The Woronin body (WB) is a peroxisome-related organelle that is centered on a crystalline core of the HEX-1 protein, which functions to seal septal pores of filamentous ascomycetes in response to cellular damage. Here, we investigate the cellular and genetic control of WB-formation and show that polarized hex-1 gene expression determines WB-biogenesis at the growing hyphal apex. We find that intron splicing is coupled to efficient hex-1 gene expression and strikingly, when the yellow fluorescent protein was expressed from hex-1 regulatory sequences, we observed a fluorescent gradient that was maximal in apical cells. Moreover, endogenous hex-1 transcripts were specifically enriched at the leading edge of the fungal colony, whereas other transcripts accumulated in basal regions. Time-lapse confocal microscopy showed that HEX-1 crystals normally formed in the vicinity of the hyphal apex in large peroxisomes, which matured and were immobilized at the cell periphery as cells underwent septation. When the hex-1 structural gene was expressed from regulatory sequences of an abundant, basally localized transcript, WB-core formation was redetermined to basal regions of the colony, and these strains displayed loss-of-function phenotypes specifically in apical hyphal compartments. These results show that apically localized gene expression is a key determinant of spatially restricted WB-assembly. We suggest that this type of regulation may be widely used to determine cellular activity in apical regions of the fungal hypha.

Receptor-like kinases (RLKs), an important family that plant cell sense and transmit extracellular signals, are fundamental to plant cell life and play critical roles in various biological processes, such as response to abiotic stress, development and hormonal response. Among RLKs, the lectin receptor-like kinases (LecRLKs) possess a characteristic extracellular carbohydrate-binding lectin domain and play important roles in plant immune, stress and hormone responses. However, little is known about the genes LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 of LecRLK family up to now. Here, we founded that LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 were localized in plasma membrane and played the physiological roles by forming a homodimer. Real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR analysis of the expression level of LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 in response to exogenous ABA, MeJA, SA, NaCl, mannitol and dehydration suggested that LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 may play important roles in response to various stresses. It will lay a good foundation for further studies on physiological functions of LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2.

As information on the Internet grows exponentially, online users primarily rely on search engines (SEs) to locate e-commerce sites for online shopping. To generate revenue while providing free service to users, SE companies offer sponsored link (SL) placements to e-commerce sites that want to appear in the first SE results page. However, the lack of users’ trust in SE advertising indicates that SEs should utilize strategies to project trustworthiness on this mechanism. Despite these insights, the role of users’ trust in the operation of SE advertising is still an unexplored territory. To address this issue, a theoretical model was synthesized from the social psychology literature, the marketing literature, and the trust literature to investigate the factors that may pose impacts on the effectiveness of SE advertising by influencing users’ perception of both cognitive and emotional trust. A laboratory experiment was conducted. The findings document the importance of incorporating emotional components of trust in the study of online communication by showing that emotional dimension of trust is different from and complementary to cognitive trust in facilitating online communication. The findings also provide valuable implications for practitioners to design and provide more effective SLs that can benefit all parties involved.

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