The success of the Green Revolution largely relies on fertilizers, and a new Green Revolution is very much needed to use fertilizers more economically and efficiently, as well as with more environmental responsibility...The success of the Green Revolution largely relies on fertilizers, and a new Green Revolution is very much needed to use fertilizers more economically and efficiently, as well as with more environmental responsibility. The use efficiency of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium is controlled by complex gene networks that co-ordinate uptake, re-distribution, assimilation, and storage of these nutrients. Great progress has been made in breeding nutrient-efficient crops by molecularly engineering root traits desirable for efficient acquisition of nutrients from soil, transporters for uptake, redistribution and homeostasis of nutrients, and enzymes for efficient assimilation. Regulatory and transcription factors modulating these processes are also valuable in breeding crops with improved nutrient use efficiency and yield performance.展开更多
A biosynthetic gene cluster for the bioactive fungal sesterterpenoids variecolin(1)and variecolactone(2)was identified in Aspergillus aculeatus ATCC 16872.Heterologous production of 1 and 2 was achieved in Aspergillus...A biosynthetic gene cluster for the bioactive fungal sesterterpenoids variecolin(1)and variecolactone(2)was identified in Aspergillus aculeatus ATCC 16872.Heterologous production of 1 and 2 was achieved in Aspergillus oryzae by expressing the sesterterpene synthase VrcA and the cytochrome P450 VrcB.Intriguingly,the replacement of VrcB with homologous P450s from other fungal terpenoid pathways yielded three new variecolin analogues(5-7).Analysis of the compounds’anticancer activity in vitro and in vivo revealed that although 5 and 1 had comparable activities,5 was associated with significantly reduced toxic side effects in cancer-bearing mice,indicating its potentially broader therapeutic window.Our study describes the first tests of variecolin and its analogues in animals and demonstrates the utility of synthetic biology for creating molecules with improved biological activities.展开更多
Human motion modeling is a core technology in computer animation,game development,and humancomputer interaction.In particular,generating natural and coherent in-between motion using only the initial and terminal frame...Human motion modeling is a core technology in computer animation,game development,and humancomputer interaction.In particular,generating natural and coherent in-between motion using only the initial and terminal frames remains a fundamental yet unresolved challenge.Existing methods typically rely on dense keyframe inputs or complex prior structures,making it difficult to balance motion quality and plausibility under conditions such as sparse constraints,long-term dependencies,and diverse motion styles.To address this,we propose a motion generation framework based on a frequency-domain diffusion model,which aims to better model complex motion distributions and enhance generation stability under sparse conditions.Our method maps motion sequences to the frequency domain via the Discrete Cosine Transform(DCT),enabling more effective modeling of low-frequency motion structures while suppressing high-frequency noise.A denoising network based on self-attention is introduced to capture long-range temporal dependencies and improve global structural awareness.Additionally,a multi-objective loss function is employed to jointly optimize motion smoothness,pose diversity,and anatomical consistency,enhancing the realism and physical plausibility of the generated sequences.Comparative experiments on the Human3.6M and LaFAN1 datasets demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches across multiple performance metrics,showing stronger capabilities in generating intermediate motion frames.This research offers a new perspective and methodology for human motion generation and holds promise for applications in character animation,game development,and virtual interaction.展开更多
Fabricating a desired porous structure on the surface of biomedical polyetheretherketone(PEEK)implants for enhancing biological functions is crucial and difficult due to its inherent chemical inertness.In this study,a...Fabricating a desired porous structure on the surface of biomedical polyetheretherketone(PEEK)implants for enhancing biological functions is crucial and difficult due to its inherent chemical inertness.In this study,a porous surface of PEEK implants was fabricated by controllable sulfonation using gaseous sulfur trioxide(SO3)for different time(5,15,30,60 and 90 min).Micro-topological structure was generated on the surface of sulfonated PEEK implants preserving original mechanical properties.The protein absorption capacity and apatite forming ability was thus improved by the morphological and elemental change with higher degree of sulfonation.In combination of the appropriate micromorphology and bioactive sulfonate components,the cell adhesion,migration,proliferation and extracellular matrix secretion were obviously enhanced by the SPEEK-15 samples which were sulfonated for 15 min.Finding from this study revealed that controllable sulfonation by gaseous SO3 would be an extraordinarily strategy for improving osseointegration of PEEK implants by adjusting the microstructure and chemical composition while maintaining excellent mechanical properties.展开更多
基金supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0100706)the National Transgenic Key Project from the Ministry of Agriculture of China (2016ZX08002-005)
文摘The success of the Green Revolution largely relies on fertilizers, and a new Green Revolution is very much needed to use fertilizers more economically and efficiently, as well as with more environmental responsibility. The use efficiency of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium is controlled by complex gene networks that co-ordinate uptake, re-distribution, assimilation, and storage of these nutrients. Great progress has been made in breeding nutrient-efficient crops by molecularly engineering root traits desirable for efficient acquisition of nutrients from soil, transporters for uptake, redistribution and homeostasis of nutrients, and enzymes for efficient assimilation. Regulatory and transcription factors modulating these processes are also valuable in breeding crops with improved nutrient use efficiency and yield performance.
基金This work was performed for the iGEM 2021 Competition,and the financial support received from the Department of Chemistry,City University of Hong Kong,is greatly appreciated.We also thank Prof.Katsuya Gomi(Tohoku University)and Profs.Katsuhiko Kitamoto and Jun-ichi Maruyama(The University of Tokyo)for providing the expression vectors and the fungal strain.We are grateful to Dr.Man-Kit Tse(City University of Hong Kong)and Dr.Shek-Man Yiu(City University of Hong Kong)for their assistance with NMR spectra acquisition and X-ray diffraction data collection and analysis,respectively.This work was supported in part by an Early Career Scheme grant from the Research Grants Council(RGC)of Hong Kong(Project No.21300219(Y.M))M.V.B acknowledges support from the City University of Hong Kong(Project No.9610518).
文摘A biosynthetic gene cluster for the bioactive fungal sesterterpenoids variecolin(1)and variecolactone(2)was identified in Aspergillus aculeatus ATCC 16872.Heterologous production of 1 and 2 was achieved in Aspergillus oryzae by expressing the sesterterpene synthase VrcA and the cytochrome P450 VrcB.Intriguingly,the replacement of VrcB with homologous P450s from other fungal terpenoid pathways yielded three new variecolin analogues(5-7).Analysis of the compounds’anticancer activity in vitro and in vivo revealed that although 5 and 1 had comparable activities,5 was associated with significantly reduced toxic side effects in cancer-bearing mice,indicating its potentially broader therapeutic window.Our study describes the first tests of variecolin and its analogues in animals and demonstrates the utility of synthetic biology for creating molecules with improved biological activities.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.72161034).
文摘Human motion modeling is a core technology in computer animation,game development,and humancomputer interaction.In particular,generating natural and coherent in-between motion using only the initial and terminal frames remains a fundamental yet unresolved challenge.Existing methods typically rely on dense keyframe inputs or complex prior structures,making it difficult to balance motion quality and plausibility under conditions such as sparse constraints,long-term dependencies,and diverse motion styles.To address this,we propose a motion generation framework based on a frequency-domain diffusion model,which aims to better model complex motion distributions and enhance generation stability under sparse conditions.Our method maps motion sequences to the frequency domain via the Discrete Cosine Transform(DCT),enabling more effective modeling of low-frequency motion structures while suppressing high-frequency noise.A denoising network based on self-attention is introduced to capture long-range temporal dependencies and improve global structural awareness.Additionally,a multi-objective loss function is employed to jointly optimize motion smoothness,pose diversity,and anatomical consistency,enhancing the realism and physical plausibility of the generated sequences.Comparative experiments on the Human3.6M and LaFAN1 datasets demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches across multiple performance metrics,showing stronger capabilities in generating intermediate motion frames.This research offers a new perspective and methodology for human motion generation and holds promise for applications in character animation,game development,and virtual interaction.
基金financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Projects.51673186 , 81672263)the Special Fund for Industrialization of Science and Technology Cooperation between Jilin Province and Chinese Academy of Sciences(2017SYHZ0021).
文摘Fabricating a desired porous structure on the surface of biomedical polyetheretherketone(PEEK)implants for enhancing biological functions is crucial and difficult due to its inherent chemical inertness.In this study,a porous surface of PEEK implants was fabricated by controllable sulfonation using gaseous sulfur trioxide(SO3)for different time(5,15,30,60 and 90 min).Micro-topological structure was generated on the surface of sulfonated PEEK implants preserving original mechanical properties.The protein absorption capacity and apatite forming ability was thus improved by the morphological and elemental change with higher degree of sulfonation.In combination of the appropriate micromorphology and bioactive sulfonate components,the cell adhesion,migration,proliferation and extracellular matrix secretion were obviously enhanced by the SPEEK-15 samples which were sulfonated for 15 min.Finding from this study revealed that controllable sulfonation by gaseous SO3 would be an extraordinarily strategy for improving osseointegration of PEEK implants by adjusting the microstructure and chemical composition while maintaining excellent mechanical properties.
