ALBERT

Description: Background Environmental lodging stress, which is a result of numerous factors, is characterized by uncertainty. However, several studies related to lodging in cereal crops have reported that lodging in the Hippeastrum rutilum environment is very rare. Hippeastrum rutilum is a garden flower with high ornamental value and abundant germplasm resources. Under past cultivation practices, it was found that the plant types of ‘Red Lion’, with red flowers, and ‘Apple Blossom’, with pink flowers, are quite different. The leaves of ‘Red Lion’ are upright, while the leaves of ‘Apple Blossom’ show lodging, which seriously affects its ornamental value. The aims of this study were to compare the differences between the two varieties with leaf lodging and upright leaves according to morphological and physiological attributes. In this study, karyotype analysis and phenotypic morphological and physiological characteristics were compared to explore the differences between the two plant types. Results The karyotype analysis of the two cultivars showed that their chromosome types were both tetraploid plants. The results showed that the lignin content in the leaves of ‘Red Lion’ was high, the cross-sectional structure of the leaf vascular bundle was more stable, and the chlorophyll content was high. In addition, significantly less energy was transferred to the electron transport chain (ETR) during the photoreaction. Similarly, the results regarding the maximum photosynthetic rate (Fv/Fm), nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ) and effective quantum yield of photosystem II photochemistry (△F/Fm′) all indicated that the photosynthetic capacity of “Red Lion” was greater than that of “Apple Blossom”, which was affected by leaf lodging. The size of the leaves was significantly smaller, and the leaf sag angle, leaf width, and leaf tip angle presented significantly lower values in ‘Red Lion’ than in ‘Apple Blossom’, which exhibits leaf sag. The difference in these factors may be the reason for the different phenotypes of the two cultivars. Conclusion The results of this study proved that lodging affects the photosynthetic capacity of Hippeastrum rutilum and revealed some indexes that might be related to leaf lodging, laying a theoretical foundation for cultivating and improving new varieties.

Description: Background As one of the deadliest diseases in the world, cancer is driven by a few somatic mutations that disrupt the normal growth of cells, and leads to abnormal proliferation and tumor development. The vast majority of somatic mutations did not affect the occurrence and development of cancer; thus, identifying the mutations responsible for tumor occurrence and development is one of the main targets of current cancer treatments. Results To effectively identify driver genes, we adopted a semi-local centrality measure and gene mutation effect function to assess the effect of gene mutations on changes in gene expression patterns. Firstly, we calculated the mutation score for each gene. Secondly, we identified differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the cohort by comparing the expression profiles of tumor samples and normal samples, and then constructed a local network for each mutation gene using DEGs and mutant genes according to the protein–protein interaction network. Finally, we calculated the score of each mutant gene according to the objective function. The top-ranking mutant genes were selected as driver genes. We name the proposed method as mutations effect and network centrality. Conclusions Four types of cancer data in The Cancer Genome Atlas were tested. The experimental data proved that our method was superior to the existing network-centric method, as it was able to quickly and easily identify driver genes and rare driver factors.