To explore the effects of breast cancer (BC)-derived exosomes on invasion and migration of BC cells.
Exosomes (Exo-MA, Exo-M7, Exo-M1) were extracted from normal breast epithelial cells (MCF-10A), BC ...cells (MCF-7/MDA-MB-231) and BC cells with miR-146a overexpression or knockdown using multi-step differential centrifugation. Morphologies and sizes of exosomes were observed by transmission electron microscope (TEM) and particle size analysis respectively. BC mouse models were injected with DIR labeled Exo-MA, Exo-M7 or Exo-M1. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in BC cells was determined by PCR and Western blot. PKH67 labeled Exo-MA, Exo-M7 and Exo-M1 were incubated with NFs or MCF-7 to measure the activation of CAFs. Cell invasion and migration abilities were determined by scratch test and Transwell assay.
Exo-MA, Exo-M7, Exo-M1 were successfully extracted with positive expressions of Alix, CD63 and TSG101. Contents of Ki67, N-cadherin, Vimentin and Snail-1 were increased but E-cadherin was decreased, compared to Exo-MA group. Exo-M7 or Exo-M1 could increase BC cell proliferation and enhance EMT in nude mouse. Exo-M7 and Exo-M1 could accelerate the transformation of NFs into CAFs and promote the recruitment of CAFs in MCF-7. Transfection of miR-146a could promote the transformation of NFs into CAFs and promote cell invasion and migration of MCF-7 cells. As a target gene of miR-146a, TXNIP could inhibit the activation of CAFs. miR-146a overexpression or TXNIP silence enhance the activation of Wnt signal pathway.
BC-derived exosomes promote the activation of CAFs through miR-146a/TXNIP axis to activate Wnt pathway, which in turn enhances invasion and metastasis of BC cells.
•BC-derived exosomes promote activation of CAFs.•MiR-146a overexpressed in BC-derived exosomes.•MiR-146a and TXNIP regulate activation of CAFs.•MiR-146a negatively targets TXNIP.•BC-derived exosomes promote invasion and metastasis via miR-16a to activate Wnt pathway.
Creating atomic defects in nanomaterials is an effective approach to promote the catalytic performance of a catalyst, but the defective catalysts are often prone to mechanical collapse if not ...properly synthesized. The uncontrollably formed defects also make it difficult to systematically investigate their effects on the catalytic performance. Herein, we report an efficient method of ionic reductive complexation extraction (IRCE) to fabricate atomic vacancies in a transition metal based nanomaterial without damaging its nanostructure, turning the otherwise catalytically inactive material to an advanced catalyst towards water oxidation in alkaline electrolyte. Here nickel based layered double hydroxide mixed with Cu(
ii
) is used to demonstrate the concept. With a tunable content and uniform dispersion of Cu(
ii
) on the brucite layer of the LDH, a suitable complexing agent could specifically combine with and remove the target Cu(
ii
), thereby creating the desired vacancies. The resulting vacancy rich TM LDH is found to be an excellent OER electrocatalyst with a low overpotential and small Tafel slope, due to the purposely modulated geometric and electronic structures of the active sites, and the greatly decreased charge transfer resistance.
NiCu LDH with atomic vacancies created
via
a facile IRCE method shows advanced electrocatalytic performance towards water oxidation.
Academics researchers and “citizen scientists” from 22 countries confirmed that yellow mealworms, the larvae of Tenebrio molitor Linnaeus, can survive by eating polystyrene (PS) foam. More detailed ...assessments of this capability for mealworms were carried out by12 sources: five from the USA, six from China, and one from Northern Ireland. All of these mealworms digested PS foam. PS mass decreased and depolymerization was observed, with appearance of lower molecular weight residuals and functional groups indicative of oxidative transformations in extracts from the frass (insect excrement). An addition of gentamycin (30 mg g−1), a bactericidal antibiotic, inhibited depolymerization, implicating the gut microbiome in the biodegradation process. Microbial community analyses demonstrated significant taxonomic shifts for mealworms fed diets of PS plus bran and PS alone. The results indicate that mealworms from diverse locations eat and metabolize PS and support the hypothesis that this capacity is independent of the geographic origin of the mealworms, and is likely ubiquitous to members of this species.
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•Consumption of polystyrene (PS) by mealworms observed in 22 countries.•PS degrades in mealworms obtained from 12 locations in the USA, UK and China.•Addition of nutrition enhances survival rate and PS consumption rate.•Antibiotics depresses gut microbes and severely inhibits PS degradation.•PS feeding shifts mealworm gut microbiome.
Due to the circadian rhythm regulation of almost every biological process in the human body, physiological and biochemical conditions vary considerably over the course of a 24-h period. Thus, optimal ...drug delivery and therapy should be effectively controlled to achieve the desired therapeutic plasma concentrations and therapeutic drug responses at the required time according to chronopharmacological concepts, rather than continuous maintenance of constant drug concentrations for an extended time period. For many drugs, it is not always necessary to constantly deliver a drug into the human body under disease conditions due to rhythmic variations. Pulsatile drug delivery systems (PDDSs) have been receiving more attention in pharmaceutical development by providing a predetermined lag period, followed by a fast or rate-controlled drug release after application. PDDSs are characterized by a programmed drug release, which may release a drug at repeatable pulses to match the biological and clinical needs of a given disease therapy.
This review article focuses on thermoresponsive gating membranes embedded with liquid crystals (LCs) for transdermal drug delivery using PDDS technology. In addition, the principal rationale and the advanced approaches for the use of PDDSs, the marketed products of chronotherapeutic DDSs with pulsatile function designed by various PDDS technologies, pulsatile drug delivery designed with thermoresponsive polymers, challenges and opportunities of transdermal drug delivery, and novel approaches of LC systems for drug delivery are reviewed and discussed. A brief overview of all academic research articles concerning single LC- or binary LC-embedded thermoresponsive membranes with a switchable on-off permeation function through topical application by an external temperature control, which may modulate the dosing interval and administration time according to the therapeutic needs of the human body, is also compiled and presented. In the near future, since thermal-based approaches have become a well-accepted method to enhance transdermal delivery of different water-soluble drugs and macromolecules, a combination of the thermal-assisted approach with thermoresponsive LCs membranes will have the potential to improve PDDS applications but still poses a great challenge.
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In recent years, microplastics/nanoplastics (MPs/NPs) have received substantial attention worldwide owing to their wide applications, persistence, and potential risks. Wetland systems are considered ...to be an important "sink" for MPs/NPs, which can have potential ecological and environmental effects on the ecosystem. This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the sources and characteristics of MPs/NPs in wetland ecosystems, together with a detailed analysis of MP/NP removal and associated mechanisms in wetland systems. In addition, the eco-toxicological effects of MPs/NPs in wetland ecosystems, including plant, animal, and microbial responses, were reviewed with a focus on changes in the microbial community relevant to pollutant removal. The effects of MPs/NPs exposure on conventional pollutant removal by wetland systems and their greenhouse gas emissions are also discussed. Finally, current knowledge gaps and future recommendations are presented, including the ecological impact of exposure to various MPs/NPs on wetland ecosystems and the ecological risks of MPs/NPs associated with the migration of different contaminants and antibiotic resistance genes. This work will facilitate a better understanding of the sources, characteristics, and environmental and ecological impacts of MPs/NPs in wetland ecosystems, and provide a new perspective to promote development in this field.
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•Sources and characteristics of MPs/NPs vary in different wetland ecosystems.•Multiple factors determine the removal of MPs/NPs from wetland ecosystems.•MPs/NPs damage the flora and fauna of wetland ecosystems to various degrees.•MPs/NPs impact pollutant conversion and purification in wetland ecosystems.•The risk of MPs/NPs accumulation via the biological chain warrants concern.
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•The recent progress in exploiting reverse-selective MOF materials for the efficient separation and purification of light hydrocarbons has been summarized.•The performance evaluation ...of reverse adsorptive separation has been presented and the strategies adopted to realize the reverse adsorption behaviors have been summarized.•The structure–property relationship of reverse-selective MOFs has been exhibited.•The existing challenges and the future prospects of reverse-selective MOFs in the separation of hydrocarbons mixtures are discussed.
The separation and purification process of hydrocarbons is one of the crucial and daunting challenges in the petrochemistry field, which is widely depended on cryogenic distillation by heat-driven for separation. Advanced alternative methods have been proposed, such as extraction, membrane separation, adsorptive separation. Adsorptive separation process based on selective porous solid adsorbent is particularly noteworthy due to the advantages of high efficiency and low energy consumption. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), as one kind of novel crystalline organic–inorganic hybrid porous solid materials, have been widely used in the field of separation and purification benefiting from their unique structure features. There are many reverse adsorption behaviors during the separations of hydrocarbons mixtures using MOFs, that is it could directly adsorb a small part of impurities and the desired target substance could be directly obtained, which could eliminate the desorption process and make the separation process more energy efficient, greener and environmentally friendly. Recent years, such studies are increasing rapidly and therefore need to be summarized for at a glance. In this review, we intend to exhibit the development of reverse-selective MOFs, which is superior to other types porous materials for the separation of light hydrocarbons. The evaluation of reverse adsorptive separation has been described and the strategies adopted to realize the reverse adsorption behaviors have been summarized. Furthermore, the existing challenges and the future prospects of reverse-selective MOFs in this active field are discussed elaborately.
•A group evidential reasoning approach based on expert reliability is developed.•Reliability of an expert in a group is measured.•Incomplete assessments are handled to form interval-valued expert ...reliabilities.•Weights and reliabilities of attributes and experts are included in the method.•The proposed method is used to analyze an industry evaluation problem.
The reliability of an expert is an important concept in multiple attribute group decision analysis (MAGDA). However, reliability is rarely considered in MAGDA, or it may be simply assumed that all experts are fully reliable and thus their reliabilities do not need to be considered explicitly. In fact, any experts can only be bounded rational and their various degrees of reliabilities may significantly influence MAGDA results. In this paper, we propose a new method based on the evidential reasoning rule to explicitly measure the reliability of each expert in a group and use expert weights and reliabilities to combine expert assessments. Two sets of assessments, i.e., original assessments and updated assessments provided after group analysis and discussion are taken into account to measure expert reliabilities. When the assessments of some experts are incomplete while global ignorance is incurred, pairs of optimization problems are constructed to decide interval-valued expert reliabilities. The resulting expert reliabilities are applied to combine the expert assessments of alternatives on each attribute and then to generate the aggregated assessments of alternatives. An industry evaluation problem in Wuhu, a city in Anhui Province of China is analyzed by using the proposed method as a real case study to demonstrate its detailed implementation process, validity, and applicability.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a mass-produced fossil-based plastic polymer that contributes to catastrophic levels of plastic pollution. Here we demonstrated that Tenebrio molitor (mealworms) ...was capable of rapidly biodegrading two commercial PET resins (microplastics) with respective weight-average molecular weight (Mw) of 39.33 and 29.43 kDa and crystallinity of 22.8 ± 3.06% and 18 ± 2.25%, resulting in an average mass reduction of 71.03% and 73.28% after passage of their digestive tract, and respective decrease by 9.22% and 11.36% in Mw of residual PET polymer in egested frass. Sequencing of 16 S rRNA gene amplicons of gut microbial communities showed that dominant bacterial genera were enriched and associated with PET degradation. Also, PICRUSt prediction exhibited that oxidases (monooxygenases and dioxygenases), hydrolases (cutinase, carboxylesterase and chitinase), and PET metabolic enzymes, and chemotaxis related functions were up-regulated in the PET-fed larvae. Additionally, metabolite analyses revealed that PET uptake caused alterations of stress response and plastic degradation related pathways, and lipid metabolism pathways in the T. molitor larvae could be reprogrammed when the larvae fed on PET. This study provides new insights into gut microbial community adaptation to PET diet under nutritional stress (especially nitrogen deficiency) and its contribution to PET degradation.
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•Confirmation of commercial PET biodegradation by Tenebrio molitor.•Minor difference in degradation performance of two PET polymers.•Spiroplasma, Dysgonomonas and Hafnia-Obesumbacterium associated with PET degradation.•Both host and gut microbiota contributed enzyme repertoire to PET degradation.•A plausible mechanism was proposed based on 16 S rRNA and metabolome analyses.
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