[Influence of humidex on incidence of bacillary dysentery in Hefei: a time-series study]

Objective: To investigate the effect of humidex combined with mean temperature and relative humidity on the incidence of bacillary dysentery in Hefei. Methods: Daily counts of bacillary dysentery cases and weather data in Hefei were collected from January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2013. Then, the humidex was calculated from temperature and relative humidity. A Poisson generalized linear regression combined with distributed lag non-linear model was applied to analyze the relationship between humidex and the incidence of bacillary dysentery, after adjusting for long-term and seasonal trends, day of week and other weather confounders. Stratified analyses by gender, age and address were also conducted. Results: The risk of bacillary dysentery increased with the rise of humidex. The adverse effect of high humidex (90 percentile of humidex) appeared in 2-days lag and it was the largest at 4-days lag (RR=1.063, 95%CI: 1.037-1.090). Subgroup analyses indicated that all groups were affected by high humidex at lag 2-5 days. Conclusion: High humidex could significantly increase the risk of bacillary dysentery, and the lagged effects were observed.

Novel polymorphic microsatellite markers isolated from the pen shell Atrina pectinata (Mollusca: Bivalvia: Pinnidae)

In this study, we isolated 21 novel polymorphic microsatellite DNA loci from the pen shell Atrina pectinata using magnetic-bead hybridization enrichment. The characteristics of these loci were tested using a population of 30 individuals collected from the Penglai coast, Shandong Province. The number of alleles ranged from 2 to 13, and polymorphism information content (PIC) varied from 0.1730 to 0.8954. Values for observed heterozygosity (HO) and expected heterozygosity (HE) ranged from 0.0714 to 0.9231 and from 0.1948 to 0.9237, respectively. Four loci deviated significantly from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The newly developed microsatellite markers will be beneficial in assessing the genetic diversity, population structure and genetic conservation of A. pectinata, and in other relevant research.

ipt Gene transformation in petunia by an Agrobacterium mediated method

To prevent leaf senescence of petunia, the cytokinin biosynthetic gene isopentenyl transferase (ipt) was placed under the control of 35S promoter and introduced into petunia. PCR analysis showed an expected 0.5 Kb fragment of ipt gene in transgenic petunia. RT-PCR analysis indicated the expression of ipt gene in the transgenic lines. Leaves from transgenic plants remained green and healthy in normal culture condition, while the non-transformed plants turned to yellow. Transgenic plants showed a reduction in height and smaller leaf sizes. In transgenic lines, the internodes were shorter, and the roots grew slower than the non-transformed plants.