Creation of Rice Doubled Haploids Resistant to Prolonged Flooding Using Anther Culture

Flood resistance in rice is very important in weed control, as weeds cannot overcome deep water. At present, there are no released varieties in Russia that would meet these requirements. The creation of such varieties will reduce production costs and pesticide load on the ecosystem. The object of the study was second-generation rice hybrids obtained by crossing the best varieties for economically valuable traits with samples carrying genes for resistance to prolonged flooding with water. To create double rice haploids resistant to prolonged flooding, the anther culture method was used, followed by molecular genetic evaluation of dihaploids for the presence of genes for resistance to prolonged flooding. An estimate of the growth energy under deep flooding was carried out according to our own method. As a result of the cultivation of anthers, 130 androgenic regenerated plants were obtained in 14 hybrid combinations. In terms of responsiveness to neoplasms, 60% of the panicles showed a positive result, while the rest 40% did not demonstrate callus formation. In total, 30 green regenerative lines were obtained from four rice hybrids, differing in visual morphological assessment. Large genotypic differences between the samples were revealed. These lines carry long-term flood resistance genes and can be used in rice breeding programs using dihaploids. As a result of the assessment of the growth energy in a number of obtained samples, the potential for rapid elongation of the first leaves, overcoming a large layer of water and accumulation of vegetative mass, was revealed.

Lines, signs, some applications, and misconceptions from a radiologist's point of view

In recent years, lung ultrasound (LUS) has developed rapidly, and it is growing in popularity in various scenarios. It has become especially popular among clinicians. There are constant attempts to introduce it in new fields, with quite a strong resistance in the radiological community. In addition, knowledge regarding lung and LUS has been augmented by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, this has led to many misconceptions. The aim of this review is to discuss lines, signs, and phenomena that can be seen in LUS in order to create a single, easily available compendium for radiologists and promote consistency in LUS nomenclature. Some simplified suggestions are presented.

Problems of mini-pig breeding

This article provides an overview of some problems of the breeding and reproduction of laboratory minipigs. The most obvious of these are the lack of centralized accounting of breeding groups, uniform selection standards for reproduction and evaluation of breeding animals, as well as minimizing the accumulation of fitness-reducing mutations and maintaining genetic diversity. According to the latest estimates, there are at least 30 breeding groups of mini-pigs systematically used as laboratory animals in the world. Among them, there are both breed formations represented by several colonies, and breeding groups consisting of a single herd. It was shown that the main selection strategy is selection for the live weight of adults of 50–80 kg and the adaptation of animals to a specific type of biomedical experiments. For its implementation in the breeding of foreign mini-pigs, selection by live weight is practiced at 140- and 154-day-old age. It was indicated that different herds of mini-pigs have their own breeding methods to counteract inbred depression and maintain genetic diversity. Examples are the maximization of coat color phenotypes, the cyclical system of matching parent pairs, and the structuring of herds into subpopulations. In addition, in the breeding of foreign mini-pigs, molecular genetic methods are used to monitor heterozygosity. Every effort is made to keep the number of inbred crosses in the breeding of laboratory mini-pigs to a minimum, which is not always possible due to their small number. It is estimated that to avoid close inbreeding, the number of breeding groups should be at least 28 individuals, including boars of at least 4 genealogical lines and at least 4 families of sows. The accumulation of genetic cargo in herds of mini-pigs takes place, but the harmful effect is rather the result of erroneous decisions of breeders. Despite the fact that when breeding a number of mini-pigs, the goal was to complete the herds with exclusively white animals, in most breeding groups there is a polymorphism in the phenotype of the coat color

The Perceptual Organisation of Visual Elements: Lines

The aim of this study is to verify the conditions under which a series of visual stimuli (line segments) will be subjectively perceived as visual lines or surfaces employing four experiments. Two experiments were conducted with the method of subjective evaluation of the line segments, and the other two with the Osgood semantic differential. We analysed five variables (thickness, type, orientation, and colour) potentially responsible for the lines' categorisation. The four experiments gave similar results: higher importance of the variables thickness and type; general lower significance of the variable colour; and general insignificance of the variable orientation. Interestingly, for the variable type, straight lines are evaluated as surfaces more frequently than curved lines and perceived as geometrical, flat, hard, static, rough, sharp, bound, sour, frigid, masculine, cold and passive. Curved lines are prevalently evaluated as lines, and categorised as organic, rounded, soft, dynamic, fluffy, blunt, free, sweet, sensual, feminine, warm and active. These results highlight the specificity of perceptual characteristics for the considered variables and confirm the relevance of the characteristics of variables such as thickness and type.

Drawing Direction Effect on a Task's Performance Characteristics among People with Essential Tremor

Essential tremor (ET) is a common movement disorder affecting the performance of various daily tasks, including drawing. While spiral-drawing task characteristics have been described among patients with ET, research about the significance of the drawing direction of both spiral and lines tasks on the performance process is scarce. This study mapped inter-group differences between people with ET and controls related to drawing directions and the intra-effect of the drawing directions on the tremor level among people with ET. Twenty participants with ET and eighteen without ET drew spirals and vertical and horizontal lines on a digitizer with an inking pen. Time-based outcome measures were gathered to address the effect of the drawing directions on tremor by analyzing various spiral sections and comparing vertical and horizontal lines. Significant group differences were found in deviation of the spiral radius from a filtered radius curve and in deviation of the distance curve from a filtered curve for both line types. Significant differences were found between defined horizontal and vertical spiral sections within each group and between both line types within the ET group. A significant correlation was found between spiral and vertical line deviations from filtered curve outcome measures. Achieving objective measures about the significance of drawing directions on actual performance may support the clinical evaluation of people with ET toward developing future intervention methods for improving their functional abilities.

The odd-skipped related gene drumstick is required for leg development in the beetle Tribolium castaneum

BACKGROUND

The evolutionarily conserved odd-skipped related genes odd-skipped (odd), drumstick (drm), sister of odd and bowel (sob), and brother-of-odd-with-entrails-limited (bwl) act downstream of the Notch pathway in various insect tissues including the appendages and the gut. While the function of some of these genes have been analyzed in the adult Tribolium beetle, the expression during and their requirement for embryonic development is not known.

RESULTS

We describe here the embryonic expression patterns of drm, sob, and bwl and analyze the RNAi knockdown phenotypes with emphasize on the appendages and the hindgut. We show that in Tribolium, drm acts independently of other odd-family members in the formation of legs, hindgut, and the dorsal epidermis. Moreover, we establish drm and sob as further markers for segment borders in the appendages that include the gnathobasic mandibles.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that the regulatory interrelationship among the odd genes differs between Tribolium and Drosophila, where odd and drm seem to act redundantly. In Tribolium, the genes drm and sob uncover the relict of a precoxal joint incorporated in the lateral body wall.

Variability in response to salinity stress in natural Tunisian populations of Hordeum marinum subsp. marinum

Soil salinity is one of the most serious environmental factors affecting crop productivity around the world. In this study, we analysed morpho-physiological variation in responses to salt stress in Tunisian populations of Hordeum marinum subsp. marinum. The plants were grown under two treatments (0 and 200 mm NaCl) until maturity. A total of 19 quantitative traits were measured before and during the harvest. It was observed that most studied traits are influenced by the increasing salinity. High to moderate broad-sense heritability (H² ) were noted for most of parameters under control and salt treatment, implying that salt tolerance is moderately heritable and environmental variation plays an equally important role. The majority of correlations between measured traits under the two treatments are positive, where the strongest correlations were between spike number (SN) and weight (SW). Based on the salt response index (SRI) values, SN and SW are the most affected by salinity. The 150 studied lines formed three groups according to the SRI values of the 19 quantitative parameters, of which 101 were moderately sensitive, 27 tolerant and 22 highly tolerant. Overall genetic variation of H. marinum in response to salt stress may provide novel insight to identify genes responsible for salt tolerance.

Visual EKF-SLAM from Heterogeneous Landmarks

Many applications require the localization of a moving object, e.g., a robot, using sensory data acquired from embedded devices. Simultaneous localization and mapping from vision performs both the spatial and temporal fusion of these data on a map when a camera moves in an unknown environment. Such a SLAM process executes two interleaved functions: the front-end detects and tracks features from images, while the back-end interprets features as landmark observations and estimates both the landmarks and the robot positions with respect to a selected reference frame. This paper describes a complete visual SLAM solution, combining both point and line landmarks on a single map. The proposed method has an impact on both the back-end and the front-end. The contributions comprehend the use of heterogeneous landmark-based EKF-SLAM (the management of a map composed of both point and line landmarks); from this perspective, the comparison between landmark parametrizations and the evaluation of how the heterogeneity improves the accuracy on the camera localization, the development of a front-end active-search process for linear landmarks integrated into SLAM and the experimentation methodology.

Distribution of MGEs and their insertion sites in the Macaca mulatta genome

Mobile genetic elements (MGEs) are fragments of DNA that can move around within the genome through retrotransposition. These are responsible for various important events such as gene inactivation, transduction, regulation of gene expression and genome expansion. The present work involves the identification and study of the distribution of Alu and L1 retrotransposons in the genome of Macaca mulatta, an extensively used organism in biomedical studies. We also make comparisons with MGE distributions in other primate genomes and study the physicochemical properties of the local DNA structure around the transposon insertion site using ELAN. The present work also includes computational testing of the pre-insertion loci in order to detect unique features based on DNA structure, thermodynamic considerations and protein interaction measures. Although there is significant sequence divergence between the elements of M. mulatta and H. sapiens, their genome wide distribution is very similar; comparing the distribution of L1's in all available X chromosome sequences suggests a common mechanism behind the spread of MGE's in primate genomes.

A pictorial essay: Radiology of lines and tubes in the intensive care unit

A variety of devices are used in the intensive care unit for long durations. Each one of them is a double-edged sword: intended to save life, but life-threatening if in the wrong place. Hence, it is important to periodically check that these devices are correctly placed so as to prevent complications. The portable chest radiograph is of tremendous value in this context.

Tissue- and stage-specific modulation of Wingless signaling by the segment polarity gene lines

Wnt signaling controls a variety of developmental programs but the mechanisms by which the same signal leads to distinct outputs remain unclear. To address this question, we identified stage-specific modulators of Wingless (Wg) signaling in the Drosophila embryonic epidermis. We show that lines (lin) is essential for Wg-dependent patterning in dorsal epidermis. lin encodes a novel protein that acts cell-autonomously, downstream or in parallel to Armadillo (Arm) and upstream of Wg-dependent target genes. Lin can accumulate in nuclei of cells signaled by Wg, suggesting that signaling promotes entry of Lin into the nucleus, where it cooperates with Arm and Pangolin. Thus, a stage-specific modulator is used to mediate Wg signaling activity in dorsal patterning. Hedgehog (Hh) controls half of the parasegmental pattern dorsally and antagonizes Wg function to do so. Lin can accumulate in the cytoplasm of cells signaled by Hh, suggesting that Hh antagonizes Wg function by prohibiting Lin from entering the nucleus.