Phenotypes of sessile organisms, such as plants, rely not only on their own genotypes but also on those of neighboring individuals. Previously, we incorporated such neighbor effects into a single-marker regression using the Ising model of ferromagnetism. However, little is known regarding how neighbor effects should be incorporated in quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping. In this study, we propose a new method for interval QTL mapping of neighbor effects, designated "neighbor QTL," the algorithm of which includes (1) obtaining conditional self-genotype probabilities with recombination fraction between flanking markers; (2) calculating conditional neighbor genotypic identity using the self-genotype probabilities; and (3) estimating additive and dominance deviations for neighbor effects. Our simulation using F2 and backcross lines showed that the power to detect neighbor effects increased as the effective range decreased. The neighbor QTL was applied to insect herbivory on Col × Kas recombinant inbred lines of Arabidopsis thaliana. Consistent with previous results, the pilot experiment detected a self-QTL effect on the herbivory at the GLABRA1 locus. Regarding neighbor QTL effects on herbivory, we observed a weak QTL on the top of chromosome 4, at which a weak self-bolting QTL was also identified. The neighbor QTL method is available as an R package (https//cran.r-project.org/package=rNeighborQTL), providing a novel tool to investigate neighbor effects in QTL studies.Discovering drug-target (protein) interactions (DTIs) is of great significance for researching and developing novel drugs, having a tremendous advantage to pharmaceutical industries and patients. However, the prediction of DTIs using wet-lab experimental methods is generally expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, different machine learning-based methods have been developed for this purpose, but there are still substantial unknown interactions needed to discover. Furthermore, data imbalance and feature dimensionality problems are a critical challenge in drug-target datasets, which can decrease the classifier performances that have not been significantly addressed yet. This paper proposed a novel drug-target interaction prediction method called PreDTIs. First, the feature vectors of the protein sequence are extracted by the pseudo-position-specific scoring matrix (PsePSSM), dipeptide composition (DC) and pseudo amino acid composition (PseAAC); and the drug is encoded with MACCS substructure fingerings. Besides, we propose a FastUS algorithm to handle the class imbalance problem and also develop a MoIFS algorithm to remove the irrelevant and redundant features for getting the best optimal features. Finally, balanced and optimal features are provided to the LightGBM Classifier to identify DTIs, and the 5-fold CV validation test method was applied to evaluate the prediction ability of the proposed method. Prediction results indicate that the proposed model PreDTIs is significantly superior to other existing methods in predicting DTIs, and our model could be used to discover new drugs for unknown disorders or infections, such as for the coronavirus disease 2019 using existing drugs compounds and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 protein sequences.Zona pellucida (ZP), which is composed of at most four extracellular glycoproteins (ZP1, ZP2, ZP3, and ZP4) in mammals, shelters the oocytes and is vital in female fertility. Several studies have identified the indispensable roles of ZP1-3 in maintaining normal female fertility. However, the understanding of ZP4 is still very poor because only one study on ZP4-associated infertility performed in rabbits has been reported up to date. Here we investigated the function of mammalian Zp4 by creating a knockout (KO) rat strain (Zp4-/- rat) using CRISPR-Cas9-mediated DNA-editing method. The influence of Zp4 KO on ZP morphology and some pivotal processes of reproduction, including oogenesis, ovulation, fertilization, and pup production, were studied using periodic acid-Schiff's staining, superovulation, in vitro fertilization, and natural mating. The ZP morphology in Zp4-/- rats was normal, and none of these pivotal processes was affected. This study renewed the knowledge of mammalian Zp4 by suggesting that Zp4 was completely dispensable for female fertility. Medical procedures and hospitalizations can be experienced as traumatic and can lead to post-traumatic stress reactions. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) shows promising results but very few long-term studies have been published. Therefore, our aim was to test the long-term (8 months post-treatment) effectiveness of EMDR in children and adolescents with medically related subthreshold post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Seventy-four children (including 39 with congenital or acquired heart disease) aged 4-15 (M = 9.6 years) with subthreshold PTSD after previous hospitalization were included into a parallel group randomized controlled trial. Crenolanib in vitro Participants were randomized to EMDR (n = 37) or care-as-usual (CAU) (n = 37; medical care only). The primary outcome was PTSD symptoms of the child. Secondary outcomes were symptoms of depression and blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia, sleep problems, and health-related quality of life (HrQoL) of the child. Assessments of all outcomes were planned at baseline and 8 weeks and 8 months after the start of EMDR/CAU. We hypothesized that the EMDR group would show significantly more improvements on all outcomes over time. Both groups showed improvements over time on child's symptoms of PTSD (only parent report), depression, BII phobia, sleep problems, and most HrQoL subscales. GEE analyses showed no significant differences between the EMDR group (nT2 = 33, nT3 = 30) and the CAU group (nT2 = 35, nT3 = 32) on the primary outcome. One superior effect of EMDR over time was found for reducing parent-reported BII phobia of the child. EMDR did not perform better than CAU in reducing subthreshold PTSD up to 8 months post-treatment in previously hospitalized children. Possible explanations and clinical implications are discussed.EMDR did not perform better than CAU in reducing subthreshold PTSD up to 8 months post-treatment in previously hospitalized children. Possible explanations and clinical implications are discussed.