Non-coding RNA (ncRNA) is a kind of RNA, produced by genomic transcription and does not encode protein, but can regulate the function of genes, thus widely regulating pathological and physiological ...processes. The dynamic balance of the reticular structure between them is needed to regulate the homeostasis, the abnormal regulation of one of them may lead to the occurrence of the disease. CircRNA is mainly involved in the evolution of CVD through sponge-like regulation of miRNAs, subsequently regulating miRNAs and their targets, mRNA functions. The role of circRNA–miRNA–mRNA axis in pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases has been recently reported and highlighted. In this review, the emerging roles of circRNA–miRNA–mRNA axis in cardiovascular pathophysiology and regulation were discussed, with a novel focus on cardioprotective network activities of the circRNA.
•circRNA–miRNA–mRNA axis is an important mechanism for in the pathogenesis and development of CVDs. Systematic analysis of circRNA–miRNA–mRNA in CVDs is lacking and greatly needed.•This is the most comprehensive review to explore the current knowledge concerning circRNA–miRNA–mRNA axis in the pathogenesis and development of CVDs and abnormal conditions.•Here, we provided the most systematic analysis so far of circRNA–miRNA–mRNA axis in CVDs, which could promote further mechanism and experimental study.
Up-conversion electroluminescence, in which the energy of a emitted photon is higher than that of the excitation electron, is observed in quantum-dot light-emitting diodes. Here, we study its ...mechanism by investigating the effect of thermal energy on the charge injection dynamic. Based on the results of temperature-dependent electroluminescence and theoretical analysis, we reveal that at sub-bandgap voltage, holes can be successfully injected into quantum-dots via thermal-assisted thermionic-emission mechanism, thereby enabling the sub-bandgap turn-on and up-conversion electroluminescence of the devices. Further theoretical deduction and experimental results confirm that thermal-assisted hole-injection is the universal mechanism responsible for the up-conversion electroluminescence. This work uncovers the charge injection process and unlocks the sub-bandgap turn-on mechanism, which paves the road for the development of up-conversion devices with power conversion efficiency over 100%.
Realizing of full-color quantum-dot LED display remains a challenge because of the poor stability of the blue quantum-dot and the immature inkjet-printing color patterning technology. Here, we ...develop a multifunctional tandem LED by stacking a yellow quantum-dot LED with a blue organic LED using an indium-zinc oxide intermediate connecting electrode. Under parallel connection and alternate-current driving, the tandem LED is full-color-tunable, which can emit red, green and blue primary colors as well as arbitrary colors that cover a 63% National Television System Committee color triangle. Under series connection and direct current driving, the tandem LED can emit efficient white light with a high brightness of 107000 cd m
and a maximum external quantum efficiency up to 26.02%. The demonstrated hybrid tandem LED, with multi-functionality of full-color-tunability and white light-emission, could find potential applications in both full-color-display and solid-state-lighting.
Emerging studies have shown that circular RNAs could be ideal biomarkers and even potential therapeutic targets for some tumors, including bladder cancer. However, only a few studies have ...investigated the circular RNAs in human bladder cancer. The key circular RNA molecules are closely related to bladder cancer and their roles remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated a novel circular RNA molecule, hsa‐circ‐0003221(circPTK2), which is differentially expressed in bladder carcinoma. Significant differential expression levels of circPTK2 were confirmed with quantitative PCR in 40 pairs of tissue and blood samples from patients with bladder carcinoma. Moreover, circPTK2 levels both in tissue and blood were significantly correlated with several clinicopathologic characteristics, including poor differentiation (P = 0.0103 in tissue, P = 0.024 in blood), N2‐N3 lymph node metastasis (P = 0.0065 in tissue, P = 0.016 in blood), and T(II–III–IV) stage (P = 0.008 in tissue, P = 0.0003 in blood). Quantitative PCR results confirmed that circPTK2 is highly expressed in migrated cells separated by Transwell assay and in metastatic lymph nodes of tumors transplanted in nude mice. In vitro silence of circPTK2 by small interfering RNA inhibited the proliferation and migration of bladder cancer cells. On the contrary, circPTK2 overexpression promoted proliferation and migration. This study showed that circPTK2 promotes proliferation and migration of cells and may be a novel potential biomarker and therapeutic target for bladder cancer diagnosis and therapy.
Hsa_circ_0003221 (circPTK2), a circular RNA molecule closely related to bladder cancer, showed significant differences in the clinical tissue and blood samples of patients with bladder cancer. Further experiments showed that this circular RNA molecule promotes proliferation and cell migration in bladder cancer cells. Our results indicated that circPTK2 may be a new potential biomarker or a target for bladder cancer diagnosis and therapy.
Antibiotic residues could promote the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environments, and biodegradation represent a major route for antibiotic removal. Previous studies have ...showed that earthworm could enhance the degradation of certain organic contaminants, however, its effectiveness in ciprofloxacin removal and ARG reduction in soil remains unclear. In the present study, high-performance liquid chromatography, 16S rRNA gene sequencing and high-throughput quantitative PCR were employed to explore the effects of earthworm addition on ciprofloxacin removal and ARG abundance in ciprofloxacin-amended soil. Ciprofloxacin removal was significantly higher in earthworm cast as compare to control soil, and ARG abundance in earthworm cast was significantly lower than that of control soil. Procrustes analysis together with Mantel test showed that the ARG profiles were strongly associated with bacterial communities, indicating that the lower abundance of ARGs in cast samples could be attributed to changes in bacterial community compositions by earthworm activity. Flavobacterium and Turicibacter were enriched in cast samples, which were negatively correlated with ciprofloxacin concentration (p < 0.05), implying their potential roles in ciprofloxacin removal. These results suggested that earthworm gut is a hotspot for ciprofloxacin removal, and could be an option for mitigation of antibiotic pollution in soil.
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•Ciprofloxacin removal is significantly enhanced by earthworm activities.•Earthworm gut is a hotspot for ciprofloxacin removal.•ARG abundance significantly decreased in earthworm cast compared to soil.•Earthworm can be a cost-effective option for antibiotic removal and ARG reduction.
Since the 1970s, species abundance distributions (SADs) have been one of the most fundamental issues in ecology and have frequently been investigated and reviewed. However, there was surprisingly ...little consensus. This study focuses on three essential questions. (1) Is there a general pattern of SAD that no community can violate it? (2) If it exists, what does it look like? (3) Why is it like this? The frequency distributions of 19,833 SADs from eight datasets (including eleven taxonomic groups from terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems) suggest that a general pattern of SAD might exist. According to two hypotheses (the finiteness of the total energy and the causality from the entropy to the diversity), this study assumes that the general pattern of SAD is approximately consistent with Zipf's law, which means that Zipf's law might be more easily to observe when one investigates any SAD. In the future, this conjecture not only needs to be tested (or supported) by more and more datasets, but also depends on how well it is explained from different angles of theories.
Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are emerging contaminants posing a potential worldwide human health risk. Intensive animal husbandry is believed to be a major contributor to the increased ...environmental burden of ARGs. Despite the volume of antibiotics used in China, little information is available regarding the corresponding ARGs associated with animal farms. We assessed type and concentrations of ARGs at three stages of manure processing to land disposal at three large-scale (10,000 animals per year) commercial swine farms in China. In-feed or therapeutic antibiotics used on these farms include all major classes of antibiotics except vancomycins. High-capacity quantitative PCR arrays detected 149 unique resistance genes among all of the farm samples, the top 63 ARGs being enriched 192-fold (median) up to 28,000-fold (maximum) compared with their respective antibiotic-free manure or soil controls. Antibiotics and heavy metals used as feed supplements were elevated in the manures, suggesting the potential for coselection of resistance traits. The potential for horizontal transfer of ARGs because of transposon-specific ARGs is implicated by the enrichment of transposases—the top six alleles being enriched 189-fold (median) up to 90,000-fold in manure—as well as the high correlation (r ² = 0.96) between ARG and transposase abundance. In addition, abundance of ARGs correlated directly with antibiotic and metal concentrations, indicating their importance in selection of resistance genes. Diverse, abundant, and potentially mobile ARGs in farm samples suggest that unmonitored use of antibiotics and metals is causing the emergence and release of ARGs to the environment.
The rapid construction of reservoir in river basin generates a river-reservoir system containing an environmental gradient from river system to reservoir system in modern aquatic environment ...worldwide. Profiles of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in river-reservoir system is essential to better understand their dynamic mechanisms in aquatic eco-environment. In this study, we investigated the diversity, abundance, distribution of ARGs and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in a representative river-reservoir system using high-throughput quantitative PCR, as well as ranked the factors (e.g. antibiotics, bacterial biomass, bacteria communities, and MGEs) influencing the patterns of ARGs based on structural equation models (SEMs). Seasonal variations in absolute abundance of ARGs and MGEs exhibited similar trends with local rainfall, suggesting that seasonal runoff induced by the rainfall potentially promote the absolute abundance of ARGs and MGEs. In contrast, environmental gradient played more important roles in the detected number, relative abundance, distribution pattern of ARGs and MGEs in the river-reservoir system. Moreover, environmental gradient also made the co-occurrence patterns associated with ARGs subtypes, MGEs and bacteria genera in river system different from those in reservoir system. The SEMs revealed that MGEs contributed the most to shape the ARG profiles. Overall, our findings provide novel insights into the mechanisms of environmental gradient on ARGs dynamics in river-reservoir system, probably via influencing the MGEs, antibiotics, pathogenic bacteria community and nonpathogenic bacteria community.
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•Seasonal rainfall potentially promoted the absolute abundance of ARGs and MGEs.•Environmental gradient played important roles in the distribution pattern of ARGs and MGEs.•MGEs contributed the most to shape the ARG profiles both in river and reservoir systems.
To study the energy storage and dissipation characteristics of deep rock under two-dimensional compression with constant confining pressure, the single cyclic loading-unloading two-dimensional ...compression tests were performed on granite specimens with two height-to-width (
H/W
) ratios under five confining pressures. Three energy density parameters (input energy density, elastic energy density and dissipated energy density) in the axial and lateral directions of granite specimens under different confining pressures were calculated using the area integral method. The experimental results show that, for the specimens with a specific
H/W
ratio, these three energy density parameters in the axial and lateral directions increase nonlinearly with the confining pressure as quadratic polynomial functions. Under constant confining pressure compression, the linear energy storage law of granite specimens in the axial and lateral directions was founded. Using the linear energy storage law in different directions, the elastic energy density in various directions (axial elastic energy density, lateral elastic energy density and total elastic energy density) of granite under any specific confining pressures can be calculated. When the
H/W
ratio varies from 1:1 to 2:1, the lateral compression energy storage coefficient increases and the corresponding axial compression energy storage coefficient decreases, while the total compression energy storage coefficient is almost independent of the
H/W
ratio.
Anaerobic ammonium oxidation coupled to iron(III) reduction, termed Feammox, is a newly discovered nitrogen cycling process. However, little is known about the roles of electron shuttles in the ...Feammox reactions. In this study, two forms of Fe(III) (oxyhydr)oxide ferrihydrite (ex situ ferrihydrite and in situ ferrihydrite) were used in dissimilatory Fe(III) reduction (DIR) enrichments from paddy soil. Evidence for Feammox in DIR enrichments was demonstrated using the 15N-isotope tracing technique. The extent and rate of both the 30N2–29N2 and Fe(II) formation were enhanced when amended with electron shuttles (either 9,10-anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonate (AQDS) or biochar) and further simulated when these two shuttling compounds were combined. Although the Feammox-associated Fe(III) reduction accounted for only a minor proportion of total Fe(II) formation compared to DIR, it was estimated that the potentially Feammox-mediated N loss (0.13–0.48 mg N L–1 day–1) was increased by 17–340% in the enrichments by the addition of electron shuttles. The addition of electron shuttles led to an increase in the abundance of unclassified Pelobacteraceae, Desulfovibrio, and denitrifiers but a decrease in Geobacter. Overall, we demonstrated a stimulatory effect of electron shuttles on Feammox that led to higher N loss, suggesting that electron shuttles might play a crucial role in Feammox-mediated N loss from soils.
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