Microplastic fibres (MPFs) often make up the largest fraction of microplastic pollution in aquatic environments, yet little is known about their degradative fate and persistence. This study ...investigates the environmentally relevant photodegradation of common MPFs: polyester (PET), polyamide (PA) and polyacrylonitrile (PAN), their respective additive chemical profile, together with their potential for additive leaching. MPFs were subject to ultraviolet (UV) exposure in seawater and freshwater media over 10 months. PET and PA MPFs showed significant fragmentation and surface changes following UV exposure, additionally PA showed evidence of chemical changes. PAN did not undergo significant photodegradation in the same exposure period. Chemicals tentatively identified in MPFs and aqueous leachates via non-target gas chromatography-mass spectrometry include monomers, UV stabilisers and degradation products. Characterisation of several bisphenols (BPs) and benzophenones (BzPs) was performed via ultraperformance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Bisphenol A, bisphenol S and benzophenone-3 were quantified in all MPFs and wool at concentrations between 4.3 and 501 ng/g, with wool displaying the highest sum concentration of BPs and BzPs at 863 and 27 ng/g, respectively.
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•Polyester and polyamide microfibres undergo significant UV degradation over 10 months.•Degradation is characterized by fragmentation and changes in surface morphology.•Polyacrylonitrile did not undergo photodegradation in the same exposure period.•Additive and degradation products tentatively identified in fibres and leachates.•Wool contained higher levels of bisphenols and benzophenones than synthetic fibres.
Environmental parameters and material-specific properties influence the degradative fate of microplastic plastic fibres and their additive chemical leaching in aquatic environments.
In recent decades, an area of active research has supported the notion that progesterone promotes a wide range of remarkable protective actions in experimental models of nervous system trauma or ...disease, and has also provided a strong basis for considering this steroid as a promising molecule for modulating the complex maladaptive changes that lead to neuropathic pain, especially after spinal cord injury. In this review, we intend to give the readers a brief appraisal of the main mechanisms underlying the increased excitability of the spinal circuit in the pain pathway after trauma, with particular emphasis on those mediated by the activation of resident glial cells, the subsequent release of proinflammatory cytokines and their impact on N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate receptor function. We then summarize the available preclinical data pointing to progesterone as a valuable repurposing molecule for blocking critical cellular and molecular events that occur in the dorsal horn of the injured spinal cord and are related to the development of chronic pain. Since the treatment and management of neuropathic pain after spinal injury remains challenging, the potential therapeutic value of progesterone opens new traslational perspectives to prevent central pain.
In the setting of spinal injury, the activation of resident glial cells and the subsequent release of pro‐inflammatory cytokines impact on N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate receptor (NMDAR) function. The increased trafficking and phosphorylation of GluN1 subunit of NMDAR may be related to the activation of neuronal interleukin‐1 beta receptor type 1 (IL‐1RI), and contributing to allodynia (pain induced by innocuous stimuli). Progesterone, by targeting the neuroinflammatory cascade and neuronal IL‐1RI/GluN1, offers a translational perspective to prevent central pain.
Lactoferrin: structure, function and applications González-Chávez, Susana A; Arévalo-Gallegos, Sigifredo; Rascón-Cruz, Quintín
International journal of antimicrobial agents,
04/2009, Letnik:
33, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Abstract Lactoferrin (LF) is an 80 kDa iron-binding glycoprotein of the transferrin family that is expressed in most biological fluids and is a major component of the mammalian innate immune system. ...Its protective effects range from direct antimicrobial activities against a large panel of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, to anti-inflammatory and anticancer activities. These extensive activities are made possible by mechanisms of action utilising not only the capacity of LF to bind iron but also interactions of LF with molecular and cellular components of both host and pathogens. This review summarises the putative antimicrobial mechanisms, clinical applications and heterologous expression models for LF.
...PR seems to be the main mediator of the remyelinating effects of progesterone, since the enhancement in the expression of the myelin basic protein induced by the steroid in organotypic cerebellar ...slices is lost in PRKO mice (Ghoumari et al., 2003). Less information is available on the role of PR isoforms expression after nervous system injury or during disease. Since both isoforms show distinct transcriptional properties, any disruption of their balanced expression may impact on the regulation of particular and/or common arrays of target genes. ...they also found that MAPK1 kinase associated with PR-B, but not PR-A, and detected hormone-dependent interactions between Src kinase with PR-A, but not PR-B. ...both PR isoforms were associated with a key regulator of energy homeostasis, FoxO1, pointing to a novel role for PR in energy metabolism. The membrane-bound mPRs are associated with G protein that, depending on the receptor subtype involved, activate intracellular pathways that may lead to increase or decrease AMPc levels.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems have been widely deployed as a powerful tool to prevent, detect, and react against cyber-attacks. SIEM solutions have evolved to become ...comprehensive systems that provide a wide visibility to identify areas of high risks and proactively focus on mitigation strategies aiming at reducing costs and time for incident response. Currently, SIEM systems and related solutions are slowly converging with big data analytics tools. We survey the most widely used SIEMs regarding their critical functionality and provide an analysis of external factors affecting the SIEM landscape in mid and long-term. A list of potential enhancements for the next generation of SIEMs is provided as part of the review of existing solutions as well as an analysis on their benefits and usage in critical infrastructures.
The accumulation of dissolved organic matter (DOM) poses an issue in the management of the water quality from recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), but its characterization is often not detailed ...enough to understand the DOM transformations in RAS. In this study, we investigated the application of two distinct non-targeted data processing approaches using ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (QTOF-MS) and two software with different algorithmic designs: PetroOrg and Progenesis QI to accurately characterize the molecular composition of DOM in RAS by UPLC-QTOF-MS.
The UPLC-QTOF-MS resolution in combination with PetroOrg and Progenesis QI software successfully assigned 912 and 106 unique elemental compositions, respectively, including compounds containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (CHO) and nitrogen-containing CHO compounds (CHON), in the DOM samples from RAS. The results of these two distinct data processing approaches were consistent with the list of DOM formulas from RAS identified by higher resolution mass spectrometry techniques confirming their reliability. PetroOrg approach revealed only compositional information in the DOM samples from RAS, while Progenesis QI in addition to identifying new elemental compositions, increased their chemical space by giving information about their polarity and their possible key structures. DOM samples from RAS were found to be rich in unsaturated CHO compounds, with tentatively key structures of terpenoids with medium polarity indicating natural origins in their composition. The analysis also revealed probable structures of sucrose fatty acid esters and polyethylene glycol, indicating anthropogenic sources.
The combination of these two non-targeted data processing approaches significantly improves the characterization of the complex mixture of DOM from RAS by UPLC-QTOF-MS reporting for the first time accurate DOM results in terms of its composition, while proposing its key structures. The presented methods can also be used to analyze different DOM samples with other HRMS techniques and software.
•Improvement of DOM characterization in RAS by UPLC-QTOF-MS using two non-targeted strategies.•Results of the UPLC-QTOF-MS are consistent with higher resolution techniques.•High-resolution alternative to characterize DOM in RAS and track its changes.•Elucidation of the polarity and possible structures of DOM in RAS for the first time.•Expansion in the DOM characterization field by the combination of the two non-targeted strategies.
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Rosaceae is the most important fruit-producing clade, and its key commercially relevant genera (Fragaria, Rosa, Rubus and Prunus) show broadly diverse growth habits, fruit types and compact diploid ...genomes. Peach, a diploid Prunus species, is one of the best genetically characterized deciduous trees. Here we describe the high-quality genome sequence of peach obtained from a completely homozygous genotype. We obtained a complete chromosome-scale assembly using Sanger whole-genome shotgun methods. We predicted 27,852 protein-coding genes, as well as noncoding RNAs. We investigated the path of peach domestication through whole-genome resequencing of 14 Prunus accessions. The analyses suggest major genetic bottlenecks that have substantially shaped peach genome diversity. Furthermore, comparative analyses showed that peach has not undergone recent whole-genome duplication, and even though the ancestral triplicated blocks in peach are fragmentary compared to those in grape, all seven paleosets of paralogs from the putative paleoancestor are detectable.
Forest inventories play an important role in enabling informed decisions to be made for the management and conservation of forest resources; however, the process of collecting inventory information ...is laborious. Despite advancements in mapping technologies allowing forests to be digitized in finer granularity than ever before, it is still common for forest measurements to be collected using simple tools such as calipers, measuring tapes, and hypsometers. Dense understory vegetation and complex forest structures can present substantial challenges to point cloud processing tools, often leading to erroneous measurements, and making them of less utility in complex forests. To address this challenge, this research demonstrates an effective deep learning approach for semantically segmenting high-resolution forest point clouds from multiple different sensing systems in diverse forest conditions. Seven diverse point cloud datasets were manually segmented to train and evaluate this model, resulting in per-class segmentation accuracies of Terrain: 95.92%, Vegetation: 96.02%, Coarse Woody Debris: 54.98%, and Stem: 96.09%. By exploiting the segmented point cloud, we also present a method of extracting a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from such segmented point clouds. This approach was applied to a set of six point clouds that were made publicly available as part of a benchmarking study to evaluate the DTM performance. The mean DTM error was 0.04 m relative to the reference with 99.9% completeness. These approaches serve as useful steps toward a fully automated and reliable measurement extraction tool, agnostic to the sensing technology used or the complexity of the forest, provided that the point cloud has sufficient coverage and accuracy. Ongoing work will see these models incorporated into a fully automated forest measurement tool for the extraction of structural metrics for applications in forestry, conservation, and research.
Hypoxia and its implications in rheumatoid arthritis Quiñonez-Flores, Celia María; González-Chávez, Susana Aideé; Pacheco-Tena, César
Journal of biomedical science,
08/2016, Letnik:
23, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Alterations in tissue oxygen pressure contribute to a number of diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Low partial pressure of oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia, is a relevant feature in ...RA since it is involved in angiogenesis, inflammation, apoptosis, cartilage degradation, energy metabolism, and oxidative damage. Therefore, alterations in hypoxia-related signaling pathways are considered potential mechanisms of disease pathogenesis. The objective of this review is to highlight and update our current knowledge of the role of hypoxia in the pathogenesis of RA. We describe the experimental evidence that RA synovial tissue exists in a hypoxic state, as well as the origin and involvement of synovial hypoxia in different aspects of the pathogenic process.
H9c2 myoblasts are a cell model used as an alternative for cardiomyocytes. H9c2 cells have the ability to differentiate towards a cardiac phenotype when the media serum is reduced in the presence of ...all-trans-retinoic acid (RA), creating multinucleated cells with low proliferative capacity. In the present study, we performed for the first time a transcriptional analysis of the H9c2 cell line in two differentiation states, i.e. embryonic cells and differentiated cardiac-like cells. The results show that RA-induced H9c2 differentiation increased the expression of genes encoding for cardiac sarcomeric proteins such as troponin T, or calcium transporters and associated machinery, including SERCA2, ryanodine receptor and phospholamban as well as genes associated with mitochondrial energy production including respiratory chain complexes subunits, mitochondrial creatine kinase, carnitine palmitoyltransferase I and uncoupling proteins. Undifferentiated myoblasts showed increased gene expression of pro-survival proteins such as Bcl-2 as well as cell cycle-regulating proteins. The results indicate that the differentiation of H9c2 cells lead to an increase of transcripts and protein levels involved in calcium handling, glycolytic and mitochondrial metabolism, confirming that H9c2 cell differentiation induced by RA towards a more cardiac-like phenotype involves remodeled mitochondrial function. PI3K, PDK1 and p-CREB also appear to be involved on H9c2 differentiation. Furthermore, complex analysis of differently expressed transcripts revealed significant up-regulation of gene expression related to cardiac muscle contraction, dilated cardiomyopathy and other pathways specific for the cardiac tissue. Metabolic and gene expression remodeling impacts cell responses to different stimuli and determine how these cells are used for biochemical assays.
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