Southwest University

About: Southwest University is a education organization based out in Chongqing, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Gene & Population. The organization has 29772 authors who have published 27755 publications receiving 409441 citations. The organization is also known as: Southwest University in Chongqing & SWU.

R2R3-MYB transcription factor MYB6 promotes anthocyanin and proanthocyanidin biosynthesis but inhibits secondary cell wall formation in Populus tomentosa

Abstract: The secondary cell wall is an important carbon sink in higher plants and its biosynthesis requires coordination of metabolic fluxes in the phenylpropanoid pathway. In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), MYB75 and the KNOX transcription factor KNAT7 form functional complexes to regulate secondary cell wall formation in the inflorescence stem. However, the molecular mechanism by which these transcription factors control different branches of the phenylpropanoid pathway remains poorly understood in woody species. We isolated an R2R3-MYB transcription factor MYB6 from Populus tomentosa and determined that it was expressed predominately in young leaves. Overexpression of MYB6 in transgenic poplar upregulated flavonoid biosynthetic gene expression, resulting in significantly increased accumulation of anthocyanin and proanthocyanidins. MYB6-overexpression plants showed reduced secondary cell wall deposition, accompanied by repressed expression of secondary cell wall biosynthetic genes. We further showed that MYB6 interacted physically with KNAT7 and formed functional complexes that acted to repress secondary cell wall development in poplar and Arabidopsis. The results provide an insight into the transcriptional mechanisms involved in the regulation of the metabolic fluxes between the flavonoid and lignin biosynthetic pathways in poplar.

A DEMATEL-based completion method for incomplete pairwise comparison matrix in AHP

Abstract: Pairwise comparison matrix (PCM) as a crucial component of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) presents the preference relations among alternatives. However, in many cases, the PCM is difficult to be completed, which obstructs the subsequent operations of the classical AHP. In this paper, based on decision-making and trial evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method which has ability to derive the total relation matrix from direct relation matrix, a new completion method for incomplete pairwise comparison matrix (iPCM) is proposed. The proposed method provides a new perspective to estimate the missing values in iPCMs with explicit physical meaning, which is straightforward and flexible. Several experiments are implemented as well to present the completion ability of the proposed method and some insights into the proposed method and matrix consistency.