Coastal seagrass meadows are essential in blue carbon and aquatic ecosystem services. However, this ecosystem has suffered severe eutrophication and destruction due to the expansion of aquaculture. ...Therefore, methods for the flourishing of seagrass are still being explored. Here, data from 49 public coastal surveys on the distribution of seagrass and seaweed around the onshore aquaculture facilities are revalidated, and an exceptional area where the seagrass Zostera marina thrives was found near the shore downstream of the onshore aquaculture facility. To evaluate the characteristics of the sediment for growing seagrass, physicochemical properties and bacterial ecological evaluations of the sediment were conducted. Evaluation of chemical properties in seagrass sediments confirmed a significant increase in total carbon and a decrease in zinc content. Association analysis and linear discriminant analysis refined bacterial candidates specified in seagrass overgrown- and nonovergrown-sediment. Energy landscape analysis indicated that the symbiotic bacterial groups of seagrass sediment were strongly affected by the distance close to the seagrass-growing aquaculture facility despite their bacterial population appearing to fluctuate seasonally. The bacterial population there showed an apparent decrease in the pathogen candidates belonging to the order Flavobacteriales. Moreover, structure equation modeling and a linear non-Gaussian acyclic model based on the machine learning data estimated an optimal sediment symbiotic bacterial group candidate for seagrass growth as follows: the Lachnospiraceae and Ruminococcaceae families as gut-inhabitant bacteria, Rhodobacteraceae as photosynthetic bacteria, and Desulfobulbaceae as cable bacteria modulating oxygen or nitrate reduction and oxidation of sulfide. These observations confer a novel perspective on the sediment symbiotic bacterial structures critical for blue carbon and low-pathogenic marine ecosystems in aquaculture.
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•Exceptional seagrass meadow found downstream of an onshore aquaculture facility.•Seagrass sediment symbiotic bacterial group estimated by ML, SEM, CMA, and LiNGAM.•Forecasting the potential role of sediment symbiotic bacterial group for blue carbon.
The human gut harbors a large and diverse community of commensal bacteria. Among them, Bifidobacterium is known to exhibit various probiotic effects including protection of hosts from infectious ...diseases. We recently discovered that genes encoding an ATP-binding-cassette-type carbohydrate transporter present in certain bifidobacteria contribute to protecting gnotobiotic mice from death induced by enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli O157:H7. We elucidated the molecular mechanism on lethal infection in mice associated with several bifidobacterial strains by a multi-omics approach combining genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics. The combined data clearly show that acetate produced by protective bifidobacteria acts in vivo to promote defense functions of the host epithelial cells and thereby protects the host from lethal infection. As demonstrated here, our multi-omics approach provides a powerful strategy for evaluation of host-microbial interactions in the complex gut ecosystem.
Surface roughness, an important property of products, can be identified using the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). A method to identify surface roughness is thus proposed using ...a one-shot reflectance direction color mapping imaging system. This imaging system can capture BRDF information across the entire field of view in one shot. Histograms of color variations in the captured images reveal that the surfaces with different roughness values on a metal piece can be identified even at a sub-micrometer scale.
•Method is proposed for identifying surface roughness with an optical imaging system.•The imaging system enables a one-shot reflectance direction color mapping.•The reflectance directions are instantly mapped as colors across entire field view.•Color histograms in images discern sub-micrometer surface roughness variations.
Periodontal disease induced by periodontopathic bacteria like
is demonstrated to increase the risk of metabolic, inflammatory, and autoimmune disorders. Although precise mechanisms for this ...connection have not been elucidated, we have proposed mechanisms by which orally administered periodontopathic bacteria might induce changes in gut microbiota composition, barrier function, and immune system, resulting in an increased risk of diseases characterized by low-grade systemic inflammation. Accumulating evidence suggests a profound effect of altered gut metabolite profiles on overall host health. Therefore, it is possible that
can affect these metabolites. To test this, C57BL/6 mice were administered with
W83 orally twice a week for 5 weeks and compared with sham-inoculated mice. The gut microbial communities were analyzed by pyrosequencing the 16S rRNA genes. Inferred metagenomic analysis was used to determine the relative abundance of KEGG pathways encoded in the gut microbiota. Serum metabolites were analyzed using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics coupled with multivariate statistical analyses. Oral administration of
induced a change in gut microbiota composition. The distributions of metabolic pathways differed between the two groups, including those related to amino acid metabolism and, in particular, the genes for phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan biosynthesis. Also, alanine, glutamine, histidine, tyrosine, and phenylalanine were significantly increased in the serum of
-administered mice. In addition to altering immune modulation and gut barrier function, oral administration of
affects the host's metabolic profile. This supports our hypothesis regarding a gut-mediated systemic pathology resulting from periodontal disease.
Increasing evidence suggest that alterations of the gut microbiome underlie metabolic disease pathology by modulating gut metabolite profiles. We have shown that orally administered
, a representative periodontopathic bacterium, alters the gut microbiome; that may be a novel mechanism by which periodontitis increases the risk of various diseases. Given the association between periodontal disease and metabolic diseases, it is possible that
can affect the metabolites. Metabolite profiling analysis demonstrated that several amino acids related to a risk of developing diabetes and obesity were elevated in
-administered mice. Our results revealed that the increased risk of various diseases by
might be mediated at least in part by alteration of metabolic profiles. The findings should add new insights into potential links between periodontal disease and systemic disease for investigators in periodontal disease and also for investigators in the field of other diseases, such as metabolic diseases.
Clathrin-associated adaptor protein (AP) complexes play a key role in the transport of proteins, by regulating the formation of transport vesicles as well as cargo selection, between organelles of ...the post-Golgi network, namely, the trans-Golgi network (TGN), endosomes, lysosomes and the plasma membrane. Evidence has been accumulating for the physiological importance of AP complexes. Deficiency in AP-1A or AP-2 results in embryonic lethality in mice, indicating that these AP complexes are essential for normal development of embryos in mammals. In contrast, mutations in the genes encoding subunits of AP-3A cause an autosomal recessive disorder, Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome in human and its disease models in mice. Knockout mice for the neuron-specific AP-3B suffer from epileptic seizure. Further studies on the physiological and pathological aspects of AP complexes will not only be beneficial for better understanding of developmental biology and medical sciences, but also deepen our insight into the molecular mechanisms of vesicular traffic.
We encountered a case of repeated shunt dysfunction caused by barium allergy. The patient was a 60-year-old male who underwent ventricular peritoneal shunting for hydrocephalus following subarachnoid ...hemorrhage due to a ruptured aneurysm;however, it malfunctioned many times. A patch test performed after the third reconstruction was positive for barium. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case report of shunt malfunction due to barium allergy. The patch test is useful in cases of suspected allergy-related dysfunction. We recommend the introduction of barium into antigen testing using the patch test. J. Med. Invest. 70 : 521-523, August, 2023
Oral immunotherapy (OIT) can ameliorate cow's milk allergy (CMA); however, the achievement of sustained unresponsiveness (SU) is challenging. Regarding the pathogenesis of CMA, recent studies have ...shown the importance of gut microbiota (Mb) and fecal water-soluble metabolites (WSMs), which prompted us to determine the change in clinical and gut environmental factors important for acquiring SU after OIT for CMA.
We conducted an ancillary cohort study of a multicenter randomized, parallel-group, delayed-start design study on 32 school-age children with IgE-mediated CMA who underwent OIT for 13 months. We defined SU as the ability to consume cow's milk exceeding the target dose in a double-blind placebo-controlled food challenge after OIT followed by a 2-week-avoidance. We longitudinally collected 175 fecal specimens and clustered the microbiome and metabolome data into 29 Mb- and 12 WSM-modules.
During OIT, immunological factors improved in all participants. However, of the 32 participants, 4 withdrew because of adverse events, and only 7 were judged SU. Gut environmental factors shifted during OIT, but only in the beginning, and returned to the baseline at the end. Of these factors, milk- and casein-specific IgE and the Bifidobacterium-dominant module were associated with SU (milk- and casein-specific IgE; OR for 10 kUA/L increments, 0.67 and 0.66; 95%CI, 0.41–0.93 and 0.42–0.90; Bifidobacterium-dominant module; OR for 0.01 increments, 1.40; 95%CI, 1.10–2.03), and these associations were observed until the end of OIT.
In this study, we identified the clinical and gut environmental factors associated with SU acquisition in CM-OIT.
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Constipation is strongly associated with the deterioration of quality of life (QOL), and patients with constipation desire clear spontaneous defecation without the feeling of incomplete evacuation, ...rather than improved defecation frequency. The use of common osmotic or stimulant laxatives has not been shown to lead to a satisfactory improvement of bowel movements. In addition, softening of stools by increasing their water content has been reported to increase the frequency of spontaneous defecation and improve hard stools, straining during defecation, and abdominal symptoms, such as abdominal bloating, thereby leading to improvement of QOL deterioration caused by constipation. Thus, the present study screened bacterial strains in vitro using intestinal epithelial T84 cells, aiming to identify one that activates chloride channels involved in water secretion into the intestinal tract. As a result, the conditioned medium of Bifidobacterium longum CLA8013 was found to induce ion transport. Also, this effect was suppressed by cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) (inh)-172, a CFTR chloride channel inhibitor. Furthermore, both live and heat-killed CLA8013 similarly induced ion transport, suggesting that bacterial cell components are responsible for the effect. In addition, the administration of heat-killed CLA8013 to loperamide-induced constipation rats resulted in an increase in fecal water content and promoted defecation. These results suggest that the active components in CLA8013 act on CFTR chloride channels in the intestinal tract, promote water secretion into the intestinal tract, and soften stools, thereby promoting bowel movements.
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