The advance of biotechnology opens up greater possibilities of bioterror and bioerror. Here, we propose multiplexed safeguard switches rooted in the development of foundational genomic, regulatory, and metabolic technologies. Safeguard switches can be regulated by submicromolar small molecule(s) and combined in a modular fashion. The resulting safeguard strains show high fitness and low reversion rates.

Trichoderma virens and some Trichoderma species are considered as biocontrol fungi since they can stimulate defense responses by interacting with the host plant. Previous studies have shown that cerato-platanin proteins, Sm1 from T. virens as well as Epl1 from Trichoderma atroviride, are vital in inducing plant defenses. However, the other members of this protein family have not yet been investigated.

Accumulating evidence has underscored the role of cytosolic p53 in promoting cell death. Different reports have revealed that p53 participates in apoptosis induction by acting directly at mitochondria. However, because p53 can mediate apoptosis without its DNA-binding domain (the domain proposed to be fundamental for the targeting of p53 to mitochondria), the mitochondrial localization of p53 is likely not the only transcription-independent mechanism by which p53 promotes apoptosis.

Imagine a friend telling you how she recently bought a goat. Why would your friend possibly buy a goat, you wonder—or had she actually said she bought a coat? Usually, listeners spend little time deciding whether someone had talked about a goat or a coat, or a pet or a bet; instead, we instantly assign the phonemes that we are hearing to one or the other category, even though the main distinguishing feature between the phonemes /ba/ and /pa/, or /ga/ and /ka/, shows a continuous, albeit bimodal distribution.

Macroautophagy (hereafter as autophagy) involves the delivery of cytosolic materials via autophagosome upon its fusion with the endosome and lysosome/vacuole. The endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery is responsible for the formation of intraluminal vesicles (ILVs) in multivesicular bodies (MVBs) and the sorting of ubiquitinated membrane cargos into MVB ILVs for degradation.

Ridge tillage (RT) can promote increases in soil C and aggregation at greater rates than conventional tillage, but few studies have investigated how RT may affect soil N distributions across the row/inter-row space. Using a spatially intensive sampling design, we monitored soil potentially mineralizable N (PMN), inorganic N, and plant tissue N in a field study comparing RT and chisel plow (CP) systems. Experiments were fully replicated at two sites in Urbana, IL and Mason, MI during the 2012 growing season.

Extreme temperature during reproductive development affects rice (Oryza sativa L.) yield and seed quality. A controlled-environment reciprocal-transfer experiment was designed where plants from two japonica cultivars were grown at 28 and 24°C (day and night temperatures) and moved to 18 and 14°C and vice versa or from 28 and 24° to 38 and 34°C and vice versa, for 7-d periods to determine the respective temporal pattern of sensitivity of spikelet fertility

Seed dormancy is imposed by one or more of the embryo, endosperm, and maternal tissues that belong to two generations and represent two ploidy levels. Many quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been identified for seed dormancy as measured by gross effects on reduced germination rate or delayed germination in crop or model plants.

Endocytosis, the process whereby the plasma membrane invaginates to form vesicles, is essential for bringing many substances into the cell and for membrane turnover. The mechanism driving clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) involves > 50 different protein components assembling at a single location on the plasma membrane in a temporally ordered and hierarchal pathway.

Every data visualization can be improved with some level of interactivity. Interactive graphics hold particular promise for the exploration of high-dimensional data. R/qtlcharts is an R package to create interactive graphics for experiments to map quantitative trait loci (QTL) (genetic loci that influence quantitative traits). R/qtlcharts serves as a companion to the R/qtl package, providing interactive versions of R/qtl’s static graphs, as well as additional interactive graphs for the exploration of high-dimensional genotype and phenotype data.