Bathyarchaeota, formerly known as the Miscellaneous Crenarchaeotal Group, is a phylum of global generalists that are widespread in anoxic sediments, which host relatively high abundance archaeal ...communities. Until now, 25 subgroups have been identified in the Bathyarchaeota. The distinct bathyarchaeotal subgroups diverged to adapt to marine and freshwater environments. Based on the physiological and genomic evidence, acetyl-coenzyme A-centralized heterotrophic pathways of energy conservation have been proposed to function in Bathyarchaeota; these microbes are able to anaerobically utilize (i) detrital proteins, (ii) polymeric carbohydrates, (iii) fatty acids/aromatic compounds, (iv) methane (or short chain alkane) and methylated compounds, and/or (v) potentially other organic matter. Furthermore, bathyarchaeotal members have wide metabolic capabilities, including acetogenesis, methane metabolism, and dissimilatory nitrogen and sulfur reduction, and they also have potential interactions with anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea, acetoclastic methanogens and heterotrophic bacteria. These results have not only demonstrated multiple and important ecological functions of this archaeal phylum, but also paved the way for a detailed understanding of the evolution and metabolism of archaea as such. This review summarizes the recent findings pertaining to the ecological, physiological and genomic aspects of Bathyarchaeota, highlighting the vital role of this phylum in global carbon cycling.
Uric acid (UA) is the end product of purine nucleotide metabolism in the human body. Hyperuricemia is an abnormally high level of UA in the blood and may result in arthritis and gout. The prevalence ...of hyperuricemia has been increasing globally. Epidemiological studies have shown that UA levels are positively correlated with cardiovascular diseases, including hypertension, atherosclerosis, atrial fibrillation (AF), and heart failure (HF). Hyperuricemia promotes the occurrence and development of cardiovascular diseases by regulating molecular signals, such as inflammatory response, oxidative stress, insulin resistance/diabetes, endoplasmic reticulum stress, and endothelial dysfunction. Despite extensive research, the underlying molecular mechanisms are still unclear. Allopurinol, a xanthine oxidase (XO) inhibitor, has been shown to improve cardiovascular outcomes in patients with HF, coronary heart disease (CHD), type 2 diabetes (T2D), and left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). Whether febuxostat, another XO inhibitor, can improve cardiovascular outcomes as well as allopurinol remains controversial. Furthermore, it is also not clear whether UA-lowering treatment (ULT) can benefit patients with asymptomatic hyperuricemia. In this review, we focus on the latest cellular and molecular findings of cardiovascular disease associated with hyperuricemia and clinical data about the efficacy of ULT in patients with cardiovascular disease.
Extracellular enzymes, primarily produced by microorganisms, affect ecosystem processes because of their essential roles in degradation, transformation and mineralization of organic matter. ...Extracellular enzymes involved in the cycling of carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) have been widely investigated in many different ecosystems, and several enzymes have been recognized as key components in regulating C storage and nutrient cycling. In this review, it was the first time to summarize the specific extracellular enzymes related to C storage and nutrient cycling for better understanding the important role of microbial extracellular enzymes in biogeochemical cycling of ecosystems. Subsequently, ecoenzymatic stoichiometry - the relative ratio of extracellular enzyme, has been reviewed and further provided a new perspective for understanding biogeochemical cycling of ecosystems. Finally, the new insights of using microbial extracellular enzyme in indicating biogeochemical cycling and then protecting ecosystems have been suggested.
•Extracellular enzyme activities can indicate C storage and nutrient availability.•Hydrolases are more related to decomposition of soil/sediment organic matter.•Phenol oxidase may have limitation to reflect C storage.•Ecoenzymatic stoichiometry can reveal microbial nutrient limitation.
A conceptual framework considering toxicity, metabolism and maintenance energy is proposed for research on microbial degradation of organic pollutants and bioremediation. There is a specific ...concentration range for metabolism of a selective pollutant by microorganisms and this range is above the concentration for maintenance requirement and below one starting to show toxicity. This framework will help the enrichment of microorganisms for isolation and their metabolism successfully, and bioremediation for cleaning up efficiently. By knowing the concentrations of maintenance energy and toxicity, degradation of any pollutants can be carried out more objectively. We propose this framework with indole and its methylated derivatives as examples and also point out several of the most critically important factors involved, specifically enrichment culturing and transfer technique, culture medium and composition, the target organic pollutant as the sole source of carbon and energy, co-metabolism, and source of the potential capable of microorganisms. The challenges facing the scientific community on degradation research are about the understanding and also implementation of the most effective scientific methods to test the research hypothesis to obtain the most significantly and convincing results. With the information presented, it is hoped that this conceptual framework can improve to better design research experiments to advance new knowledge on microbial degradation and also implement bioremediation more effective in applications for cleaning up the contaminated sites.
Microfluidic spinning technology (MST), incorporating microfluidics with chemical reactions, has gained considerable interest for constructing anisotropic advanced microfibers, especially helical ...microfibers. However, these efforts suffer from the limited material choices, restricting their applications. Here, a new phase inversion‐based microfluidic spinning (PIMS) method is proposed for producing helical microfibers. This method undergoes a physicochemical phase inversion process, which is capable of efficiently manufacturing strong (tensile stress of more than 25 MPa), stretchable, flexible and biocompatible helical microfibers. The helical microfibers can be used to fabricate bi‐oriented stretchable artificial abdominal skin, preventing incisional hernia formation and promoting the wound healing without conglutination. This research not only offers a universal approach to design helical microfibers but also provides a new insight into artificial skin.
A novel phase inversion‐based microfluidic spinning (PIMS) technology is developed to continuously produce stretchable high‐strength polycaprolactone (PCL) helical microfibers with controllable structures. The helical microfibers are weaved into strong, bi‐oriented stretchable, flexible and biocompatible artificial skins meshes, which can be used to prevent abdominal incisional hernia formation and promote wound healing.
Two novel gallium nitride-based vertical junction FETs (VJFETs), one with a vertical channel and the other with a lateral channel, are proposed, designed, and modeled to achieve a 1.2 kV normally OFF ...power switch with very low ON resistance (R ON ). The 2-D drift diffusion model of the proposed devices was implemented using Silvaco ATLAS. A comprehensive design space was generated for the vertical channel VJFET (VC-VJFET). For a well-designed VC-VJFET, the breakdown voltage (V BR ) obtained was 1260 V, which is defined in this study as the drain-to-source voltage at an OFF-state current of 1 μA · cm -2 and a peak electric field not exceeding 2.4 MV/cm. The corresponding R ON was 5.2 mΩ · cm 2 . To further improve the switching device figure of merit, a merged lateral-vertical geometry was proposed and modeled in the form of a lateral channel VJFET (LC-VJFET). For the LC-VJFET, a breakdown voltage of 1310 V with a corresponding R ON of 1.7 mQ · cm 2 was achieved for similar thicknesses of the drift region. This paper studies the design space in detail and discusses the associated tradeoffs in the R ON and V BR in conjunction with the threshold voltage (V T ) desired for the normally OFF operation.
Development of fast curing and easy modeling of colloidal photonic crystals is highly desirable for various applications. Here, a novel type of injectable photonic hydrogel (IPH) is proposed to ...achieve self‐healable structural color by integrating microfluidics‐derived photonic supraballs with supramolecular hydrogels. The supramolecular hydrogel is engineered via incorporating β‐cyclodextrin/poly(2‐hydroxypropyl acrylate‐co‐N‐vinylimidazole) (CD/poly(HPA‐co‐VI)) with methacrylated gelatin (GelMA), and serves as a scaffold for colloidal crystal arrays. The photonic supraballs derived from the microfluidics techniques, exhibit excellent compatibility with the hydrogel scaffolds, leading to enhanced assembly efficiency. By virtue of hydrogen bonds and host–guest interactions, a series of self‐healable photonic hydrogels (linear, planar, and spiral assemblies) can be facilely assembled. It is demonstrated that the spherical symmetry of the photonic supraballs endows them with identical optical responses independent of viewing angles. In addition, by taking the advantage of angle independent spectrum characteristics, the IPH presents beneficial effects in reflective cooling, which can achieve up to 17.4 °C in passive solar reflective cooling. The strategy represents an easy‐to‐perform platform for the construction of IPH, providing novel insights into macroscopic self‐assembly toward thermal management applications.
An injectable photonic hydrogel is proposed to achieve self‐healable structural color for facile curing of colloidal photonic crystals in a large‐scale and fast fashion. By integrating microfluidics‐derived photonic supraballs with supramolecular hydrogels, highly ordered photonic hydrogels with linear, planar, and spiral assemblies with flexible structures and angle‐independent spectrum characteristics can be easily achieved, which show great potentials in reflective cooling.
Thorarchaeota are a new archaeal phylum within the Asgard superphylum, whose ancestors have been proposed to play possible ecological roles in cellular evolution. However, little is known about the ...lifestyles of these uncultured archaea. To provide a better resolution of the ecological roles and metabolic capacity of Thorarchaeota, we obtained Thorarchaeota genomes reconstructed from metagenomes of different depth layers in mangrove and mudflat sediments. These genomes from deep anoxic layers suggest the presence of Thorarchaeota with the potential to degrade organic matter, fix inorganic carbon, reduce sulfur/sulfate and produce acetate. In particular, Thorarchaeota may be involved in ethanol production, nitrogen fixation, nitrite reduction, and arsenic detoxification. Interestingly, these Thorarchaeotal genomes are inferred to contain the tetrahydromethanopterin and tetrahydrofolate Wood-Ljungdahl (WL) pathways for CO
reduction, and the latter WL pathway appears to have originated from bacteria. These archaea are predicted to be able to use various inorganic and organic carbon sources, possessing genes inferred to encode ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase-like proteins (normally without RuBisCO activity) and a near-complete Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle. The existence of eukaryotic selenocysteine insertion sequences and many genes for proteins previously considered eukaryote-specific in Thorarchaeota genomes provide new insights into their evolutionary roles in the origin of eukaryotic cellular complexity. Resolving the metabolic capacities of these enigmatic archaea and their origins will enhance our understanding of the origins of eukaryotes and their roles in ecosystems.
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