Colletotrichum fructicola is a non-adapted fungus in Nicotiana benthamiana. Credit: Horticulture Research (2024). DOI: 10.1093/hr/uhae078
Plant diseases caused by pathogens like Colletotrichum fructicola lead to significant agricultural losses, particularly in fruit crops such as pear, apple, and peach. Traditional control methods often fail as pathogens adapt to plant defenses. Nonhost resistance (NHR) offers a promising alternative due to its robustness and broad-spectrum effectiveness. NHR occurs when a plant species is naturally resistant to pathogens affecting other species.
Understanding the molecular mechanisms behind NHR is crucial for developing sustainable and effective disease management strategies. Based on these challenges, exploring NHR mechanisms is essential for advancing agricultural resilience.
Researchers from Anhui Agricultural University, in collaboration with Northwest A&F University, have made a significant stride in understanding plant-pathogen interactions. Their findings, published in the journal Horticulture Research on March 14, 2024, reveal the role of novel core effectors in the nonhost Nicotiana benthamiana’s response to the pear anthracnose pathogen Colletotrichum fructicola.
The research team isolated a virulent strain of Colletotrichum fructicola from pear and studied its interaction with the nonhost plant Nicotiana benthamiana. They identified four novel core effectors—CfCE4, CfCE25, CfCE61, and CfCE66—using bioinformatics and agroinfiltration-mediated screening. These effectors were found to induce cell death and activate immune responses in N. benthamiana. The effectors’ activity depends on the BAK1 coreceptor and helper NLRs (ADR1, NRG1, and NRCs).
Further analysis showed that these core effectors trigger significant immune responses, enhancing the plant’s resistance to the pathogen. This study represents the first comprehensive characterization of Colletotrichum fructicola core effectors, providing valuable insights into the mechanisms of NHR and highlighting the potential for using these findings to develop new strategies for managing anthracnose disease in various horticultural crops.
Dr. Jiajun Nie, a corresponding author of the study, stated, “Our findings represent a significant advancement in understanding NHR. By identifying these core effectors, we can better comprehend how plants recognize and respond to pathogens, which is crucial for developing effective disease management strategies.”
The identification of these core effectors offers valuable insights for developing resistant crops through genetic engineering and selective breeding. By leveraging the understanding of NHR, agricultural practices can be enhanced to mitigate the impact of pathogenic fungi, ensuring sustainable crop production and food security.
More information:
Mengqing Han et al, Extracellular perception of multiple novel core effectors from the broad host-range pear anthracnose pathogen Colletotrichum fructicola in the nonhost Nicotiana benthamiana, Horticulture Research (2024). DOI: 10.1093/hr/uhae078
Citation:
Battling anthracnose: Unearthing the plant’s arsenal against pathogenic fungi (2024, June 25)
retrieved 25 June 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-06-anthracnose-unearthing-arsenal-pathogenic-fungi.html
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Kyle Reed led a team testing an ORNL-made, hardy new type of transistor in the reactor pool as it glows with radiation at The Ohio State University Nuclear Reactor laboratory. Credit: Michael Huson/The Ohio State University
The safety and efficiency of a large, complex nuclear reactor can be enhanced by hardware as simple as a tiny sensor that monitors a cooling system. That’s why researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working to make those basic sensors more accurate by pairing them with electronics that can withstand the intense radiation inside a reactor.
The ORNL research team recently met with unexpectedly high success using a galliumnitride semiconductor for sensor electronics. A transistor made with the material maintained operations near the core of a nuclear reactor operated by research partner The Ohio State University.
Gallium nitride, a wide-bandgap semiconductor, had previously been tested against the ionizing radiation encountered when rockets hurtle through space. Devices with wide-bandgap semiconductors can operate at much higher frequencies, temperatures and irradiation rates. But gallium nitride had not faced the even more intense radiation of neutron bombardment.
“We are showing it is great for this neutron environment,” said lead researcher Kyle Reed, a member of the Sensors and Electronics group at ORNL.
That could offer a big boost for equipment monitoring in nuclear facilities. The information gathered by sensors provides early warnings about wear and tear on equipment, allowing timely maintenance to avoid broader equipment failures that cause reactor downtime. Currently, this sensing data is processed from a distance, through yards of cable connected to electronics with silicon-based transistors.
“Our work makes measuring the conditions inside an operating nuclear reactor more robust and accurate,” Reed said. “When you have lengthy cables, you end up with a lot of noise, which can interfere with the accuracy of the sensor information. By placing electronics closer to a sensor, you increase its accuracy and precision.” To meet that goal, scientists need to develop electronics that can better tolerate radiation.
Kyle Reed and Dianne Ezell of ORNL gather data about the performance of a sensor transistor as it is tested against the radiation within the reactor pool behind them at The Ohio State University Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. Credit: Michael Huson/The Ohio State University
Researchers irradiated gallium nitride transistors for three days at temperatures up to 125 degrees Celsius close to the core of The Ohio State University Research Reactor.
“We fully expected to kill the transistors on the third day, and they survived,” Reed said. The team pushed the transistors all the way to the reactor’s safety threshold: seven hours at 90% power.
The gallium nitride transistors were able to handle at least 100 times higher accumulated dose of radiation than a standard silicon device, said researcher Dianne Ezell, leader of ORNL’s Nuclear and Extreme Environment Measurements group and a member of the transistor research team.
She said the transistor material must be capable of surviving at least five years, the normal maintenance window, in the pool of a nuclear reactor. After the research team exposed the gallium nitride device to days of much higher radiation levels within the core itself, they concluded that the transistors would exceed that requirement.
This is an important technical advance as attention turns from the large-scale existing fleet of nuclear energy plants to microreactors that could generate from tens to hundreds of megawatts of power. Although these novel reactor designs are still in the development and licensing stage, their potential portability could allow them to be deployed on the back of a truck to a military or disaster zone.
Advanced reactors are being designed to operate at higher temperatures using different forms of fuel. Because microreactors will be so compact, all the operating components, including the sensors, will have to be able to function in the radiation field, Ezell said. Gallium nitride transistors could be the key.
A wire-bonded die consisting of over 20 gallium nitride high-electron mobility transistors, seen here under a microscope, could be used in nuclear sensing equipment because of its high resistance to radiation. Credit: Kyle Reed/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Ohio State researchers built devices of different designs and sizes to meet specifications set by ORNL, and then the team compared their responses to radiation, finding that larger devices seemed less susceptible to radiation damage. Ohio State is now developing computer models to project how various circuit designs will perform under different temperatures and radiation levels.
Reed said the radiation testing at Ohio State showed that heat seemed to be more harmful to the gallium nitride than radiation, so the research team wants to measure how gallium nitride reacts to heat alone.
“Since the ultimate goal is to design circuits with these materials, once we understand the temperature and radiation effects, we can compensate for them in the circuit design,” Reed said.
Better nuclear monitoring means increased safety and reduced operating costs, Ezell noted. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars are lost every day a reactor is shut down,” she said. “If we’re going to make nuclear economically competitive with other energy industries, we’ve got to keep our costs low.” Plus, reducing the frequency of maintenance reduces human safety risks. “You’re able to avoid putting people in harsh radiation environments or handling radioactive material as often,” Ezell added.
Although gallium nitride has been commercially available for around a decade, it’s not widely used, Reed said.
“We’re opening up different side avenues for using gallium nitride, so we can start to create a more reasonable market demand for investment, research and workforce development for subclasses of electronics beyond consumer-grade,” Reed said.
In the long run, researchers would like to demonstrate that gallium nitride circuits could be used to transmit data from sensors wirelessly. The material is already used for devices that support radio frequency applications, like cell phones, and for power electronics.
ORNL researchers, staff and interns including Nance Ericson, Brett Witherspoon, Craig Gray, Emma Brown, Adam Buchalter, Caleb Damron and former intern Kevin Deng also contributed to the project.
Citation:
Hardy transistor material could be game-changer for nuclear reactor safety monitoring (2024, June 24)
retrieved 25 June 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-06-hardy-transistor-material-game-changer.html
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Informal care has a huge impact on your working life. Informal caregivers earn less per hour and are less satisfied with their job. This is the conclusion reached by sociologist Klara Raiber, who will defend her Ph.D. dissertation at Radboud University on 2 July. With more people becoming informal caregivers, the researcher says it is high time for structural support to be provided.
In our aging society, many people are informal caregivers—especially as more and more professional care has been replaced by informal care in recent years. “Caring for friends or family with health problems is placing more and more demands on people,” explains researcher Klara Raiber. “This means that informal care is having a bigger impact on other aspects of life, such as work.”
Raiber studied the extent of this impact on work by conducting multi-year surveys among broad sections of the Dutch, British and German populations. The results are clear: a relatively large number of informal caregivers find caretaking obligations difficult to combine with their work.
Some informal caregivers have had to reduce their hours or even stop working altogether to care for a relative or friend. Others have changed jobs or become self-employed in order to have more flexibility in their working hours. In addition, it seems that informal caregivers earn less and are less satisfied with their jobs than their non-care-giving colleagues.
Men benefit
The sociologist was able to compare different types of informal caregivers. For all these groups, providing informal care seemed to have a negative effect on work. “However, we can see that people who have been informal caregivers for many years experience slightly more benefits,” explains Raiber.
“This may be because they learn from providing informal care, for example about time management and empathy. For this group, the pay gap with other colleagues is smaller, probably because they have found a way to combine work and informal care better.”
Using data from Statistics Netherlands, Raiber was able to investigate how providing informal care affects pay. According to the researcher, the fact that informal caregivers earn less may be because employers feel that informal caregivers are less productive. As a result, they are less likely to be promoted. And some informal caregivers take time off work or work less, so their pay doesn’t keep pace.
For one group of men, however, providing informal care was found to be more beneficial. Raiber states, “Men sometimes even get a higher salary during or after a period of caregiving. This could be because men who are informal caregivers become more empathetic and better at managing their time. Those qualities in men are especially valued by employers, while women are already expected to have those skills.”
Aging
More support needs to be offered to informal caregivers, says the researcher, especially in the face of an aging society. “The problems experienced by informal caregivers are sometimes dismissed as being an individual’s problem, but they’re not. More and more people are having to deal with them. There are things like informal care leave, but that doesn’t solve the problem of lower pay.”
Policymakers should also continue to invest in professional care, thinks Raiber. “Informal care can be a great help to caregivers and dependents, but what happens to grandpa if his informal caregiver falls ill? There has to be an alternative.
“Also, professional care doesn’t have to be more expensive than informal care. If you look at how much less time a family caregiver works, it might only be a few minutes on average per week. That may seem little, but if one-third of the population does that, a total of hundreds of thousands of hours less per week is worked. That also costs society money.”
Citation:
Informal care is difficult to combine with work (2024, June 25)
retrieved 25 June 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-06-difficult-combine.html
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The engineered skin tissue and the way it adheres to the underlying complex structure of the robot’s features were inspired by skin ligaments in human tissues. Credit: 2024 Takeuchi et al. CC-BY-ND
Researchers have found a way to bind engineered skin tissue to the complex forms of humanoid robots. This brings with it potential benefits to robotic platforms such as increased mobility, self-healing abilities, embedded sensing capabilities and an increasingly lifelike appearance.
Taking inspiration from human skin ligaments, the team, led by Professor Shoji Takeuchi of the University of Tokyo, included special perforations in a robot face, which helped a layer of skin take hold. Their research could be useful in the cosmetics industry and to help train plastic surgeons. The work is published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.
Takeuchi is a pioneer in the field of biohybrid robotics, where biology and mechanical engineering meet. So far, his lab, the Biohybrid Systems Laboratory, has created mini robots that walk using biological muscle tissue, 3D printed lab-grown meat,engineered skin that can heal, and more. It was during research on the last of these items that Takeuchi felt the need to take the idea of robotic skin further to improve its properties and capabilities.
“During previous research on a finger-shaped robot covered in engineered skin tissue we grew in our lab, I felt the need for better adhesion between the robotic features and the subcutaneous structure of the skin,” said Takeuchi.
“By mimicking human skin-ligament structures and by using specially made V-shaped perforations in solid materials, we found a way to bind skin to complex structures. The natural flexibility of the skin and the strong method of adhesion mean the skin can move with the mechanical components of the robot without tearing or peeling away.”
Previous methods to attach skin tissue to solid surfaces involved things like mini anchors or hooks, but these limited the kinds of surfaces that could receive skin coatings and could cause damage during motion. By carefully engineering small perforations instead, essentially any shape of surface can have skin applied to it.
The trick the team employed was to use a special collagen gel for adhesion, which is naturally viscous so difficult to feed into the minuscule perforations. But using a common technique for plastic adhesion called plasma treatment, they managed to coax the collagen into the fine structures of the perforations while also holding the skin close to the surface in question.
The new anchoring method allows flexible skin tissue to conform to any shape it’s attached to. In this case, a relatively flat robotic face is made to smile and the skin deforms without constraining the robot, returning to its original shape afterwards. Credit: 2024 Takeuchi et al. CC-BY-ND
Other methods to bind skin tissue to solid structures come with limitations. This new method can work on complex, curved, and even moving surfaces. Credit: 2024 Takeuchi et al. CC-BY-ND
“Manipulating soft, wet biological tissues during the development process is much harder than people outside the field might think. For instance, if sterility is not maintained, bacteria can enter and the tissue will die,” said Takeuchi.
“However, now that we can do this, living skin can bring a range of new abilities to robots. Self-healing is a big deal—some chemical-based materials can be made to heal themselves, but they require triggers such as heat, pressure or other signals, and they also do not proliferate like cells. Biological skin repairs minor lacerations as ours does, and nerves and other skin organs can be added for use in sensing and so on.”
This research was not just made to prove a point, though. Takeuchi and his lab have a goal in mind for this application that could help in several areas of medical research. The idea of an organ-on-a-chip is not especially new, and finds use in things like drug development, but something like a face-on-a-chip could be useful in research into skin aging, cosmetics, surgical procedures, plastic surgery and more. Also, if sensors can be embedded, robots may be endowed with better environmental awareness and improved interactive capabilities.
“In this study, we managed to replicate human appearance to some extent by creating a face with the same surface material and structure as humans,” said Takeuchi.
“Additionally, through this research, we identified new challenges, such as the necessity for surface wrinkles and a thicker epidermis to achieve a more humanlike appearance. We believe that creating a thicker and more realistic skin can be achieved by incorporating sweat glands, sebaceous glands, pores, blood vessels, fat and nerves.
“Of course, movement is also a crucial factor, not just the material, so another important challenge is creating humanlike expressions by integrating sophisticated actuators, or muscles, inside the robot. Creating robots that can heal themselves, sense their environment more accurately and perform tasks with humanlike dexterity is incredibly motivating.”
Citation:
Engineered skin tissue grants robots special properties and abilities (2024, June 25)
retrieved 25 June 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-06-skin-tissue-grants-robots-special.html
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