Extreme climate risks and farmland structural constraints are intensifying agricultural vulnerability, making the improvement of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) essential for enhancing agricultural resilience and sustainability. High-standard farmland construction (HSFC) represents an important practice for advancing CSA by improving cultivated land quality and farmland infrastructure. However, existing studies have mainly examined HSFC’s effects on single outcomes, including yield, efficiency, or environmental performance, with insufficient attention to whether it can simultaneously advance multiple CSA objectives or generate synergies and trade-offs among them. To examine the multidimensional linkages between HSFC and CSA, this study proposes an integrated Pressure-State-Response-Objective (PSRO) analytical framework. Using 2003–2022 panel data for 122 counties in Hunan Province, we apply a continuous difference-in-differences (DID) model and mechanism tests to estimate HSFC’s policy effects and assess transmission through input optimization, technology upgrading, and cultivated-land habitat quality. Results show that (1) HSFC has a positive and significant policy effect on CSA, with estimated coefficients of about 0.011–0.012 across specifications; (2) HSFC positively influences CSA in pillars food security and climate adaptation, but negatively affects pillar carbon mitigation in the short term; (3) heterogeneous effects are evident across regions, with stronger impacts where regional development conditions and land-consolidation potential are more favorable; (4) CSA gains from HSFC arise from improved farmland production conditions, reduced per-output input pressure, and complementary technological and cultivated-land habitat improvements. This study links a land-consolidation mega-program with a multi-pillar CSA index under an integrated PSRO framework and offers guidance for coordinating food security, climate resilience, and carbon mitigation.
To develop plant proteins with high foaming properties, potato protein isolate (PPI)-gliadin nanoparticles were prepared via a mild, low-energy, and facile method of weak alkaline pH-shifting combined with mild thermal treatment. As the PPI-to-gliadin mass ratio increased from 4:1 to 1:1, the nanoparticles transitioned from a “core-shell” structure to a structure with exposed gliadin. The nanoparticles exhibited smaller particle sizes, a more compact structure, and enhanced flexibility. In addition, the PPI aggregates in the system disappeared, and the system became homogeneous. Molecular dynamics simulation results indicated that hydrophobic interactions were the main force stabilizing the nanoparticles, and the interactions between patatin and α/β-gliadin likely contributed more to the self-assembly of the nanoparticles than did the interactions between patatin and γ-gliadin. The nanoparticles at a PPI-to-gliadin mass ratio of 1:1 showed exceptional foaming properties, with foamability and foam stability reaching 535.7% and 92.2%, respectively, which were 1.4 and 1.75 times those of sodium caseinate. Mechanistically, the diffusion stage may have played a dominant role in the adsorption process; therefore, the small size and high hydrophobicity of the gliadin-dominated nanoparticles ensured rapid diffusion (high Kdiff) and high foamability. Although smaller particles are more prone to detachment according to the desorption energy equation, the gliadin-dominated nanoparticles also exhibited high foam stability. This was attributed to their extensive interfacial deformation, which rendered the air-water interface smooth and transformed it into a near-complete protein film, thereby effectively increasing the interfacial desorption energy.
In response to the global threat posed by multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, this study established an efficient heterologous expression system for the antimicrobial peptide N6 in Pichia pastoris X-33. By employing an innovative 6His-2Flag dual-tag fusion strategy coupled with formic acid-mediated cleavage, we achieved a high-yield production of N6, with a final titer of 1.02 g/L—significantly surpassing previous reports and meeting the threshold for scalable industrial production. The expressed N6 exhibited potent and broad-spectrum antibacterial activity against clinical isolates of K. pneumoniae, with MIC values ranging from 2 to 8 μg/mL. Mechanistic studies revealed that N6 exerted rapid bactericidal and biofilm-eradicating effects through a multimodal action involving membrane disruption, metabolic interference, and induction of oxidative stress. In a murine systemic infection model, the N6 treatment significantly improved survival rates of mice to 70% and reduced bacterial burdens in key organs. This work not only identifies N6 as a promising therapeutic candidate against drug-resistant bacterial infections, but also provides a streamlined and cost-effective synthetic biology platform for the high-level production of antimicrobial peptides, thereby facilitating their clinical translation and industrial application.
Animal gut microbiomes—comprising bacteria, archaea, fungi, viruses, and protozoa—are fundamental to host evolution, physiology, and ecosystem resilience. This review synthesizes 21st-century advances in their diversity, spatiotemporal dynamics, and functional roles across the animal kingdom. Although high-throughput metagenomics has transformed the field, major biases remain: most studies still focus on domesticated vertebrates and fecal samples, leaving substantial “microbial dark matter” in wild hosts, invertebrates, and non-bacterial domains unexplored. We highlight how gut microbiomes mediate adaptation to environmental extremes, including hypoxia, temperature stress, and toxins, and how industrialization disrupts these communities, contributing to biodiversity loss and disease risk. We further integrate eco-evolutionary theory, multi-omics, and spatial modeling to clarify cross-kingdom interactions and functional networks. Finally, we discuss translational applications—including probiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), phage therapy, and synthetic consortia—and emphasize the need for global collaborative initiatives, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven discovery, and standardized databases to unlock the full potential of animal gut microbiomes for biodiversity conservation, climate resilience, and planetary health in the coming decades.
Abiotic stresses, including drought, salinity, heat, and nutrient imbalances, severely constrain cereal crop productivity and pose a growing threat to global food security under climate change. While traditional breeding has contributed to crop improvement, its limited speed and resolution necessitate the integration of advanced biotechnological approaches. Recent developments in genome editing, particularly CRISPR/Cas systems, alongside marker-assisted selection, genomic selection, and multi-omics technologies, have enabled precise manipulation of stress-responsive genes and accelerated trait discovery in major cereals such as wheat, rice, and maize. This review synthesises current advances in the physiological, molecular, and genomic mechanisms underlying abiotic stress tolerance, with a particular emphasis on integrative frameworks that combine genomics, phenomics, and computational approaches. Importantly, emerging constraints associated with genome editing, including off-target effects, delivery challenges, and mosaicism, highlight the need for complementary strategies. The integration of pangenomics, high-throughput phenotyping, artificial intelligence-assisted selection, and speed breeding represents a transformative shift toward systems-level crop improvement. Overall, this review proposes that future progress in developing climate-resilient cereals will depend not on individual technologies alone, but on their coordinated deployment within holistic, data-driven breeding pipelines capable of addressing complex and dynamic stress environments.
