Foliar iron delivery requires simultaneous control of ferrous-state stability, nutrient transport, and leaf-surface residence, yet these functions are rarely integrated within a single formulation. Here, we developed a carbon dot-stabilized and coordination-gated nanocarrier formulation (NFCT) by co-confining Fe2+ and carbon dots (CDs) within amino-functionalized mesoporous silica and depositing an external tannic acid-Fe (TA-Fe) coordination network. Electron spin resonance measurements and density functional theory calculations support complementary contributions of the CDs to reactive-oxygen-species attenuation and Fe2+ coordination, whereas the outer metal-phenolic network provides pH-dependent regulation of nutrient transport. Under the tested storage conditions, NFCT retained 93.0% of recoverable Fe2+ after 7 d and showed substantially greater recoverable Fe2+ availability under mildly acidic than near-neutral or alkaline conditions. On model waxy leaf surfaces, NFCT improved droplet spreading and achieved 72% of the pre-rain total-Fe deposit after a 70.7 mm simulated-rainfall challenge. These redox, transport, and interfacial attributes were associated with greater foliar Fe accumulation, chlorophyll index, biomass production, and root-system remodeling in Fe-deficient rice. In a single-site, single-season proof-of-concept field trial, no statistically significant differences were detected between NFCT and commercial EDTA-Fe for the measured agronomic traits under the tested application program. The results define a carbon-dot-centered structure-property-function framework in which internal Fe2+ protection, external coordination-gated transport, and rainfast foliar residence provide complementary delivery functions.
Text-based person re-identification (TBPReID) aims to retrieve person images from a gallery using natural language descriptions. Despite recent progress, TBPReID remains challenging because image–text pairs in real-world datasets often suffer from noisy correspondence (NC), including ambiguous descriptions, attribute-level inconsistencies, and mismatched image-caption pairs. Such unreliable supervision may force cross-modal models to align semantically inconsistent samples and degrade fine-grained retrieval performance. To address this problem, we propose an Uncertainty-Aware Alignment (UAA) framework for robust TBPReID under NC. The key idea is to model image–text correspondence as a continuous reliability-estimation problem and propagate the estimated reliability into fine-grained alignment. Specifically, we introduce an Uncertainty-Aware Consensus (UAC) mechanism, where consensus denotes the reliability of cross-modal matching inferred from in-batch similarity evidence. UAC constructs Dirichlet-based evidence distributions to estimate epistemic uncertainty and adaptively down-weight unreliable correspondences. We further design a Fine-Grained Attribute Masking (FGAM) module with an uncertainty-weighted ranking loss, which uses uncertainty-derived confidence to suppress ambiguous attributes and strengthen trustworthy identity-related cues. Extensive experiments on CUHK-PEDES, ICFG-PEDES, and RSTPReid demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of UAA. Under the 50% noise setting, UAA achieves 71.58% R@1 on CUHK-PEDES, yielding a 4.01% improvement over the baseline. Our code is available at https://github.com/pengchengL-hub/UAA.
Soil microorganisms are the biological engines of terrestrial ecosystems. The development of molecular technologies has overturned the ‘everything is everywhere’ paradigm, revealing that at the strain-level, soil microbes exhibit distinct biogeographical patterns governed by environmental selection, dispersal, diversification, and drift. In this review, we first summarize the major progresses in soil microbial biogeography. Then, we discuss the potential limitations, including the constraints of space-for-time substitution, the disconnect between statistical correlation and ecological causality, and the inherent challenges in mapping and scaling microbial distributions. Finally, we propose a strategic framework centered on three directions: (1) Enhancing prediction, by integrating microbial traits into Earth System Models to forecast the responses of soil microbes and their associated functions to global change; (2) Deciphering mechanisms, by bridging multi-omics approaches with rigorous experimental validation to establish causality between structure and function; and (3) Achieving manipulation, by leveraging synthetic ecology and core taxa to engineer microbiomes for practical application in One Health initiatives. Moving from pattern description to mechanistic understanding and functional manipulation will enable soil microbial biogeography to provide actionable solutions for sustainability in a rapidly changing world.
McORA activates McHDR transcription to enhance aphid-induced (E)-β-farnesene biosynthesis, conferring increased aphid resistance in German chamomile and providing a target for genetic improvement. German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla L.) is an annual medicinal plant whose essential oil is rich in sesquiterpenoids, including (E)-β-farnesene (EβF), chamazulene, nerolidol and α-bisabolol, which collectively exhibit antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, hypoglycemic, hypolipidemic, spasmolytic, and sedative activities. However, German chamomile is highly susceptible to aphid infestation, resulting in stunted growth, leaf chlorosis and curling, and premature senescence. Here, we demonstrate that EβF production can be induced by aphid-feeding, and that it exerts a repellent effect on aphids, as shown by Y-tube olfactometer choice assays. To elucidate the regulatory mechanism underlying EβF biosynthesis, we cloned the promoter of McHDR, a key gene in the EβF pathway, using Fusion Primer and Nested Integrated PCR (FPNI-PCR). Correlation analysis and yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) library screening identified McORA as a transcription factor that regulates McHDR, and full-length McORA cDNA was obtained using 5’/3’-RACE. McORA specifically bound the CAACA motif within the McHDR promoter and activated its transcription, as confirmed by Y1H point-to-point assays, dual-luciferase reporter assays and electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA). Finally, transgenic hairy roots and virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) in German chamomile leaves verified that McORA positively regulates McHDR expression and EβF accumulation, and aphid infestation experiments under natural conditions showed that McORA silencing significantly reduces aphid resistance. Taken together, these findings provide experimental evidence that EβF functions as an effective aphid-repellent and, for the first time, elucidate McORA-mediated transcriptional regulation of McHDR and its influence on EβF biosynthesis in German chamomile, thereby highlighting a potential genetic engineering strategy to enhance aphid resistance.
Direct-seeded rice is of great significance for ensuring food security. The hypoxic conditions under deep sowing impose significant abiotic stress to severely inhibit seed germination and seedling emergence in direct-seeded rice. Improvement of rice tolerance to deep-sowing germination stress is critical for promoting the seedling and grain yield of direct-seeded rice. In this study, we employed 276 rice germplasms to investigate the hypoxic germination (HG)-related traits through genome-wide association study (GWAS). Transcriptome profiling was conducted on germplasms with strong and weak HG tolerance under both deep-sowing and control conditions. GWAS identified 76 HG-associated genes, among which 27 genes were also detected by transcriptome profiling. Gene functional annotation and haplotype analysis screened four important candidate genes (LOC_Os01g51870, LOC_Os03g11510, LOC_Os05g01440, and LOC_Os07g35350) related to HG under deep sowing. The findings establish a genetic framework for improving HG tolerance in rice under deep sowing through molecular breeding strategies.
