We have developed Lyso-V, the first fluorescent probe of lysosomal viscosity. Because of its lysosome-actived fluorescence characteristics, Lyso-V has proved to be an ideal lysosomal tracer with high ...spatial and temporal resolution under laser confocal microscopy. More importantly, Lyso-V shows its practical applicability in real-time quantification of lysosomal viscosity changes in live cells through fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy.
Background
Mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA) exposed to the extracellular space due to cell death and stress has immunostimulatory properties. However, the clinical significance of circulating MtDNA in ...maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients and the precise mechanism of its emergence have yet to be investigated.
Methods
This cross‐sectional study consisted of 52 MHD patients and 32 age‐ and sex‐matched healthy controls. MHD patients were further categorized into high and low circulating cell‐free MtDNA (ccf‐MtDNA) groups based on the median value. Copy number of MtDNA was quantified using TaqMan‐based qPCR. Plasma cytokines were measured using ELISA kits. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψm) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were detected using DCFH‐DA or JC‐1 staining.
Results
The copy numbers of ccf‐MtDNA in patients with MHD were higher than those in healthy controls, and these alterations were correlated with changes of cytokines TNF‐α and IL‐6. Adjusted model in multivariate analysis showed that the presence of anuria and longer dialysis vintage were independently associated with higher levels of ccf‐MtDNA. Meanwhile, although not statistically significant, an inverse correlative trend between urinary MtDNA and ccf‐MtDNA was observed in patients with residual urine. Afterward, using PBMCs as surrogates for mitochondria‐rich cells, we found that patients in the high ccf‐MtDNA group exhibited a significantly higher ROS production and lower Δψm in cells.
Conclusions
Our data suggested that changes in ccf‐MtDNA correlate with the degree of inflammatory status in MHD patients, and that the excessive MtDNA may be caused by mitochondrial dysfunction and reduced urinary MtDNA excretion.
The “out of place” MtDNA may be involved in the sterile inflammatory response in MHD patients. A longer dialysis vintage and the presence of anuria predict higher ccf‐MtDNA levels in MHD patients. Kidney may be partly responsible for MtDNA excretion. Mitochondrial damage likely has a contribution to the MtDNA leakage.
Soil erosion is a universal phenomenon on the Loess Plateau but it exhibits complex and typical mechanism which makes it difficult to understand soil loss laws on slopes. We design artificial ...simulated rainfall experiments including six rainfall intensities (45, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120 mm/h) and five slopes (5°, 10°, 15°, 20°, 25°) to reveal the fundamental changing trends of runoff and sediment yield on bare loess soil. Here, we show that the runoff yield within the initial 15 min increased rapidly and its trend gradually became stable. Trends of sediment yield under different rainfall intensities are various. The linear correlation between runoff and rainfall intensity is obvious for different slopes, but the correlations between sediment yield and rainfall intensity are weak. Runoff and sediment yield on the slope surface both presents an increasing trend when the rainfall intensity increases from 45 mm/h to 120 mm/h, but the increasing trend of runoff yield is higher than that of sediment yield. The sediment yield also has an overall increasing trend when the slope changes from 5° to 25°, but the trend of runoff yield is not obvious. Our results may provide data support and underlying insights needed to guide the management of soil conservation planning on the Loess Plateau.
Intelligence has been considered as the major challenge in promoting economic potential and production efficiency of precision agriculture. In order to apply advanced deep-learning technology to ...complete various agricultural tasks in online and offline ways, a large number of crop vision datasets with domain-specific annotation are urgently needed. To encourage further progress in challenging realistic agricultural conditions, we present the CropDeep species classification and detection dataset, consisting of 31,147 images with over 49,000 annotated instances from 31 different classes. In contrast to existing vision datasets, images were collected with different cameras and equipment in greenhouses, captured in a wide variety of situations. It features visually similar species and periodic changes with more representative annotations, which have supported a stronger benchmark for deep-learning-based classification and detection. To further verify the application prospect, we provide extensive baseline experiments using state-of-the-art deep-learning classification and detection models. Results show that current deep-learning-based methods achieve well performance in classification accuracy over 99%. While current deep-learning methods achieve only 92% detection accuracy, illustrating the difficulty of the dataset and improvement room of state-of-the-art deep-learning models when applied to crops production and management. Specifically, we suggest that the YOLOv3 network has good potential application in agricultural detection tasks.
Summary
The plant family 1 UDP‐glycosyltransferases (UGTs) are the biggest GT family in plants, which are responsible for transferring sugar moieties onto a variety of small molecules, and control ...many metabolic processes; however, their physiological significance in planta is largely unknown. Here, we revealed that two Arabidopsis glycosyltransferase genes, UGT79B2 and UGT79B3, could be strongly induced by various abiotic stresses, including cold, salt and drought stresses. Overexpression of UGT79B2/B3 significantly enhanced plant tolerance to low temperatures as well as drought and salt stresses, whereas the ugt79b2/b3 double mutants generated by RNAi (RNA interference) and CRISPR‐Cas9 strategies were more susceptible to adverse conditions. Interestingly, the expression of UGT79B2 and UGT79B3 is directly controlled by CBF1 (CRT/DRE‐binding factor 1, also named DREB1B) in response to low temperatures. Furthermore, we identified the enzyme activities of UGT79B2/B3 in adding UDP‐rhamnose to cyanidin and cyanidin 3‐O‐glucoside. Ectopic expression of UGT79B2/B3 significantly increased the anthocyanin accumulation, and enhanced the antioxidant activity in coping with abiotic stresses, whereas the ugt79b2/b3 double mutants showed reduced anthocyanin levels. When overexpressing UGT79B2/B3 in tt18 (transparent testa 18), a mutant that cannot synthesize anthocyanins, both genes fail to improve plant adaptation to stress. Taken together, we demonstrate that UGT79B2 and UGT79B3, identified as anthocyanin rhamnosyltransferases, are regulated by CBF1 and confer abiotic stress tolerance via modulating anthocyanin accumulation.
Significance Statement
The physiological roles of most UDP‐glycosyltransferases (UGTs) are unknown. Here, we used overexpression and RNA interference or CRISPR‐Cas9 strategies to show that two anthocyanin rhamnosyltransferases play crucial roles in enhancing tolerance to cold, salt and drought.
Guest‐induced host–guest assembly in metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has become a critical strategy to achieve circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). Herein, chiral metal–organic clusters (MOCs) ...induced CPL of achiral MOF are reported. Enantiopure titanium‐oxo clusters (R/S‐TOCs) are effectively loaded into the pores of a fluorescent, highly stable MOF NU‐901 thin film by using a liquid‐phase epitaxial layer‐by‐layer encapsulation method. The resulting chiral TOCs@NU‐901 MOF thin films exhibit strong chirality, intense photoluminescence, and excellent CPL performance with the highest dissymmetry factor (±0.025) reported so far for the downshifted MOF‐based materials. Further, the comparison experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations demonstrate that the excellent performance benefited from the strong chirality and charge transfer caused by the significant π–π interactions between the host (MOF) and guest (R/S‐TOCs). This novel chiral MOCs induced approach provides a powerful toolbox for new host–guest CPL thin film materials.
Novel chiral guests‐induced metal–organic framework (MOF) thin films by liquid‐phase epitaxial layer‐by‐layer encapsulation strategy for high circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) are reported. Thanks to the chirality and charge transfers caused by the significant π–π interactions in the host–guest combination, the resulting host–guest MOF thin film exhibits excellent CPL with the highest glum (±0.025) among the downshifted MOFs‐based materials.
A
bstract
Unifying relations of amplitudes are elegant results in flat spacetime, but the research on these in (A)dS case is not very rich. In this paper, we discuss a type of unifying relation in ...(A)dS by using Berends-Giele currents. By taking the flat limit, we also get a semi-on-shell way to prove the unifying relations in the flat case. We also discuss the applications of our results in cosmology.
Human enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), a member of the species
of the
family, was first isolated in 1962 in the United States. EV-D68 infection was only infrequently reported until an outbreak occurred in ...2014 in the US; since then, it has continued to increase worldwide. EV-D68 infection leads to severe respiratory illness and has recently been reported to be linked to the development of the neurogenic disease known as acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), mostly in children, seriously endangering public health. Hitherto, treatment options for EV-D68 infections were limited to supportive care, and as yet there are no approved, specific antiviral drugs or vaccines. Research on EV-D68 has mainly focused on its epidemiology, and its virologic characteristics and pathogenesis still need to be further explored. Here, we provide an overview of current research on EV-D68, including the genotypes and genetic characteristics of recent epidemics, the mechanism of infection and virus-host interactions, and its relationship to acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), in order to broaden our understanding of the biological features of EV-D68 and provide a basis for the development of effective antiviral agents.
Objective. To observe the effects of resveratrol (Res) on the antioxidative function and estrogen level in an Alzheimer’s disease (AD) mouse model. Methods. First, we examined the effects of Res on ...an AD mice model. SAMP8 mice were selected as the model, and normal-aging SAMR1 mice were used as the control group. The model mice were randomly divided into three groups: a model group, high-dose Res group (40mg/kg, intraperitoneal (ip)), and low-dose Res group (20mg/kg, ip). After receiving medication for 15 days, the mice were subjected to the water maze test to assess their spatial discrimination. The spectrophotometric method was used to detect the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), and catalase (CAT) as well as the malondialdehyde (MDA) content. Quantitative PCR (q-PCR) was used to detect SOD, GSH-Px, CAT, and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) mRNA level changes. Western blot analysis detected HO-1 and Nrf2 protein expression. Second, we researched the effect of Res on the estrogen level in the SAMP8 model mice. The model mice were randomly divided into four groups: a model group, estrogen replacement group (0.28 mg/kg, intramuscular (im), estradiol benzoate), high-dose Res group (5 mg/kg, im), and low-dose Res group (2.5 mg/kg, im). The mice were injected, once every three days, for 5 weeks. Q-PCR was used to detect brain tissue mRNA expression changes. Western blot analysis detected ERα, ERβ, and ChAT protein expression. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit was used to detect the expression of E2 and amyloid β protein (Aβ) in brain tissue. Results. Compared with the control treatment, Res could improve the spatial abilities of the mice to a certain extent and also increase the expression of SOD, GSH-Px, CAT, and HO-1 at the mRNA level (P<0.05). In addition, enhanced SOD, GSH-Px, and CAT activities and HO-1 protein levels and decreased MDA content (P<0.05) were detected in the brain tissue of the Res-treated mice. The cytoplasmic Nrf2 content in the Res-treated mice was also decreased while the nuclear Nrf2 content and the nuclear translation rate of Nrf2 were increased (P<0.05). Res could decrease the expression of ERβ in the brain tissue at the mRNA and protein levels and the expression of Aβ in the brain tissue at the protein level. Res could also increase the mRNA and protein expression of ERα and ChAT and the protein expression of estradiol in the brain tissue. Conclusion. Res can increase the antioxidant capacity of AD models through the Nrf2/HO-1 signaling pathway. In addition, Res can enhance estrogen levels in an AD model. These findings provide a new idea for the treatment of AD.
The belief that the vertebrate brain functions normally without classical lymphatic drainage vessels has been held for many decades. On the contrary, new findings show that functional lymphatic ...drainage does exist in the brain. The brain lymphatic drainage system is composed of basement membrane-based perivascular pathway, a brain-wide glymphatic pathway, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) drainage routes including sinus-associated meningeal lymphatic vessels and olfactory/cervical lymphatic routes. The brain lymphatic systems function physiological as a route of drainage for interstitial fluid (ISF) from brain parenchyma to nearby lymph nodes. Brain lymphatic drainage helps maintain water and ion balance of the ISF, waste clearance, and reabsorption of macromolecular solutes. A second physiological function includes communication with the immune system modulating immune surveillance and responses of the brain. These physiological functions are influenced by aging, genetic phenotypes, sleep-wake cycle, and body posture. The impairment and dysfunction of the brain lymphatic system has crucial roles in age-related changes of brain function and the pathogenesis of neurovascular, neurodegenerative, and neuroinflammatory diseases, as well as brain injury and tumors. In this review, we summarize the key component elements (regions, cells, and water transporters) of the brain lymphatic system and their regulators as potential therapeutic targets in the treatment of neurologic diseases and their resulting complications. Finally, we highlight the clinical importance of ependymal route-based targeted gene therapy and intranasal drug administration in the brain by taking advantage of the unique role played by brain lymphatic pathways in the regulation of CSF flow and ISF/CSF exchange.
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