A research team from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) and the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology has uncovered a molecular module shared in formation of moss midribs and seed plant axillary meristems, two completely different anatomical structures.

Based on fieldwork in the karst areas of Yunnan, researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden identified several potential new species. In a recent study, they described two new species of of geckos.

The processes that govern the formation of symbiotic structures between nitrogen-fixing bacteria and legumes in the latter's roots remain largely a mystery, but researchers from the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have recently discovered that a duplication of the genes is playing a key role.

Researchers from the Wuhan Botanical Garden evaluated the antifungal activity and mechanism of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) against four pathogens causing kiwifruit post- harvest rot. They found that AgNPs had distinct inhibitory effects on the mycelial growth and spore germination of the four pathogens.

Researchers from Dr. LIU Danqian's Lab at the Institute of Neuroscience, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences demonstrated that selective retrosplenial cortex activation encodes and regulates rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, revealed the cortical activity patterns and a selectively activated cortical region during REM sleep, the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), discovered and characterized two distinct substages of REM sleep, and confirmed that RSC neuronal activity encodes and regulates the two substage transition.

Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, and Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, and the other collaborators, developed a software package named IsoNet for the isotropic reconstruction for cryogenic electron tomography (cryoET). They effectively solved the intrinsic "missing-wedge" problem and low signal-to-noise ratio problems in cryoET.

A research team led by Prof. HUANG Ying from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science has been conducting research aiming at a new non-invasive screening method for VAP. With a self-developed breath tester proton transfer reaction-mass spectrometry, they detected exhaled volatile organic compounds from patients infected with ventilator-associated pneumonia .

To explore patterns in termite taxonomic richness and functional biogeography, researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) created a dataset of termite species and their functional traits together with environmental data.

A research team led by Prof. WU Jianqiang at the Kunming Institute of Botany has elucidated the functions of maize MYC2s in JA-mediated insect defense response by means of genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, and bioinformatics.

A research team led by Dr. WU Shangong and Prof. WU Chenxi from Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the collaborators, illustrated the distribution and differences of crayfish intestinal ARGs and microbiota in main aquaculture areas in China, and the distribution and interaction of pathogenic bacteria and high-risk ARGs in crayfish gut.

A joint study by Prof. FANG Xiaofeng from Tsinghua University and Prof. LIN Rongcheng from the Institute of Botany found that the transcriptional regulator SEUSS (SEU) plays a key role via its condensation during hyperosmotic stress in Arabidopsis.

To determine the underlying causes of the variations of species diversity in the temperate forest, Dr. HE Rui, supervised by Prof. DANG Haishan from the Wuhan Botanical Garden, applied multivariate linear regression analysis to test the effects of biotic and abiotic factors on alpha- diversity, Local Contribution to Beta Diversity and Species Contribution to Beta Diversity.