The whitefly Bemisia tabaci, one of the most important agricultural pests worldwide, can attack more than 600 host plants. We found that, through an exceptional horizontal gene transfer event, the whitefly has acquired the plant-derived phenolic glucoside malonyltransferase gene BtPMaT1. This gene enables whiteflies to neutralize phenolic glucosides, which widely exist in host plants of whitefly s...

Traditionally, methanogenic degradation of complex organic matter requires the syntrophic metabolism between bacteria and archaea. The study used stable-carbon isotope-labeled culture, metagenome, and metatranscriptome sequencing and high-resolution mass spectrometry analysis to confirm that a novel single methanogenic archaeal species (Candidatus Methanoliparum) could directly complete the proces...

Reinventing potato from a clonally propagated tetraploid into a diploid seed crop is an essential innovation in agriculture. Due to the numerous deleterious mutations hidden in the potato genome, developing highly homozygous inbred lines is still a big challenge. This research group constructed the pipeline of genome design of hybrid potato breeding, including the percentage of genome homozygosity...

Large-scaled genomic variation investigations for germplasm are critical for understanding the formation and evolution of favorable traits in crops. This study demonstrated that two extensive chromosomal inversions derived from landraces were the essential causes for subpopulation divergence in the Upland cotton (cultivars) population via analyzing approximately 3,000 Gossypium hirsutum accessions...

In this study, Yin and his colleagues found that clofazimine possesses broad antiviral activities against coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. They demonstrated that clofazimine inhibits cell fusion mediated by the viral spike glycoprotein, as well as the activity of the viral helicase. Prophylactic or therapeutic administration of clofazimine in a hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis led to r...

Lungfish have the largest known genome of vertebrates. Scientists have failed to assemble it successfully for a long time. Therefore, the research on the transition of vertebrates from aquatic to terrestrial habitats missed a critical link. In a previous study, only 34.5 Gb of genome sequence was obtained from Australian lungfish, and the extremely low core gene completeness (67%) hindered the i...

Enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass is an attractive method for sustainable cellulosic ethanol production. Given the complex lignin-cellulose-hemicellulose network of lignocellulosic biomass, enzymatic hydrolysis is a complicated heterogeneous catalytic process. This work is the first to comprehensively analyze the research progress of enzymatic hydrolysis (including pretreatment, enzy...

Increasing environmental concerns regarding fossil fuels and potential future supply constraints have driven the exploration of alternative fuel resources. The natural fermentation products by anaerobic acetogens can synthesize fuels and chemicals cleanly and sustainably. Cellular biology that enables syngas fermentation by using these versatile microorganisms contributes substantially to design s...

Currently, the fuel ethanol industry in China is in a critical period of transforming from the first-generation (1G) to the second-generation (2G). In this research, issues on the policy system, financial subsidy, industry layout, and historic yield of the fuel ethanol industry in China are comprehensively summarized and comparatively analyzed. Based on the correlation between the annual yield of ...

In order to improve the accuracy of regional crop yield estimation based on data assimilation, this study proposed a novel EnSRF assimilation algorithm based on a variable time window and four-dimensional extension (VW-4DEnSRF) and constructed a new crop yield estimation system based on crop growth model and VW-4DEnSRF algorithm. This study conducted the quantitative simulation and yield estimatio...