Reverse chemical ecology based on insect functional odorant binding proteins has been extensively studied to screen behaviourally active compounds, whereas chemosensory proteins (CSPs), which are ...reportedly involved in olfactory chemical reception and could serve as molecular targets remain unclear. In the present study, two behaviourally active compounds for Cnaphalocrocis medinalis, a serious pest of rice in Asia, were successfully screened via an antenna‐biased CSP, CmedCSP33. Fluorescence competitive binding assays showed that CmedCSP33 could bind to seven out of 32 rice volatiles. Fluorescence quenching experiments revealed that CmedCSP33 forms a stable complex with nerolidol and β‐ionone, and circular dichroism (CD) spectra demonstrated that these two compounds cause conformational changes in CmedCSP33. Furthermore, H‐tube olfactometer bioassays showed that C. medinalis displayed prominent attractant responses to nerolidol and prominent repellent responses to β‐ionone. Additionally, binding assays and CD spectra at different pH values implied that extensive conformational changes may be a general feature of CSPs for triggering the subsequent chemical transduction. Overall, our findings provide evidence for the involvement of CSPs in olfactory perception, and a protocol for effectively screening behaviourally active compounds.
Aims
Huanglongbing (HLB)‐affected citrus often display zinc deficiency symptoms. In this study, supplemental zinc was applied to citrus to determine its effect on Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus ...(Las) titre, HLB symptoms, and leaf microbiome.
Methods and Results
HLB‐affected citrus were treated with various amounts of zinc. The treatments promoted Las growth and affected microbiomes in citrus leaves. Phylochip™‐based results indicated that 5475 of over 50 000 known Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in 52 phyla were detected in the midribs of HLB‐affected citrus, of which Proteobacteria was the most abundant, followed by Firmicutes and Actinobacteria. In comparison, the microbiomes of zinc‐treated diseased plants had overall more OTUs with higher amounts of Proteobacteria, but decreased percentages of Firmicutes and Actinobacteria. In addition, more OTUs of siderophore‐producing bacteria were present. Only zinc‐sensitive Staphylococcaceae had higher OTU's in the diseased plants without zinc treatments.
Conclusions
Although HLB‐affected citrus appear zinc deficient, zinc amendments increased the pathogen levels and shifted the microbiome.
Significance and Impact of the Study
HLB is currently the most devastating disease of citrus worldwide. Zinc is often applied to HLB‐affected citrus due to zinc deficiency symptoms. This study provided new insights into the potential effects of zinc on HLB and the microbial ecology of citrus.
The internal transport barrier (ITB) has been obtained in ELMy H-mode plasmas by neutron beam injection and lower hybrid wave heating on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). The ...ITB structure has been observed in profiles of ion temperature, electron temperature, and electron density within < 0.5. It was also observed that the ITB formation is stepwise. Due to the ITB formation, the confinement quality H98y2 increases from 1 to 1.1 and the normalized beta, βN, increases from 1.5 to near 2. The fishbone activity observed during the ITB phase suggests the central safety factor q(0) ∼ 1. Transport coefficients are calculated by particle balance and power balance analysis, showing an obvious reduction after the ITB formation.
.
It has been accepted that low-frequency vibrational modes are causally correlated to fundamental plastic rearrangement events in amorphous solids, irrespective of the structural details. But the ...mode-event relationship is far from clear. In this work, we carry out case studies using atomistic simulations of a three-dimensional Cu
50
Zr
50
model glass under athermal, quasistatic shear. We focus on the first four plastic events, and carefully trace the spatiotemporal evolution of the associated low-frequency normal modes with applied shear strain. We reveal that these low-frequency modes get highly entangled with each other, from which the critical mode emerges spontaneously to predict a shear transformation event. But the detailed emergence picture is event by event and shear-protocol dependent, even for the first plastic event. This demonstrates that the instability of a plastic event is a result of extremely complex multiple-path choice or competition, and there is a strong, elastic interaction among neighboring instability events. At last, the generality of the present findings is shown to be applicable to covalent-bonded glasses.
Graphical abstract
Purpose: Tobacco smoking, biomass smoke, and occupational exposure are the main risk factors for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The present study analyzes data on exposure to these ...factors in a cohort of patients with COPD and assesses their differences in demographic and clinical characteristics. Patients and Methods: The cross-sectional observational study was conducted from November 2016 to December 2019. Inclusion criteria were patients aged over 40 years old with post-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV.sub.1)/forced vital capacity (FVC) <0.7. At baseline, demographic features and exposure history were recorded. Moreover, respiratory symptoms were assessed by the COPD Assessment Test (CAT) and modified Medical Research Council scale (mMRC). A generalized linear mixed model was used to adjust for potential confounders. Results: A total of 5183 patients with COPD were included in the final analysis. The results demonstrate that exposure to tobacco combined with other risk factors resulted in significantly higher CAT scores (16.0 + or - 6.7 vs 15.3 + or - 6.3, P = 0.003) and more severe dyspnea (patients with mMRC greater than or equal to 2, 71.5% vs 61.6%, P < 0.001) than exposure to tobacco alone. In addition, COPD patients with biomass smoke exposure alone had higher CAT scores than patients with only tobacco or occupational exposure (17.5 + or - 6.3 vs 15.3 + or - 6.3, and 15.2 + or - 6.3, respectively, P < 0.05 for each comparison) and were more likely to be female and older. In addition, COPD patients who suffered from occupational exposure developed more severe dyspnea than those exposed to tobacco alone (70.8% vs 61.6%, P < 0.05), as did those exposed to biomass smoke alone (74.2% vs 61.6%, P < 0.05). This difference remained strong even after adjustment for potential confounders. Conclusion: There are significant demographic and clinical differences among COPD patients with tobacco smoking, biomass smoke, and occupational exposures. Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tobacco, biomass smoke, occupational exposure
To compare the efficacy of prostatic artery embolization (PAE) in the treatment of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) with different prostatic volume (PV).
In this single-center, ...retrospective study, 137 patients, mean age (70±11) years, range 50-89 years, undergoing PAE for BPH between January 2015 and May 2017 in Chinese PLA General Hospital were involved and divided into three groups according to the PV (group A, >80 ml; group B, 40-80 ml; group C, <40 ml). The changes of international prostate symptoms (IPSS) score, quality of life (QoL) score, and maximum urinary flow rate (Q(max)) were compared among the three groups at 1, 6, and 12 months post-PAE. Correlation between the proportion of prostate ischemia at 1 month post-PAE and the proportion of PV reduction at 12 month post-PAE were analyzed, also the correlation between both of them with IPSS and QoL score were analyzed, respectively.
Mean baseline prostate volumes were 110 ml in group A (
62), 67 ml in group B (
47) and 33 ml in group C
Crisaborole 2% ointment is a non-steroidal treatment for mild-moderate atopic dermatitis (AD) and may produce fewer adverse effects than topical corticosteroids (TCS). We used PS-OCT to quantify ...dermal collagen at baseline and after 29 days of treatment with crisaborole and betamethasone valerate (BMV), in 32 subjects. PS-OCT detected a mean increase 1 × 10-6, 95% CI (6.3, 1.37) × 10-6 in dermal birefringence following TCS use (p < 0.0001, ad-hoc, not powered), whereas a change of -4 × 10-6, 95% CI (-32, 24) × 10-6 was detected for crisaborole (p = 0.77, ad-hoc, not powered). These results could suggest a differential effect on dermal collagen between the two compounds. PS-OCT may thus find an important role in safety assessment of novel AD treatment’ and larger trials are warranted.
The effectiveness of fluid mixing in a reactor is crucial for the success of chemical reactions. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-phase flow reactor for continuous flow technology and employ ...computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to optimize the mixing efficiency for a liquid-liquid system. The uniformity index and phase boundary area per unit volume (custom parameters representing mixing efficiency) are used to characterize the mixing effects of the fluid. We investigate the impact of stirring paddle structure, rotation speed, and feed flow rate on fluid mixing. The numerical simulation results demonstrate that employing multiple stirring paddles enhances the mixing effects of the fluid, but there is an upper limit to this improvement. Increasing the rotation speed improves fluid mixing, but excessively high speeds generate a strong centrifugal effect. Effectively enhancing fluid mixing can be achieved by reducing the feed flow rate to prolong the reaction time. These findings are valuable for the application of multi-phase flow reactor.
Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) is an autoimmune disease of the nervous system and is the most common acute polyneuropathy. Both cellular and humoral immunity are believed to be involved in the ...pathogenesis of GBS, and various types of activated CD4+ T cells are thought to orchestrate the onset and progression of GBS. Lymphoplasma exchange (LPE) filtering out activated lymphocytes while exchanging plasma has been used for GBS treatment for years. However the treatment is still not yet optimal. In order to assess the efficacy of this treatment, we evaluate the effect of LPE and determine the appropriate frequency of LPE treatments for GBS patients through comparing the neurological deficit scores and the changes in related immunology indicators of GBS patients before and after LPE treatment. Twenty-four patients with GBS who received LPE were evaluated for immunologic indicants before treatment, on the second day, and the fourth day after the treatment. The immunoglobulin complement and CD4+ T lymphocyte subsets were tested by flow cytometry. The patients' Medical Research Council sum scores were increased from 25.7±10.4 up to. 36.7±10.4 (P=0.019) and their Hughes scores decreased from 3.7±0.76 to 3.1±0.73 (P=0.027) at 7 days after LPE. In the peripheral blood from patients received LPE treatment, the levels of immunoglobulin, complement, monocytes and fibrinogen were significantly reduced. The percentages of Th1 and Th17 cells in the CD4+ T lymphocyte subsets were significantly decreased, whereas the Th2 and Treg cells were increased in patients after treatment. The changes in CD4+T lymphocyte subsets were correlated with patient MRC score changes. Our data indicate that LPE is effective in treating GBS patients by directly removing immunoglobulin, complement, monocytes, and fibrinogen as well as regulating lymphocyte subsets in the peripheral blood.
Root rot caused by
Fusarium solani
, is one of the most severe diseases in pepper (
Capsicum annuum
L.). Grafting has been attempted as an effective means to control the disease, but little is known ...about the disease resistance mechanism in grafted pepper. Therefore, we investigated the changes of biomass, cell structure, and the secondary metabolism in roots of control (non-grafted pepper) and grafted peppers using cvs. Weishi and Buyeding as rootstocks and the cv. Xinfeng 2 as a scion. After a manual inoculation, less
F. solani
invaded grafted pepper roots and consequently less serious injury to the root cell ultra-structure compared with the control was found. The roots of grafted pepper infected with
F. solani
exhibited greater biomass production and root activity than the roots of infected controls. Grafting led to an increased content of salicylic acid, benzoic acid, vanillin, lignin, and polyamines, as well as activities of phenylalanine ammonia lyase, polyphenoloxidase, and peroxidase. These results suggest that grafting improved the resistance of peppers to root rot.
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