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The patterning of adaxial-abaxial tissues plays a vital role in the morphology of lateral organs, which is maintained by antagonism between the genes that specify adaxial and abaxial tissue identity. The homeo-domain leucine zipper class III (HD-ZIP III) family genes regulate adaxial identity; however, little information is known about the physical interactions or transcriptionally regulated downstream genes of HD-ZIP III.In this study, we identified a dominant rice mutant, lateral floret 1 (lf1), which has defects in lateral organ polarity. LF1 encodes the HD-ZIP III transcription factor, which expressed in the adaxial area of lateral organs.LF1 can activate directly the expression of LITTLE ZIPPER family gene OsZPR4 and HD-ZIP II family gene OsHOX1, and OsZPR4 and OsHOX1 respectively interact with LF1 to form a heterodimer to repress the transcriptional activity of LF1. LF1 influences indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) content by directly regulating the expression of OsYUCCA6. Therefore, LF1 forms negative feedback loops between OsZPR4 and OsHOX1 to affect IAA content, leading to the regulation of lateral organs polarity development.These results reveal the cross-talk among HD-ZIP III, LITTLE ZIPPER, and HD-ZIP II proteins and provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the polarity development of lateral organs.

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This paper analyzed the development of higher education and the regional differences in China, using the survey data and official statistics. Two indicators, the undergraduate students of per 100,000 population and higher education's contribution to GDP growth, were applied respectively to study the regional differences. The results showed that higher education in China was enjoying great development, fundamentally constructed talent cultivation system and comprehensively reasonable resource distribution. However, some colleges and universities still had some problems, such as incorrect orientation, overheated scale expansion and insufficient capital investment. Besides, higher education in China was suffering from considerable regional differences, namely higher education in East China is developing rapidly and contributing more to the economic growth, while the West China has presented slower rate of higher education development and smaller contribution to economic growth. Based on the problems lying in present reality of higher education development, this paper proposed the suggestions to enhance the development of higher education in China and to dispel the regional differences in higher education performance.