ALBERT

Description: A 250-km-long broadband and long-period (0.01–20,000 s periods) magnetotelluric (MT) line along latitude 401/2°N spans from the California-Nevada border at longitude 120°W across the buried extension of the northern Sierra Nevada, the southern Cascades arc, and the subducting Gorda plate to longitude 123°W. The resulting resistivity cross section reveals conductors at the locations of dewatering of the subducting metasomatized crust at 100 km depth, partial melting of the mantle wedge at 40–60 km depth, and melting in the crust shallower than 40 km. The conductor at 100 km is too conductive (8 S/m) to result solely from magma; very conductive fluids must be present either separately or incorporated into hydrous melts. A melt fraction of 7% is estimated for the mantle wedge (average conductivity is 0.06 S/m). Sites of Pleistocene and Holocene volcanism at Lassen Peak, Hat Creek, and Poison Lake are closely associated with crustal conductors inferred to be shallow magma. The MT study also reveals presumably basaltic magma at 40–50 km depth in the upper mantle where the eastern end of the profile extends into the Basin and Range province.

Description: SUMMARYThe Arabidopsis gene AVP1 encodes a vacuolar H+-translocating inorganic pyrophosphatase (enzyme classification (EC) 3.6.1.1) that functions as an electronic proton pump in the vacuolar membrane and affects growth development and the stress response in plants. The current study was conducted to evaluate the molecular properties of the Arabidopsis thaliana vacuolar H+-pyrophosphatase (AVP1) gene in rice (Oryza sativa L.). Incorporation and expression of the transgene was confirmed by semi-quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and quantitative real-time PCR. Expression of the AVP1 gene in transgenic rice plants (TRP1 and TRP2) resulted in a significantly enhanced tolerance to 5·8 g/l NaCl under greenhouse conditions when compared with the control wild-type (WT) rice plants. Augmented AVP1 expression in the transgenic rice plants (TRP) also affected total biomass and improved ion homoeostasis through increased accumulation of Na+ ions in whole tissues when compared with control WT rice plants under high salinity conditions. The photochemical yield (Fv/Fm) values of TRP were higher than those of the WT rice plants, even though the values decreased over time in both the WT and transgenic (TRP1 to TRP8) rice plants. Furthermore, rice grain yield and biomass of the TRP were at least 15% higher based on culm and root weights, and panicle and spikelet numbers when compared with those of the WT rice plants during the 2010 and 2010 growing seasons in South Korea. Thus, these results suggest that ectopic AVP1 expression conferred tolerance and stress resistance to genetically modified transgenic crop plants by improving cellular ion homoeostasis in response to saline conditions, which enhanced rice yield and biomass under natural conditions in paddy fields.