| 1. |
- Li, Jinxiu, et al.
(författare)
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A Discovery of a Genetic Mutation Causing Reduction of Atrogin-1 Expression in Broiler Chicken Muscle
- 2019
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Genetics. - : FRONTIERS MEDIA SA. - 1664-8021. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Chickens are bred all over the world and have significant economic value as one of the major agricultural animals. The growth rate of commercial broiler chickens is several times higher than its Red Jungle fowl (RJF) ancestor. To further improve the meat production of commercial chickens, it is quite important to decipher the genetic mechanism of chicken growth traits. In this study, we found that broiler chickens exhibited lower levels of E3 ubiquitin ligase muscle atrophy F-box (MAFbx or Atrogin-1) relative to its RJF ancestor. As a ubiquitin ligase, Atrogin-1 plays a crucial role in muscle development in which its up-regulation often indicates the activation of muscle atrophic pathways. Here, we showed that the Atrogin-1 expression variance partly affects chicken muscle growth rates among different breeds. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the reduced expression of Atrogin-1 in broiler chickens was ascribed to a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), which inhibited the binding of transcription regulators and attenuated the enhancer activity. The decreased Atrogin-1 in broiler chickens suppresses the catabolism of muscle protein and preserves muscle mass. Our study facilitates the understanding of the molecular mechanism of chicken muscle development and has a high translational impact in chicken breeding.
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| 2. |
- Davies, Stuart J., et al.
(författare)
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ForestGEO: Understanding forest diversity and dynamics through a global observatory network
- 2021
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Ingår i: Biological Conservation. - : Elsevier BV. - 0006-3207. ; 253
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- ForestGEO is a network of scientists and long-term forest dynamics plots (FDPs) spanning the Earth's major forest types. ForestGEO's mission is to advance understanding of the diversity and dynamics of forests and to strengthen global capacity for forest science research. ForestGEO is unique among forest plot networks in its large-scale plot dimensions, censusing of all stems ≥1 cm in diameter, inclusion of tropical, temperate and boreal forests, and investigation of additional biotic (e.g., arthropods) and abiotic (e.g., soils) drivers, which together provide a holistic view of forest functioning. The 71 FDPs in 27 countries include approximately 7.33 million living trees and about 12,000 species, representing 20% of the world's known tree diversity. With >1300 published papers, ForestGEO researchers have made significant contributions in two fundamental areas: species coexistence and diversity, and ecosystem functioning. Specifically, defining the major biotic and abiotic controls on the distribution and coexistence of species and functional types and on variation in species' demography has led to improved understanding of how the multiple dimensions of forest diversity are structured across space and time and how this diversity relates to the processes controlling the role of forests in the Earth system. Nevertheless, knowledge gaps remain that impede our ability to predict how forest diversity and function will respond to climate change and other stressors. Meeting these global research challenges requires major advances in standardizing taxonomy of tropical species, resolving the main drivers of forest dynamics, and integrating plot-based ground and remote sensing observations to scale up estimates of forest diversity and function, coupled with improved predictive models. However, they cannot be met without greater financial commitment to sustain the long-term research of ForestGEO and other forest plot networks, greatly expanded scientific capacity across the world's forested nations, and increased collaboration and integration among research networks and disciplines addressing forest science.
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| 3. |
- Ishfaq, Muhammad, et al.
(författare)
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Improvement of nutritional quality of food crops with fertilizer : a global meta-analysis
- 2023
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Ingår i: Agronomy for Sustainable Development. - : Springer Nature. - 1774-0746 .- 1773-0155. ; 43:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Providing the world’s population with sufficient and nutritious food through sustainable food systems is a major challenge of the twenty-first century. Fertilizer use is a major driver of crop yield, but a comprehensive synthesis of the effect of fertilizer on the nutritional quality of food crops is lacking. Here we performed a comprehensive global meta-analysis using 7859 data pairs from 551 field experiment-based articles published between 1972 and 2022, assessing the contribution of fertilization with a wide set of plant nutrients to the nutritional quality of food crops (i.e., fruits, vegetables, cereals, pulses/oil crops, and sugar crops). On average, fertilizer application improved crop yield by 30.9% (CI: 28.2–33.7%) and nutritional quality (referring to all nutritionally relevant components assessed; carbohydrates, proteins, oil, vitamin C, representative mineral nutrients, and total soluble solids) by 11.9% (CI: 10.7–12.1%). The improvements were largely nutrient- and crop species dependent, with vegetables being the most responsive. Potassium, magnesium, and micronutrients played important roles in promoting crop nutritional quality, whereas the combined application of inorganic and organic source(s) had the greatest impact on quality. Desirable climatic conditions and soil properties (i.e., silt loam, soil organic matter 2.5–5.0%, and pH 4.5–8.5) supported further enhancements. Considering cross-continent responsiveness, the increase in the nutritional quality of food crops with fertilizer application was greatest in Africa. In a nutshell, our findings pave the way towards a quantitative understanding of nutrient management programs and responsible plant nutrition solutions that foster the sustainable production of nutritious and healthy food crops for human consumption.
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| 4. |
- Wang, Chunyu, et al.
(författare)
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Modelling water and energy fluxes with an explicit representation of irrigation under mulch in a maize field
- 2022
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Ingår i: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0168-1923 .- 1873-2240. ; 326
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Globally, water-saving irrigation plays a vital role in agricultural ecosystems to achieve sustainable food pro-duction under climate change. Irrigation under mulch (IUM) system has been widely used in modern agricultural ecosystems due to its high water use efficiency, but it remains unclear how each component of the water and energy processes responds to this agricultural management practice. Current modeling approaches are inade-quate in investigating the impacts of IUM management on water-energy balance, which have shown more complicated than non-mulched management. Therefore, this study provided an explicit simulation of water and energy fluxes in IUM system using a process-oriented ecosystem model-CoupModel and the three years of the eddy covariance (EC) measurements. Based on Monte Carlo and the multiple model performance evaluation criteria, most of the model sensitive parameters were well constrained and 32 potentially important parameters, e.g., iscovevap, the fraction of mulch coverage, were identified to characterize the impacts of plastic mulching on energy balance and water transport. After proper calibration, the coefficient of determination (R2) for measured and simulated soil temperature (T) and soil water content (SWC) was 0.79 and 0.60, respectively, and the R2 for T and SWC during the validation period were 0.91 and 0.71, respectively. Furthermore, we found that there was a strong coupling between the parameters of the water and energy processes, which would restrict the simulation results due to the correlation between the parameters and the evaluation indices. This study presented a sys-tematic model parameters calibration in the agricultural ecosystem implemented with IUM and provided with a more comprehensive understanding of the water and energy balance in cropland. These results would help agricultural model development with more detailed considerations of the water-saving management.
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| 5. |
- He, Haoran, et al.
(författare)
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Deciphering microbiomes dozens of meters under our feet and their edaphoclimatic and spatial drivers
- 2024
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - 1354-1013. ; 30:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Microbes inhabiting deep soil layers are known to be different from their counterpart in topsoil yet remain under investigation in terms of their structure, function, and how their diversity is shaped. The microbiome of deep soils (>1 m) is expected to be relatively stable and highly independent from climatic conditions. Much less is known, however, on how these microbial communities vary along climate gradients. Here, we used amplicon sequencing to investigate bacteria, archaea, and fungi along fifteen 18-m depth profiles at 20–50-cm intervals across contrasting aridity conditions in semi-arid forest ecosystems of China's Loess Plateau. Our results showed that bacterial and fungal α diversity and bacterial and archaeal community similarity declined dramatically in topsoil and remained relatively stable in deep soil. Nevertheless, deep soil microbiome still showed the functional potential of N cycling, plant-derived organic matter degradation, resource exchange, and water coordination. The deep soil microbiome had closer taxa–taxa and bacteria–fungi associations and more influence of dispersal limitation than topsoil microbiome. Geographic distance was more influential in deep soil bacteria and archaea than in topsoil. We further showed that aridity was negatively correlated with deep-soil archaeal and fungal richness, archaeal community similarity, relative abundance of plant saprotroph, and bacteria–fungi associations, but increased the relative abundance of aerobic ammonia oxidation, manganese oxidation, and arbuscular mycorrhizal in the deep soils. Root depth, complexity, soil volumetric moisture, and clay play bridging roles in the indirect effects of aridity on microbes in deep soils. Our work indicates that, even microbial communities and nutrient cycling in deep soil are susceptible to changes in water availability, with consequences for understanding the sustainability of dryland ecosystems and the whole-soil in response to aridification. Moreover, we propose that neglecting soil depth may underestimate the role of soil moisture in dryland ecosystems under future climate scenarios.
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| 6. |
- Li, Faji, et al.
(författare)
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Genetic architecture of grain yield in bread wheat based on genome-wide association studies
- 2019
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Ingår i: BMC Plant Biology. - : BioMed Central. - 1471-2229. ; 19
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BackgroundIdentification of loci for grain yield (GY) and related traits, and dissection of the genetic architecture are important for yield improvement through marker-assisted selection (MAS). Two genome-wide association study (GWAS) methods were used on a diverse panel of 166 elite wheat varieties from the Yellow and Huai River Valleys Wheat Zone (YHRVWD) of China to detect stable loci and analyze relationships among GY and related traits.ResultsA total of 326,570 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers from the wheat 90K and 660K SNP arrays were chosen for GWAS of GY and related traits, generating a physical distance of 14,064.8Mb. One hundred and twenty common loci were detected using SNP-GWAS and Haplotype-GWAS, among which two were potentially functional genes underpinning kernel weight and plant height (PH), eight were at similar locations to the quantitative trait loci (QTL) identified in recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations in a previous study, and 78 were potentially new. Twelve pleiotropic loci were detected on eight chromosomes; among these the interval 714.4-725.8Mb on chromosome 3A was significantly associated with GY, kernel number per spike (KNS), kernel width (KW), spike dry weight (SDW), PH, uppermost internode length (UIL), and flag leaf length (FLL). GY shared five loci with thousand kernel weight (TKW) and PH, indicating significantly affected by two traits. Compared with the total number of loci for each trait in the diverse panel, the average number of alleles for increasing phenotypic values of GY, TKW, kernel length (KL), KW, and flag leaf width (FLW) were higher, whereas the numbers for PH, UIL and FLL were lower. There were significant additive effects for each trait when favorable alleles were combined. UIL and FLL can be directly used for selecting high-yielding varieties, whereas FLW can be used to select spike number per unit area (SN) and KNS.ConclusionsThe loci and significant SNP markers identified in the present study can be used for pyramiding favorable alleles in developing high-yielding varieties. Our study proved that both GWAS methods and high-density genetic markers are reliable means of identifying loci for GY and related traits, and provided new insight to the genetic architecture of GY.
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| 7. |
- Li, Tiewei, et al.
(författare)
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Increasing Sensitivity of Tree Radial Growth to Precipitation
- 2024
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Ingår i: Geophysical Research Letters. - 1944-8007 .- 0094-8276. ; 51:16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The sensitivity of tree growth to precipitation regulates their responses to drought, and is a crucial metric for predicting ecosystem dynamics and vulnerability. Sensitivity may be changing with continuing climate change, yet a comprehensive assessment of its change is still lacking. We utilized tree ring measurements from 3,044 sites, climate data and CO2 concentrations obtained from monitoring stations, combined with dynamic global vegetation models to investigate spatiotemporal changes in the sensitivity over the past century. We observed an increasing sensitivity since around 1950. This increased sensitivity was particularly pronounced in arid biomes due to the combined effect of increased precipitation and elevated CO2. While elevated CO2 reduced the sensitivity of the humid regions, the intensified water pressure caused by decreased precipitation still increased the sensitivity. Our findings suggest an escalating vulnerability of tree growth to precipitation change, which may increase the risk of tree mortality under future intensified drought.
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| 8. |
- Li, Wenyun, et al.
(författare)
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Personalized microbial fingerprint associated with differential glycemic effects of a whole grain rye intervention on Chinese adults
- 2024
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Ingår i: Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1613-4125 .- 1613-4133.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Scope: This study aims to identify the gut enterotypes that explain differential responses to intervention with whole grain rye by proposing an “enterotype - metabolic” model.Methods and results: A 12-week randomized controlled trial is conducted in Chinese adults, with 79 subjects consuming whole grain products with fermented rye bran (FRB) and 77 consuming refined wheat products in this exploratory post-hoc analysis. Responders or non-responders are identified according to whether blood glucose decreased by more than 10% after rye intervention. Compared to non-responders, responders in FRB have higher baseline Bacteroides (p < 0.001), associated with reduced blood glucose (p < 0.001), increased Faecalibacterium (p = 0.020) and Erysipelotrichaceae_UCG.003 (p = 0.022), as well as deceased 7β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (p = 0.033) after intervention. The differentiated gut microbiota and metabolites between responders and non-responders after intervention are enriched in aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis.Conclusion: The work confirms the previously suggested importance of microbial enterotypes in differential responses to whole grain interventions and supports taking enterotypes into consideration for improved efficacy of whole grain intervention for preventing type 2 diabetes. Altered short-chain fatty acids and bile acid metabolism might be a potential mediator for the beneficial effects of whole grain rye on glucose metabolism.
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| 9. |
- Wang, Chunyu, et al.
(författare)
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Water use efficiency control for a maize field under mulched drip irrigation
- 2023
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697. ; 857
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agricultural ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE) is an important indicator reflecting carbon-water coupling, but its control mechanisms in managed fields remain unclear. In order to reveal the influencing factors of WUE in the agricultural field under mulched drip irrigation (DM), we carried out the 8-year continuous observations in a maize field from Northwestern China. The structural equation model, relative importance analysis and principal component analysis were used to quantify the regulation effects of environmental and biological factors on WUE at different time scales, in different growth stages and under different hydrothermal conditions. The results showed that annual WUE varied between 2.18 g C Kg−1 H2O and 3.60 g C Kg−1 H2O, with a multi-year mean of 2.91 g C Kg−1 H2O. The total effects of air temperature on the daily WUE in the whole growth period, the vegetative growth stage, the warm and dry years, the cold and wet years, and the warm and wet years were the largest, with values of 0.61, 0.80, 0.70, 0.70 and 0.91 respectively. However, vapor pressure deficit and net radiation had the largest total effect in the cold and dry years (−0.63) and the reproductive growth stage (−0.49), respectively. Leaf biomass played a leading role in regulating the daily and interannual WUE, and the relative importance of leaf biomass to WUE in the vegetative growth stage was up to 75 %. In the warm and wet years, the relative importance of root biomass to WUE was 33 %, slightly higher than that of leaf biomass (31 %). At the same time, we found that Ta has the potential to increase WUE under future climate warming. Our results improve the understanding of carbon-water coupling mechanisms and provide important enlightenment on how crop ecosystems should adapt to future climate change.
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