Carotenoids are the general term of natural pigments. The formation of plant color is probably related to the components of carotenoids. As the yellow variety of celery, it is rich in the composition ...and content of carotenoids. However, the transcript profiling and roles of the genes related to carotenoids biosynthesis in yellow celery remain unclear. In this study, three yellow celery cultivars at different growth stages were used to analyze the content and composition of carotenoids and transcriptional changes of carotenoid biosynthesis-related genes. The lutein and β-carotene were detected in yellow celery cultivar, while α-carotene and lycopene were not detected. The contents of lutein and β-carotene were higher in leaf blades than in petioles. During the growth and development, the contents of lutein and β-carotene gradually decreased in celery. Compared with the other two cultivars, the contents of lutein and β-carotene were the highest in ‘Huangtaiji’ of 65 days after sowing (DAS) and 85 DAS and ‘Liuhehuangxinqin’ of 105 DAS, respectively. The expression levels of
AgLCYB
and
AgPSY2
genes were significantly correlated with lutein and β-carotene contents. This work provided a reference for the further study on carotenoid metabolisms in yellow celery and also made sense on the way of cultivating yellow celery with high carotenoids content.
Lead-zinc ore deposits hosted by carbonatic strata are the most important ore type of Pb–Zn resources in South China and have long been studied. Although their metallogenic timing has been well ...constrained recently to the Caledonian, our understanding of the metal sources and mineralization mechanism remains controversial. This study aims to provide new insights to these contexts via a new Pb isotope tracing of the Xiangshuidong deposit in the western Hunan Province. The Xiangshuidong deposit is one of the typical deposits in the Huayuan-Tongren Pb–Zn ore-concentrated area in South China. Both ore-forming sulfides and carbonates of the host strata were analyzed by in situ analysis using MC-LA-ICPMS. Along with compiled data of other typical deposits of the same type in South China, it is revealed that: the ore-forming sulfides were distinctively different from the carbonates of the host strata in Pb isotopic signatures; the ore-forming metals were sourced mainly by regional high-grade crystalline basements, rather than host rocks or adjacent strata; the ores display metallogenic characteristics typical of Mississippi Valley Type (MVT) Pb–Zn deposits, rather than reworked sedimentary deposits. A metallogenic model for the Caledonian Pb–Zn ores is accordingly proposed and a new guidance on further ore exploration is suggested.
•A modified Pb isotope study is applied to the Caledonian Pb–Zn deposits in South China.•The ore-metals are dominantly derived from the crystalline basement, rather than the host carbonate strata.•An orogeny-related process caused the mineralization of the Caledonia Pb–Zn deposits.•The metallogenic loci were dominated by basement-cover unconformity and bottom dolomitic layers of the cover strata.•Their origin is typical of MVT Pb–Zn deposits.
Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a fatal complication of diabetes and the main cause of end-stage renal disease. Due to the suboptimal effects of current treatments, there is an urgent need to develop ...new therapeutic strategies for DN. Trametenolic acid (TA), a lanostane-type tetracyclic triterpenoid, is one of the main active ingredients extracted from the natural product Inonotus obliquus. Our study was aimed at clarifying the potential protective effects of TA on DN and its underlying mechanism. In this research, C57BLKS/db (db/db) mice were used as the spontaneous DN model, and TA (10 mg/kg/d) was intraperitoneally injected for 4 consecutive weeks. Ratio of right kidney weight/body weight was calculated, and the contents of serum creatinine (Scr), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and urine albumin were detected. The activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) and the contents of reductive glutathione (GSH) and malondialdehyde (MDA) were measured. The histopathological changes of renal tissues were observed by hematoxylin and eosin (HE), periodic acid-Schiff (PAS), and Masson staining. The protein expressions of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase-1 (NQO-1), nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), proinflammation cytokine tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), Nephrin, and Podocin were detected by western blot assay. Immunohistochemistry was utilized to detect expressions of collagen III (COL-III) and fibronectin (FN). Our results showed that TA administration significantly reduced the ratio of right kidney weight/body weight, BUN, Scr, and urine albumin levels and alleviated the histopathological changes of DN mice. Moreover, TA administration remarkably increased GSH content and SOD and CAT activities and decreased MDA content. Western blot assay demonstrated that TA activated Nrf2 signaling and increased the expression of downstream antioxidant enzymes HO-1 and NQO-1. Further studies illustrated that NF-κB signaling was inhibited, and downstream proinflammation cytokine expressions of TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β were also downregulated. In addition, we also found that TA administration significantly increased the expression of nephrin and podocin proteins and reduced the protein expression of COL-III and FN. These findings suggested that TA exhibited a renoprotective effect by ameliorating oxidative stress and inflammation via Nrf2/HO-1 and NF-κB signaling pathways.
Introduction Hemorrhagic transformation (HT) is a serious complication that can occur spontaneously after an acute ischemic stroke (AIS) or after a thrombolytic/mechanical thrombectomy. Our study ...aims to explore the potential correlations between fibrinogen levels and the occurrence of spontaneous HT (sHT) and HT after mechanical thrombectomy (tHT). Methods A total of 423 consecutive AIS patients diagnosed HT who did not undergone thrombolysis and 423 age- and sex-matched patients without HT (non-HT) were enrolled. Fibrinogen levels were measured within 24 h of admission after stroke. The cohorts were trisected according to fibrinogen levels. The HT were further categorized into hemorrhagic infarction (HI) or parenchymal hematoma (PH) based on their imaging characteristics. Results In sHT cohort, fibrinogen levels were higher in HT patients than non-HT patients ( p < 0.001 versus p = 0.002). High fibrinogen levels were associated with the severity of HT. HT patients without atrial fibrillation (AF) had higher levels of fibrinogen compared to non-HT (median 3.805 vs. 3.160, p < 0.001). This relationship did not differ among AF patients. In tHT cohort, fibrinogen levels were lower in HT patients than non-HT patients ( p = 0.002). Lower fibrinogen levels were associated with the severity of HT ( p = 0.004). The highest trisection of fibrinogen both in two cohorts were associated with HT sHT cohort: OR = 2.515 (1.339–4.725), p = 0.016; that cohort: OR = 0.238 (0.108–0.523), p = 0.003. Conclusion Our study suggests that lower fibrinogen level in sHT without AF and higher fibrinogen level in tHT are associated with more severe HT.
Celery is one of the most important vegetable crop and its yield and quality is influenced by many environmental factors. Researches on gene expression not only help to unravel the molecular ...regulatory mechanism but also identify the key genes in the biological response. RT-qPCR is a commonly used technology to quantify the gene expression. Selecting an appropriate reference gene is an effective approach to improve the accuracy of RT-qPCR assay. To our knowledge, the evaluation of reference genes under different treatments in celery has not been reported yet. In this study, the expression stabilities of eight candidate reference genes (ACTIN, eIF-4alpha, GAPDH, TBP, TUB-A, UBC, TUB-B, and EF-1alpha) under abiotic stresses (heat, cold, drought, and salt) and hormone treatments (SA, MeJA, GA, and ABA) were detected. The expression stabilities of candidate genes were compared and ranked by geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper, DELTACt, and RefFinder programs. The results calculated by different programs were not completely consistent. Considering the comprehensive analysis results, ACTIN was the most stable reference gene and TUB-B showed the worst expression stabilities under the selected abiotic stress and hormone treatments in celery. The reliability of reference genes was further confirmed by the normalization of CAT1 gene under drought stress. This study presented evidences and basis to select the appropriate reference genes under different treatments in celery.
To explore the common differential flora of IgAN, Kawasaki disease and IgA vasculitis by screening and analyzing the differential intestinal flora between the three disease groups of IgAN, Kawasaki ...disease and IgA vasculitis and their healthy controls.
Papers on 16srRNA sequencing-related intestinal flora of IgAN, Kawasaki disease and IgA vasculitis were searched in databases, the literature was systematically collated and analysed, the original data was download from the relevant databases, and then the operational taxonomic unit and species classification analysis were performed. Besides, Alpha diversity analysis and Beta diversity analysis were performed to screen for IgAN, Kawasaki disease and I1gA vasculitis groups and finally compare the common intestinal differential flora among the three groups.
Among the common differential flora screened,
was lower in both the IgAN and Kawasaki disease groups than in the respective healthy controls;
was low in the IgAN group but high in the IgA vasculitis group.
was lower in both the Kawasaki disease and IgA vasculitis groups than in their respective healthy controls, and
was low in the Kawasaki disease group, but its expression was high in the IgA vasculitis group.
The dysbiosis of the intestinal flora in the three groups of patients with IgAN, Kawasaki disease and IgA vasculitis, its effect on the immunity of the organism and its role in the development of each disease group remain unclear, and the presence of their common differential flora may further provide new ideas for the association of the pathogenesis of the three diseases.
Reconstructing the shape of a 3D object from multi-view images under unknown, general illumination is a fundamental problem in computer vision. High quality reconstruction is usually challenging ...especially when fine detail is needed and the albedo of the object is non-uniform. This paper introduces vertex overall illumination vectors to model the illumination effect and presents a total variation (TV) based approach for recovering surface details using shading and multi-view stereo (MVS). Behind the approach are the two important observations: (1) the illumination over the surface of an object often appears to be piecewise smooth and (2) the recovery of surface orientation is not sufficient for reconstructing the surface, which was often overlooked previously. Thus we propose to use TV to regularize the overall illumination vectors and use visual hull to constrain partial vertices. The reconstruction is formulated as a constrained TV-minimization problem that simultaneously treats the shape and illumination vectors as unknowns. An augmented Lagrangian method is proposed to quickly solve the TV-minimization problem. As a result, our approach is robust, stable and is able to efficiently recover high-quality surface details even when starting with a coarse model obtained using MVS. These advantages are demonstrated by extensive experiments on the state-of-the-art MVS database, which includes challenging objects with varying albedo.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are most widely used as effective anti-inflammatory agents. However, their clinical application brings about inevasible gastrointestinal side effects. ...Pogostemon cablin is a traditional herbal medicine used for the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases in China. One of its representative components, the tricyclic triterpenoid β-patchoulone (β-PAE) has demonstrated great anti-inflammatory activity and gastroprotective effect against ethanol-induced gastric injury, but its protective effect against gastric ulcer induced by indomethacin is still unknown.
To assess the protective effect of β-PAE against ulcer produced by indomethacin and reveal the underlying pharmacological mechanism.
We used an indomethacin-induced gastric ulcer model of rats in vivo.
Gastroprotective activity of β-PAE (10, 20, 40 mg/kg, i.g.) was estimated via indomethacin-induced gastric ulcer model in rats. Histopathological and histochemical assessment of ulcerated tissues were performed. Protein and mRNA expression were determined by Elisa, Western blotting and qRT-PCR.
β-PAE could inhibit ulcer formation. Histopathological and histochemical assessment macroscopically demonstrated that β-PAE alleviates indomethacin-induced gastric ulceration in dose-dependent manner. After administration of β-PAE, elevated tumor necrosis factor -α level was significantly decreased and the phosphorylation of JNK and IκB was markedly inhibited. β-PAE suppressed the levels of E-selectin, P-selectin, intercellular adhesion molecule-1, vascular cell adhesion molecule and monocyte chemoattractant protein 1, as well as myeloperoxidase. Meanwhile, β-PAE increased cyclooxygenase enzyme activities (COX-1 and COX-2) to enhance the production of prostaglandin E2. Proangiogenic protein, vascular endothelial growth factor and its receptor fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 mRNA expression were promoted while anti-angiogenic protein, endostatin-1 and its receptor ETAR mRNA expression were decreased.
β-PAE may provide gastroprotection in indomethacin-induced gastric ulcer in rats by reducing inflammatory response and improving angiogenesis.
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In the past decade, multi-view clustering has received a lot of attention due to the popularity of multi-view data. However, not all samples can be observed from every view due to some unavoidable ...factors, resulting in the incomplete multi-view clustering (IMC) problem. Up until now, most efforts for the IMC problem have been made on the learning of consensus representations or graphs, while many missing views are ignored, making it impossible to capture the information hidden in the missing view. To overcome this drawback, we first analyzed the low-rank relationship existing inside each graph and among all graphs, and then propose a novel method for the IMC problem via low-rank graph tensor completion. Specifically, we first stack all similarity graphs into a third-order graph tensor and then exploit the low-rank relationship from each mode using the matrix nuclear norm. In this way, the connection hidden between the missing and available instances can be recovered. The consensus representation can be learned from all completed graphs via multi-view spectral clustering. To obtain the optimal multi-view clustering result, incomplete graph recovery and consensus representation learning are integrated into a joint framework for optimization. Extensive experimental results on several incomplete multi-view datasets demonstrate that the proposed method can obtain a better clustering performance in comparison with state-of-the-art incomplete multi-view clustering methods.
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:
To provide the surgical indication for patients with myopic traction maculopathy (MTM) by investigating the postoperative outcomes after vitrectomy among different types of ...morphological characteristic groups.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:
This was a retrospective cohort study that included patients (37 eyes) diagnosed with MTM at a single institution. All 37 eyes from 37 patients with MTMs were classified into three groups: foveal retinoschisis (FS), lamellar macular hole (LMH), and foveal retinal detachment (FRD). The ratios of anatomic recovery, central retinal thickness (CRT), and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) were statistically analyzed among the three groups preoperatively and at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after vitrectomy.
RESULTS:
Anatomical recovery could be found in all patients of the FS group at 6 months postoperatively and in the LMH group at 12 months postoperatively. Only 83.33% patients in the FRD group showed anatomic recovery until 12 months. The time taken for CRT to reduce to 200 µm was gradually increased between the FS, LMH, and FRD groups. Postoperative BCVA was better in the FS group than the LMH and FRD groups (
P
< .05), but the LMH and FDR groups had no difference (
P
≥ .05) at any point. The visual acuity was significantly improved in the FS group (
P
< .01) and FRD group (
P
= .018), but not in the LMH group (
P
= .196) at 12 months postoperatively.
CONCLUSIONS:
The FS group achieved anatomical recovery in the shortest time and had the best postoperative BCVA. FRD patients could get visual gain but need too much time for the anatomical recovery. LMH patients experienced anatomic success with surgery, but not in BCVA. Early surgery might be considered for eyes at FS prior to the occurrence of LMH or FRD.
Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina.
2020;51:574–582.
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