We have designed and fabricated a high speed 850 nm oxide-confined vertical cavity surface emitting laser with an oxide aperture dimension of ~ 4 μm and a threshold current ITH=0.53 mA at room ...temperature (20 ° C). It demonstrates a modulation bandwidth of 21.2 GHz, and achieves a laser relative intensity noise reaching standard quantum limit 2hν/P 0 =-154.3 dB/Hz at high bias I/I TH =10. Furthermore, error-free data transmission at 40 Gb/s is obtained at I=6.5 mA which corresponds to an energy/data efficiency of 431 fJ/bit.
Carotenoids are liposoluble pigments found in plant chromoplasts that are responsible for the yellow, orange, and red colors of carrot taproots. Drought is one of the main stress factors affecting ...carrot growth. Carotenoids play important roles in drought resistance in higher plants. In the present work, the carotenoid contents in three different-colored carrot cultivars, ‘Kurodagosun’ (orange), ‘Benhongjinshi’ (red), and ‘Qitouhuang’ (yellow), were determined by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) after 15% polyethylene glycol (PEG) 6000 treatment. Real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was then used to determine the expression levels of carotenoid synthesis- and degradation-related genes. Increases in β-carotene content in ‘Qitouhuang’ taproots under drought stress were found to be related to the expression levels of
DcPSY2
and
DcLCYB
. Increases in lutein and decreases in α-carotene content in ‘Qitouhuang’ and ‘Kurodagosun’ under PEG treatment may be related to the expression levels of
DcCYP97A3
,
DcCHXE
, and
DcCHXB1
. The expression levels of
DcNCED1
and
DcNCED2
in the three cultivars significantly increased, thus suggesting that
NCED
genes could respond to drought stress. Analysis of the growth status and carotenoid contents of carrots under PEG treatment indicated that the orange cultivar ‘Kurodagosun’ has better adaptability to drought stress than the other cultivars and that β-carotene and lutein may be involved in the stress resistance process of carrot.
Abstract
The stem cell is the foundation of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Regulating specific stem cell fate, such as cell attachment, proliferation, differentiation, and even death, ...undergoes continuous development. Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), the core technology of plasma medicine, is attracting tremendous attention due to its ability and versatility to manipulate various types of cells, including stem cells. Specifically, the direct and indirect applications of CAP in controlling cell fate are best exemplified by upfront irradiation of the stem cells and modification of the stem cell niche, respectively. This review will describe the recent advances in various CAP strategies, both direct and indirect, and their influence on the fate of healthy and cancer stem cells. Particular emphasis will be placed on the mechanism of connecting the physical and chemical cues carried by the plasma and biological changes presented by the cells, especially at the transcriptomic level. The ultimate goal is to exploit CAP’s potential in regenerative medicine.
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•Lycopene is a natural red compound with potent antioxidant activity.•A breakthrough in increasing the yield of lycopene synthesis is needed.•Conventional fermentation enhanced the ...yield of lycopene by optimizing strains, additives, and culture conditions.•Nowadays, genetic engineering, protein engineering, and metabolic engineering have been applied to lycopene production.•Current lycopene production strategies can provide useful reference for metabolic engineering of lycopene production in plants.
Lycopene is a natural red compound with potent antioxidant activity that can be utilized both as pigment and as a raw material in functional food, and so possesses good commercial prospects. The biosynthetic pathway has already been documented, which provides the foundation for lycopene production using biotechnology.
Although lycopene production has begun to take shape, there is still an urgent need to alleviate the yield of lycopene. Progress in this area can provide useful reference for metabolic engineering of lycopene production utilizing multiple approaches.
Using conventional microbial fermentation approaches, biotechnologists have enhanced the yield of lycopene by selecting suitable host strains, utilizing various additives, and optimizing culture conditions. With the development of modern biotechnology, genetic engineering, protein engineering, and metabolic engineering have been applied for lycopene production. Extraction from natural plants is the main way for lycopene production at present. Based on the molecular mechanism of lycopene accumulation, the production of lycopene by plant bioreactor through genetic engineering has a good prospect. Here we summarized common strategies for optimizing lycopene production engineering from a biotechnology perspective, which are mainly carried out by microbial cultivation. We reviewed the challenges and limitations of this approach, summarized the critical aspects, and provided suggestions with the aim of potential future breakthroughs for lycopene production in plants.
In most countries, the old-age people population continues to rise. Because young adults are busy with their work engagements, they have to let the elderly stay at home alone. This is quite ...dangerous, as accidents at home may happen anytime without anyone knowing. Although sending elderly relatives to an elderly care center or hiring a caregiver are good solutions, they may not be feasible since it may be too expensive over a long-term period. The behavior patterns of elderly people during daily activities can give hints about their health condition. If an abnormal behavior pattern can be detected in advance, then precautions can be taken at an early stage. Previous studies have suggested machine learning techniques for such anomaly detection but most of the techniques are complicated. In this paper, a simple model for detecting anomaly patterns in human activity sequences using Random forest (RF) and K-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifiers is presented. The model was implemented on a public dataset and it showed that the RF classifier performed better, with an accuracy of 85%, compared to the KNN classifier, which achieved 73%.
The worldwide incidence of head and neck cancer (HNC) exceeds half a million cases annually, and up to half of the patients with HNC present with advanced disease. Surgical resection remains the ...mainstay of treatment for many HNCs, although radiation therapy, chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy might contribute to individual patient’s treatment plan. Irrespective of which modality is chosen, disease prognosis remains suboptimal, especially for higher staging tumors. Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has recently demonstrated a substantial anti-tumor effect. After a thorough literature search, we provide a comprehensive review depicting the oncological potential of CAP in HNC treatment. We discovered that CAP applies to almost all categories of HNC, including upper aerodigestive tract cancers, head and neck glandular cancers and skin cancers. In addition, CAP is truly versatile, as it can be applied not only directly for superficial or luminal tumors but also indirectly for deep solid organ tumors. Most importantly, CAP can work collaboratively with existing clinical oncotherapies with synergistic effect. After our attempts to elaborate the conceivable molecular mechanism of CAP’s anti-neoplastic effect for HNC, we provide a brief synopsis of recent clinical and preclinical trials emphasizing CAP’s applicability in head and neck oncology. In conclusion, we have enunciated our vision of plasma oncology using CAP for near future HNC treatment.
The novelty of the work: This review introduces briefly the use of LDH materials as adsorbents and photocatalysts for the CO2.
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•This review provides a brief introduction to recent ...strategies to improve adsorption capacity and photoreduction efficiency for CO2 by LDHs based materials.•Perspectives and challenges in this field of adsorption and photoreduction of CO2 by LDHs are presented.
There has been increasing demand for the fixation of CO2 because the increasing atmospheric concentration of CO2 causes the global warming. Layered double hydroxides (LDHs), known as hydrotalcite-like compounds or ionic lamellar compounds, have attracted increasing research interest because of their promising applications as CO2 adsorbents and photocatalysts. The development of LDH-based materials used as CO2 adsorbents and photocatalysts has been separately reviewed in previous papers. However, few of these reviews include the typical synthesis and modification strategies of LDHs to improve their adsorption capacities and photoreduction efficiencies for CO2. Therefore, in this review we summarized some recent progress made in this field. The co-precipitation method is a simple and rapid method for fabricating the desired LDHs directly, and this synthesis method is readily scaled up for industrial production. A few methods have been used for LDHs modification, including doping LDHs with alkali metal, controlling particle characteristics, and fabrication of junctions. It is evident from the literature survey presented herein that modified LDH-based materials have exhibited good potential for the adsorption and photoreduction of CO2. The unresolved issues and possible improvements of LDHs are also highlighted.
Amino acid metabolism has been implicated in tumorigenesis and tumor progression. Alterations in intracellular and extracellular metabolites associated with metabolic reprogramming in cancer have ...profound effects on gene expression, cell differentiation, and tumor immune microenvironment. However, the prognostic significance of amino acid metabolism in head and neck cancer remains to be further investigated. In this study, we identified 98 differentially expressed genes related to amino acid metabolism in head and neck cancer in The Cancer Genome Atlas. Using batch univariate Cox regression and Lasso regression, we extracted nine amino acid metabolism-related genes. Based on that, we developed the amino acid metabolism index. The prognostic value of this index was validated in two Gene Expression Omnibus cohorts. The results show that this model can help predict tumor recurrence and prognosis. The infiltration of immune cells in the tumor microenvironment was analyzed, and it was discovered that the high index is associated with an immunosuppressive microenvironment. In addition, this study demonstrated the impact of the amino acid metabolism index on clinical indicators, survival of patients with head and neck cancer, and the prediction of treatment response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. We conducted several cell experiments and demonstrated that epigenetic drugs could affect the index and enhance tumor immunity. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that the index not only has important prognostic value in head and neck cancer patients but also facilitates patient stratification for immunotherapy.
Introduction Allergic rhinitis (AR) is an upper airway inflammatory disease of the nasal mucosa. Conventional treatments such as symptomatic pharmacotherapy and allergen-specific immunotherapy have ...considerable limitations and drawbacks. As an emerging therapy with regenerative potential and immunomodulatory effect, mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosomes (MSC-Exos) have recently been trialed for the treatment of various inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Methods In order to achieve sustained and protected release of MSC-Exos for intranasal administration, we fabricated Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) micro and nanoparticles-encapsulated MSC-Exos (PLGA-Exos) using mechanical double emulsion for local treatment of AR. Preclinical in vivo imaging, ELISA, qPCR, flow cytometry, immunohistochemical staining, and multiomics sequencing were used for phenotypic and mechanistic evaluation of the therapeutic effect of PLGA-Exos in vitro and in vivo . Results The results showed that our PLGA platform could efficiently encapsulate and release the exosomes in a sustained manner. At protein level, PLGA-Exos treatment upregulated IL-2, IL-10 and IFN-γ, and downregulated IL-4, IL-17 and antigen-specific IgE in ovalbumin (OVA)-induced AR mice. At cellular level, exosomes treatment reduced Th2 cells, increased Tregs, and reestablished Th1/Th2 balance. At tissue level, PLGA-Exos significantly attenuated the infiltration of immune cells (e.g., eosinophils and goblet cells) in nasal mucosa. Finally, multiomics analysis discovered several signaling cascades, e.g., peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) pathway and glycolysis pathway, that might mechanistically support the immunomodulatory effect of PLGA-Exos. Discussion For the first time, we present a biomaterial-facilitated local delivery system for stem cell-derived exosomes as a novel and promising strategy for AR treatment.
Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) is characterized by the progressive deterioration of intellectual/cognitive function following surgery. It has been suggested that the senile brain, which ...characteristically expresses higher levels of central proinflammatory cytokines, interleukin (IL)-6, IL-1β, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, is more susceptible to additional insult following surgery. The authors of this study investigated the expression of central cytokines IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α and hippocampal glial cell activation in aged and adult rats following partial hepatectomy.
Cognitive function was assessed in a reversal-learning version of the Morris water maze (MWM) before and after surgery. Hippocampal pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α and glial cell activation markers glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and S100β were measured at each time point; CD200 and CD200R were also measured to explore potential mechanisms of glial cell activation.
Surgical trauma resulted in impairments in distance and latency only on postoperative day 1 (p
<
0.001, respectively) in adult rats. Aged rats exhibited impairments on day 1 (p
<
0.001) that persisted until postoperative day 3 (p
=
0.002 and p
=
0.001, respectively). All significant impairments paralleled upregulated cytokine IL-1β and IL-6 expression. Immunohistochemistry assay further showed more hippocampal glial cell activation in aged rats compared to that in adults.
Overall, these findings suggest that surgical trauma, rather than anesthesia, resulted in cognitive function impairment potentiated by aging. Hippocampal pro-inflammatory cytokines and glial cell activation might mediate trauma-induced POCD.
► Moderate surgical trauma induced an exaggerated neuroinflammatory response and an exacerbated cognitive impairment in aged rats when compared to their adult counterparts. ► Anesthesia alone did not impair cognitive function or alter hippocampal pro-inflammatory cytokine levels in adult and aged rats. ► An age-related increase in susceptibility to cognitive impairments following surgical trauma.
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