenografts. Tumor burden was analyzed using BLI, and body weight and overall survival were recorded to assess antitumor effect and toxicity.Results[89Zr]Zr-DFO-YS5 demonstrated high affinity for CD46 expressing MM.1S multiple myeloma cells (Kd = 16.3 nmol/L). In vitro assays in multiple myeloma cell lines demonstrated high binding, and bioinformatics analysis of human multiple myeloma samples revealed high CD46 expression. [89Zr]Zr-DFO-YS5 PET/CT specifically detected multiple myeloma lesions in a variety of models, with low uptake in controls, including CD46 knockout (KO) mice or multiple myeloma mice using a nontargeted antibody. In the MM.1S systemic model, localization of uptake on PET imaging correlated well with the luciferase expression from tumor cells. A treatment study using [225Ac]Ac-DOTA-YS5 in the MM.1S systemic model demonstrated a clear tumor volume and survival benefit in the treated groups.ConclusionsOur study showed that the CD46-targeted probe [89Zr]Zr-DFO-YS5 can successfully image CD46-expressing multiple myeloma xenografts in murine models, and [225Ac]Ac-DOTA-YS5 can effectively inhibit the growth of multiple myeloma. These results demonstrate that CD46 is a promising theranostic target for multiple myeloma, with the potential for clinical translation.

In the form of distance, video broadcast interactive courses, rural distance video classes enable rural schools with struggling art education teachers to share high-quality art education resources retrieved from urban-area schools. This study aims to investigate and explore teaching strategies that effectively enhance pupils' concentration in distance music classes. The descriptive survey method was employed to collect, analyze, and interpret the data to meet the study's objectives. Students' (N = 45) behavior in thirteen (13) distance music classes in Changsha County China was tracked and observed, and two rural school assistant teachers (N = 2) were interviewed. Text data recorded from observations and interviews were analyzed and categorized qualitatively. The research results indicated that the visual and audio support, incorporation of music games, and progressive learning of rhythms et al. can effectively improve students' concentration in distance music classes. The article also suggests: (1) conducting clear and engaging classroom tasks; (2) mixing body rhythm participation; (3) building a harmonious teacher-student relationship; (4) creating sustainable online learning environments; and (5) utilizing ChatGPT assistance in future distance music teaching practice.

The effect of correlated color temperature (CCT) on the thermal performance of light emitting diode (LED) filament in flip-chip packaging was investigated in detail. Two filaments with different lengths were selected as the research object, and the thermal resistance of filaments under three CCT (2200 K, 2400 K, 2700 K) were studied. The optical properties and thermal parameters of the two groups of filaments were measured, and the results were analyzed combined with the color coordinate. The experimental results show that thermal properties of LED filaments is closely related to CCT. Under constant current condition, junction temperature decreases with the increase of color difference. With the change of phosphor glue and phosphorus powder ratio, the color temperature of LED filament also changes. In the filaments with the same chip structure and packaging mechanism, the higher the proportion of red phosphorescent powder, the worse the heat dissipation performance of the filament. These results show that in the design and manufacture of LED filament, it is helpful to control the CCT of LED filament under the premise of meeting the use requirements.

The weakening effect is one of the most important causes triggering large deformation and failure of soft-rock engineering; however, few studies paid attention to damage evolution and constitutive relationship of rock in tensile damage in the excavation unloading and water-weakening process, not to mention the coupling process of unloading and water-weakening. In this paper, the mechanism and engineering characteristics of unloading softening and water-softening of water-rich soft rock are analyzed and summarized. Then with the aid of the strain equivalent principle, the damage of surrounding rock caused by unloading softening and water-softening is coupled, and the compression shear damage and the tensile damage of surrounding rock under the unloading process are analyzed. A damage constitutive model of rock subjected to excavation unloading and water-weakening is proposed considering the influence of water immersion time, and the proposed model is applied in a newly established finite element simulation method, which is suitable for excavation in the water-rich soft rock. Based on the mechanical-hydraulic-damage coupled method, the progressive failure process of surrounding rock under the dual softening effects can be reflected by the deteriorated parameters of damage elements. Finally, the field monitoring data of a typical section in the Xujiadi tunnel is used to verify the applicability and accuracy of the proposed dual softening model and simulation method.

Pink rot (Phytophthora erythroseptica) of potato is a major concern in many potato production regions. The pathogen produces zoospores that serve as a primary inoculum for infection. To understand how the pink rot incidence is related to pathogen population, qualitative, and quantitative chemical analyses were conducted. It was demonstrated that P. erythroseptica zoospores required a minimal population of 103 zoospores/ml (threshold) for initiating germination and the subsequent infection; the percentage of zoosporic germination was positively correlated with the density of zoospores above the threshold. To elucidate the density-dependent behavior, zoospore exudate (ZE) was extracted from high-density (105/ml) zoospore suspension. Zoosporic inocula of P. erythroseptica at different concentrations were inoculated on potato tubers. Necrotic lesions were caused by inoculum with 100 zoospores per inoculation site; 5 zoospores per site did not cause lesions on the tuber. However, five zoospores did cause lesions when they were placed in ZE, suggesting ZE contained chemical compounds that regulate germination of zoospores. ZE was collected and analyzed using liquid chromatography mass spectroscopy (LC-MS). Results showed that the amino acid leucine was associated with zoosporic germination. Therefore, zoosporic germination and infection of P. erythroseptica were mediated by signaling molecules secreted from zoospores.