Planthoppers are the most notorious rice pests, because they transmit various rice viruses in a persistent-propagative manner. Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) between virus and vector are crucial for virus transmission by vector insects. However, the number of known PPIs for pairs of rice viruses and planthoppers is restricted by low throughput research methods. In this study, we applied DeNovo, a virus-host sequencebased PPI predictor, to predict potential PPIs at a genome-wide scale between three planthoppers and five rice viruses. PPIs were identified at two different confidence thresholds, referred to as low and high modes. The number of PPIs for the five planthopper-virus pairs ranged from 506 to 1985 in the low mode and from 1254 to 4286 in the high mode. After eliminating the "one-too-many" redundant interacting information, the PPIs with unique planthopper proteins were reduced to 343-724 in the low mode and 758-1671 in the high mode. Homologous analysis showed that 11 sets and 31 sets of homologous planthopper proteins were shared by all planthopper-virus interactions in the two modes, indicating that they are potential conserved vector factors essential for transmission of rice viruses. Ten PPIs between small brown planthopper and rice stripe virus (RSV) were verified using glutathione-S-transferase (GST)/His-pull down or co-immunoprecipitation assay. Five of the ten PPIs were proven positive, and three of the five SBPH proteins were confirmed to interact with RSV. The predicted PPIs provide new clues for further studies of the complicated relationship between rice viruses and their vector insects.

Pervious concrete pavement is a permeable pavement with a large volume of interconnected voids to satisfy the need for both pavement surface and storm water management. It is made from a mixture of cement, coarse aggregates, and water. However, it contains little or no sand, which results in a porous open-cell structure that water passes through. Enhancement of its physical and mechanical properties is the main objective of this work. Clogging is perceived as a major problem for permeable pavement, so this study is focusing on the clogging phenomena. Eight mixtures of pervious concrete were cast using polypropylene fibers (0.1, 0.15, and 0.2) % by volume of concrete and a waste industrial material (8, 10, 12) % partial replacement of cement as main variables in this research. The specimens were tested at 7, 28, 90 and 120 days. Physical tests included the evaluation of density, water absorption, permeability and clogging. Mechanical tests included the evaluation of compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and flexure strength. The results showed that using polypropylene fiber improved the mechanical properties and water permeability of pervious concrete. The waste industrial material improved the mechanical properties up to 10% replacement of cement. Also increasing the waste industrial material replacement ratio improved the clogging resistance.

microRNA (miRNA) is a post-transcriptional gene regulation mechanism that mediates sequence-specific degradation of the targeted RNA and thus provides an opportunity for the development of oligonucleotide-based drugs. Here, we propose a systematic approach for finding, selecting, and validating miRNAs that target conserved regions in the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Different factors, such as target conservation, target accessibility, miRNA and target RNA thermodynamics, are considered in our pipeline. The conservation profiles of six major genotypes of HCV have been analyzed and the potential conserved regions are selected for downstream analysis based on their entropy and length. An in silico protocol for predicting the miRNA targets in HCV highly conserved regions is devised, and a set of potential miRNAs is filtered and verified using different techniques. Some of the predicted miRNAs were previously experimentally validated, which gives support to our analysis.