bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
In Arabidopsis hybrids and Hybrid Mimics, up‐regulation of cell wall biogenesis is associated with the increased plant size
Authors: Wang Li , Wu Li Min , Greaves Ian K. , Dennis Elizabeth S. , Peacock William James 
Published: November 2019

AbstractHybrid breeding is of economic importance in agriculture for increasing yield, yet the basis of heterosis is not well understood. In Arabidopsis, crosses between different accessions produce hybrids with different levels of heterosis relative to parental phenotypes in biomass. In all hybrids, the advantage of the F1 hybrid in both phenotypic uniformity and yield gain is lost in the heterogeneous F2. F5/F6 Hybrid Mimics generated from a cross between C24 and Landsbergerecta(Ler) ecotypes demonstrated that the large plant phenotype of the F1 hybrids can be stabilized. Hybrid Mimic selection was applied to Wassilewskija (Ws)/Lerand Col/Lerhybrids. The two hybrids show different levels of heterosis. The Col/Lerhybrid generated F7 Hybrid Mimics with rosette diameter and fresh weight equivalent to the F1 hybrid at 30 DAS; F7 Ws/LerHybrid Mimics outperformed the F1 hybrid in both the rosette size and biomass. Transcriptome analysis revealed up‐regulation of cell wall biosynthesis, and cell wall expansion genes could be a common pathway in increased size in the Arabidopsis hybrids and Hybrid Mimics. Intercross of two independent Hybrid Mimic lines can further increase the biomass gain. Our results encourage the use of Hybrid Mimics for breeding and for investigating the molecular basis of heterosis.
Receptor‐Like Kinase Phosphorylation of Arabidopsis Heterotrimeric G‐Protein Gα ‐Subunit AtGPA1
Authors: Jia Haiyan , Song Gaoyuan , Werth Emily G. , Walley Justin W. , Hicks Leslie M. , Jones Alan M. 
Published: November 2019

AbstractAs molecular on–off switches, heterotrimeric G protein complexes, comprised of a Gα subunit and an obligate Gβγ dimer, transmit extracellular signals received by G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) to cytoplasmic targets that respond to biotic and abiotic stimuli. Signal transduction is modulated by phosphorylation of GPCRs and G protein complexes. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the Gα subunit AtGPA1 is phosphorylated by the receptor‐like kinase (RLK) BRI1‐associated Kinase 1 (BAK1), but the extent that other RLKs phosphorylates AtGPA1 is unknown. Twenty‐two trans‐phosphorylation sites on AtGPA1 are mapped by 12 RLKs hypothesized to act in the Arabidopsis G protein signaling pathway. Cis‐phosphorylation sites are also identified on these RLKs, some newly shown to be dual specific kinases. Multiple sites are present in the core AtGPA1 functional units, including pSer52 and/or pThr53 of the conserved P‐loop that directly binds nucleotide/phosphate, pThr164, and pSer175 from αE helix in the intramolecular domain interface for nucleotide exchange and GTP hydrolysis, and pThr193 and/or pThr194 in Switch I (SwI) that coordinates nucleotide exchange and protein partner binding. Several AtGPA1 S/T phosphorylation sites are potentially nucleotide‐dependent phosphorylation patterns, such as Ser52/Thr53 in the P‐loop and Thr193 and/or Thr194 in SwI.
Liquid Crystal Ordering on Conjugated Polymers Film Morphology for High Performance
Authors: Zhang Lu , Zhao Kefeng , Li Hongxiang , Zhang Tao , Liu Duo , Han Yanchun 
Published: November 2019

ABSTRACTThe electronic performance of conjugated polymers depends on the microstructure of the polymer films. A percolated network morphology with high crystallinity, ordered intermolecular packing and long‐range order is beneficial for charge transport. In recent reports, some conjugated polymers have been shown to exhibit liquid crystallinity. The appearance of liquid crystalline ordering provides a new solution to solve the difficulties in microstructure manipulation. In this review, we summarize how liquid crystallinity can assist molecular arrangement and guide long‐range orientation during film processing, leading to high charge mobility. We expect that this article could draw more attention to the liquid crystallinity of conjugated polymers. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2019, 57, 1572–1591
Phase Transformation Behavior of Polylactide Probed by Small Angle Light Scattering and Calorimetry
Authors: Schmidt Nico , Keuker‐Baumann Susanne , Meyer Jörg , Huber Klaus 
Published: November 2019

ABSTRACTSmall angle light scattering (SALS) and differential scanning calorimetry DSC have been applied to investigate the melting of spherulites isothermally crystallized polylactide. At an isothermal crystallization temperature high enough, pure α‐phase crystals are formed. Exposed to a temperature gradient, the crystals first melt and then recrystallize before they finally melt. With decreasing crystallization temperature, an increasing fraction of polylactide is crystallizing in the less stable α
′‐phase. α
′‐crystals also melt upon increasing the temperature but recrystallize to the more stable α‐phase. A constant spherulite size is revealed by SALS for both processes, the α/α and α
′/α melt‐recrystallization, until completion of the final melting, thereby supporting integrity of the spherulites throughout the entire processes. Joint DSC and SALS experiments demonstrate that the depolarized scattering invariant correlates with the heat flow recorded by DSC and thus offer an alternative measure for the degree of crystallinity. The following mechanism is identified for both processes: initial melting and recrystallization overlay each other. Crystallinity is not fully recovered upon recrystallization because only part of the original lamellae survives the melt‐recrystallization, though with an increased thickness. While lamellae are melting and reforming or simply transforming their phase, the spherulites survive the process until final melting. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2019, 57, 1483–1495
Prediction of impacts of mutations on protein structure and interactions: SDM, a statistical approach, and mCSM, using machine learning
Authors: Pandurangan Arun Prasad , Blundell Tom L. 
Published: November 2019

AbstractNext‐generation sequencing methods have not only allowed an understanding of genome sequence variation during the evolution of organisms but have also provided invaluable information about genetic variants in inherited disease and the emergence of resistance to drugs in cancers and infectious disease. A challenge is to distinguish mutations that are drivers of disease or drug resistance, from passengers that are neutral or even selectively advantageous to the organism. This requires an understanding of impacts of missense mutations in gene expression and regulation, and on the disruption of protein function by modulating protein stability or disturbing interactions with proteins, nucleic acids, small molecule ligands, and other biological molecules. Experimental approaches to understanding differences between wild‐type and mutant proteins are most accurate but are also time‐consuming and costly. Computational tools used to predict the impacts of mutations can provide useful information more quickly. Here, we focus on two widely used structure‐based approaches, originally developed in the Blundell lab: site‐directed mutator (SDM), a statistical approach to analyze amino acid substitutions, and mutation cutoff scanning matrix (mCSM), which uses graph‐based signatures to represent the wild‐type structural environment and machine learning to predict the effect of mutations on protein stability. Here, we describe DUET that uses machine learning to combine the two approaches. We discuss briefly the development of mCSM for understanding the impacts of mutations on interfaces with other proteins, nucleic acids, and ligands, and we exemplify the wide application of these approaches to understand human genetic disorders and drug resistance mutations relevant to cancer and mycobacterial infections.Statement for a Broader AudienceGenetic or somatic changes in genes can lead to mutations in human proteins, which give rise to genetic disorders or cancer, or to genes of pathogens leading to drug resistance. Computer software described here, using statistical approaches or machine learning, uses the information from genome sequencing of humans and pathogens, together with experimental or modeled 3D structures of gene products, the proteins, to predict impacts of mutations in genetic disease, cancer and drug resistance.
Structural complementarity of distance constraints obtained from chemical cross‐linking and amino acid coevolution
Authors: dos Santos Ricardo N. , Bottino Guilherme F. , Gozzo Fábio C. , Morcos Faruck , Martínez Leandro 
Published: November 2019

AbstractThe analysis of amino acid coevolution has emerged as a practical method for protein structural modeling by providing structural contact information from alignments of amino acid sequences. In parallel, chemical cross‐linking/mass spectrometry (XLMS) has gained attention as a universally applicable method for obtaining low‐resolution distance constraints to model the quaternary arrangements of proteins, and more recently even protein tertiary structures. Here, we show that the structural information obtained by XLMS and coevolutionary analysis are effectively complementary: the distance constraints obtained by each method are almost exclusively associated with non‐coincident pairs of residues, and modeling results obtained by the combination of both sets are improved relative to considering the same total number of constraints of a single type. The structural rationale behind the complementarity of the distance constraints is discussed and illustrated for a representative set of proteins with different sizes and folds.
Spirulina extract enriched for Braun‐type lipoprotein (Immulina®) for inhibition of 4T1 breast tumors' growth and metastasis
Authors: Kefayat Amirhosein , Ghahremani Fatemeh , Safavi Ashkan , Hajiaghababa Alireza , Moshtaghian Jamal 
Published: November 2019

Spirulina platensis extracts have exhibited considerable anti‐cancer effects. To investigate the efficacy of the Spirulina extract enriched for Braun‐type lipoprotein (Immulina®) for breast cancer treatment, 4T1 breast tumor‐bearing mice were treated with 40 mg/kg Immulina® daily and the tumors' growth and metastasis were assessed. Also, CD4, CD8, and CD56 staining were performed to investigate the Immulina® effect on the immune cells' recruitment to the tumors by immunohistochemistry. Immulina® could significantly (P < 0.001) inhibit 4T1 breast tumors' growth. Immulina®‐treated group exhibited a 63% decrease in the tumors' volume in comparison with control (P < 0.001). Also, Immulina® could significantly (P < 0.001) decrease metastatic burden at the vital organs as 68% and 61% decrease in the liver and lungs metastatic colonies were observed, respectively. Also, Immulina® could increase mean survival time of the tumor‐bearing mice for 29 days. The Spirulina‐treated mice tumors contained significantly more infiltrated NK, CD4+, and CD8+ T lymphocytes in comparison with control. Taking together, Immulina® can be a safe anti‐cancer supplement with the ability to cause direct apoptosis to the cancer cells and activate the immune system against tumor. This supplement with natural origin seems to have bright future to help breast cancer patients.
Effect of dimer formation via hydrogen bonding on static and dynamic nonlinear optical characteristics of chromophores
Authors: Shalin Nikita I. , Fominykh Olga D. , Balakina Marina Yu. 
Published: November 2019

AbstractThe effect of head‐to‐tail azochromophore dimer formation on the values of static and dynamic first hyperpolarizability is studied on the basis of calculations performed at M06‐2X/aug‐cc‐pVDZ and ωB97X‐D/aug‐cc‐pVDZ computational levels; the results are compared with those obtained at second‐order Moller‐Plesset pertubation theory (MP2)/aug‐cc‐pVDZ. AzochromophoresDO3andAAB‐DCV, participating in the dimer formation, contain nitro‐ or dicyanovinylene acceptor moieties. The structure of the studied dimers is obtained at the B3LYP‐D3/6‐31++G (d,p) level with basis set superposition error (BSSE) correction. Dynamic first hyperpolarizabilities are calculated at radiation frequencies of 0.65 eV, 0.918 eV and 1.165 eV. The essential effect of dimer formation is demonstrated: it results in almost a 3.5 times increase of the first hyperpolarizability. In the seriesD1‐D2‐D3, β(2ω) values at 0.65 eV increase in a way similar to the static case: β(2ω) forD2andD3are 1.5 and 1.8 times higher than that forD1. The notable resonance enhancement of β(2ω) for the studied hydrogen‐bonded dimers is demonstrated at radiation frequency of 1.165 eV.
Next‐generation quantum theory of atoms in molecules for the S1/S0 conical intersections in dynamics trajectories of a light‐driven rotary molecular motor
Authors: Wang LiLing , Azizi Alireza , Momen Roya , Xu Tianlv , Kirk Steven R. , Filatov Michael , Jenkins Samantha 
Published: November 2019

AbstractNext‐generation quantum theory of atoms in molecules was applied to analyze, along an entire bond path, intramolecular interactions known to influence the photoisomerization dynamics of a light‐driven rotary molecular motor. The 3D bond‐path framework set B0,1 constructed from the least and most preferred directions of electronic motion, provided new insights into the bonding leading to different S1 state lifetimes including the first quantification of covalent character of a closed‐shell intramolecular bond path. We undertook the first use of the stress tensor trajectory Tσ(s) analysis on selected nonadiabatic molecular dynamics trajectories with the electron densities obtained using the ensemble density functional theory method. The stress tensor Tσ(s) analysis was found to be well suited to follow the dynamics trajectories that included the S0 and S1 electronic states through the conical intersection and also provided to a new measure to assess the degree of purity of the axial bond rotation for the design of rotary molecular motors.
The Simple View of Reading Made Complex by Morphological Decoding Fluency in Bilingual Fourth‐Grade Readers of English
Authors: Zhang Dongbo , Ke Sihui 
Published: November 2019

AbstractThe authors examined the complexity of the simple view of reading, focusing on morphological decoding fluency in fourth‐grade readers of English in Singapore. The participants were three groups of students who all learned to become bilingual and biliterate in the English language (EL) and their respective ethnic language in school but differed in the home language they used. The first group was ethnic Chinese students who used English as the dominant home language (ChineseEL1); the other two groups were ethnic Chinese and Malay students whose dominant home language was not English but Chinese (ChineseEL2) and Malay (MalayEL2), respectively. The measures included pseudoword decoding (phonemic decoding), timed decoding of derivational words (morphological decoding fluency), oral vocabulary, and passage comprehension. Path analysis showed that oral vocabulary significantly predicted reading comprehension across all three groups, yet a significant effect of morphological decoding fluency surfaced in the ChineseEL1 and MalayEL2 groups but not the ChineseEL2 group. Multigroup path analysis and commonality analysis further confirmed that morphological decoding played a larger role in the ChineseEL1 and MalayEL2 groups. These findings are discussed in light of the joint influence of target‐language experience and cross‐linguistic influence on second‐language or bilingual reading development.
Younger age negatively impacts depression‐associated exacerbation of hemoglobin A1c levels in type 2 diabetes: Implications for intervention
Authors: Jean Moïse‐Denis K. , Mihailescu Dan V. , Ajilore Olugbenga , Kumar Anand , Ajilore Olusola A. 
Published: November 2019

AbstractAdults with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and depression are associated with higher hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) compared to their nondepressed counterparts. Little is known about related clinical and demographic components contributing to these differences. We examined differences in HbA1C between adults who have T2DM with and without major depression. T tests and chi‐square analyses measured differences in HbA1C and clinical/demographic variables. HbA1C was statistically higher in depressed participants compared to nondepressed participants. The difference was no longer statistically significant after controlling for age. Age and HbA1C were negatively correlated across the sample and were still correlated in each group independently. The interaction of age and HbA1C was moderated by depression status. Additionally, mechanisms for diabetes severity differences were assessed using moderation analyses and Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition technique. Seventy‐four percent of the mean outcome HbA1C difference between depressed and nondepressed diabetic participants was explained by age. Furthermore, age was negatively correlated with clinical variables, such as diastolic blood pressure and cholesterol. Comparing age to smoking and nonsmoking participants, smokers were statistically younger. Younger adults with T2DM may require more attention regarding self‐management, particularly in the context of depression. Depression should be screened and treated among individuals with diabetes since this exacerbates diabetes severity.
Behavior of fiber reinforced concrete members under sustained axial/flexural load
Authors: Watts Murray J. , Amin Ali , Gilbert Raymond Ian , Kaufmann Walter 
Published: November 2019

AbstractThe inclusion of steel or polypropylene fibers in the concrete mix can substantially improve the serviceability characteristics of reinforced concrete members. For fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) members, the fibers enhance the postcracking stiffness, thereby reducing the short‐term and long‐term deflections, and very significantly reducing the width of cracks and the spacing between them. Relatively little experimental and analytical research has been undertaken on the effects of creep and shrinkage on the long‐term performance of FRC structural members after cracking. Failure to account for creep and shrinkage of the concrete and creep of the fibers can lead to a serious under‐estimation of the extent and severity of cracking, as well as long‐term curvatures and deformations. This paper describes a method of analysis and the material modeling required to determine the time‐dependent behavior of cracked, steel or macro‐synthetic FRC members containing conventional bar reinforcement and subjected to a sustained bending moment and/or axial force. The model is versatile in that it can handle a range of inputs (fiber type, specimen geometry, loading conditions, etc.) and is simple enough for routine use. The model is validated against available test data and is shown to produce satisfactory correlations.
Chief executive officers' dispositional optimism, host country's rule of law, and foreign market equity mode choice of Ghanaian small and medium‐sized enterprises
Authors: Adomako Samuel , Frimpong Kwabena , Mohammed Riaz A. , Opoku Robert A. , Hussain Rifaqat 
Published: November 2019

AbstractDespite a growing interest in the influence of managerial characteristics on firms' strategic decision‐making process, scholarly knowledge is limited with regard to how and when psychological attributes of executives affect firms' foreign entry mode decision. Building on behavioral decision‐making theory, we address this gap by investigating the effect of chief executive officers' (CEOs') optimism on firms' foreign market equity mode choice. In addition, we examine the moderating influence of the host country's rule of law on this relationship. Using primary data from 227 small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana, we found that increases in the levels of CEOs' optimism are related to the increases in preference for equity entry mode. This relationship is amplified when CEOs perceive the host country to have stronger rule of law. The findings have theoretical, managerial, and policy implications for SMEs' foreign market entry mode strategy.
Epigenetic modification of H3K4 and oxidative stress are involved in MC‐LR‐induced apoptosis in testicular cells of SD rats
Authors: Yuan Le , Liu Haohao , Liu Xiaohui , Zhang Xiaofeng , Wu Jinxia , Wang Yueqin , Du Xingde , Wang Rui , Ma Ya , Chen Xinghai , Petlulu Pavankumar , Cheng Xuemin , Zhuang Donggang , Guo Hongxiang , Zhang Huizhen 
Published: November 2019

AbstractMicrocystin‐leucine arginine (MC‐LR) is a cyclic heptapeptide, produced by aquatic cyanobacteria such as microcystis, with strong reproductive toxicity which poses greater threat to the reproductive abilities of humans and animals. By exploring the role of trimethylation of histone H3 at lysine 4 (H3K4me3) and the role of oxidative stress in MC‐LR‐induced apoptosis in testicular Sertoli cells in Sprague‐Dawley (SD) rats, this study indicated that MC‐LR increased the expression levels of apoptosis‐related genes by raising the levels of H3K4me3. 5′‐Deoxy‐5′‐methylthioadenosine (MTA), the inhibitor of H3K4me3, reduced apoptosis, indicating for the first time that epigenetic modification is closely related to the testicular reproductive toxicity induced by MC‐LR. MC‐LR also induced oxidative stress by stimulating the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and subsequently triggering mitochondria‐mediated apoptotic pathway by decreasing mitochondrial membrane potential and increasing the levels of Bax, Bcl‐2, Caspase‐3, and so on. MC‐LR‐induced apoptosis of testicular cells could be decreased after pretreatment with oxidative stress inhibitor N‐acetyl‐cysteine (NAC). Furthermore, the pathological damage to mitochondria and testes were observed in SD rats. These results show that MC‐LR can induce apoptosis by raising the levels of H3K4me3, and pretreatment with MTA can ameliorate the MC‐LR‐induced apoptosis of cocultured cells by lowering the levels of H3K4me3. Furthermore, NAC has a protective effect on MC‐LR‐induced apoptosis of testicular cells in SD rats by inhibiting the oxidative stress.