氮肥对玉米籽粒发育的影响还未得到充分研究。microRNAs与mRNAs联合分析有助于加深我们对氮素调控玉米籽粒发育的理解。在本研究中，我们分析了不同施氮量（0 kg ha^-1、100 kg ha^-1，200 kg ha^-1和300 kg ha^-1）下玉米籽粒的形态、生理和转录组变化。结果表明，增加施氮显著增加了玉米籽粒的鲜重和干重，但施氮量超过200 kg ha^-1时，籽粒的鲜重和干重没有显著增加。总体来说，生长素、细胞分裂素和赤霉素的含量随着施氮量的增加而增加，而乙烯的含量降低。我们在激素合成和传导过程中获得了31个差异表达基因（DEGs），其中9个DEGs由14个差异表达microRNAs（DEMIs）调节，共形成26个表达对。本研究中候选的DEGs和DEMIs为不同施氮量下的玉米籽粒发育提供了有价值的见解。

Rice panicles are composed of many branches with two types of extreme grains, the superior and the inferior. Traditionally, it has been well accepted that earlier flowers result in superior grains and late flowers generate inferior grains. However, these correlations have never been strictly examined in practice. In order to determine the accurate relationship between superior and inferior grains and the flowering order, we localized all the seeds in a panicle in four distinct rice species and systematically documented the rice flowering order, flower locations and the final grain weight for their relationships. Our results demonstrated that the grain weight is more heavily determined by the position of the seeds than by the flowering order. Despite earlier flowering has a positive correlation with the grain weight in general, grains from flowers blooming on the second day after anthesis generally gained the highest weight. This suggests earlier flowers may not result in superior grains. Therefore, we concluded that superior and inferior grains, commonly determined by grain weight, are not fully correlated with the flowering order in rice. Following the order of the grain weight, the superior grains are generally localized at the middle parts of the primary branches, whereas inferior grains were mainly on the last two secondary branches of the lower half part of the panicle. In addition, the weight of inferior grains were affected by spikelet thinning and spraying with exogenous plant growth regulators, indicating that physiological incompetence might be the major reason for the occurrence of the inferior grains.

Soybean seed storage protein is one of the most important plant vegetable proteins, and β subunit is of great significance to enhance soybean protein quality and processing property. F2 segregated population and residual heterozygous lines (RHL) derived from the cross between Yangyandou (low level of β subunit) and Zhonghuang 13 (normal level of β subunit) were used for mapping of β subunit content. Our results showed that β subunit content was controlled by a single dominant locus, qBSC-1 (β subunit content), which was mapped to a region of 11.9 cM on chromosome 20 in F2 population of 85 individuals. This region was narrowed down to 2.5 cM between BARCSOYSSR_20_0997 and BARCSOYSSR_20_0910 in RHL with a larger population size of 246 individuals. There were 48 predicted genes within qBSC-1 region based on the reference genome (Glyma 1.0, Williams 82), including the two copies of β subunit coding gene CG4. An InDel marker developed from a thymine (TT) insertion in one copy of CG4 promoter region in Yangyandou cosegregrated with BARCSOYSSR_20_0975 within qBSC-1 region, suggesting that this InDel marker maybe useful for marker-assisted selection (MAS).