Atrazine (ATZ) residue in farmland is one of the environmental contaminants seriously affecting crop production and food safety. Understanding the regulatory mechanism for ATZ metabolism and degradation in plants is important to help reduce ATZ potential toxicity to both plants and human health. Here, we report our newly developed engineered rice overexpressing a novel Phase II metabolic enzyme glycosyltransfearse1 (ARGT1) responsible for transformation of ATZ residues in rice. Our results showed that transformed lines, when exposed to environmentally realistic ATZ concentration (0.2-0.8 mg/L), displayed significantly high tolerance, with 8-27% biomass and 36-56% chlorophyll content higher, but 37-69% plasma membrane injury lower than untransformed lines. Such results were well confirmed by ARGT1 expression in Arabidopsis. ARGT1-transformed rice took up 1.6-2.7 fold ATZ from its growth medium compared to its wild type (WT) and accumulated ATZ 10%-43% less than that of WT. A long-term study also showed that ATZ in the grains of ARGT1-transformed rice was reduced by 30-40% compared to WT. The ATZ-degraded products were characterized by UPLC/Q-TOF-MS/MS. More ATZ metabolites and conjugates accumulated in ARGT1-transformed rice than in WT. Eight ATZ metabolites for Phase I reaction and 10 conjugates for Phase II reaction in rice were identified, with three ATZ-glycosylated conjugates that have never been reported before. These results indicate that ARGT1 expression can facilitate uptake of ATZ from environment and metabolism in rice plants.

Accumulating pesticide (and herbicide) residues in soils have become a serious environmental problem. This study focused on identifying the removal of two widely used pesticides, isoproturon (IPU) and acetochlor (ACT), by a genetically developed paddy (or rice) plant overexpressing an uncharacterized glycosyltransferase (IRGT1). IRGT1 conferred plant resistance to isoproturon–acetochlor, which was manifested by attenuated cellular injury and alleviated toxicity of rice under isoproturon–acetochlor stress. A short-term study showed that IRGT1-transformed lines removed 33.3–48.3% of isoproturon and 39.8–53.5% of acetochlor from the growth medium, with only 59.5–72.1 and 58.9–70.4% of the isoproturon and acetochlor remaining in the plants compared with the levels in untransformed rice. This phenotype was confirmed by IRGT1-expression in yeast (Pichia pastoris) which grew better and contained less isoproturon–acetochlor than the control cells. A long-term study showed that isoproturon–acetochlor concentrations at all developmental stages were significantly lower in the transformed rice, which contain only 59.3–69.2% (isoproturon) and 51.7–57.4% (acetochlor) of the levels in wild type. In contrast, UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS analysis revealed that more isoproturon–acetochlor metabolites were detected in the transformed rice. Sixteen metabolites of isoproturon and 19 metabolites of acetochlor were characterized in rice for Phase I reactions, and 9 isoproturon and 13 acetochlor conjugates were characterized for Phase II reactions in rice; of these, 7 isoproturon and 6 acetochlor metabolites and conjugates were reported in plants for the first time.

The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of dietary lysozyme levels on growth performance, gut health and non-specific immunity of weanling piglets. A total of 150 weanling piglets were allocated to six treatments. The piglets were fed the same basel diet supplemented with 0, 30, 60, 90 and 120 mg/kg lysozyme as well as antibiotics for 28 days. From day 14 to day 28 of dietary treatment, piglets fed 90 mg/kg lysozyme had greater average daily gain than piglets fed control diet. During the whole experimental period, piglets fed 120 mg/kg lysozyme tended to have greater average daily gain than piglets fed control diet. Compared with piglets fed control diet, piglets fed diets containing antibiotics and 90 mg/kg lysozyme had greater villus height to crypt depth ratio in duodenum and jejunum. Additionally, dietary supplementation of 60 and 90 mg/kg lysozyme as well as antibiotics enhanced the phagocytic activity of peritoneal macrophages in piglets. In conclusion, dietary lysozyme can accelerate the growth of weanling piglets by improving gut health and non-specific immunity and supplementing 90 mg/kg lysozyme is as effective as antibiotics (20 mg/kg colistin sulphate + 50 mg/kg kitasamycin) in improving the growth performance of weanling piglets.

This study identified the effect of salicylic acid on degradation of isoproturon in Arabidopsis. Three T-DNA insertion mutant lines pal1-1, pal1-2, and eps1-1 defective in salicylic acid synthesis were tested, which showed higher isoproturon accumulation and a toxic symptom in the mutants. When treated with 5 mg/L salicylic acid, these lines displayed a lower level of isoproturon and showed an attenuated toxic symptom. An RNA-sequencing study identified 2651 (1421 up and 1230 down) differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in eps1-1 and 2211 (1556 up and 655 down) in pal1-2 mutant plants (>2.0 fold change, p < 0.05). Some of the DEGs covered Phase I–III reaction components, like glycosyltransferases (GTs) and ATP-binding cassette transporters (ABCs). Using ultra performance liquid chromatography–time-of-flight–tandem-mass spectrometer/mass spectrometer (UPLC/Q-TOF-MS/MS), 13 Phase I and four Phase II metabolites were characterized. Of these, two metabolites 1-OH-isopropyl-benzene-O-glucoside and 4-isopropylphenol-S-2-methylbutanoyl-serine, have been identified and reported for the first time.

Two experiments were conducted to study the effects of extrusion on the energy content of corn and broken rice and on growth performance of weaning pigs. In experiment 1, 24 barrows (28 days old, 7.28 ± 0.90 kg body weight (BW)) were used to compare the effects of extrusion of corn and broken rice on the values of digestible energy (DE) in weaned pigs. The DE content in extruded corn (17.45 MJ/kg dry matter (DM)) was significantly greater (P < 0.05) by 5.54% compared with that in corn (16.48 MJ/kg DM), while no significant difference in DE content was observed between extruded broken rice (17.66 MJ/kg DM) and broken rice (17.76 MJ/kg DM). In experiment 2, 120 weanling pigs (21 days old, 5.76 ± 0.07 kg BW) were used to evaluate the influence of substitution corn and extruded corn by different proportions of raw and extruded broken rice on growth performance of pigs. The inclusion of broken rice in the diets improved (P < 0.05) growth performance of pigs during the first week and the 2 weeks post-weaning but not thereafter. However, there was no significant difference in growth performance between treatments in other periods. Overall, this study indicates that feeding weaning pigs with broken rice has beneficial results.