Soil salinity affects the expression of serine/arginine-rich (SR) genes and isoforms by alternative splicing, which in turn regulates the adaptation of plants to stress.  We previously identified the cassava spliceosomal component 35 like (SCL) and SR subfamilies, belonging to the SR protein family, which are extensively involved in responses to abiotic stresses.  However, the post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism of cassava arginine/serine-rich (RS) subfamily in response to salt stress remains to be explored.  In the current study, we identified 37 genes of the RS subfamily from 11 plant species and systematically investigated the transcript levels of the RS40 and RS31 genes under diverse abiotic stress conditions.  Subsequently, an analysis of the conserved protein domains revealed that plant RS subfamily genes were likely to preserve their conserved molecular functions and played critical functional roles in responses to abiotic stresses.  Importantly, we found that overexpression of MeRS40 in Arabidopsis enhanced salt tolerance by maintaining reactive oxygen species homeostasis and up-regulating the salt-responsive genes.  However, overexpression of MeRS40 gene in cassava reduced salt tolerance due to the depression of its endogenous gene expression by negative autoregulation of its own pre-mRNA.  Moreover, the MeRS40 protein interacted with MeU1-70Ks (MeU1-70Ka and MeU1-70Kb) in vivo and in vitro, respectively.  Therefore, our findings highlight the critical role of cassava SR proteins in responses to salt stress in plants. 

The liver is a vital organ in chickens that performs a number of crucial physiological functions, including the storage of hepatic glycogen, protein synthesis, detoxification, and deoxidation.  The growth and metabolism of the liver are complex processes influenced by factors such as environment, diet, and genetics.  MicroRNAs (miRNAs), as post-transcriptional regulatory molecules, play a role in various biological processes.  There is growing evidence that miR-27b-5p plays a key role in the regulation of liver development and metabolism in various species.  However, its role in chicken livers has yet to be determined.  In our experiment, we found that chickens with fatty livers had significantly higher levels of serum triglyceride (TG) and total cholesterol (TC) compared to the normal chickens, while the control group had significantly higher levels of very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) and serum hormones.  Further research showed that the mRNA of miR-27b-5p was highly expressed in fatty livers.  By exploring the function of miR-27b-5p in chicken livers, we discovered that it promotes lipogenesis, oxidative stress, and inflammatory responses, leading to hepatocyte apoptosis.  Our study also established the mechanism by which miR-27b-5p interacts with its target gene, and found that miR-27b-5p targets insulin receptor substrate 2 (IRS2) and modulates the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.  Additionally, our investigation of IRS2 in chicken hepatocytes revealed that knocking down IRS2 has the same effects as overexpressing miR-27b-5p.  In conclusion, our study revealed that miR-27b-5p directly binds to IRS2, inhibiting the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway and causing steatosis, oxidative stress, inflammation, and apoptosis in chicken liver.

As an emerging class of non-coding transcripts, circular RNAs (circRNAs) are proved to participate in the complex process of myogenesis in diverse species.  A previous study has identified circular RNA EDC3 (circEDC3) as a typical covalently closed circular RNA abundant in chicken skeletal muscle.  This study found that circEDC3 is a conservative circular RNA and performed functional analysis to investigate the role of circEDC3 in chicken muscle growth.  The results indicated that circEDC3 could inhibit (P<0.05) chicken skeletal muscle satellite cells (SMSCs) proliferation and differentiation but had no significant influence on SMSCs apoptosis.  Additionally, bioinformatics analysis showed that circEDC3 had promising coding potential.  The open reading frames (ORF) were found in circEDC3 in this study.  Furthermore, this study predicted that circEDC3 had internal ribosome entry sites (IRES) and N6-methyladenosine (m6A) motifs in different species, implying that circEDC3 might be translatable.  This study revealed that circEDC3 might be a negative regulator in chicken muscle development and suggested it has protein-coding potential in different species.

Recent investigations on pomegranate products have significantly increased and successfully drawn consumers’ attention to nutritional and medicinal values, promoting the pomegranate industry’s development worldwide.  However, little information on pomegranates grown in China is available.  Morphological and chemical characterizations of fruits and arils from 20 pomegranate cultivars in six regions of China were investigated.  Combined with overall scores by principal component analysis, ‘Yushiliu No. 1’, ‘Taishanhong No. 2’, ‘Tunisia’ and ‘Mollar’ were promising cultivars, and Chinese researchers bred the first two.  It was surprising that ‘Mollar’ had bigger fruit size and more aril moisture grown in China than in Spain.  Cultivars with higher anthocyanin content in arils were ‘Turkey’, ‘Moyu’ and ‘Red Angel’, which might be used as the source of natural red food colourants.  While red husk ‘Hongruyi’ and ‘Hongshuangxi’ with higher vitamin C, aril moisture and lower titratable acid in arils, might also be promising cultivars for further various utilization.  Furthermore, the comparison of ‘Tunisia’ fruits from four regions revealed that cultivation locations had more influence on fruit traits than genotypes.  Maturity index classification was established for Chinese pomegranate cultivars.  Therefore, the results would provide a valuable guide for agricultural cultivation, industrial utilization, and breeding. 

Drought is a major natural disaster causing crop yield losses, while its occurrence mechanism and spatiotemporal variations in a changing climate are still not clear. Based on a long-term climatic dataset (during 1958–2015) from weather stations in the North China Plain (NCP), the influencing mechanism of various climatic factors on drought risk of winter wheat was quantified by using sensitivity analysis, Mann-Kendall trend test and slope estimation. The results indicated that climatic factors have changed considerably over the past six decades in the growth season of winter wheat. As a result, winter wheat suffered from severe droughts (with 350 mm of water deficit during its growth season), particularly at the jointing–heading and heading–mature stages, which were critical to crop yield formation. There were large spatial and temporal variations in drought risk and climatic change factors at different growth stages of winter wheat. Despite precipitation playing a vital role in determining the spatiotemporal patterns of drought risk, high temperature and low humidity along with other climatic factors at key growth stages of winter wheat aggravated drought risk. Particularly, temperature at nearly 90% weather stations showed a notablely upward trend, which exacerbated water deficit and drought risk of winter wheat. Given the complexity and high uncertainty of climate change, these findings provide important information for adapting crop production to future climate change and accompanied droughts while ensuring food security and agricultural sustainability.

Salinity is one of the major abiotic factors affecting the growth and productivity of crops in Hetao Irrigation District, China. In this study, the salinity tolerances of three local crops, wheat (Triticum aestinum L.), maize (Zea mays L.) and sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.), growing in 76 farm fields are evaluated with modified discount function. Salinity ecological zones appropriate for these local crops are characterized and a case study is presented for crop salinity ecological zoning. The results show that the yield reductions of wheat, maize and sunflower when grown in saline soils are attributed primarily to a reduction in spikelet number, 1 000-grain weight and seed number per head, respectively. Sunflower is the most tolerant crop among the three which had a salinity tolerance index (ST-index) of 12.24, followed by spring maize and spring wheat with ST-Indices of 9.00 and 7.43, respectively. According to the crop salinity tolerance results, the arable land in the Heping Village of this district was subdivided into four salinity ecological zones: the most suitable, suitable, sub-suitable and unsuitable zones. The area proportion of the most suitable zone for wheat, maize and sunflower within the Heping Village was 27.5, 46.5 and 77.5%, respectively. Most of the most suitable zone occurred in the western part of the village. The results of this study provide the scientific basis for optimizing the local major crop distribution and improving cultural practices management in Hetao Irrigation District.

EST-PCR based molecular markers specific for alien chromosomes are not only useful for the detection of the introgressed alien chromatin in the wheat background, but also provide evidence of the syntenic relationship between homoeologous chromosomes. In the present study, in order to develop high density and evenly distributed molecular markers on chromosome 4V of Haynaldia villosa, a total of 607 primer pairs were designed according to the EST sequences, which were previously located in 23 different bins of wheat chromosomes 4A, 4B and 4D. By using the Triticum durum-H. villosa amphiploid and T. aestivum-H. villosa alien chromosome lines involving chromosome 4V, it was found that 9.23% of the tested primers could amplify specific bands for chromosome 4V. Thirty and twenty-six specific markers could be assigned to chromosome arms 4VS and 4VL, respectively. These 4V specific markers provided efficient tools for the characterization of structural variation involving the chromosome 4V as well as for the selection of useful genes located on chromosome 4V in breeding programs.