Wiley最新文献

There is growing interest in the role of agricultural genomics, including biotechnology, in enhancing the “sustainability” of food production systems. However, as “sustainability” becomes more frequently linked to the goals of agricultural genomics, a critical question arises: what claims are made about “sustainability” and how is the concept of “sustainability” defined in the scholarly literature on agricultural genomics? Using a structured analysis of the recent scientific literature, this article investigates increasingly frequent claims about “sustainability,” including how this term is defined and measured in the field of agricultural genomics. It argues that more transparent definitions and clearer metrics, tied to appropriate scholarly literature, are crucial for improving the coherence, impact, and credibility of research in agricultural genomics.

High-throughput experiments in plants are hindered by long generation times and high costs. To address these challenges, we present an optimized pipeline for Agrobacterium tumefaciens transformation and a simplified a protocol to obtain stable transgenic lines of the model liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, paving the way for efficient high-throughput experiments for plant synthetic biology and other applications. Our protocol involves a freeze–thaw Agrobacterium transformation method in six-well plates that can be adapted to robotic automation. Using the Opentrons open-source platform, we implemented a semi-automated protocol showing similar efficiency compared to manual manipulation. Additionally, we have streamlined and simplified the process of stable transformation and selection of M. polymorpha, reducing cost, time, and manual labor without compromising transformation efficiency. The addition of sucrose in the selection media significantly enhances the production of gemmae, accelerating the generation of isogenic plants. We believe these protocols have the potential to facilitate high-throughput screenings in diverse plant species and represent a significant step towards the full automation of plant transformation pipelines. This approach allows testing ~100 constructs per month, using conventional plant tissue culture facilities. We recently demonstrated the successful implementation of this protocol for screening hundreds of fluorescent reporters in Marchantia gemmae.

We are delighted to present this special issue of IET Optoelectronics on ‘Towards large-scale commercialisation of Space-division multiplexing (SDM) fibres’. This issue features contributions from five speakers at the ECOC 2023 workshop ‘What Will Eventually Trigger Large-Scale Commercialisation of SDM Fibres?’, held in Glasgow on 1 October 2023.

SDM is a promising technology to effectively deal with the unabated growth of data traffic in optical fibre networks. Over the past decade, extensive research on SDM optical fibres has resulted in the development of high-quality, multicore and few-mode fibres as well as other network elements that leverage the SDM concept. Whereas large-scale commercialisation of SDM fibres is essential to meet the ever-increasing demand for higher data rates, achieving practical deployment requires more than innovative fibre designs. It also necessitates system optimisation to reduce cost per bit and standardisation to ensure interoperability. The successful commercialisation of SDM fibres also hinges on the advancement of other network elements such as optical amplifiers, multiplexers, connectors and splices. This special issue explores the challenges and opportunities associated with SDM fibre commercialisation. It aims to identify potential triggers that could accelerate the adoption of SDM technology across various applications such as submarine optical cable systems, terrestrial fibre networks and data centre interconnects.

We hope this special issue provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the latest advancements in SDM technologies and valuable insights into their large-scale deployment, paving the way for significant upgrades in optical fibre communication systems in the years ahead.

In order to mitigate the negative impact of increasing energy demand for buildings, a series of measures are taken to improve the energy efficiency in the built environment. Previous studies have found that household appliances, hot water supply and space heating in buildings account for a large proportion of energy consumption, where heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) contribute about 40% of the energy consumption as well as a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Energy saving while maintaining occupant comfort, therefore attract tremendous interest in the field where HVAC energy reduction or efficiency improvement are the key issues. By employing data mining and visualization technologies, this paper has reviewed highly crucial work in building energy systems with an attempt to explore the key researches as well as the future development trend. On the platform of CiteSpace with Web of Science (WOS) database, the key findings in line with building energy conservation technologies are collected. An innovative bibliometric method is used to map the knowledge in a visualizing way where research directions and cutting-edge technologies are discovered. This article also discusses the relationship between energy system development and national energy conservation policies with a specific focus on China's photovoltaic policies.

Plant immunity is triggered by endogenous elicitors known as damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). Oligogalacturonides (OGs) are DAMPs released from the cell wall (CW) demethylated homogalacturonan during microbial colonization, mechanical or pest-provoked mechanical damage, and physiological CW remodeling. Berberine bridge enzyme-like (BBE-l) proteins named OG oxidases (OGOXs) oxidize and inactivate OGs to avoid deleterious growth-affecting hyper-immunity and possible cell death. Using OGOX1 over-expressing lines and ogox1/2 double mutants, we show that these enzymes determine the levels of active OGs vs. inactive oxidized products (ox-OGs). The ogox1/2-deficient plants have elevated levels of OGs, while plants overexpressing OGOX1 accumulate ox-OGs. The balance between OGs and ox-OGs affects disease resistance against Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato, Pectobacterium carotovorum, and Botrytis cinerea depending on the microbial capacity to respond to OGs and metabolize ox-OGs. Gene expression upon plant infiltration with OGs reveals that OGOXs orchestrate OG signaling in defense as well as upon mechanical damage, pointing to these enzymes as apoplastic players in immunity and tissue repair.