Novel superabsorbent materials, inorganicorganic hybrids, were synthesized by polymerizing acrylic acid or acrylamide with sodium silicate without any other crosslinking agent. The crosslinking bonds of SiOOOC form through the reaction of carboxyl groups with silanol groups (SiOOH) existing in reaction system. Results of FTIR, swelling, and degrading experiments show that the crosslinking degree increased as the mol ratio of silicate increased in a certain range. The hybrids possess the properties of high absorbency and high absorption rate in both distilled water and normal saline solution. Because of the hydrolysis of SiOOOC bonds in aqueous solution, the hybrid hydrogels can degrade in days, and maybe beneficial to environment protection. This property is quite different from those superabsorbent polymer crosslinked with organic crosslinking agent. By monitoring the temperature of the reaction system, sodium silicate was also found to facilitate the trommsdorff effect in polymerization process.

Arabidopsis thaliana ENO2 (AtENO2) plays an important role in plant growth and development. It encodes two proteins, a full‐length AtENO2 and a truncated version, AtMBP‐1, alternatively translated from the second start codon of the mRNA. The AtENO2 mutant (eno2−) exhibited reduced leaf size, shortened siliques, a dwarf phenotype and higher sensitivity to abiotic stress. The objectives of this study were to analyze the regulatory network of the ENO2 gene in plant growth development and understand the function of AtENO2/AtMBP‐1 to abiotic stresses. An eno2−/35S:AtENO2‐GFP line and an eno2−/35S:AtMBP‐1‐GFP line of Arabidopsis were obtained. Results of sequencing by 454 GS FLX identified 578 upregulated and 720 downregulated differential expressed genes (DEGs) in a pairwise comparison (WT‐VS‐eno2−). All the high‐quality reads were annotated using the Gene Ontology (GO) terms. The DEGs with KEGG pathway annotations occurred in 110 pathways. The metabolic pathways and biosynthesis of secondary metabolites contained more DEGs. Moreover, the eno2−/35S:AtENO2‐GFP line returned to the wild‐type (WT) phenotype and was tolerant to drought and salt stresses. However, the eno2−/35S:AtMBP‐1‐GFP line was not able to recover the WT phenotype but it has a higher tolerance to drought and salt stresses. Results from this study demonstrate that AtENO2 is critical for the growth and development, and the AtMBP‐1 coded by AtENO2 is important in tolerance of Arabidopsis to abiotic stresses.

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