In late December 2019, a cluster of cases with 2019 Novel Coronavirus pneumonia (SARS-CoV-2) in Wuhan, China, aroused worldwide concern. Previous studies have reported epidemiological and clinical ...characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The purpose of this brief review is to summarize those published studies as of late February 2020 on the clinical features, symptoms, complications, and treatments of COVID-19 and help provide guidance for frontline medical staff in the clinical management of this outbreak.
Biothiols such as cysteine (Cys), homocysteine (Hcy), and glutathione (GSH) play crucial roles in maintaining redox homeostasis in biological systems. This Minireview summarizes the most significant ...current challenges in the field of thiol‐reactive probes for biomedical research and diagnostics, emphasizing the needs and opportunities that have been under‐investigated by chemists in the selective probe and sensor field. Progress on multiple binding site probes to distinguish Cys, Hcy, and GSH is highlighted as a creative new direction in the field that can enable simultaneous, accurate ratiometric monitoring. New probe design strategies and researcher priorities can better help address current challenges, including the monitoring of disease states such as autism and chronic diseases involving oxidative stress that are characterized by divergent levels of GSH, Cys, and Hcy.
Probing biothiols: Cysteine (Cys), homocysteine (Hcy), and glutathione (GSH) play crucial roles in human health. There are very few molecular probes and abiotic sensors that can simultaneously discriminate among biothiols. Recent progress on probes featuring multiple binding sites to distinguish Cys, Hcy, and GSH is summarized, and a variety of unmet critical needs and opportunities for chemists in the thiol probe field are discussed.
The family Toxoderidae (Mantodea) contains an ecologically diverse group of praying mantis species that have in common greatly elongated bodies. In this study, we sequenced and compared the complete ...mitochondrial genomes of two Toxoderidae species,
and
, and compared their mitochondrial genome characteristics with another member of the Toxoderidae,
(KY689118)
The lengths of the mitogenomes of
and
were 15,616 bp and 15,999 bp, respectively, which is similar to that of
(15,846 bp). The size of each gene as well as the A+T-rich region and the A+T content of the whole genome were also very similar among the three species as were the protein-coding genes, the A+T content and the codon usages. The mitogenome of
had the typical 22 tRNAs, whereas that of
had 26 tRNAs including an extra two copies of
-
. Intergenic regions of 67 bp and 76 bp were found in
and
, respectively, between
and
; these can be explained as residues of a tandem duplication/random loss of
and
This non-coding region may be synapomorphic for Toxoderidae. In BI and ML analyses, the monophyly of Toxoderidae was supported and
was the sister clade to
and
.
A two-component AB system, which describes the wave-packets in a baroclinic fluid, is investigated in this paper. Bright one- and two-soliton solutions are constructed via the Hirota method. We ...derive the degenerate and nondegenerate vector solitons associated with the one and two wave numbers, respectively, and the latter admit both the single- and double-hump profiles. Effects of the supercritical/subcritical coefficient μ and nonlinearity coefficient σ in that system on the wave packets A1 and A2 are analysed: Velocities of A1,A2 and the wave-induced modification of the basic flow, B, are proportional to μ, amplitudes of A1 and A2 are inversely proportional to σ, and amplitude of B is proportional to μ. Via the asymptotic analysis, we find that (1) the interactions between the two degenerate solitons or two nondegenerate solitons can be elastic under certain conditions, otherwise the interactions are shape-changing with the total energy in each soliton (consisting of all the components) being conserved; (2) the interactions between the nondegenerate and degenerate solitons are shape-changing, and the nondegenerate solitons can remain the double-hump shape or change to the periodic oscillation after the interactions; (3) the energy redistribution between the A1 and A2 components occurs when the two degenerate solitons undergo the shape-changing interaction, and the nondegenerate soliton undergoes the interaction without any intensity redistribution.
We determined 15 complete and two nearly complete mitogenomes of Heptageniidae belonging to three subfamilies (Heptageniinae, Rhithrogeninae, and Ecdyonurinae) and six genera (
,
,
,
,
, and
). ...Species of Rhithrogeninae and Ecdyonurinae had the same gene rearrangement of CR
, whereas a novel gene rearrangement of CR-
-NCR-
was found in Heptageniinae. Non-coding regions (NCRs) of 25-47 bp located between
and
were observed in all mayflies of Heptageniidae, which may be a synapomorphy for Heptageniidae. Both the BI and ML phylogenetic analyses supported the monophyly of Heptageniidae and its subfamilies (Heptageniinae, Rhithrogeninae, and Ecdyonurinae). The phylogenetic results combined with gene rearrangements and NCR locations confirmed the relationship of the subfamilies as (Heptageniinae + (Rhithrogeninae + Ecdyonurinae)). To assess the effects of low-temperature stress on Heptageniidae species from Ottawa, Canada, we found 27 positive selection sites in eight protein-coding genes (PCGs) using the branch-site model. The selection pressure analyses suggested that mitochondrial PCGs underwent positive selection to meet the energy requirements under low-temperature stress.
The prevalence of cardiomyopathy is higher in diabetic patients than those without diabetes. Diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) is defined as a clinical condition of abnormal myocardial structure and ...performance in diabetic patients without other cardiac risk factors, such as coronary artery disease, hypertension, and significant valvular disease. Multiple molecular events contribute to the development of DCM, which include the alterations in energy metabolism (fatty acid, glucose, ketone and branched chain amino acids) and the abnormalities of subcellular components in the heart, such as impaired insulin signaling, increased oxidative stress, calcium mishandling and inflammation. There are no specific drugs in treating DCM despite of decades of basic and clinical investigations. This is, in part, due to the lack of our understanding as to how heart failure initiates and develops, especially in diabetic patients without an underlying ischemic cause. Some of the traditional anti-diabetic or lipid-lowering agents aimed at shifting the balance of cardiac metabolism from utilizing fat to glucose have been shown inadequately targeting multiple aspects of the conditions. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (PPARα), a transcription factor, plays an important role in mediating DCM-related molecular events. Pharmacological targeting of PPARα activation has been demonstrated to be one of the important strategies for patients with diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases. The aim of this review is to provide a contemporary view of PPARα in association with the underlying pathophysiological changes in DCM. We discuss the PPARα-related drugs in clinical applications and facts related to the drugs that may be considered as risky (such as fenofibrate, bezafibrate, clofibrate) or safe (pemafibrate, metformin and glucagon-like peptide 1-receptor agonists) or having the potential (sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitor) in treating DCM.
Mutations in Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) are linked to the most common familial forms and some sporadic forms of Parkinson's disease (PD). The LRRK2 protein contains two well-known ...functional domains, MAPKKK-like kinase and Rab-like GTPase domains. Emerging evidence shows that LRRK2 contains kinase activity which is enhanced in several PD-associated mutants of LRRK2. However, the GTPase activity of LRRK2 has yet to be formally demonstrated. Here, we produced and purified the epitope-tagged LRRK2 protein from transgenic mouse brain, and showed that purified brain LRRK2 possesses both kinase and GTPase activity as assayed by GTP binding and hydrolysis. The brain LRRK2 is associated with elevated kinase activity in comparison to that from transgenic lung or transfected cultured cells. In transfected cell cultures, we detected GTP hydrolysis activity in full-length as well as in GTPase domain of LRRK2. This result indicates that LRRK2 GTPase can be active independent of LRRK2 kinase activity (while LRRK2 kinase activity requires the presence of LRRK2 GTPase as previously shown). We further found that PD mutation R1441C/G in the GTPase domain causes reduced GTP hydrolysis activity, consistent with the altered enzymatic activity in the mutant LRRK2 carrying PD familial mutations. Therefore, our study shows the biochemical characteristics of brain-specific LRRK2 which is associated with robust kinase and GTPase activity. The distinctive levels of kinase/GTPase activity in brain LRRK2 may help explain LRRK2-associated neuronal functions or dysfunctions in the pathogenesis of PD.
BackgroundCigarette smoking is a common risk factor for diseases and cancers. Oral microbiota is also associated with diseases and cancers. However, little is known about the impact of cigarette ...smoking on the oral microbiota, especially among ethnic minority populations.MethodsWe investigated cigarette smoking in relationship with the oral microbiota in a large population of predominately low-income and African-American participants. Mouth rinse samples were collected from 1616 participants within the Southern Community Cohort Study, including 592 current-smokers, 477 former-smokers and 547 never-smokers. Oral microbiota was profiled by 16S ribosomal RNA gene deep sequencing.ResultsCurrent-smokers showed a different overall microbial composition from former-smokers (p=6.62×10−7) and never-smokers (p=6.00×10−8). The two probiotic genera, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, were enriched among current-smokers when compared with never-smokers, with Bonferroni-corrected p values (PBonferroni ) of 1.28×10−4 and 5.89×10−7, respectively. The phylum Actinobacteria was also enriched in current-smokers when compared with never-smokers, with a median relative abundance of 12.35% versus 9.36%, respectively, and with a PBonferroni =9.11×10−11. In contrast, the phylum Proteobacteria was depleted in current smokers (PBonferroni =5.57×10−13), with the relative abundance being almost three times that of never-smokers (7.22%) when compared with that of current-smokers (2.47%). Multiple taxa within these two phyla showed differences in abundance/prevalence between current-smokers and never-smokers at PBonferroni <0.05. The differences in the overall microbial composition and abundance/prevalence of most taxa were observed among both African-Americans and European-Americans. Meanwhile, such differences were not observed between former-smokers and never-smokers.ConclusionSmoking has strong impacts on oral microbial community, which was recovered after smoking cessation.
The owlflies (Family Ascalaphidae) belong to the Neuroptera but are often mistaken as dragonflies because of morphological characters. To date, only three mitochondrial genomes of Ascalaphidae, ...namely
;
;
, are published in GenBank, meaning that they are greatly under-represented in comparison with the 430 described species reported in this family. In this study, we sequenced and described the complete mitochondrial genome of
(Neuroptera, Ascalaphidae). The total length of the
mitogenome was 15,911 bp, which is the longest known to date among the available family members of Ascalaphidae. However, the size of each gene was similar to the other three Ascalaphidae species. The
mitogenome included a transposition of tRNA
and tRNA
genes and formed an unusual gene arrangement tRNA
-tRNA
-tRNA
(CWY). It is likely that the transposition occurred by a duplication of both genes followed by random loss of partial duplicated genes. The nucleotide composition of the
mitogenome was as follows:
= 41.0%,
= 33.8%,
= 15.5%,
= 9.7%. Both Bayesian inference and ML analyses strongly supported
as a sister clade to (
+
), and indicated that Ascalaphidae is not monophyletic.
In industry, the task of defect classification and defect localization is an important part of defect detection system. However, existing studies only focus on one task and it is difficult to ensure ...the accuracy of both tasks. This paper proposes a defect detection system based on improved Yolo_v4, which greatly improves the detection ability of minor defects. For K_Means algorithm clustering prianchors question with strong subjectivity, the paper proposes the Density Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm to determine the number of Anchors. To solve the problem of low detection rate of small targets caused by insufficient reuse rate of low-level features in CSPDarknet53 feature extraction network, this paper proposes an ECA-DenseNet-BC-121 feature extraction network to improve it. And the Dual Channel Feature Enhancement (DCFE) module is proposed to improve the local information loss and gradient propagation obstruction caused by quad chain convolution in PANet networks to improve the robustness of the model. The experimental results on the fabric surface defect detection datasets show that the mAP of the improved Yolo_v4 is 98.97%, which is 7.67% higher than SSD, 3.75% higher than Faster_RCNN, 10.82% higher than Yolo_v4 tiny, and 5.35% higher than Yolo_v4, and the detection speed reaches 39.4 fps. It can meet the real-time monitoring needs of industrial sites.
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