Rice (Oryza sativa), a major staple food, is usually milled to remove the oil-rich aleurone layer that turns rancid upon storage, especially in tropical areas. The remaining edible part of rice grains, the endosperm, lacks several essential nutrients, such as provitamin A. Thus, predominant rice consumption promotes vitamin A deficiency, a serious public health problem in at least 26 countries, including highly populated areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Recombinant DNA technology was used to improve its nutritional value in this respect. A combination of transgenes enabled biosynthesis of provitamin A in the endosperm.

Heat shock transcription factors (Hsfs) are major transactivators of heat shock protein (Hsp) genes in the response to stress stimuli, but are also thought to be involved in embryonic development and spermatogenesis. Among the three known mammalian Hsfs, Hsf1 is recognized as the most effective transactivator of Hsps in response to thermal challenge, but the role of Hsf2 in regulation of genes under normal or increased stress conditions in vivo remains elusive. To study its physiological function in vivo, we generated mice deficient in hsf2 by gene targeting. We report here that hsf2(-/-) mice exhibit multiple phenotypes, including an increased prenatal lethality occurring between mid-gestation to birth, with fetal death probably due to central nervous system defects including collapse of the lateral ventricles and ventricular hemorrhages. Approximately 30% of hsf2(-/-) animals surviving to adulthood exhibited brain abnormalities characterized by marked dilation of the third and lateral ventricles. In addition, disruption of hsf2 resulted in reduced female fertility; however, despite ubiquitous expression in the testes and markedly reduced testis size and sperm count, only a small reduction in fertility was apparent in hsf2(-/-) male mice. Immunoblotting and gene expression microarray analysis of hsf2(-/-) embryos did not reveal reduced Hsp expression levels, indicating that the defects observed in hsf2(-/-) embryos may not result from disruption of Hsp expression. These findings suggest that hsf2 has a major function in controlling expression of genes important for embryonic development and maintenance of sperm production.

Macrofungus is defined as the fungus that grows an observable sporocarp. The sporocarps of many species are commonly called mushrooms and consumed by people all around the world as food and/or medicine. Most macrofungi belong to the divisions Basidiomycetes and Ascomycetes, which are estimated to contain more than 80,000 species in total. We report the draft genome assemblies of macrofungi (83 Basidiomycetes species and 7 Ascomycetes species) based on Illumina sequencing. The genome sizes of these species ranged from 27.4 Mb (Hygrophorus russula) to 202.2 MB (Chroogomphus rutilus). The numbers of protein-coding genes were predicted in the range of 9,511 (Hygrophorus russula) to 52,289 (Craterellus lutescens). This study provides the largest genomic dataset for macrofungi species. This resource will facilitate the artificial cultivation of edible mushrooms and the discovery of novel drug candidates.

No abstract

ENCODE 3 (2012-2017) expanded production and added new types of assays 8 (Fig. 1, Extended Data Fig. 1), which revealed landscapes of RNA binding and the 3D organization of chromatin via methods such as chromatin interaction analysis by paired-end tagging (ChIA-PET) and Hi-C chromosome conformation capture. Phases 2 and 3 delivered 9,239 experiments (7,495 in human and 1,744 in mouse) in more than 500 cell types and tissues, including mapping of transcribed regions and transcript isoforms, regions of transcripts recognized by RNA-binding proteins, transcription factor binding regions, and regions that harbour specific histone modifications, open chromatin, and 3D chromatin interactions. The results of all of these experiments are available at the ENCODE portal (http://www.encodeproject.org). These efforts, combined with those of related projects and many other laboratories, have produced a greatly enhanced view of the human genome (Fig. 2), identifying 20,225 protein-coding and 37,595 noncoding genes