Rational engineering active sites and vantage defects of catalysts are promising but grand challenging task to enhance photoreduction CO2 to high value‐added C2 products. In this study, we designed ...an N,S‐codoped Fe‐based MIL‐88B catalyst with well‐defined bipyramidal hexagonal prism morphology via a facile and effective process, which was synthesized by addition of appropriate 1,2‐benzisothiazolin‐3‐one (BIT) and acetic acid to the reaction solution. Under simulated solar irradiation, the designed catalyst exhibits high C2H4 evolution yield of 17.7 μmol g−1⋅h, which has been rarely achieved in photocatalytic CO2 reduction process. The synergistic effect of Fe‐N coordinated sites and reasonable defects in the N,S‐codoped photocatalyst can accelerate the migration of photogenerated carriers, resulting in high electron density, and this in turn helps to facilitate the formation and dimerization of C−C coupling intermediates for C2H4 effectively.
The integration of new active sites with beneficial defects in Fe‐MOF MIL‐88B catalysts gives enhanced photoreduction of CO2 to C2H4 under visible light. The modified structure promotes the migration and separation of the photoelectrons to produce the pivotal C−C coupling intermediate for the generation of C2H4, a result supported by in situ FT‐IR analysis.
Summary Approximately 27–37% of the people experienced prolonged sleep duration and 12–16% reported shortened sleep duration. However, prolonged or shortened sleep duration may be associated with ...serious health problems. A comprehensive, flexible, non-linear meta-regression with restricted cubic spline (RCS) was used to investigate the dose–response relationship between sleep duration and all-cause mortality in adults. Medline (Ovid), Embase, EBSCOhost—PsycINFO, and EBSCOhost—CINAHL Plus databases, reference lists of relevant review articles, and included studies were searched up to Nov. 29, 2015. Prospective cohort studies investigating the association between sleep duration and all-cause mortality in adults with at least three categories of sleep duration were eligible for inclusion. We eventually included in our study 40 cohort studies enrolling 2,200,425 participants with 271,507 deaths. A J-shaped association between sleep duration and all-cause mortality was present: compared with 7 hours of sleep (reference for 24-hour sleep duration), both shorted and prolonged sleep durations were associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality (4 hours: relative risk RR = 1.05; 95% confidence interval CI = 1.02–1.07; 5 hours: RR = 1.06; 95% CI = 1.03–1.09; 6 hours: RR =1.04; 95% CI = 1.03–1.06; 8 hours: RR = 1.03; 95% CI = 1.02–1.05; 9 hours: RR = 1.13; 95% CI = 1.10–1.16; 10 hours: RR = 1.25; 95% CI = 1.22–1.29; 11 hours: RR = 1.38; 95% CI = 1.33–1.44; n = 29; P < 0.01 for non-linear test). With regard to the night-sleep duration, prolonged night-sleep duration was associated with increased all-cause mortality (8 hours: RR = 1.01; 95% CI = 0.99–1.02; 9 hours: RR = 1.08; 95% CI = 1.04–1.11; 10 hours: RR = 1.24; 95% CI = 1.21–1.28; n = 13; P < 0.01 for non-linear test). Subgroup analysis showed females with short sleep duration a day (<7 h) were at high risk of all-cause mortality (4 hours: RR = 1.07; 95% CI = 1.02–1.13; 5 hours: RR = 1.08; 95% CI = 1.03–1.14; 6 hours: RR = 1.05; 95% CI = 1.02–1.09), but males were not (4 hours: RR = 1.01; 95% CI = 0.96–1.06; 5 hours: RR = 1.02; 95% CI = 0.97–1.08; 6 hours: RR = 1.02; 95% CI = 0.98–1.06). The current evidence suggests that insufficient or prolonged sleep may increase all-cause mortality. Women may be more susceptible to short sleep duration on all-cause mortality. Glossary of terms Restricted cubic spline: A smoothly joined piecewise polynomial with third-order polynomials fitted within each piecewise, which the left and (or) right tail of the curve are (is) restricted to linear. The joints of polynomials refer to knots. This function is usually used to fit the non-linear relationship.
Programmed death ligand 1 (PD‐L1) is widely known as an immune checkpoint, and immunotherapy through the inhibition of checkpoint molecules has become an important component in the successful ...treatment of tumours via programmed death 1 (PD‐1)/PD‐L1 signalling pathways. However, its biological functions and expression profile in colorectal cancer (CRC) are elusive. We previously found that PD‐L1 can bind to PD‐L1 and cause cell detachment. However, the detailed molecular mechanisms of how PD‐L1 binds to PD‐L1 and how it transmits signals to the cell remain unclear. In this study, we disclosed that PD‐L1 expression was dramatically upregulated in CRC compared to normal tissues. Ectopic expression of PD‐L1 inhibits cell adhesive capacity and promotes cell migration in CRC cell lines, while silencing PD‐L1 had the opposite effects and suppressed invasion and proliferation. Mechanistically, PD‐L1 was found to promote epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) through the ERK signalling molecule pathway and interacted with the 1–86 aa fragment of KRAS to transduce signals. Collectively, our study demonstrated the role of PD‐L1 after binding to PD‐L1 in CRC, thereby providing a new theoretical basis for further improving immunotherapy with anti‐PD‐L1 antibodies.
Spermatogenesis is a cyclical process in which different generations of spermatids undergo a series of developmental steps at a fixed time and finally produce spermatids. Here, we report that ...overexpression of PD‐L1 (B7 homolog1) in the testis causes sperm developmental disorders and infertility in male mice, with severe malformation and sloughing during spermatid development, characterized by disorganized and collapsed seminiferous epithelium structure. PD‐L1 needs to be simultaneously expressed on Sertoli cells and spermatogonia to cause spermatogenesis failure. After that, we excluded the influence of factors such as the PD‐L1 receptor and humoral regulation, confirming that PD‐L1 has an intrinsic function to interact with PD‐L1. Studies have shown that PD‐L1 not only serves as a ligand but also plays a receptor‐like role in signal transduction. PD‐L1 interacts with PD‐L1 to affect the adhesive function of germ cells, causing malformation and spermatid sloughing. Taken together, these results indicate that PD‐L1 can interact with PD‐L1 to cause germ cell detachment and male infertility.
Abstract
Background
The atherogenicity of remnant cholesterol (RC) has been underlined by recent guidelines, which was linked to coronary artery disease (CAD), especially for patients with diabetes ...mellitus (DM). This study aimed to examine the prognostic value of plasma RC in the patients with CAD under different glucose metabolism status.
Methods
Fasting plasma RC were directly calculated or measured in 4331 patients with CAD. Patients were followed for the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) and categorized according to both glucose metabolism status DM, pre-DM, normoglycemia (NG) and RC levels. Cox proportional hazards model was used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals.
Results
During a mean follow-up of 5.1 years, 541 (12.5%) MACEs occurred. The risk for MACEs was significantly higher in patients with elevated RC levels after adjustment for potential confounders. No significant difference in MACEs was observed between pre-DM and NG groups (p > 0.05). When stratified by combined status of glucose metabolism and RC, highest levels of calculated and measured RC were significant and independent predictors of developing MACEs in pre-DM (HR: 1.64 and 1.98; both p < 0.05) and DM (HR: 1.62 and 2.05; both p < 0.05). High RC levels were also positively associated with MACEs in patients with uncontrolled DM. .
Conclusions
In this large-scale and long-term follow-up cohort study, data firstly demonstrated that higher RC levels were significantly associated with the worse prognosis in DM and pre-DM patients with CAD, suggesting that RC may be a target for patients with impaired glucose metabolism.
Accumulating evidence indicates that the long non-coding RNA HOTAIR plays a critical role in cancer progression and metastasis. However, the overall biological role and clinical significance of ...HOTAIR in gastric carcinogenesis remains largely unknown.
HOTAIR expression was measured in 78 paired cancerous and noncancerous tissue samples by real-time PCR. The effects of HOTAIR on gastric cancer cells were studied by overexpression and RNA interference approaches in vitro and in vivo. Insights of the mechanism of competitive endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) were gained from bioinformatic analysis, luciferase assays and RNA binding protein immunoprecipitation (RIP). The positive HOTAIR/HER2 interaction was identified and verified by immunohistochemistry assay and bivariate correlation analysis.
HOTAIR upregulation was associated with larger tumor size, advanced pathological stage and extensive metastasis, and also correlated with shorter overall survival of gastric cancer patients. Furthermore, HOTAIR overexpression promoted the proliferation, migration and invasion of gastric carcinoma cells, while HOTAIR depletion inhibited both cell invasion and cell viability, and induced growth arrest in vitro and in vivo. In particular, HOTAIR may act as a ceRNA, effectively becoming a sink for miR-331-3p, thereby modulating the derepression of HER2 and imposing an additional level of post-transcriptional regulation. Finally, the positive HOTAIR/HER2 correlation was significantly associated with advanced gastric cancers.
HOTAIR overexpression represents a biomarker of poor prognosis in gastric cancer, and may confer malignant phenotype to tumor cells. The ceRNA regulatory network involving HOTAIR and the positive interaction between HOTAIR and HER2 may contribute to a better understanding of gastric cancer pathogenesis and facilitate the development of lncRNA-directed diagnostics and therapeutics against this disease.
Relationships between biodiversity and multiple ecosystem functions (that is, ecosystem multifunctionality) are context-dependent. Both plant and soil microbial diversity have been reported to ...regulate ecosystem multifunctionality, but how their relative importance varies along environmental gradients remains poorly understood. Here, we relate plant and microbial diversity to soil multifunctionality across 130 dryland sites along a 4,000 km aridity gradient in northern China. Our results show a strong positive association between plant species richness and soil multifunctionality in less arid regions, whereas microbial diversity, in particular of fungi, is positively associated with multifunctionality in more arid regions. This shift in the relationships between plant or microbial diversity and soil multifunctionality occur at an aridity level of ∼0.8, the boundary between semiarid and arid climates, which is predicted to advance geographically ∼28% by the end of the current century. Our study highlights that biodiversity loss of plants and soil microorganisms may have especially strong consequences under low and high aridity conditions, respectively, which calls for climate-specific biodiversity conservation strategies to mitigate the effects of aridification.
Mounting evidence indicates that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) could play a pivotal role in cancer biology. However, the overall biological role and clinical significance of PVT1 in gastric ...carcinogenesis remains largely unknown.
Expression of PVT1 was analyzed in 80 GC tissues and cell lines by qRT-PCR. The effect of PVT1 on proliferation was evaluated by MTT and colony formation assays, and cell apoptosis was evaluated by Flow-cytometric analysis. GC cells transfected with shPVT1 were injected into nude mice to study the effect of PVT1 on tumorigenesis in vivo. RIP was performed to confirm the interaction between PVT1 and EZH2. ChIP was used to study the promoter region of related genes.
The higher expression of PVT1 was significantly correlated with deeper invasion depth and advanced TNM stage. Multivariate analyses revealed that PVT1 expression served as an independent predictor for overall survival (p = 0.031). Further experiments demonstrated that PVT1 knockdown significantly inhibited the proliferation both in vitro and in vivo. Importantly, we also showed that PVT1 played a key role in G1 arrest. Moreover, we further confirmed that PVT1 was associated with enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) and that this association was required for the repression of p15 and p16. To our knowledge, this is the first report showed that the role and the mechanism of PVT1 in the progression of gastric cancer.
Together, these results suggest that lncRNA PVT1 may serve as a candidate prognostic biomarker and target for new therapies in human gastric cancer.
Biochar-derived dissolved organic matter (BDOM) plays key roles in soil ecosystem by affecting soil physicochemical and biological properties and supplying nutrients to soil microbes. It can either ...enhance or suppress the growth of certain soil microorganisms, depending on its composition and content of labile organic compounds. This review aims to discuss and summarize the role of BDOM in modifying soil microbial functioning, microbial community structure, and enzymatic activity. We mainly focus on the role of BDOM as a function of its concentration, type of feedstock biomass, and pyrolysis temperature (PT). Results show that saw dust- and manure-based biochars produce higher BDOM concentrations than straw-, bone-, and sludge-based biochars. The types of feedstock biomass and its PT determine BDOM characteristics and its interaction with soil microbial communities. Plant-derived biochar with pyrolysis temperature ≤300 °C often results in a more aliphatic BDOM than that with pyrolysis temperature ≥500 °C, which yields a more aromatic BDOM. BDOM of plant biochar contains higher specific ultraviolet absorbance (SUVA) and humification index (HIX) than that of manure biochar. The SUVA and HIX of BDOM positively correlate (R
2
=0.68-0.96) with the content of total fatty acid methyl esters, but negatively correlate with the abundances of actinomycetes, arbuscular mycorrhizae, and fungal communities. However, the environmental fate of BDOM in biochar amended soil requires long-term experiment, both in laboratory and field scales, to provide a full understating of BDOM interaction with soil organic matter and microorganisms and help to tailor a safe utilization of biochar in agroecosystems.
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