Carbon nanotube (CNT) membrane electrochemical filtration has been found to provide effective solutions for water contaminant removal. However, bubble elimination, water flux increase, and CNT ...membrane robustness enhancement still remain great challenges for CNT electrochemical filtration technologies. To improve the performance of the electrochemical CNT filter, a ceramic flat membrane is used as the CNT electrode support. Aniline (AN) is chosen as the target pollutant to investigate the effects of water quality (initial pH, initial AN concentration, and support electrolyte concentration) and running conditions (anode potential and water flux). In addition, the current efficiencies (CE) of the two different modes (single-pass filtration and recirculated filtration) are also estimated. The results showed that the effects of various impact factors on the AN degradation were generally similar in both modes. Overall, the CEs of the sing-pass filtration mode with the stable influent conditions were higher than those of the recirculation filtration mode. Increasing the flux and applied anode potential did increase the AN degradation rate. The maximum water flux density of the high-flux CNT electrochemical filter reached 83.9 mL/(cm2·h), 4.0–16.1 fold of that of a typical CNT electrochemical filter, addressing the defects of bubble formation and CNT fragility of the free-standing BUCKYPAPER membrane in a conventional electrochemical filter. The configuration with a ceramic membrane support greatly improved the practicability of CNT-based electrochemical filtration technology for real wastewater treatment.
Exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has been linked to a higher pulmonary fibrosis risk. Dysregulation of the epitranscriptome results in abnormal expression of mRNAs during fibrosis ...development. N4-acetylcytidine (ac4C) is one of the most frequent RNA epigenetic alterations, however, its function in PM2.5-triggered fibrosis is yet unknown. In this study, lung epithelial and murine models were established and exposed to PM2.5 to analyze the function of ac4C alteration in pulmonary fibrosis and underlying mechanisms. Meanwhile, the expression levels of only known ac4C “writer” protein, N-acetyltransferase 10 (NAT10), were significantly induced in pulmonary epithelia, relative to the control. Subsequently, NAT10 enhanced the stability of transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGFB1) mRNA as well as protein levels. As an up-stream driver, TGFB1 accelerated EMT and fibrosis process. Inhibition of NAT10 significantly protected against pulmonary EMT and fibrosis driven by PM2.5 exposure, whereas TGFB1 overexpression reversed the protective effects of NAT10 inhibition. Thus, NAT10 accelerated PM2.5-triggered pulmonary fibrosis via increasing TGFB1 mRNA stability in an ac4C-dependent manner. Our results reveal a pivotal role of NAT10-regulated mRNA ac4C acetylation in PM2.5-triggered pulmonary fibrosis and uncover the potential epitranscriptional mechanism.
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•NAT10-mediated RNA acetylation accelerates PM2.5-induced pulmonary fibrosis.•NAT10 enhances TGFB1 mRNA stability in an RNA acetylation-dependent manner.•TGFB1 reverses the protection of NAT10 depletion on PM2.5-induced pulmonary fibrosis.
Emotional neglect is an under-recognized but relatively common type of childhood maltreatment. Although it has been reported that adolescents will facilitate positive growth after experiencing ...childhood maltreatment, such as sexual abuse, it is unknown whether adolescents could also get a promotion after experiencing emotional neglect. Thus, we aimed to examine the association between emotional neglect and posttraumatic growth (PTG) and further explored the potential influence factors underlying such association. Six hundred and thirty-five adolescents (55.2% female, Msubscript age = 14.12 years old, SD = 1.47) were asked to complete self-report questionnaires regarding emotional neglect, school engagement, psychological suzhi, and PTG. Results showed that emotional neglect was negatively associated with PTG, and school engagement mediated such association. Further, psychological suzhi moderated the direct pathway from emotional neglect to PTG in which the deleterious effect of emotional neglect on PTG was weaker for adolescents who reported higher psychological suzhi. Meanwhile, psychological suzhi moderated the indirect pathway from emotional neglect to school engagement in the mediated model in which the deleterious effect of emotional neglect on school engagement was weaker for adolescents who reported higher psychological suzhi. Overall, the current study advances our understanding of the relationship between emotional neglect and PTG, and further tests the potential roles of school engagement and psychological suzhi in this relationship.
Fisetin, a dietary polyphenol abundantly found in strawberries, exhibits a broad spectrum of health-promoting activities, including antihyperlipidemic effects. This study aimed to investigate the ...regulatory effect of fisetin on cholesterol elimination through novel transintestinal cholesterol excretion (TICE) pathway. A hypercholesterolemic mouse model and human colon epithelial cancer cell line Caco-2 were utilized to conduct the study. In hypercholesterolemic mice, fisetin (25 mg/kg) treatment reduced serum total cholesterol by 46.48% and significantly decreased lipid accumulation in the liver. Furthermore, fisetin administration led to a substantial increase in the fecal neutral sterol contents, including coprostanol, coprostanone, dihydrocholesterol, and cholesterol. Specifically, these sterol contents increased by approximately 224.20%, 151.40%, 70.40% and 50.72% respectively. The fluorescence intensity of 22-NBD-cholesterol in intestinal perfusion increased by 95.94% in fisetin group (25 mg/kg), indicating that fisetin stimulated TICE. In high cholesterol-induced Caco-2 cells, fisetin at a concentration of 30 μM reduced total cholesterol and free cholesterol by 37.21% and 45.30% respectively, stimulated cholesterol excretion, and inhibited cholesterol accumulation. Additionally, fisetin upregulated the gene and protein expression of cholesterol efflux transporters ABCG5/G8 and ABCB1, while downregulating the cholesterol uptake regulator NPC1L1. Furthermore, fisetin increased LDLR protein expression and decreased PCSK9 expression. Notably, fisetin significantly activated nuclear receptor PPARδ in Caco-2 cells. PPARδ antagonist pretreatment counteracted the regulatory effects of fisetin on TICE regulators, suggesting fisetin lowered cholesterol through enhancing TICE by activation of intestinal PPARδ. Fisetin could be used as functional dietarysupplement for eliminating cholesterol and reducing the incidence of cardiovascular diseases.
Golgins are coiled-coil proteins that play prominent roles in maintaining the structure and function of the Golgi complex. However, the role of golgin proteins in phytopathogenic fungi remains poorly ...understood. In this study, we functionally characterized the
golgin protein RUD3, a homolog of
RUD3/GMAP-210 in
and mammalian cells. Cellular localization observation revealed that RUD3 is located in the
-Golgi. Deletion of RUD3 caused defects in vegetative growth, ascospore discharge, deoxynivalenol (DON) production, and virulence. Moreover, the Δ
mutant showed reduced expression of
genes and impairment of the formation of toxisomes, both of which play essential roles in DON biosynthesis. We further used green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged SNARE protein SEC22 (SEC22-GFP) as a tool to study the transport between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi and observed that SEC22-GFP was retained in the
-Golgi in the Δ
mutant. RUD3 contains the coiled coil (CC), GRAB-associated 2 (GA2), GRIP-related Arf binding (GRAB), and GRAB-associated 1 (GA1) domains, which except for GA1, are indispensable for normal localization and function of RUD3, whereas only CC is essential for normal RUD3-RUD3 interaction. Together, these results demonstrate how the golgin protein RUD3 mediates retrograde trafficking in the ER-to-Golgi pathway and is necessary for growth, ascospore discharge, DON biosynthesis, and pathogenicity in
head blight (FHB) caused by the fungal pathogen
is an economically important disease of wheat and other small grain cereal crops worldwide, and limited effective control strategies are available. A better understanding of the regulation mechanisms of
development, deoxynivalenol (DON) biosynthesis, and pathogenicity is therefore important for the development of effective control management of this disease. Golgins are attached via their extreme carboxy terminus to the Golgi membrane and are involved in vesicle trafficking and organelle maintenance in eukaryotic cells. In this study, we systematically characterized a highly conserved Golgin protein, RUD3, and found that it is required for vegetative growth, ascospore discharge, DON production, and pathogenicity in
Our findings provide a comprehensive characterization of the golgin family protein RUD3 in plant-pathogenic fungus, which could help to identify a new potential target for effective control of this devastating disease.
Background
It has been indicated that the single nuclear polymorphisms (SNPs) in the long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) have association with colorectal cancer (CRC) susceptibility.
Methods
We enrolled 1078 ...cases with CRC and 1175 age‐ and gender‐matched cancer‐free controls to explore whether the polymorphisms in MAGI2‐AS3 have associations with CRC risk. qRT‐PCR, expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analyses, dual‐luciferase reporter assay, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), flow cytometry, and transwell assays were performed to explore the specific mechanisms in which MAGI2‐AS3 rs7783388 variation influenced the tumorigenesis of CRC.
Results
Subjects carrying rs7783388 GG genotype presented a higher risk of CRC compared with the AG/AA genotypes. Mechanistically, we found that the functional genetic variant of rs7783388 A > G decreased binding affinity of transcription factor glucocorticoid receptor (GR) to the MAGI2‐AS3 promoter, resulting in decreased transcriptional activity that subsequently downregulated MAGI2‐AS3 expression. Furthermore, functional experiments elucidated that MAGI2‐AS3 overexpression suppressed CRC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion capacities, arrested cell cycle at G0/G1 phase, and promoted cell apoptosis.
Conclusion
Taken together, our study demonstrated that the potential function of MAGI2‐AS3 as a tumor suppressor for CRC, and the MAGI2‐AS3 rs7783388 polymorphism is associated with the increased susceptibility to CRC by altering the binding ability of GR to the MAGI2‐AS3 promoter.
To evaluate the effects of a low-sodium and high-potassium salt-substitute on lowering blood pressure (BP) among Tibetans living at high altitude (4300 meters).
The study was a patient-blinded ...randomized controlled trial conducted between February and May 2009 in Dangxiong County, Tibetan Autonomous Region, China. A total of 282 Tibetans aged 40 or older with known hypertension (systolic BP≥140 mmHg) were recruited and randomized to intervention (salt-substitute, 65% sodium chloride, 25% potassium chloride and 10% magnesium sulfate) or control (100% sodium chloride) in a 1: 1 allocation ratio with three months' supply. Primary outcome was defined as the change in BP levels measured from baseline to followed-up with an automated sphygmomanometer. Per protocol (PP) and intention to treat (ITT) analyses were conducted.
After the three months' intervention period, the net reduction in SBP/DBP in the intervention group in comparison to the control group was -8.2/-3.4 mmHg (all p<0.05) in PP analysis, after adjusting for baseline BP and other variables. ITT analysis showed the net reduction in SBP/DBP at -7.6/-3.5 mmHg with multiple imputations (all p<0.05). Furthermore, the whole distribution of blood pressure showed an overall decline in SBP/DBP and the proportion of patients with BP under control (SBP/DBP<140 mmHg) was significantly higher in salt-substitute group in comparison to the regular salt group (19.2% vs. 8.8%, p = 0.027).
Low sodium high potassium salt-substitute is effective in lowering both systolic and diastolic blood pressure and offers a simple, low-cost approach for hypertension control among Tibetans in China.
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01429246.
In this paper, an accelerated singular boundary method (SBM) incorporating adaptive cross approximation (ACA) is developed for the steady-state heat conduction problems. The SBM, a recently developed ...boundary collocation method, employs the fundamental solutions of the governing operators as the kernel functions, and desingularizes the source singularity with a concept of origin intensity factor. However, the SBM suffers fully-populated influence matrix which results in prohibitively expensive operation counts and memory requirements as the number of degrees of freedom increases. In this paper, the ACA is applied to accelerate the SBM meanwhile reducing the memory requirement. Furthermore, the ACA-SBM is robust to different fundamental solutions, which enables it to deal with different heat conduction problems. The effectiveness, feasibility and robustness of the proposed method are numerically tested on different heat conduction problems including isotropic homogeneous, anisotropic homogeneous and non-homogeneous media with quadratic material variation of thermal conductivity, highlighting the accuracy as well as the significant reduction in memory storage and analysis time in comparison with the traditional SBM.
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The pathological changes and possible underlying molecular mechanisms of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are currently unclear. Effective treatment of this pathological state remains a ...challenge. The purpose of this study is to obtain some key genes with diagnostic and prognostic meaning and to identify potential therapeutic agents for HCC treatment. Here, CDK1, CCNB1 and CCNB2 were found to be highly expressed in HCC patients and accompanied by poor prognosis, and knockdown of them by siRNA drastically induced autophagy and senescence in hepatoma cells. Simultaneously, the anti-HCC effect of lycorine was comparable to that of interfering with these three genes, and lycorine significantly promoted the decrease both in protein and mRNA expression of CDK1. Molecular validation mechanistically demonstrated that lycorine might attenuate the degradation rate of CDK1 via interaction with it, which had been confirmed by cellular thermal shift assay and drug affinity responsive targets stability assay. Taken together, these findings suggested that CDK1, CCNB1 and CCNB2 could be regarded as potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for HCC, and CDK1 might serve as a promising therapeutic target for lycorine against HCC.
Childhood maltreatment is a rising social issue worldwide. Notably, childhood maltreatment is suggested to incur non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), which is also considered as a profound public health ...concern, especially among Chinese youth and adolescence. Although the relationship between the two has been reported, little is known about the roles of psychological suzhi and inferiority complex in it. The current study aimed to examine the link between childhood maltreatment and NSSI among Chinese adolescents, and determine the mediating role of inferiority complex and the moderating effect of psychological suzhi. A total of 648 students (55.6% female; M
age
= 14.59) were guided to complete the self-report questionnaires regarding the mentioned study variables. Results demonstrated that childhood maltreatment was positively related with NSSI, and inferiority complex mediated such association. Furthermore, structural equation modeling (SEM) results showed that the effect of high childhood maltreatment on NSSI was weaker for adolescents who reported high psychological suzhi. In addition, the effect of inferiority on NSSI was also weaker for adolescents with high psychological suzhi. The current study demonstrated the indirect effects of inferiority complex and psychological suzhi in the link between childhood maltreatment and NSSI, advancing our understanding of the potential mechanism of such link.
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