Throughout its development, common wheat, Triticum aestivum responds to different kinds of adverse abiotic and biotic stress by expressing specific genes that allow it to adapt to these stresses. In this process, genes in the AP2/ERF family encode transcriptional regulators involved in diverse developmental and physiological processes play critical roles. Here, we established an extensive picture of the AP2/ERF family genes in wheat. From 960, 174 ESTs of T. aestivum, 117 putative AP2/ERF family genes were identified by in silico analysis based on the presence of the conserved AP2/ERF domain amino acid sequence of Arabidopsis thaliana. Based on the model species A. thaliana, the AP2/ERF TFs from T. aestivum were classified into five subfamilies with the following number of members: DREB (57), ERF (47), AP2 (9), RAV (3) and Soloist (1). Using the available EST information as a source of expression data, the putative AP2/ERF family genes from T. aestivum were detected in nine kinds of tissues. Transcripts of the genes were shown to be most abundant in leaves, followed by roots and seeds, and the least abundant in stem. Most of the T. aestivum AP2/ERF family genes showed some tissue specificity.

At least one third of sharks and their cartilaginous relatives (Class Chondrichthyes) meet the IUCN Red List Criteria for being threatened with extinction. Overfishing is the primary threat, with less than 4% of the world's shark catches managed for sustainability. The high-value shark-fin trade has gained the greatest attention as a conservation issue, yet there has been little research on shark-fin consumer preferences, and how these might be leveraged to deliver sustainability goals. We used an online discrete choice experiment to explore preferences for price, quality, rarity, and finning among 2914 shark-fin soup consumers in China. Overall, consumers prefer higher priced and rare shark-fins, obtained without finning, yet we found three distinct groups with substantial heterogeneity between them. Our results provide evidence for the conspicuous consumption nature of shark-fin use, but also suggest these preferences could be leveraged to incentivize responsible shark fishing. In addition, messaging for future unsustainable demand reduction should focus on shark-finning and animal welfare as opposed species rarity and extinction.

Transcriptional regulation is thought to be important for stress tolerance and response of transcription factors. RAV subfamily transcription factor contains an AP2- and B3-DNA binding domain, which belongs to the AP2/ERF family. It encodes transcriptional regulators with a variety of functions involved in the developmental and physiological processes in plants. Here, a RAV-like gene, BnaRAV-1-HY15, was isolated from Brassica napus L. cv HuYou15. Sequence homology analysis revealed that the BnaRAV-1-HY15 factor belongs to the RAV subfamily of the AP2/ERF family, and it shares high identity with the AtRAV2 of Arabidopsis. Sequence and three-dimensional structural analyses revealed that BnaRAV-1-HY15 contains two distinct DNA-binding domains, one AP2 domain together with one B3 domain. The AP2 domain composed of 54 amino acids and present in N-terminal region. In addition to AP2 domain, 117 amino acids show significant sequence similarity to the B3 domain present in C-terminal region. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR analysis indicated that the BnaRAV-1-HY15 gene is induced by cold, NaCl and PEG treatments. Under ABA stress, the expression of BnaRAV-1-HY15 gene was not detected. The gene expression was also not traceable from the tissues of pod, bud, petal, leaf, stem and root of normally grown B. napus L. HuYou15 plant at the period of flowering and seed development.

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