Chitin is the major component of fungal cell wall and serves as a molecular pattern that can be recognized by the receptor OsCEBiP in rice, a lysine motif (LysM) receptor-like protein (RLP), to trigger immune responses. The molecular mechanisms underlying chitin recognition remain elusive. Here we report the crystal structures of the ectodomain of OsCEBiP (OsCEBiP-ECD) in free and chitin-bound forms. The structures reveal that OsCEBiP-ECD contains three tandem LysMs followed by a novel structure fold of cysteine-rich domain. The structures showed that chitin binding induces no striking conformational changes in OsCEBiP. Structural comparison among N-acetylglucosamine (NAG) oligomer-bound LysMs revealed a highly conserved recognition mechanism, which is expected to facilitate study of other LysM-containing proteins for their NAG binding. Modeling study showed that chitin induces OsCEBiP homodimerization in a "sliding mode". Our data provide insights into rice chitin receptor-mediated immunity triggered by fungal cell wall.

Identifying influential spreaders in complex networks is crucial in understanding, controlling and accelerating spreading processes for diseases, information, innovations, behaviors, and so on. Inspired by the gravity law, we propose a gravity model that utilizes both neighborhood information and path information to measure a node’s importance in spreading dynamics. In order to reduce the accumulated errors caused by interactions at distance and to lower the computational complexity, a local version of the gravity model is further proposed by introducing a truncation radius. Empirical analyses of the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) spreading dynamics on fourteen real networks show that the gravity model and the local gravity model perform very competitively in comparison with well-known state-of-the-art methods. For the local gravity model, the empirical results suggest an approximately linear relation between the optimal truncation radius and the average distance of the network.

Strigolactones (SLs) are the latest confirmed phytohormones that regulate shoot branching by inhibiting bud outgrowth in higher plants. Perception of SLs depends on a novel mechanism employing an enzyme-receptor DWARF14 (D14) that hydrolyzes SLs and becomes covalently modified. This stimulates the interaction between D14 and D3, leading to the ubiquitination and degradation of the transcriptional repressor protein D53. However, the regulation of SL perception in rice remains elusive. In this study, we provide evidences that D14 is ubiquitinated after SL treatment and degraded through the 26S proteasome system. The Lys280 site of the D14 amino acid sequence was important for SL-induced D14 degradation, but did not change the subcellular localization of D14 nor disturbed the interaction between D14 and D3, nor D53 degradation. Biochemical and genetic analysis indicated that the key amino acids in the catalytic center of D14 were essential for D14 degradation. We further showed that D14 degradation is dependent on D3 and is tightly correlated with protein levels of D53. These findings revealed that D14 degradation takes place following D53 degradation and functions as an important feedback regulation mechanism of SL perception in rice.