Soil salinization is a major threat to cucumbers grown under protected cultivation. Under stressful environments, calcineurin B-like proteins (CBLs) can sense and bind Ca2+ signals and regulate CBL-interacting protein kinases (CIPKs) to transmit signals and induce cellular responses. Although CBL-CIPK modules play central roles in plant development and response to various abiotic stresses in Arabidopsis, little is known about their functions in cucumber. In this study, we demonstrate that CsCBL4 interacts with CsCIPK6, which exhibited similar responses to salt stress in cucumber. Furthermore, salt stress resulted in greater accumulation of CsCBL4 and CsCIPK6. Comprehensive phenotype analysis demonstrated that silencing CsCBL4 or CsCIPK6 reduced the salt tolerance of cucumber, and overexpression of CsCBL4 increased the salt tolerance of Arabidopsis. Collectively, these results indicate that the CsCBL4-CsCIPK6 module plays an important role in the resistance of cucumber to salt stress. The information provides insights for the genetic breeding of salt tolerance in cucumber in the future.
Summary Fusarium wilt disease, caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cucumerinum ( Foc ), leads to widespread yield loss and quality decline in cucumber. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying Foc resistance remain poorly understood. We report the mapping and functional characterisation of CsChi23 , encoding a cucumber class I chitinase with antifungal properties. We assessed sequence variations at CsChi23 and the associated defence response against Foc . We functionally characterised CsChi23 using transgenic assay and expression analysis. The mechanism regulating CsChi23 expression was assessed by genetic and molecular approaches. CsChi23 was induced by Foc infection, which led to rapid upregulation in resistant cucumber lines. Overexpressing CsChi23 enhanced fusarium wilt resistance and reduced fungal biomass accumulation, whereas silencing CsChi23 causes loss of resistance. CsHB15, a homeodomain leucine zipper (HD‐Zip) III transcription factor, was found to bind to the CsChi23 promoter region and activate its expression. Furthermore, silencing of CsHB15 reduces CsChi23 expression. A single‐nucleotide polymorphism variation −400 bp upstream of CsChi23 abolished the HD‐Zip III binding site in a susceptible cucumber line. Collectively, our study indicates that CsChi23 is sufficient to enhance fusarium wilt resistance and reveals a novel function of an HD‐Zip III transcription factor in regulating chitinase expression in cucumber defence against fusarium wilt.
An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.
Flow models are effective at progressively generating realistic images, but they generally struggle to capture long-range dependencies during the generation process as they compress all the information from previous time steps into a single corrupted image. To address this limitation, we propose integrating autoregressive modeling -- known for its excellence in modeling complex, high-dimensional joint probability distributions -- into flow models. During training, at each step, we construct causally-ordered sequences by sampling multiple images from the same semantic category and applying different levels of noise, where images with higher noise levels serve as causal predecessors to those with lower noise levels. This design enables the model to learn broader category-level variations while maintaining proper causal relationships in the flow process. During generation, the model autoregressively conditions the previously generated images from earlier denoising steps, forming a contextual and coherent generation trajectory. Additionally, we design a customized hybrid linear attention mechanism tailored to our modeling approach to enhance computational efficiency. Our approach, termed ARFlow, under 400k training steps, achieves 14.08 FID scores on ImageNet at 128 * 128 without classifier-free guidance, reaching 4.34 FID with classifier-free guidance 1.5, significantly outperforming the previous flow-based model SiT's 9.17 FID. Extensive ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our modeling strategy and chunk-wise attention design.
Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is a globally prevalent and extensively cultivated vegetable whose yield is significantly influenced by various abiotic stresses, including drought, heat, and salinity. Transcription factors, such as zinc finger-homeodomain proteins (ZHDs), a plant-specific subgroup of Homeobox, play a crucial regulatory role in stress resistance. In this study, we identified 13 CsZHDs distributed across all six cucumber chromosomes except chromosome 7. Phylogenetic analysis classified these genes into five clades (ZHDI-IV and MIF) with different gene structures but similar conserved motifs. Collinearity analysis revealed that members of clades ZHD III, IV, and MIF experienced amplification through segmental duplication events. Additionally, a closer evolutionary relationship was observed between the ZHDs in Cucumis sativus (C. sativus) and Arabidopsis thaliana (A. thaliana) compared to Oryza sativa (O. sativa). Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis demonstrated the general expression of CsZHD genes across all tissues, with notable expression in leaf and flower buds. Moreover, most of the CsZHDs, particularly CsZHD9-11, exhibited varying responses to drought, heat, and salt stresses. Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) experiments highlighted the potential functions of CsZHD9 and CsZHD10, suggesting their positive regulation of stomatal movement and responsiveness to drought stress. In summary, these findings provide a valuable resource for future analysis of potential mechanisms underlying CsZHD genes in response to stresses.
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