Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine), a well-known animal hormone, is also involved in plant development and abiotic stress responses. In this study, it is shown that exogenous application of melatonin conferred improved salt, drought, and cold stress resistances in bermudagrass. Moreover, exogenous melatonin treatment alleviated reactive oxygen species (ROS) burst and cell damage induced by abiotic stress; this involved activation of several antioxidants. Additionally, melatonin-pre-treated plants exhibited higher concentrations of 54 metabolites, including amino acids, organic acids, sugars, and sugar alcohols, than non-treated plants under abiotic stress conditions. Genome-wide transcriptomic profiling identified 3933 transcripts (2361 up-regulated and 1572 down-regulated) that were differentially expressed in melatonin-treated plants versus controls. Pathway and gene ontology (GO) term enrichment analyses revealed that genes involved in nitrogen metabolism, major carbohydrate metabolism, tricarboxylic acid (TCA)/org transformation, transport, hormone metabolism, metal handling, redox, and secondary metabolism were over-represented after melatonin pre-treatment. Taken together, this study provides the first evidence of the protective roles of exogenous melatonin in the bermudagrass response to abiotic stresses, partially via activation of antioxidants and modulation of metabolic homeostasis. Notably, metabolic and transcriptomic analyses showed that the underlying mechanisms of melatonin could involve major reorientation of photorespiratory and carbohydrate and nitrogen metabolism.

Transposable elements constitute an important part of the genome and are essential in adaptive mechanisms. Transposition events associated with phenotypic changes occur naturally or are induced in insertional mutant populations. Transposon mutagenesis results in multiple random insertions and recovery of most/all the insertions is critical for forward genetics study. Using genome next-generation sequencing data and appropriate bioinformatics tool, it is plausible to accurately identify transposon insertion sites, which could provide candidate causal mutations for desired phenotypes for further functional validation. We developed a novel bioinformatics tool, ITIS (Identification of Transposon Insertion Sites), for localizing transposon insertion sites within a genome. It takes next-generation genome re-sequencing data (NGS data), transposon sequence, and reference genome sequence as input, and generates a list of highly reliable candidate insertion sites as well as zygosity information of each insertion. Using a simulated dataset and a case study based on an insertional mutant line from Medicago truncatula, we showed that ITIS performed better in terms of sensitivity and specificity than other similar algorithms such as RelocaTE, RetroSeq, TEMP and TIF. With the case study data, we demonstrated the efficiency of ITIS by validating the presence and zygosity of predicted insertion sites of the Tnt1 transposon within a complex plant system, M. truncatula. This study showed that ITIS is a robust and powerful tool for forward genetic studies in identifying transposable element insertions causing phenotypes. ITIS is suitable in various systems such as cell culture, bacteria, yeast, insect, mammal and plant.

Background: Unlike resident birds, migratory birds are generally believed to have evolved to enhance flight efficiency; however, direct evidence is still scarce due to the difficulty of measuring the flight speed and mechanical power. Methods: We studied the differences in morphology, flight kinematics, and energy cost between two passerines with comparable size, a migrant (Fringilla montifringilla, Brambling, BRAM), and a resident (Passer montanus, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, TRSP). Results: The BRAM had longer wings, higher aspect ratio, lower wingbeat frequency, and stroke amplitude compared to the TRSP despite the two species had a comparable body mass. The BRAM had a significantly lower maximum speed, lower power at any specific speed, and thus lower flight energy cost in relative to the TRSP although the two species had a comparable maximum vertical speed and acceleration. Conclusions: Our results suggest that adaptation for migration may have led to reduced power output and maximum speed to increase energy efficiency for migratory flight while residents increase flight speed and speed range adapting to diverse habitats.

An optical transfer function (OTF) reconstruction model is first embedded into incoherent Fourier ptychography (IFP). The leading result is a proposed algorithm that can recover both the super-resolution image and the OTF of an imaging system with unknown aberrations simultaneously. This model overcomes the difficult problem of OTF estimation that the previous IFP faces. The effectiveness of this algorithm is demonstrated by numerical simulations, and the superior reconstruction is presented. We believe that the reported algorithm can extend the original IFP for more complex conditions and may provide a solution by using structured light for characterization of optical systems' aberrations.