产生活性氧（reactive oxygen species, ROS）是植物防御病原菌的重要途径。为对抗这种攻击，病原菌通常表达超氧化物歧化酶（superoxide dismutases, SODs）来清除寄主植物产生的ROS。大丽轮枝菌（Verticillium dahliae）是引发寄主植物黄萎病的重要土传性病原真菌，前期研究发现大丽轮枝菌Vd991在寄主棉花组织诱导下，胞外超氧化物歧化酶VdSOD5丰度显著提高。暗示超氧化物歧化酶在大丽轮枝菌侵染寄主过程中发挥重要作用，但其是否具有清除ROS及致病功能尚不清楚。因此，本研究拟系统解析大丽轮枝菌超氧化物歧化酶VdSOD5在清除寄主ROS的功能及其在致病性方面发挥的作用。序列分析显示VdSOD5编码蛋白为仅具有Cu²⁺结合位点的超氧化物歧化酶。酵母信号肽捕获系统证明VdSOD5蛋白N端肽段具有介导蛋白分泌的功能。利用同源重组技术构建了VdSOD5基因缺失突变体（ΔVdSOD5-1/2）。氯化硝基四氮唑蓝（p-Nitro-Blue Tetrazolium, NBT）还原法检测表明ΔVdSOD5培养液和菌体的SOD活性较野生型菌株分别下降了74%和28%。ΔVdSOD5对胞内活性氧产生剂甲萘醌的敏感性与野生型菌株相似。NBT染色表明VdSOD5在病原侵染过程中具有降解棉花根系超氧化物的能力。VdSOD5的转录在侵染棉花根部的早期显著上调。VdSOD5缺失不影响大丽轮枝菌营养生长、碳源利用和产孢量。蘸根接种实验表明ΔVdSOD5 对棉花的致病力较野生型菌株显著下降，定量PCR显示ΔVdSOD5在寄主棉花体内的生物量较野生型菌株降低了30%。VdSOD5是大丽轮枝菌带有Cu2+结合位点的胞外超氧化物歧化酶。VdSOD5缺失不影响大丽轮枝菌生长发育，其在侵染过程中通过降解寄主ROS而发挥解毒功能，从而促进大丽轮枝菌对寄主棉花的侵染。

Extreme meteorological disaster effects on grain production is mainly determined by the interaction between danger degree of hazard-induced factors and vulnerability degree of hazard-affected bodies.  This paper treats physical exposure, sensitivity of the response to the impact, and capabilities of disaster prevention and mitigation as a complex system for vulnerability degree of hazard-affected bodies, which included the external shocks and internal stability mechanism.  Hazard-induced factors generate external shocks on grain production systems though exposure and sensitivity of hazard-affected body, and the result can be represented as affected area of grain.  By quantile regression model, this paper depicts the quantitative relationship between hazard-induced factors of extreme meteorological disaster and the affected area in the tail of the distribution.  Moreover, the model of production function have also been utilized to expound and prove the quantitative relationship between the affected area and final grain output under the internal stability mechanism of the agricultural natural resources endowment, the input factors of agricultural production, and the capacity of defending disaster.  The empirical study of this paper finds that impact effects of drought disaster to grain production system presents the basic law of “diminishing marginal loss”, namely, with the constant improvement of the grade of drought, marginal affected area produced by hazard-induced factors will be diminishing.  Scenario simulation of extreme drought impact shows that by every 1% reduction in summer average rainfall, grain production of Jilin Province will fell 0.2549% and cut production of grain 14.69% eventually.  In response to ensure China’s grain security, the construction of the long-term mechanism of agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation, and the innovation of agricultural risk management tools should be also included in the agricultural policy agenda.

    The antioxidant of reduced glutathione (GSH) is the most abundant thiol in cells for the maintenance of the intracellular redox balance. The study aimed to assay the effect of sperm treatment with GSH before incubation with oocytes on the development potential of embryos obtained by in vitro fertilization (IVF). Also the mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm), plasma membrane integrity (viability), DNA fragmentation, reactive oxygen species (ROS) content, superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activities, methane dicarboxylic aldehyde (MDA) level as indices of lipid peroxidation in sex-sorted and unsorted sperm from three bulls were investigated using flow cytometry and enzyme-labeled instrument individually. The results showed that 2 mmol L^–1 GSH increased significantly the cleavage rate (86.68% vs. 82.78%), 4- to 8-cell rate (82.30% vs. 73.43%) and blastocyst rate (43.15% vs. 35.24%) of IVF embryos compared with untreated group. Furthermore, addition of GSH increased significantly the ΔΨm and viability, decreased the ratio of DNA fragmentation in sex-sorted or unsorted semen (P<0.05), except the sex-sorted semen from bull 019. Similarly, activities of SOD, CAT and GPx were increased significantly. However, the contents of MDA were decreased significantly both in sex-sorted and unsorted semen treated with GSH (P<0.05). These results suggest that sperm pretreatment with GSH during IVF can maintain better the viability and fertility of sperm through reducing apoptosis and increasing the antioxidant capacity, which improves the IVF embryos development.

Secreted frizzled-related protein 2 (SFRP2), a member of the SFRPs family, is associated with cell growth and differentiation in myogenesis. Our previous study suggested that SFRP2 was a potential target of microRNA (miRNA)-1/206, which was considered as myomiRs. To further explore the biological function and regulation mechanisms of the SFRP2 gene in porcine skeletal muscle development, we first analyzed the sequence structure of the porcine SFRP2 gene. Subsequently, we detected its tissue distribution in adult Tongcheng pigs (a Chinese indigenous breed) and investigated its dynamic expression in developmental skeletal muscle (13 prenatal and 7 postnatal time points) in Tongcheng pigs. An interaction analysis between SFRP2 and myomiRs was also performed. The results showed that the expression pattern of the SFRP2 varied greatly across diverse tissues. It exhibited abundant expression in prenatal skeletal muscle and peaked at 55 days post coitus (E55), and had a lower expression in postnatal skeletal muscle, indicating that the SFRP2 gene might affect porcine embryonic skeletal muscle development. Co-expression analysis revealed that the expression levels of SFRP2 correlated negatively with miRNA-1 (r=–0.570, P-value=0.009) and miRNA-206 (r=–0.546, P-value=0.013), but positively with SFRP1 (r=0.613, P-value=0.004). The bioinformatics analysis and dual luciferase assay verified that the SFRP2 was a putative target of miRNA-1/206 in pigs. Therefore, this study is helpful for understanding the biological function and molecular regulation of the SFRP2 gene during porcine skeletal muscle development.

Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis) is mainly distributed in desert, and the molecular mechanisms of jojoba in response to abiotic stress still remain elusive. In this paper, we cloned and characterized a SOD gene from jojoba named as ScMnSOD, and introduced into Arabidopsis to investigate its functions of responding to drought stress. The transgenic Arabidopsis showed an improvement in drought tolerance. Moreover, under a water deficit condition, the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was remarkably decreased in the transgenic lines compared to the WT. Furthermore, the ScMnSOD promoter was cloned to the 5´-upstream of GUS coding region in a binary vector, and introduced into Arabidopsis. And results showed that ScMnSOD expression can be induced by drought, salt, ABA, and low temperature. In conclusion, ScMnSOD plays an important role in drought tolerance which is, at least partially, attributed to its role in ROS detoxification.

For the users’ convenience of accessing the AGRIS resources quickly and using them fully, the paper decomposes the structure of AGRIS Search net, analyzes the users’ requirement met for conducting a bilingual (ZH/EN) retrieval, the system function extensions based on AGRIS English retrieval system and the key issues which the core function module should resolve. Derived by the application requirement, the paper also puts forward to a bilingual retrieval model on the basis of CAT/AGROVOC mapping, designs and realizes the ZH/EN bilingual retrieval prototype system.

In the present study we studied the genetic structure of five Chinese sheep populations of Hu sheep, Tong sheep, SmalltailedHan sheep, Tan sheep, and Wadi (WD) sheep using 15 microsatellite loci. The results showed that the FIT, FST, andFIS statistics computed for the complete dataset had the following values, 0.523±0.140, 0.363±0.131 and 0.263±0.092,respectively. All loci were significantly contributed to the genetic differentiation among population (P<0.001). There is norelationship between the scatter of pairwise FST geographical distance points as geographical distance increases betweenthe five populations. Membership probabilities and genetic structure of sheep populations were estimated when K=2, thepopulations were classified into Hu, Tong, Han and WD, and Tan sheep group. However, when K=3, the populations wereclassified into Hu and Tong, Han and WD, and Tan sheep group. The findings supported the previous literatures thatthese populations are originated on different time stages from the primogenitor population and communicated geneticallywith each other by natural and artificial selection in different ecological environment.