Waterlogging is a major abiotic stress causing oxygen depletion and carbon dioxide accumulation in the rhizosphere. Barley is more susceptible to waterlogging stress than other cereals. To gain a better understanding, the genome-wide gene expression responses in roots of waterlogged barley seedlings of Yerong and Deder2 were analyzed by RNA-Sequencing. A total of 6736, 5482, and 4538 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in waterlogged roots of Yerong at 72 h and Deder2 at 72 and 120 h, respectively, compared with the non-waterlogged control. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analyses showed that the most significant changes in GO terms, resulted from these DEGs observed under waterlogging stress, were related to primary and secondary metabolism, regulation, and oxygen carrier activity. In addition, more than 297 transcription factors, including members of MYB, AP2/EREBP, NAC, WRKY, bHLH, bZIP, and G2-like families, were identified as waterlogging responsive. Tentative important contributors to waterlogging tolerance in Deder2 might be the highest up-regulated DEGs: Trichome birefringence, α/β-Hydrolases, Xylanase inhibitor, MATE efflux, serine carboxypeptidase, and SAUR-like auxin-responsive protein. The study provides insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the response to waterlogging in barley, which will be of benefit for future studies of molecular responses to waterlogging and will greatly assist barley genetic research and breeding.

Background: Discovering single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from agriculture crop genome sequences has been a widely used strategy for developing genetic markers for several applications including marker-assisted breeding, population diversity studies for eco-geographical adaption, genotyping crop germplasm collections, and others. Accurately detecting SNPs from large polyploid crop genomes such as wheat is crucial and challenging. A few variant calling methods have been previously developed but they show a low concordance between their variant calls. A gold standard of variant sets generated from one human individual sample was established for variant calling tool evaluations, however hitherto no gold standard of crop variant set is available for wheat use. The intent of this study was to evaluate seven SNP variant calling tools (FreeBayes, GATK, Platypus, Samtools/mpileup, SNVer, VarScan, VarDict) with the two most popular mapping tools (BWA-mem and Bowtie2) on wheat whole exome capture (WEC) re-sequencing data from allohexaploid wheat. Results: We found the BWA-mem mapping tool had both a higher mapping rate and a higher accuracy rate than Bowtie2. With the same mapping quality (MQ) cutoff, BWA-mem detected more variant bases in mapping reads than Bowtie2. The reads preprocessed with quality trimming or duplicate removal did not significantly affect the final mapping performance in terms of mapped reads. Based on the concordance and receiver operating characteristic (ROC), the Samtools/mpileup variant calling tool with BWA-mem mapping of raw sequence reads outperformed other tests followed by FreeBayes and GATK in terms of specificity and sensitivity. VarDict and VarScan were the poorest performing variant calling tools with the wheat WEC sequence data. Conclusion: The BWA-mem and Samtools/mpileup pipeline, with no need to preprocess the raw read data before mapping onto the reference genome, was ascertained the optimum for SNP calling for the complex wheat genome re-sequencing. These results also provide useful guidelines for reliable variant identification from deep sequencing of other large polyploid crop genomes.

Different breast cancer (BC) subtypes have unique gene expression patterns, but their regulatory mechanisms have yet to be fully elucidated. We hypothesized that the top upregulated (Yin) and downregulated (Yang) genes determine the fate of cancer cells. To reveal the regulatory determinants of these Yin and Yang genes in different BC subtypes, we developed a lasso regression model integrating DNA methylation (DM), copy number variation (CNV) and microRNA (miRNA) expression of 391 BC patients, coupled with miRNA–target interactions and transcription factor (TF) binding sites. A total of 25, 20, 15 and 24 key regulators were identified for luminal A, luminal B, Her2-enriched, and triple negative (TN) subtypes, respectively. Many of the 24 TN regulators were found to regulate the PPARA and FOXM1 pathways. The Yin Yang gene expression mean ratio (YMR) and combined risk score (CRS) signatures built with either the targets of or the TN regulators were associated with the BC patients’ survival. Previously, we identified FOXM1 and PPARA as the top Yin and Yang pathways in TN, respectively. These two pathways and their regulators could be further explored experimentally, which might help to identify potential therapeutic targets for TN.

Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the most important global crops. The six-row barley cultivar Morex reference genome has been used by the barley research community worldwide. However, this reference genome can have limitations when used for genomic and genetic diversity analysis studies, gene discovery, and marker development when working in two-row germplasm that is more common to Canadian barley. Here we assembled, for the first time, the genome sequence of a Canadian two-row malting barley, cultivar AAC Synergy. We applied deep Illumina paired-end reads, long mate-pair reads, PacBio sequences, 10X chromium linked read libraries, and chromosome conformation capture sequencing (Hi-C) to generate a contiguous assembly. The genome assembled from super-scaffolds had a size of 4.85 Gb, N50 of 2.32 Mb, and an estimated 93.9% of complete genes from a plant database (BUSCO, benchmarking universal single-copy orthologous genes). After removal of small scaffolds (< 300 Kb), the assembly was arranged into pseudomolecules of 4.14 Gb in size with seven chromosomes plus unanchored scaffolds. The completeness and annotation of the assembly were assessed by comparing it with the updated version of six-row Morex and recently released two-row Golden Promise genome assemblies.

This chapter discusses the molecular basis of learning and memory, specifically the Hebbian theory, which suggests that coincident activation of pre- and postsynaptic neurons leads to modifications in synaptic efficacy, creating associative links between the neurons. Memories are stored as alterations of these synaptic changes. The chapter will also discuss three basic assumptions regarding the neurochemical basis of learning and memory, including the requirement for protein synthesis for long-term memory formation, and the storage of memory in synaptic connections. The passage also discusses long-term potentiation (LTP) as the most frequently studied cellular basis of learning and memory in vertebrates, including its properties such as state-dependence, input specificity, and associativity. LTP is considered an analog of memory since it is a long-lasting alteration in neuronal function that results from a brief period of stimulus.