Various strategies are developed to engineer aligned hierarchical architectures in polymer hydrogels for enhanced mechanical performance. However, chain alignment remains impeded by the presence of hydrogen bonds between adjacent chains. Herein, a facile sacrificial micelle‐assisted‐alignment strategy is proposed, leading to well‐aligned, strong and tough pure chitosan hydrogels. The sacrificial sodium dodecyl sulfate micelles electrostatically interact with the protonated chitosan chains, enabling chain sliding and alignment under uniaxial forces. Subsequently, sacrificial micelles can be easily removed via NaOH treatment, causing the reforming of H‐bond in the chain networks. The strength of the pure chitosan hydrogels increases 140‐fold, reaching 58.9 ± 3.4 MPa; the modulus increases 595‐fold, reaching 226.4 ± 42.8 MPa. After drying‐rehydration, the strength and modulus further rise to 70.3 ± 2.4 and 403.5 ± 76.3 MPa, marking a significant advancement in high‐strength pure chitosan hydrogel films. Furthermore, the designed multiscale architectures involving enhanced crystallinity, well‐aligned fibers, strong interfaces, robust multilayer Bouligand assembly contribute to the exact replica of lobster underbelly with impact resistance up to 6.8 ± 1.0 kJ m⁻¹. This work presents a promising strategy for strong, tough, stiff and impact‐resistant polymer hydrogels via well‐aligned hierarchical design.

Mycoheterotrophic plants (MHPs) growing on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) usually maintain specialized mycorrhizal associations. The level of specificity varies between MHPs, although it remains largely unknown whether interactions with mycorrhizal fungi differ by plant lineage, species, and/or by population. Here, we investigate the mycorrhizal interactions among Burmannia species (Burmanniaceae) with different trophic modes using high-throughput DNA sequencing. We characterized the inter- and intraspecific dynamics of the fungal communities by assessing the composition and diversity of fungi among sites. We found that fully mycoheterotrophic species are more specialized in their fungal associations than chlorophyllous species, and that this specialization possibly results from the gradual loss of some fungal groups. In particular, although many fungal species were shared by different Burmannia species, fully MHP species typically host species-specific fungal assemblages, suggesting that they have a preference for the selected fungi. Although no apparent cophylogenetic relationship was detected between fungi and plants, we observe that evolutionarily closely related plants tend to have a greater proportion of shared or closely related fungal partners. Our findings suggest a host preference and specialization toward fungal assemblages in Burmannia, improving understanding of interactions between MHPs and fungi.

Plastomes of heterotrophs went through varying degrees of degradation along with the transition from autotrophic to heterotrophic lifestyle. Here, we identified the plastome of mycoheterotrophic speciesBurmannia itoanaand compared it with those of its reported relatives including three autotrophs and one heterotroph (Thismia tentaculata) in Dioscoreales.B.itoanayields a rampantly degraded plastome reduced in size and gene numbers at the advanced stages of degradation. Its length is 44,463 bp with a quadripartite structure.B. itoanaplastome contains 33 tentatively functional genes and six tentative pseudogenes, including several unusually retained genes. These unusual retention suggest that the inverted repeats (IRs) regions and possibility of being compensated may prolong retention of genes in plastome at the advanced stage of degradation. Otherwise, six rearrangements including four inversions (Inv1/Inv2/Inv3/Inv4) and two translocations (Trans1/Trans2) were detected inB. itoanaplastome vs. its autotrophic relativeB. disticha. We speculate that Inv1 may be mediated by recombination of distinct tRNA genes, while Inv2 is likely consequence of extreme gene losses due to the shift to heterotrophic lifestyle. The other four rearrangements involved in IRs and small single copy region may attribute to multiple waves of IRs and overlapping inversions. Our study fills the gap of knowledge about plastomes of heterotroph inBurmanniaand provides a new evidence for the convergent degradation patterns of plastomes en route to heterotrophic lifestyle.