This paper discusses the spread of several special techniques for tomb ceiling construction in Northeast Asia from the 2nd to the 5th centuries and the mixed beliefs of Buddhism and the cult of the ...Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu 西王母) that were embedded in the design of these ceilings. In the 2nd century, stone tombs with ceilings formed by stepped layers of stone slabs flourished in Shandong and northern Jiangsu. These tombs are usually believed to be the prototypes of the stone tombs with more complicated stepped ceilings that appeared in the Goguryeo Kingdom on the Korean Peninsula in the 4th century. However, the way in which the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 CE) stone tombs in eastern China influenced the Goguryeo tombs over relatively long distances in the following centuries is open for discussion. This paper argues that Youzhou 幽州, i.e., the Province of You 幽 ruling the areas including Beijing, northern Hebei, Liaoning, and the northwest of the Korean Peninsula, was a crucial area for the dissemination of these special ceilings of stone tombs. The officials of the Province of You were keen to introduce highly developed masonry craftsmanship from Shandong to construct their ideal shelters for an afterlife in an age full of regional wars and unexpected deaths. Newly introduced Buddhism and traditional beliefs in the immortal land of the Queen Mother of the West were potential driving forces for the dissemination and popularity of these stone ceilings as spaces for worship.
This review is intended to reflect the recent progress on therapeutic applications of nanomaterials in amyloid diseases. The progress on anti‐amyloid functions of various nanomaterials including ...inorganic nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles, carbon nanomaterials and biomolecular aggregates, is reviewed and discussed. The main functionalization strategies for general nanoparticle modifications are reviewed for potential applications of targeted therapeutics. The interaction mechanisms between amyloid peptides and nanomaterials are discussed from the perspectives of dominant interactions and kinetics. The encapsulation of anti‐amyloid drugs, targeted drug delivery, controlled drug release and drug delivery crossing blood brain barrier by application of nanomaterials would also improve the therapeutics of amyloid diseases.
This review highlights the recent progress on therapeutic applications of nanomaterials in amyloid diseases. Nanomaterials as potential anti‐amyloid drugs and drug delivery systems for currently available molecules are reviewed and the interaction mechanism between amyloid peptides and various nanomaterials is also discussed.
Abstract
By electronically wiring-up living cells with abiotic conductive surfaces, bioelectrochemical systems (BES) harvest energy and synthesize electric-/solar-chemicals with unmatched ...thermodynamic efficiency. However, the establishment of an efficient electronic interface between living cells and abiotic surfaces is hindered due to the requirement of extremely close contact and high interfacial area, which is quite challenging for cell and material engineering. Herein, we propose a new concept of a single cell electron collector, which is
in-situ
built with an interconnected intact conductive layer on and cross the individual cell membrane. The single cell electron collector forms intimate contact with the cellular electron transfer machinery and maximizes the interfacial area, achieving record-high interfacial electron transfer efficiency and BES performance. Thus, this single cell electron collector provides a superior tool to wire living cells with abiotic surfaces at the single-cell level and adds new dimensions for abiotic/biotic interface engineering.
Bionic algorithms have always played an important role in industrial, agricultural, and scientific research. The optimization of bionics algorithms has always been the focus of scholars in various ...countries. A whale algorithm based on optimization based on adaptive convergence and Levy features (IWOA) is proposed to overcome the disadvantages, such as low precision, slow convergence speed and tending to involve the local optimum of the whale algorithm. The improved Bernouilli Shift map is used to initialize the population to maintain diversity of the population. Optimizing the adaptive convergence factor is able to balance the local and global optimization ability. The Levy flight mechanism is introduced to optimize foraging behavior and improve global searching ability. In addition, the trigger rule is applied to screen individuals after each iteration to maintain individual vitality and enhance overall performance of the algorithm. In the simulation, IWOA, Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, Whale Optimization Algorithm and the optimized whale algorithms CWOA, LWOA are compared using the 20 classical test functions. The simulation results demonstrate that the IWOA algorithm possesses good global and local searching ability, especially in solving multi-peak and high-dimensional functions.
The reversible boronic acid-diol interaction empowers boronic acid receptors' saccharide binding capacities, rendering them a class of lectin mimetic, termed "boronlectins". Boronic acids follow ...lectin functions not just in being able to bind saccharides, but in multivalent saccharide binding that enhances both affinity and selectivity. For almost a decade, efforts have been made to achieve and improve selectivity for given saccharide targets, most notably glucose, by using properly positioned boronic acids, offering multivalent interactions. Incorporation of several boronic acid groups into a covalent framework or non-covalent assembly of boronic acid are two general methods used to create such smart sensors, of which the latter resembles lectin oligomerisation that affords multivalent saccharide-binding architectures. In this review, we discuss supramolecular selective sensing of saccharides by using simple boronic acids in their aggregate forms, after a brief survey of the general aspects of boronic acid-based saccharide sensing.
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients have an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The present study aimed to investigate the gut microbiota and blood trimethylamine-N-oxide ...concentration (TMAO) in Chinese CKD patients and explore the underlying explanations through the animal experiment. The median plasma TMAO level was 30.33 μmol/L in the CKD patients, which was significantly higher than the 2.08 μmol/L concentration measured in the healthy controls. Next-generation sequence revealed obvious dysbiosis of the gut microbiome in CKD patients, with reduced bacterial diversity and biased community constitutions. CKD patients had higher percentages of opportunistic pathogens from gamma-Proteobacteria and reduced percentages of beneficial microbes, such as Roseburia, Coprococcus, and Ruminococcaceae. The PICRUSt analysis demonstrated that eight genes involved in choline, betaine, L-carnitine and trimethylamine (TMA) metabolism were changed in the CKD patients. Moreover, we transferred faecal samples from CKD patients and healthy controls into antibiotic-treated C57BL/6 mice and found that the mice that received gut microbes from the CKD patients had significantly higher plasma TMAO levels and different composition of gut microbiota than did the comparative mouse group. Our present study demonstrated that CKD patients had increased plasma TMAO levels due to contributions from both impaired renal functions and dysbiosis of the gut microbiota.
Microbiota disorder promotes chronic inflammation and carcinogenesis. High glycolysis is associated with poor prognosis in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the potential correlation ...between the gut microbiota and glucose metabolism is unknown in CRC.
F-FDG (
F-fluorodeoxyglucose) PET (positron emission tomography)/CT image scanning data and microbiota PCR analysis were performed to measure the correlation between metabolic alterations and microbiota disorder in 33 patients with CRC. Multiple colorectal cancer models, metabolic analysis and Seahorse assay were established to assess the role of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) enolase1-intronic transcript 1 (ENO1-IT1) in
-induced glucose metabolism and colorectal carcinogenesis. RNA immunoprecipitation and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing were conducted to identify potential targets of lncRNA ENO1-IT1.
We have found
.
abundance correlated with high glucose metabolism in patients with CRC. Furthermore,
supported carcinogenesis via increasing CRC cell glucose metabolism. Mechanistically,
activated lncRNA ENO1-IT1 transcription via upregulating the binding efficiency of transcription factor SP1 to the promoter region of lncRNA ENO1-IT1. Elevated ENO1-IT behaved as a guider modular for KAT7 histone acetyltransferase, specifying the histone modification pattern on its target genes, including ENO1, and consequently altering CRC biological function.
and glucose metabolism are mechanistically, biologically and clinically connected to CRC. Targeting ENO1 pathway may be meaningful in treating patients with CRC with elevated
.
The frequent intake of whole foods and dietary food variety is recommended due to their health benefits, such as prevention of multiple chronic diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's disease, ...cardiovascular diseases, and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Often, consuming whole fruits or vegetables showed the enhanced effects than consuming the individual dietary supplement from natural products, which is widely explained by the interactive effects of co-existing phytochemicals in whole foods. Although research relevant to interactive effects among the bioactive compounds mounted up, the mechanism of interaction is still not clear. Especially, biological influence factors such as bioavailability are often neglected. The present review summarizes the progress on the synergistic and antagonistic effects of dietary phytochemicals, the evaluating models for antioxidant interactions, and the possible interaction mechanisms both in vitro and in vivo, and with an emphasis on biological-related molecular mechanisms of phytochemicals. The research on the interaction mechanism is of value for guiding how to take advantage of synergistic effects and avoid antagonistic effects in daily diets or phytochemical-based treatments for preventing chronic diseases.
Reversible post-translational modifications represent a mechanism to control tumor metabolism. Here we show that mitochondrial Sirtuin5 (SIRT5), which mediates lysine desuccinylation, ...deglutarylation, and demalonylation, plays a role in colorectal cancer (CRC) glutamine metabolic rewiring. Metabolic profiling identifies that deletion of SIRT5 causes a marked decrease in
C-glutamine incorporation into tricarboxylic-acid (TCA) cycle intermediates and glutamine-derived non-essential amino acids. This reduces the building blocks required for rapid growth. Mechanistically, the direct interaction between SIRT5 and glutamate dehydrogenase 1 (GLUD1) causes deglutarylation and functional activation of GLUD1, a critical regulator of cellular glutaminolysis. Consistently, GLUD1 knockdown diminishes SIRT5-induced proliferation, both in vivo and in vitro. Clinically, overexpression of SIRT5 is significantly correlated with poor prognosis in CRC. Thus, SIRT5 supports the anaplerotic entry of glutamine into the TCA cycle in malignant phenotypes of CRC via activating GLUD1.
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