Maggie Wang

Common bean is the most important grain legume for human consumption and has a role in sustainable agriculture owing to its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. We assembled 473 Mb of the 587-Mb genome and genetically anchored 98% of this sequence in 11 chromosome-scale pseudomolecules. We compared the genome for the common bean against the soybean genome to find changes in soybean resulting from polyploidy. Using resequencing of 60 wild individuals and 100 landraces from the genetically differentiated Mesoamerican and Andean gene pools, we confirmed 2 independent domestications from genetic pools that diverged before human colonization. Less than 10% of the 74 Mb of sequence putatively involved in domestication was shared by the two domestication events. We identified a set of genes linked with increased leaf and seed size and combined these results with quantitative trait locus data from Mesoamerican cultivars. Genes affected by domestication may be useful for genomics-enabled crop improvement.

© 2015 Elsevier Inc.The breakthrough of induced pluripotent stem cell technology has raised the possibility that patient-specific iPSCs may become a renewable source of autologous cells for cell therapy without the concern of immune rejection. However, the immunogenicity of autologous human iPSC -derived cells is not well understood. Using a humanized mouse model reconstituted with a functional human immune system, we demonstrate that most teratomas formed by autologous integration-free hiPSCs exhibit local infiltration of antigen-specific T cells and associated tissue necrosis, indicating immune rejection of certain hiPSC-derived cells. In this context, autologous hiPSC-derived smooth muscle cells appear to be highly immunogenic, while autologous hiPSC-derived retinal pigment epithelial cells are immune tolerated even in non-ocular locations. This differential immunogenicity is due in part to abnormal expression of immunogenic antigens in hiPSC-derived SMCs, but not in hiPSC-derived RPEs. These findings support the feasibility of developing hiPSC-derived RPEs for treating macular degeneration.

© 2015 American Physical Society.We present a systematic angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy study of the substitution dependence of the electronic structure of Rb0.8Fe22, where superconductivity is continuously suppressed into a metallic phase. Going from the nonsuperconducting Rb0.8Fe2S2 to superconducting Rb0.8Fe2Se2, we observe little change of the Fermi surface topology, but a reduction of the overall bandwidth by a factor of 2. Hence, for these heavily electron-doped iron chalcogenides, we have identified electron correlation as explicitly manifested in the quasiparticle bandwidth to be the important tuning parameter for superconductivity, and that moderate correlation is essential to achieving high TC.

© 2015 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Soil transplant serves as a proxy to simulate climate changes. Recently, we have shown that southward transplant of black soil and northward transplant of red soil altered soil microbial communities and biogeochemical variables. However, fundamental differences in soil types have prevented direct comparison between southward and northward transplants. To tackle it, herein we report an analysis of microbial communities of Cambisol soil in an agriculture field after 4 years of adaptation to southward and northward soil transplants over large transects. Analysis of bare fallow soils revealed concurrent increase in microbial functional diversity and coarse-scale taxonomic diversity at both transplanted sites, as detected by GeoChip 3.0 and DGGE, respectively. Furthermore, a correlation between microbial functional diversity and taxonomic diversity was detected, which was masked in maize cropped soils. Mean annual temperature, soil moisture, and nitrate showed strong correlations with microbial communities. In addition, abundances of ammonium-oxidizing genes and denitrification genes were correlated with nitrification capacity and NO3--N contents, suggesting that microbial responses to soil transplant could alter microbe-mediated biogeochemical cycle at the ecosystem level. This study proved that microbial responses to southward and northward soil transplants were asymmetric. Microbial responses at the community level to soil transplant can result in altered ecosystem-level biogeochemical cycle.