Curvularia lunata is an important maize foliar fungal pathogen that distributes widely in maize growing area in China, and several key pathogenic factors have been isolated. An yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) library is a very useful platform to further unravel novel pathogenic factors in C. lunata. To construct a high-quality full length-expression cDNA library from the C. lunata for application to pathogenesis-related protein-protein interaction screening, total RNA was extracted. The SMART (Switching Mechanism At 5′ end of the RNA Transcript) technique was used for cDNA synthesis. Double-stranded cDNA was ligated into the pGADT7-Rec vector with Herring Testes Carrier DNA using homologous recombination method. The ligation mixture was transformed into competent yeast AH109 cells to construct the primary cDNA library. Eventually, a high qualitative library was successfully established according to an evaluation on quality. The transformation efficiency was about 6.39 ×105 transformants/3 μg pGADT7-Rec. The titer of the primary cDNA library was 2.5×108 cfu/mL. The numbers for the cDNA library was 2.46×105. Randomly picked clones show that the recombination rate was 88.24%. Gel electrophoresis results indicated that the fragments ranged from 0.4 kb to 3.0 kb. Melanin synthesis protein Brn1 (1,3,8-hydroxynaphthalene reductase) was used as a “bait” to test the sufficiency of the Y2H library. As a result, a cDNA clone encoding VelB protein that was known to be involved in the regulation of diverse cellular processes, including control of secondary metabolism containing melanin and toxin production in many filamentous fungi was identified. Further study on the exact role of the VelB gene is underway.

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Holothurians of the family Psychropotidae are widely distributed but remain the least studied deep-sea holothurians. On an expedition to the Western Pacific, six psychropotid specimens were collected by the Jiaolong Human Operated Vehicle (HOV). Through morphological examination, four of them were identified as a new species, Benthodytes jiaolongisp. nov., which was characterized as having minute papillae, a narrow brim, and a terminal anus; and the ossicles were rods and primary crosses. The remaining two specimens were identified as Psychropotes verrucicaudatus Xiao, Gong, Kou & Li, 2019, first recorded at the Kyushu-Palau Ridge. The phylogenetic analysis showed that B. jiaolongisp. nov. and P. verrucicaudatus were embedded in the clades Benthodytes and Psycheotrephes, respectively, and that Benthodytes was paraphyletic. The new species clustered with Benthodytes sanguinolenta and was separated from the clade containing the other Benthodytes species.