SUMMARY
The mitochondrial alternative pathway (AP) represents an important photoprotective mechanism for the chloroplast, but the temperature sensitivity of its photoprotective role is unknown. In ...this study, using the aox1a Arabidopsis mutant, the photoprotective role of the AP was verified under various temperatures, and the mechanism underlying the temperature sensitivity of the AP’s photoprotective role was clarified. It was observed that the photoprotective role of the AP increased with rising temperature but was absent at low temperature. The photoprotective role of the AP was severely reduced under non‐photorespiratory conditions. Disturbance of the AP inhibited the conversion of glycine to serine in mitochondria, which may restrain upstream photorespiratory metabolism and aggravate photoinhibition. With rising temperatures, photorespiration accelerated and the restraint of photorespiration caused by disturbance of the AP also increased, determining the temperature sensitivity of the AP’s photoprotective role. We also verified that not only the AP but also the cytochrome pathway in mitochondria contributes to photoprotection by maintaining photorespiration.
Significance Statement
Photoprotection by the mitochondrial alternative pathway (AP) is enhanced at heat but disabled at chilling, which is due to (i) the AP’s contribution to photoprotection through maintaining photorespiration and (ii) acceleration of photorespiration with rising temperatures.
Primitive processing of e-waste potentially releases abundant organic contaminants to the environment, but the magnitudes and mechanisms remain to be adequately addressed. We conducted thermal ...treatment and open burning of typical e-wastes, that is, plastics and printed circuit boards. Emission factors of the sum of 39 polybrominated diphenyl ethers (∑39PBDE) were 817–1.60 × 105 ng g–1 in thermal treatment and nondetected-9.14 × 104 ng g–1, in open burning. Airborne particles (87%) were the main carriers of PBDEs, followed by residual ashes (13%) and gaseous constituents (0.3%), in thermal treatment, while they were 30%, 43% and 27% in open burning. The output–input mass ratios of ∑39PBDE were 0.12–3.76 in thermal treatment and 0–0.16 in open burning. All PBDEs were largely affiliated with fine particles, with geometric mean diameters at 0.61–0.83 μm in thermal degradation and 0.57–1.16 μm in open burning from plastic casings, and 0.44–0.56 and nondetected- 0.55 μm, from printed circuit boards. Evaporation and reabsorption may be the main emission mechanisms for lightly brominated BDEs, but heavily brominated BDEs tend to affiliate with particles from heating or combustion. The different size distributions of particulate PBDEs in emission sources and adjacent air implicated a noteworthy redisposition process during atmospheric dispersal.
In nature, plants are exposed to a dynamic light environment. Fluctuations in light decreased the photosynthetic light utilization efficiency (PLUE) of leaves, and much more severely in C
species ...than in C
species. However, little is known about the plasticity of PLUE under dynamic light in C
species. Present study focused on the influence of planting density to the photosynthesis under dynamic light in maize (Zea mays L.), a most important C
crop. In addition, the molecular mechanism behind photosynthetic adaptation to planting density were also explored by quantitative proteomics analysis. Results revealed that as planting density increases, maize leaves receive less light that fluctuates more. The maize planted at high density (HD) improved the PLUE under dynamic light, especially in the middle and later growth stages. Quantitative proteomics analysis showed that the transfer of nitrogen from Rubisco to RuBP regeneration and C
pathway related enzymes contributes to the photosynthetic adaptation to lower and more fluctuating light environment in HD maize. This study provides potential ways to further improve the light energy utilization efficiency of maize in HD.
With economic development and overnutrition, including high-fat diets (HFD) and high-glucose diets (HGD), the incidence of obesity in children is increasing, and thus, the incidence of precocious ...puberty is increasing. Therefore, it is of great importance to construct a suitable animal model of overnutrition-induced precocious puberty for further in-depth study. Here, we fed a HFD, HGD, or HFD combined with a HGD to pups after P-21 weaning, while weaned pups fed a normal diet served as the control group. The results showed that HFD combined with a HGD increased the body weight (BW) of weaned rat pups. In addition, a HFD, HGD, and HFD combined with a HGD lowered the age at which vaginal opening occurred and accelerated the vaginal cell cycle. Furthermore, a HFD combined with a HGD increased the weight of the uterus and ovaries of weaned rat pups. Additionally, a HFD combined with a HGD promoted the development of reproductive organs in weaned female rat pups. Ultimately, a HFD combined with a HGD was found to elevate the serum levels of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), leptin, adiponectin, and oestradiol (E2) and increase hypothalamic GnRH, Kiss-1, and GPR54 expression levels in weaned female rat pups. The current study found that overnutrition, such as that through a HFD combined with HGD, could induce precocious puberty in weaned female rat pups. In addition, a rat model of overnutrition-induced precocious puberty was established.
•A relatively inactive dynamic brain status occurred more often in SSNHL participants. Early-stage SSNHL participants showed decreased brain status transition number.•Disturbed neurovascular coupling ...restricted to the primary auditory cortex occurred in the intermediate- and late-stage SSNHL patients.•A significant shrinkage of the left medial superior frontal gyrus developed at the late stage.•Our study offered neuroimaging evidence for evolvement from functional to structural brain alterations of SSNHL patients with disease duration less than 1 month.
A cortical plasticity after long-duration single side deafness (SSD) is advocated with neuroimaging evidence while little is known about the short-duration SSDs. In this case-cohort study, we recruited unilateral sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) patients and age-, gender-matched health controls (HC), followed by comprehensive neuroimaging analyses. The primary outcome measures were temporal alterations of varied dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) states, neurovascular coupling (NVC) and brain region volume at different stages of SSNHL. The secondary outcome measures were pure-tone audiograms of SSNHL patients before and after treatment. A total of 38 SSNHL patients (21 55% male; mean standard deviation age, 45.05 15.83 years) and 44 HC (28 64% male; mean standard deviation age, 43.55 12.80 years) were enrolled. SSNHL patients were categorized into subgroups based on the time from disease onset to the initial magnetic resonance imaging scan: early- (n = 16; 1-6 days), intermediate- (n = 9; 7-13 days), and late- stage (n = 13; 14-30 days) groups. We first identified slow state transitions between varied dFNC states at early-stage SSNHL, then revealed the decreased NVC restricted to the auditory cortex at the intermediate- and late-stage SSNHL. Finally, a significantly decreased volume of the left medial superior frontal gyrus (SFGmed) was observed only in the late-stage SSNHL cohort. Furthermore, the volume of the left SFGmed is robustly correlated with both disease duration and patient prognosis. Our study offered neuroimaging evidence for the evolvement from functional to structural brain alterations of SSNHL patients with disease duration less than 1 month, which may explain, from a neuroimaging perspective, why early-stage SSNHL patients have better therapeutic responses and hearing recovery.
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Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) remains incurable with current standard therapy. We have previously reported that an increased expression of interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) receptor CD126 leads to resistance ...of CLL cells to chemotherapy and worse prognosis for patients with CLL. In this study, we determine whether autocrine IL‐6 production by CLL B cells is associated with poor clinical outcome and explore IL‐6‐mediated survival mechanism in primary CLL cells. Our results demonstrate that higher levels of autocrine IL‐6 are significantly associated with shorter absolute lymphocyte doubling time, patients received treatment, without complete remission, advanced Binet stages, 17p/11q deletion, and shorter time to first time treatment and progression‐free survival. IL‐6 activated both STAT3 and nuclear factor kappa B (NF‐κB) in primary CLL cells. Blocking IL‐6 receptor and JAK2 inhibited IL‐6‐mediated activation of STAT3 and NF‐κB. Our study demonstrates that an increased autocrine IL‐6 production by CLL B‐cells are associated with worse clinical outcome for patients with CLL. IL‐6 promotes CLL cell survival by activating both STAT3 and NF‐κB through diverse signaling cascades. Neutralizing IL‐6 or blocking IL‐6 receptor might contribute overcoming the resistance of CLL cells to chemotherapy. We propose that the measurement of autocrine IL‐6 could be a useful approach to predict clinical outcome.
Children in China with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are prone to vitamin A deficiency (VAD). The present study compared two vitamin A supplements (VAS) in two groups of children with ASD and VAD ...to explore a better VAS program for children with ASD.
A total of 138 3-8-year-old children with ASD (118 males and 20 females) were enrolled in this 6-month study. Of these 138 children, 82 who had VAD (ASD-VAD) were divided into two VAS groups that received the recommended VAS program (RNI-VAS) or a weekly dose of VAS (WD-VAS). The 56 children who had normal vitamin A levels (ASD-VAN) served as a control group. The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) was used to assess the severity of social impairment before and after the interventions. Their serum retinol (VA) and oxytocin (OXT) concentrations, the mRNA expression of retinoic acid receptors (RARs), and CD38 gene in peripheral blood was measured before and after the 6-month intervention.
The WD-VAS program increased VA levels better than the RNI-VAS program did (P < 0.01), and it significantly decreased SRS scores (P < 0.05). In addition, the change in VA was positively correlated with the change in mRNA levels in RARβ (r = 0.2441, P = 0.0092), the CD38 in PBMC (r = 0.2729, P = 0.0033), and the change in OXT concentration in serum (r = 0.3735, P < 0.0001). VA was also negatively correlated with changes in SRS scores across the three groups (r = -0.2615, P = 0.0026).
The WD-VAS might be more suitable for children with ASD and VAD than other interventions to improve both VA and social functioning, which may be mediated through the RARβ-CD38-OXT axis.
Gastrointestinal (GI) cancer, a common malignant tumor with a high incidence in China, is showing a trend of rising incidence and is afflicting increasingly younger patients. Meanwhile, there have ...been constant development and innovations in new therapeutic technologies, among which, immunotherapy is now leading in a new era in the treatment of GI cancer. However, the complexity and diversity of immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) bring many obstacles to the immunotherapy of solid tumors in the GI tract. In this paper, focusing on solid tumors in the GI tract, we reviewed the main factors affecting the formation of immunosuppressive TME, and summarized strategies for targeted immunosuppressive TME-based therapies. Moreover, we analyzed the synergistic mechanism of various combination immunotherapies and reported on the latest progress in and future direction of immunotherapy for GI cancer, intending to provide new perspectives for treating solid tumors in the GI tract with immumotherapy.
The fabrication of crystalline COF materials with predictable structures and desirable features is one of the crystal engineering strategic goals. Many synthetic factors play an invisible role in the ...crystallization of COFs, and the nature of the solvent is one of the most influential. Herein, we synthesized two series of benzothiadiazole-based COFs using three pairs of solvent systems of different polarities to explore the effect on the COF synthesis product crystallization, as well as the photocatalytic performance of H
2
evolution under visible light irradiation. The results showed that the crystallinity of the COFs increases with increasing solvent polarity. This work showed that increasing the solvent polarity not only enhanced the crystallinity, but also enhanced the thermal stability and gave highly crystalline COFs with a shorter reaction time (30 min). More interestingly, the amorphous materials generated by the use of less solvent polarity (dioxane) can be transferred into crystalline COFs by increasing the polarity of the solvent with butanol or ethanol. The high crystallinity COFs exhibited excellent hydrogen evolution rates. Therefore, this work demonstrates that the choice of solvent is very important.
The higher the polarity or the hydrogen bond donor ability of the solvent, the more easily COFs crystallize, and the higher the COF crystallization, the higher the photocatalytic H
2
evolution.
Plants are always exposed to dynamic light. The photosynthetic light use efficiency of leaves is lower in dynamic light than in uniform irradiance. Research on the influence of environmental factors ...on dynamic photosynthesis is very limited. Nitrogen is critical for plants, especially for photosynthesis. Low nitrogen (LN) decreases ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) and thus limits photosynthesis. The decrease in Rubisco also delays photosynthetic induction in LN leaves; therefore, we hypothesized that the difference of photosynthetic CO
fixation between uniform and dynamic light will be greater in LN leaves compared to leaves with sufficient nitrogen supply.
To test this hypothesis, soybean plants were grown under low or high nitrogen (HN), and the photosynthetic gas exchange, enzyme activity and protein amount in leaves were measured under uniform and dynamic light. Unexpectedly, dynamic light caused less photosynthetic suppression, rather than more, in LN leaves than in HN leaves. The underlying mechanism was also clarified. Short low-light (LL) intervals did not affect Rubisco activity but clearly deactivated fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase (FBPase) and sedoheptulose-1,7-bisphosphatase (SBPase), indicating that photosynthetic induction after a LL interval depends on the reactivation of FBPase and SBPase rather than Rubisco. In LN leaves, the amount of Rubisco decreased more than FBPase and SBPase, so FBPase and SBPase were present in relative excess. A lower fraction of FBPase and SBPase needs to be activated in LN leaves for photosynthesis recovery during the high-light phase of dynamic light. Therefore, photosynthetic recovery is faster in LN leaves than in HN leaves, which relieves the photosynthetic suppression caused by dynamic light in LN leaves.
Contrary to our expectations, dynamic light caused less photosynthetic suppression, rather than more, in LN leaves than in HN leaves of soybean. This is the first report of a stress condition alleviating the photosynthetic suppression caused by dynamic light.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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