Gut microbiota has been suggested to play a role in stroke patients. Nevertheless, little is known about gut microbiota and the clinical indexes in stroke patients.
Total of 30 cerebral ischemic ...stroke (CI) patients and 30 healthy control were enrolled in this study and the fecal gut microbiota was profiled via Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA V1-V2. The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) were used to quantify stroke severity and modified Rankin scale (mRS) to assess outcome for CI patients. The correlations between the clinical indexes and microbiota were evaluated.
Though the microbial α-diversity and structure is similar between CI patients and healthy controls, the gut microbiota of CI patients had more short chain fatty acids producer including Odoribacter, Akkermansia, Ruminococcaceae_UCG_005 and Victivallis. We also found that the special microbes were correlation with serum index, such as norank_O_ _Mollicutes_RF9, Enterobacter, Ruminococcaceae_UCG-002 were negative correlation with LDL (r = - 0.401, P < 0.01), HDL (r = - 0.425, P < 0.01) and blood glucose (r = - 0.439, P < 0.001), while the HDL was significantly positive correlation with the genus Ruminococcus_1 (r = 0.443, P < 0.001). The Christensenellaceae_R-7_group and norank_f_Ruminococcaceae was significantly positive correlation with NIHSS1M (r = 0.514, P < 0.05; r = 0.449, P < 0.05) and mRS (r = 0.471, P < 0.05, r = 0.503, P < 0.01), respectively. On the other hand, the genus Enterobacter was significantly negative correlation with NIHSS1M (r = 0.449, P < 0.05) and mRS (r = 0.503, P < 0.01).
This study suggests that CI patients showed significant dysbiosis of the gut microbiota with enriched short chain fatty acids producer, including Odoribacter, Akkermansia. This dysbiosis was correlation with the outcomes and deserves further study.
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•A total of 643 ARGs subtypes belonging to 22 different ARG types were identified.•The profiles of ARGs shown a city functional region dependent pattern.•Airborne ARGs from the ...hospital exhibited higher ARG abundance and richness, may be the hotspots of resistant genes of multidrug and quinolone.•Environmental ARGs from suburban community could be explained by human fecal pollution, and crAssphage could be applied to predict the abundance of ARGs.
Environmental antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) have received much attention, while the characteristics of ARGs carried by particulate matter (PM) as a function of urban functional region are almost unknown. In this study, ARGs carried by PM2.5 and PM10 in an urban hospital, a nearby urban community and the nearest suburban community were detected using metagenomics. In total, 643 ARG subtypes belonging to 22 different ARG types were identified. The chloramphenicol exporter gene, sul1, bacA, and lnuA were the most abundant ARG subtypes in all air samples. The hospital exhibited higher ARG abundance and richness than the nearby communities. ARG profiles depended on functional region: hospital and suburban samples clustered separately, and samples from the nearby urban community interspersed among them. The representation of multidrug and quinolone resistance genes decayed with distance from the hospital to the urban community to the suburban community, indicating that hospital PM may be a hotspot for ARGs encoding proteins conferring multidrug and quinolone resistance. Airborne ARGs carried by PM in the hospital environment were more closely associated with clinically important pathogens than were those in nearby communities. In particular, carbapenemase genes, including blaNDM,blaKPC,blaIMP,blaVIM,and blaOXA-48, were discovered in hospital PM. In the suburban community, crAssphage, a human host-specific bacteriophage, was applied to predict ARG abundance and found to be enriched due to anthropogenic pollution but showed no clear evidence for ARG selection. In the hospital and the nearby urban community, the drivers of ARGs were complex. Our results highlighted that PM ARGs were closely related to human activities and revealed a potential hotspot, which could provide new evidence for further research and consequently mitigate the formation of airborne ARGs and transfer risks.
A Chinese and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) invention patented process defined as “modified atmosphere vacuum cooling (MAVC)” was developed in the current study. In traditional vacuum cooling (VC), ...air enters the vacuum chamber during pressure recovery stage at the end of the cooling process. In this study, instead of air, a gas mixture consisting of 7% O2, 7% CO2 and 86% N2 enters the chamber to achieve modified atmosphere storage. Three types of cabbages with different morphological structure, including flowering cabbage, Chinese cabbage and green cabbage were treated by MAVC and stored for 21 d under 4 ± 0.5 °C, relative humidity was controlled in the range of 90%–95%. The changes of color, sensory score, ascorbic acid, chlorophyll, respiration rate, peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) activity were measured throughout the storage period. The results showed that MAVC achieved the maximum values of color, sensory score, ascorbic acid, chlorophyll and CAT, and reduced the rate of respiration and the activity of POD during storage. A comparative analysis on the three cabbages found that different leaf morphology characteristics were not the main factor affecting gas retention during MAVC, and the intercellular spaces of leaves might have greater impact on the maintaining the quality of the cabbages.
•A patented “modified atmosphere vacuum cooling (MAVC)” technique was developed.•Three types of cabbages were treated by MAVC method.•Quality of three cabbages throughout the storage period was investigated.•MAVC achieved the maximum values of most quality attributes investigated.•MAVC reduced the rate of respiration and the activity of POD during storage.
We aimed to evaluate the relationships between climate variability, animal reservoirs and scrub typhus incidence in Southern China.
We obtained data on scrub typhus cases in Guangzhou every month ...from 2006 to 2014 from the Chinese communicable disease network. Time-series Poisson regression models and distributed lag nonlinear models (DLNM) were used to evaluate the relationship between risk factors and scrub typhus.
Wavelet analysis found the incidence of scrub typhus cycled with a period of approximately 8-12 months and long-term trends with a period of approximately 24-36 months. The DLNM model shows that relative humidity, rainfall, DTR, MEI and rodent density were associated with the incidence of scrub typhus.
Our findings suggest that the incidence scrub typhus has two main temporal cycles. Determining the reason for this trend and how it can be used for disease control and prevention requires additional research. The transmission of scrub typhus is highly dependent on climate factors and rodent density, both of which should be considered in prevention and control strategies for scrub typhus.
We use the mobile phone camera as a new spectral imaging device to obtain raw responses of samples for spectral estimation and propose an improved sequential adaptive weighted spectral estimation ...method. First, we verify the linearity of the raw response of the cell phone camera and investigate its feasibility for spectral estimation experiments. Then, we propose a sequential adaptive spectral estimation method based on the CIE1976 L*a*b* (CIELAB) uniform color space color perception feature. The first stage of the method is to weight the training samples and perform the first spectral reflectance estimation by considering the Lab color space color perception features differences between samples, and the second stage is to adaptively select the locally optimal training samples and weight them by the first estimated root mean square error (RMSE), and perform the second spectral reconstruction. The novelty of the method is to weight the samples by using the sample in CIELAB uniform color space perception features to more accurately characterize the color difference. By comparing with several existing methods, the results show that the method has the best performance in both spectral error and chromaticity error. Finally, we apply this weighting strategy based on the CIELAB color space color perception feature to the existing method, and the spectral estimation performance is greatly improved compared with that before the application, which proves the effectiveness of this weighting method.
Since the discovery of methylcytosine oxidase ten-eleven translocation (TET) proteins, we have witnessed an exponential increase in studies examining their roles in epigenetic regulation. TET family ...proteins catalyze the sequential oxidation of 5-methylcytosine (5mC) to oxidized methylcytosines including 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), 5-formylcytosine, and 5-carboxylcytosine. TETs contribute to the regulation of lineage-specific gene expression via modulating DNA 5mC/5hmC balances at the proximal and distal regulatory elements of cell identity genes, and therefore enhance chromatin accessibility and gene transcription. Emerging evidence suggests that TET dioxygenases participate in the establishment and/or maintenance of hypomethylated bivalent domains at multiple differentiation-associated genes, and thus ensure developmental plasticity. Here, we review the current state of knowledge concerning TET family proteins, DNA hydroxymethylation, their distribution, and function in endoderm, mesoderm, and neuroectoderm specification. We will summarize the evidence pertaining to their crucial regulatory roles in lineage commitment and development.
Changes in precipitation patterns, including rainfall intensity and rainfall timing, have been extensively demonstrated to impact biological processes and associated ecosystem functions. However, ...less attention has been paid to the effects of rainfall intensity and rainfall timing on the assembly of detritivore communities and the decomposition rate of detritus such as animal dung. In a grazed alpine meadow on the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, we conducted a manipulative experiment involving two levels of rainfall intensity (heavy rainfall, 1000 mL/5 min; light rainfall, 100 mL/5 min) and five levels of rainfall timing (0, 2, 4, 24, and 48 h after yak dung deposition). The aim was to determine the effects of rainfall intensity, timing, and their interaction on the assemblage of dung beetles and dung removal rate during the early stage (i.e., 96 h after yak dung deposition) of dung decomposition. Light rainfall significantly increased species richness in the treatment of 48 h after dung pats were deposited. Heavy rainfall significantly decreased beetle abundance in both the 0 h and 48 h treatments while light rainfall had no effect on beetle abundance. Dung mass loss was significant lower in the 2 h treatment compared to other treatments regardless of rainfall intensity. The structural equation model further revealed that the species richness of dung beetles and dung mass loss were significantly affected by rainfall timing but not by rainfall intensity. However, no significant relationships were observed between any variables examined. These findings suggest that changes in precipitation patterns can influence both the structure of dung beetles and the rate of dung decomposition but may also decouple their relationship under a certain circumstance. Therefore, it is crucial to pay greater attention to fully understand local variability between the biological processes and ecosystem functions within a global climate change scenario.
Abstract
Existing knowledge of the role of epigenetic modifiers in pancreas development has exponentially increased. However, the function of TET dioxygenases in pancreatic endocrine specification ...remains obscure. We set out to tackle this issue using a human embryonic stem cell (hESC) differentiation system, in which
TET1
/
TET2
/
TET3
triple knockout cells display severe defects in pancreatic β-cell specification. The integrative whole-genome analysis identifies unique cell-type-specific hypermethylated regions (hyper-DMRs) displaying reduced chromatin activity and remarkable enrichment of FOXA2, a pioneer transcription factor essential for pancreatic endoderm specification. Intriguingly, TET depletion leads to significant changes in FOXA2 binding at the pancreatic progenitor stage, in which gene loci with decreased FOXA2 binding feature low levels of active chromatin modifications and enriches for bHLH motifs. Transduction of full-length
TET1
but not the TET1-catalytic-domain in
TET
-deficient cells effectively rescues β-cell differentiation accompanied by restoring
PAX4
hypomethylation. Taking these findings together with the defective generation of functional β-cells upon TET1-inactivation, our study unveils an essential role of TET1-dependent demethylation in establishing β-cell identity. Moreover, we discover a physical interaction between TET1 and FOXA2 in endodermal lineage intermediates, which provides a mechanistic clue regarding the complex crosstalk between TET dioxygenases and pioneer transcription factors in epigenetic regulation during pancreas specification.
The dengue epidemic in Guangzhou has imposed a rising burden on society and health infrastructure. Here, we present the genotype data for dengue virus serotype 2 (DENV-2) to improve understanding of ...this dengue epidemic.
We sequenced the envelope gene of DENV-2 obtained from patient serum samples and subsequently performed maximum-likelihood phylogenetic analysis using PhyMLv3.1, maximum clade credibility analysis using BEAST v.1.10.4, and selection pressure analysis using Datamonkey 2.0.
The prevalent DENV-2 strains identified in Guangzhou region are related to those in Southeast Asian countries. In particular, the Malaysia/Indian subcontinent genotype is prevailing in Guangzhou with no apparent genotype shift having occurred over the past 20 years. However, episodic positive selection was detected at one site.
Local control of the DENV-2 epidemic in Guangzhou requires effective measures to prevent and monitor imported cases. Moreover, the shift between the Malaysia/Indian subcontinent genotype lineages, which originated at different time points, may account for the rise in DENV-2 cases in Guangzhou. Meanwhile, the low rate of dengue haemorrhagic fever in Guangzhou may be explained by the dominance of the less virulent Malaysia/Indian subcontinent genotype.
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