Brucellosis has become a global zoonotic disease, seriously endangering the health of people all over the world. Vaccination is an effective strategy for protection against Brucella infection in livestock in developed countries. However, current vaccines are pathogenic to humans and pregnant animals, which limits their use. Therefore, it is very important to improve the safety and immune protection of Brucella vaccine. In this study, different bioinformatics approaches were carried out to predict the physicochemical properties, T/B epitope, and tertiary structure of Omp2b and Omp31. Then, these two proteins were sequentially linked, and the Cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4) variable region was fused to the N-terminal of the epitope sequence. In addition, molecular docking was performed to show that the structure of the fusion protein vaccine had strong affinity with B7 (B7-1, B7-2). This study showed that the designed vaccine containing CTLA-4 had high potency against Brucella, which could provide a reference for the future development of efficient brucellosis vaccines.

Mining and related activities caused plant productivity and soil carbon content reduced in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Soil carbon plays an essential role in ecosystem stability. Soil carbon and associated changes in soil property were important drivers and indicators of ecosystem recovery at post-mining areas. We selected 5, 10 and 20 years of restoration lands to examine the effect of artificial grassland on vegetation community and soil property. Results showed that artificial grassland markedly increased the biomass, canopy coverage and soil carbon content, but decreased soil bulk density and soil water content. After 10-year of restoration, both the biomass and soil organic carbon (SOC) content reached the peak, however, soil bulk density and soil water content arrived the lowest at depth of 0-20 cm and got the highest at depth of 20-30 cm. At 20-year of restoration land, the biomass (above- and belowground) and SOC content (0-30 cm) significantly decreased by 46.2 % and 67.0 % with compared to 10-year of restoration land, while soil bulk density of 0-10 cm and 10-20 cm depths increased by 7.8 % and 21.4 %, respectively, soil water content (0-30 cm) increased by 11.6 % . It was evident that artificial grassland as an effective ecological restoration approach could improve soil physic-chemical property, while properly anthropogenic perturbations were also needed to stimulate plant growth.