This study assessed the concentration characteristics of culturable airborne microbes in 60 family homes with children aged 1–15 years in Hangzhou, southeast China. The concentration of culturable ...airborne microbes ranged from 314 colony-forming units (CFU)/m
3
to 2903 CFU/m
3
, with a mean value of 873 CFU/m
3
. The mean fungal concentration (653 CFU/m
3
) was significantly higher than the mean bacterial concentration of the atmosphere (220 CFU/m
3
), and the proportion of airborne fungi (73.9%) was significantly higher than that of airborne bacteria (26.1%). Microbial concentrations in family homes with a male child were significantly higher than those in homes with a female child, and there was a negative correlation between microbial concentration and living area per capita in family homes. The mean microbial concentration was highest in summer, followed by spring and autumn, and lowest in winter. This study provides an exposure database of airborne microbes in family homes in southeast China, suggesting that child gender and human occupancy in family homes significantly influence the microbial concentration in the air.
The pre-aerobic process of coking wastewater treatment has strong capacity of decarbonization and detoxification, which contribute to the subsequent dinitrogen of non-carbon source/heterotrophic ...denitrification. The COD removal rate can reach > 90% in the first aerobic bioreactor of the novel O/H/O coking wastewater treatment system during long-term operation. The physico-chemical characteristics of influent and effluent coking wastewater in the first aerobic bioreactor were analyzed to examine how they correlated with bacterial communities. The diversity of the activated sludge microbial community was investigated using a culture-independent molecular approach. The microbial community functional profiling and detailed pathways were predicted from the 16S rRNA gene-sequencing data by the PICRUSt software and the KEGG database. High-throughput MiSeq sequencing results revealed a distinct microbial composition in the activated sludge of the first aerobic bioreactor of the O/H/O system. Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Chlorobi were the decarbonization and detoxification dominant phyla with the relative abundance of 84.07 ± 5.45, 10.89 ± 6.31, and 2.96 ± 1.12%, respectively. Thiobacillus, Rhodoplanes, Lysobacter, and Leucobacter were the potential major genera involved in the crucial functional pathways related to the degradation of phenols, cyanide, benzoate, and naphthalene. These results indicated that the comprehensive understanding of the structure and function diversity of the microbial community in the bioreactor will be conducive to the optimal coking wastewater treatment.
Lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) represent some of the most globally prevalent and detrimental diseases. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) technology has effectively addressed ...the requirement for the diagnosis of clinical infectious diseases. This study aimed at identifying and classifying opportunistic pathogens from the respiratory tract-colonizing microflora in LRTI patients using data acquired from mNGS analyses. A retrospective study was performed employing the mNGS data pertaining to the respiratory samples derived from 394 LRTIs patients. Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis was conducted to discern the discriminant bacteria. Receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) were established to demonstrate discriminant bacterial behavior to distinguish colonization from infection. A total of 443 discriminant bacteria were identified and segregated into three cohorts contingent upon their correlation profiles, detection frequency, and relative abundance in order to distinguish pathogens from colonizing microflora. Among them, 119 emerging opportunistic pathogens (cohort 2) occupied an average area under the curve (AUC) of 0.976 for exhibiting the most prominent predictability in distinguishing colonization from infection, 39 were colonizing bacteria (cohort 1, 0.961), and 285 were rare opportunistic pathogens (cohort 3, 0.887). The LTRIs patients appeared modular in the form of cohorts depicting complex microbial co-occurrence networks, reduced diversity, and a high degree of antagonistic interactions in the respiratory tract microbiome. The study findings indicate that therapeutic interventions should target interaction networks rather than individual microbes, providing an innovative perspective for comprehending and combating respiratory infections. Conclusively, this study reports a profile of LRTIs-associated bacterial colonization and opportunistic pathogens in a relatively large-scale cohort, which might serve as a reference panel for the interpretation of mNGS results in clinical practice.
•Dietary astaxanthin and its isomers widely exist in nature.•The cis-isomers exhibit greater health benefits.•(3S,3′S) optical configuration of astaxanthin shows higher biological activity.•The cis-, ...(3S,3′S)-isomers have greater bioavailability than other isomers which is related to intestinal absorption mediated by transporters.
Astaxanthin, a xanthophyll carotenoid, has attracted considerable attention owing to its unique molecular structure and excellent antioxidant properties. Due to its structural particularity, it has many geometrical and optical isomers in the diet; Interestingly, the human body has considerable quantity of Z- and optical isomers despite the intake of E- and (3S,3′S) isomers. However, there remains no systematic analysis and summary of astaxanthin and its isomers regarding health benefits and bioavailability. To address this need, this review details the latest research progress of biological activities related to oxidative damage, and these effects are more obvious in Z- and (3S,3′S)-isomers from the existing research. In addition, we outline a comprehensive analysis of the bioavailability of dietary astaxanthin and its isomers from the perspective of transporter-mediated process (e.g. SR-BI, CD36). Further nvestigation of astaxanthin and its isomers is expected to improve human health and promote their applications in future healthcare-related products.
The health benefits of astaxanthin (AST) are related to its geometric isomers. Generally, functional activity is realized by the interactions between active substances and transporters. Hereto, ...bovine serum albumin (BSA), as a model-binding protein and transporter, is able to recognize and transport isomers of active substances through binding with them. However, differences in the binding mechanism of isomers to BSA may affect the functional activities of isomers through the "binding-transport-activity" chain reaction. Thus, this study sought to elucidate the interactions between AST geometrical isomers and BSA using multi-spectroscopy, surface plasmon resonance and molecular docking. The results showed that Z-AST displayed more interacting amino acid residues and lower thermodynamic parameters than all-E-AST. Meanwhile, the order of binding affinity to BSA was 13Z-AST (1.56 × 10
M) > 9Z-AST (2.70 × 10
M) > all-E-AST (4.01 × 10
M), indicating that Z-AST possessed stronger binding ability to BSA. Moreover, AST isomers were located at the junction between subdomains ⅡA and ⅢA of BSA, and showed the same interaction forces (hydrogen bond and van der Waals force) as well as kinetic processes (slow combination, slow dissociation). These interaction parameters provide valuable insights into their pharmacokinetics in vivo, and it was of great significance to explain the potential differences among AST isomers in functional activities.
Enhancing the uptake and enrichment of heavy metals in plants is one of the important means to strengthen phytoremediation. In the present study, citric acid (CA), tartaric acid (TA), and malic acid ...(MA) were applied to enhance phytoremediation by
Bidens pilosa
L. in Cd-contaminated soil. The results showed that by the addition of appropriate concentrations of CA, TA, and MA, the values of the bioconcentration factor increased by 77.98%, 78.33%, and 64.49%, respectively, the translocation factor values increased by 16.45%, 12.61%, and 5.73%, respectively, and the values of the phytoextraction rates increased by 169.21%, 71.28%, and 63.11%, respectively. The minimum fluorescence values of leaves decreased by 31.62%, 0.28%, and 17.95%, while the potential efficiency of the PSII values of leaves increased 117.87%, 2.25%, and 13.18%, respectively, when CA, TA, and MA with suitable concentration were added. Redundancy analysis showed that CA and MA in plants were significantly positively correlated with plant growth, photosynthesis, and other indicators, whereas TA showed a negative correlation with most indicators. Moreover, CA addition could significantly increase the abundances of
Azotobacter
,
Pseudomonas
, and other growth-promoting bacteria, and the abundance values of
Actinophytocola
and
Ensifer
were improved in TA treatments. Therefore, our results demonstrated that low-molecular-weight organic acids could enhance phytoremediation, and exogenous CA could significantly improve the phytoremediation of Cd-contaminated soil by
Bidens pilosa
L.
•Excipient emulsions increase the bioaccessibility of β-carotene in spinach.•Mixed micelles promote osmotic absorption of β-carotene in the intestine.•LCT facilitates the entry of β-carotene into the ...circulation via the lymphatic pathway.•Excipient emulsions improve the biological activity of β-carotene in vivo.
This study sought to improve the biological fate of β-carotene obtained from spinach, using in vitro digestion, in situ single-pass intestinal perfusion, and in vivo approaches, to investigate the effects of excipient emulsions with medium- (MCT) and long-chain triglyceride (LCT) as a vehicle for improved health benefits of β-carotene. Results showed that the bioavailability and bioactivity of β-carotene were both significantly higher in the excipient emulsions relative to those without the emulsions. This was especially true when LCT was used as the vehicle. These results were confirmed by bioaccessibility, duodenal absorption, and in vivo absorption and metabolism. Furthermore, animal feeding studies revealed that LCT may have the potential to promote triglyceride and apo-B48 reconstitution and secretion. This suggested that LCT may facilitate the entry of carotenoids into circulation via the lymphatic pathway. These results highlight the importance of the optimization of excipient foods to improve the efficacy of lipophilic carotenoid.
To characterize the microbial community of the coking wastewater (CWW) treatment system and to study the effects of CWW characteristics and operational parameters on microbial communities, active ...sludge samples were collected from a full-scale CWW treatment plant using three-phase fluidized bed biological reactors. High-throughput MiSeq sequencing was used to examine the 16S rRNA genes of microbiology, revealing a distinct microbial composition among the active sludge samples of three sequential bioreactors. Pseudomonas, Comamonas, and Thiobacillus-related sequences dominated in the anaerobic bioreactor A, aerobic bioreactor O₁, and aerobic bioreactor O₂ active sludge with relative abundance of 72.59, 56.75, and 27.82 %, respectively. The physico-chemical characteristics of CWW were analyzed by standard methods and operational parameters were recorded to examine their effects on the microbial communities. The redundancy analysis (RDA) results showed that the bacterial communities of bioreactors A, O₁, and O₂ correlated strongly with cyanides, phenols, and ammonia, respectively. These results expand the knowledge about the biodiversity and population dynamics of microorganisms and discerned the relationships between bacterial communities and environmental variables in the biological treatment processes in the full-scale CWW treatment system.
The presence of multiple conjugated double bonds and chiral carbon atoms endows astaxanthin with geometric and optical isomers, and these isomers widely exist in biological sources, food processing, ...and in vivo absorption. However, there remains no systematic summary of astaxanthin isomers regarding isomerization methods and analytic techniques. To address this need, this Review focuses on a comprehensive analysis of Z-isomerization methods of astaxanthin, including solvent system, catalyst, and heat treatment. Comparatively, high-efficiency and health-friendly methods are more conducive to put into practical use, such as food-grade solvents and food-component catalysts. In addition, we outline the recent advances in analysis techniques of astaxanthin isomers, as well as the structural characteristics reflected by various methods (e.g., HPLC, NMR, FTIR, and RS). Furthermore, we summarized the related research on the safety evaluation of astaxanthin isomers. Finally, future trends and barriers in Z-transformation and analysis of astaxanthin isomers are also discussed.
Coking wastewater (CWW) contains high contents of phenols and other toxic and refractory compounds including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with the most carcinogenic benzoapyrene (BaP) ...among them. The mechanism of PAHs/BaP degradation in activated sludge of CWW treatment with phenol as co-substrate was studied. For characterizing the structure and functions of microbial community associated with BaP degradation with phenol as co-substrate, high-throughput MiSeq sequencing was used to examine the 16S rRNA genes of microbiology, revealing noticeable shifts in CWW activated sludge bacterial populations. Major genera involved in anaerobic degradation were Tissierella_Soehngenia, Diaphorobacter and Geobacter, whereas in aerobic degradation Rhodanobacter, Dyella and Thauera prevailed. BaP degradation with phenol as co-substrate induced bacterial diversification in CWW activated sludge in opposite trends when anaerobic and aerobic conditions were applied. In order to predict the microbial community functional profiling, a bioinformatics software package of phylogenetic investigation of communities by reconstruction of unobserved states (PICRUSt) was run to find that some dominant genera enriched in the BaP pathway may own the ability to degrade PAHs/BaP. Further experiments should focus on testing the dominant genera in BaP degradation at different oxygen levels.
•Phenol as co-substrate improves BaP biodegradation in activated sludge of CWW.•Degradation of BaP with phenol as co-substrate induced notable microbial diversity changes.•Opposite bacterial diversity trends appeared in anaerobic and aerobic biodegradation of BaP with phenol as co-substrate.•Phenol as co-substrate changed the microbial populations in favor of BaP degrading species.
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