Stir-fried Semen Armeniacae Amarum Suppresses Aristolochic Acid I-Induced Nephrotoxicity and DNA Adducts.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the protective effects of stir-fried Semen Armeniacae Amarum (SAA) against aristolochic acid I (AAI)-induced nephrotoxicity and DNA adducts and elucidate the underlying mechanism involved for ensuring the safe use of Asari Radix et Rhizoma. METHODS: In vitro, HEK293T cells overexpressing Flag-tagged multidrug resistance-associated protein 3 (MRP3) were constructed by Lentiviral transduction, and inhibitory effect of top 10 common pairs of medicinal herbs with Asari Radix et Rhizoma in clinic on MRP3 activity was verified using a self-constructed fluorescence screening system. The mRNA, protein expressions, and enzyme activity levels of NAD(P)H quinone dehydrogenase 1 (NQO1) and cytochrome P450 1A2 (CYP1A2) were measured in differentiated HepaRG cells. Hepatocyte toxicity after inhibition of AAI metabolite transport was detected using cell counting kit-8 assay. In vivo, C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into 5 groups according to a random number table, including: control (1% sodium bicarbonate), AAI (10 mg/kg), stir-fried SAA (1.75 g/kg) and AAI + stir-fried SAA (1.75 and 8.75 g/kg) groups, 6 mice in each group. After 7 days of continuous gavage administration, liver and kidney damages were assessed, and the protein expressions and enzyme activity of liver metabolic enzymes NQO1 and CYP1A2 were determined simultaneously. RESULTS: In vivo, combination of 1.75 g/kg SAA and 10 mg/kg AAI suppressed AAI-induced nephrotoxicity and reduced dA-ALI formation by 26.7%, and these detoxification effects in a dose-dependent manner (P<0.01). Mechanistically, SAA inhibited MRP3 transport in vitro, downregulated NQO1 expression in vivo, increased CYP1A2 expression and enzymatic activity in vitro and in vivo, respectively (P<0.05 or P<0.01). Notably, SAA also reduced AAI-induced hepatotoxicity throughout the detoxification process, as indicated by a 41.3% reduction in the number of liver adducts (P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Stir-fried SAA is a novel drug candidate for the suppression of AAI-induced liver and kidney damages. The protective mechanism may be closely related to the regulation of transporters and metabolic enzymes.

A cost-saving, safe, and highly efficient natural mediator for laccase application on aflatoxin detoxification.

Laccase mediators possess advantage of oxidizing substrates with high redox potentials, such as aflatoxin B1 (AFB1). High costs of chemically synthesized mediators limit laccase industrial application. In this study, thin stillage extract (TSE), a byproduct of corn-based ethanol fermentation was investigated as the potential natural mediator of laccases. Ferulic acid, p-coumaric acid, and vanillic acid were identified as the predominant phenolic compounds of TSE. With the assistance of 0.05 mM TSE, AFB1 degradation activity of novel laccase Glac1 increased by 17 times. The promoting efficiency of TSE was similar to ferulic acid, but superior to vanillic acid and p-coumaric acid, with 1.2- and 1.3-fold increases, respectively. After Glac1-TSE treatment, two oxidation products were identified. Ames test showed AFB1 degradation products lost mutagenicity. Meanwhile, TSE also showed 1.3-3.0 times promoting effect on laccase degradation activity in cereal flours. Collectively, a safe and highly efficient natural mediator was obtained for aflatoxin detoxification.

Effect of polyethoxylated flavonoids (PMFs)-loaded citral and chitosan composite coatings on citrus preservation: From the perspective of fruit resistance.

Previous studies have shown that polymethoxylated flavonoids-loaded citral emulsion (PCT) can inhibit the growth and reproduction of Penicillium in citrus; however, PCT is difficult to apply to fruit preservation due to its high fluidity and volatility. Therefore, in this study, we combined PCT with chitosan (CS) to investigate the effect of a composite coating on citrus preservation. The results showed that compared to the control group, the CS-PCT group could effectively reduce the decay rate and maintain moisture availability, color difference, and hardness. Moreover, the contents of nonenzymatic antioxidants and volatile substances with antimicrobial activity were better preserved. In addition, the activities of related antioxidant enzymes were greater in the treatment group, and the expression of the corresponding enzyme-encoding genes was upregulated. Consequently, CS-PCT treatment could effectively maintain fruit quality and improve the resistance of citrus fruits during storage; moreover, it can be considered a nontoxic and efficient citrus preservative.

A Network Meta-Analysis of the Systemic Therapies in Unresectable Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

The current standard treatment for locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (LASCCHN) comprises concurrent radiotherapy (CRT) alongside platinum-based chemotherapy. However, innovative therapeutic alternatives are being evaluated in phase II/III randomized trials. This study employed a Bayesian network meta-analysis (NMA) using fixed effects to provide both direct and indirect comparisons of all existing treatment modalities for unresectable LASCCHN. METHODS: We referenced randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from January 2000 to July 2023 by extensively reviewing PubMed, EMBASE, and Web of Science databases, adhering to the Cochrane methodology. Relevant data, including summary estimates of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), were extracted from these selected studies and recorded in a predefined database sheet. Subsequently, we conducted a random effects network meta-analysis using a Bayesian framework. RESULTS: Based on the Surface Under the Cumulative Ranking (SUCRA) values, the league table organizes the various treatments for OS in the following order: IC + RT&MTT, MTT-CRT, IC + CRT&MTT, CRT, IC + CRT, MTT-RT, IC + MTT-RT, and RT. In a similar order, the treatments rank as follows according to the league table: IC + CRT&MTT, MTT-CRT, IC + CRT, IC + RT&MTT, CRT, IC + MTT-RT, MTT-RT, and RT. Notably, none of these treatments showed significant advantages over concurrent chemoradiotherapy. CONCLUSION: Despite concurrent chemoradiotherapy being the prevailing treatment for LASCCHN, our findings suggest the potential for improved outcomes when concurrent chemoradiotherapy is combined with targeted therapy or induction chemotherapy.

The current standard treatment for advanced head and neck cancer involves combining radiation therapy with chemotherapy. However, there are ongoing trials exploring alternative therapies. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of existing treatments using a statistical method called network meta-analysis. Our analysis included data from randomized controlled trials published between January 2000 and July 2023. We focused on overall survival and progression-free survival as key outcome measures. The results of our analysis showed that none of the alternative treatments demonstrated significant advantages over the standard concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Nevertheless, there is potential for improved outcomes when targeted therapy or induction chemotherapy is combined with concurrent chemoradiotherapy.

Integrative Analysis of Transcriptome and Metabolome Sheds Light on Flavonoid Biosynthesis in the Fruiting Body of Stropharia rugosoannulata.

Flavonoids are a diverse family of natural compounds that are widely distributed in plants and play a critical role in plant growth, development, and stress adaptation. In recent years, the biosynthesis of flavonoids in plants has been well-researched, with the successive discovery of key genes driving this process. However, the regulation of flavonoid biosynthesis in fungi remains unclear. Stropharia rugosoannulata is an edible mushroom known for its high nutritional and pharmacological value, with flavonoids being one of its main active components. To investigate the flavonoid content of S. rugosoannulata, a study was conducted to extract and determine the total flavonoids at four stages: young mushroom (Ym), gill (Gi), maturation (Ma), and parachute-opening (Po). The findings revealed a gradual increase in total flavonoid concentration as the fruiting body developed, with significant variations observed between the Ym, Gi, and Ma stages. Subsequently, we used UPLC-MS/MS and transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) to quantify the flavonoids and identify regulatory genes of Ym, Gi, and Ma. In total, 53 flavonoid-related metabolites and 6726 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified. Through KEGG pathway enrichment analysis, we identified 59 structural genes encoding flavonoid biosynthesis-related enzymes, most of which were up-regulated during the development of the fruiting body, consistent with the accumulation of flavonoids. This research led to the establishment of a comprehensive transcriptional metabolic regulatory network encompassing flavonoids, flavonoid synthases, and transcription factors (TFs). This represents the first systematic exploration of the molecular mechanism of flavonoids in the fruiting of fungi, offering a foundation for further research on flavonoid mechanisms and the breeding of high-quality S. rugosoannulata.

Removal of Ocular and Muscular Artifacts From Multi-Channel EEG Using Improved Spatial-Frequency Filtering.

Over recent decades, electroencephalogram (EEG) has become an essential tool in the field of clinical analysis and neurological disease research. However, EEG recordings are notably vulnerable to artifacts during acquisition, especially in clinical settings, which can significantly impede the accurate interpretation of neuronal activity. Blind source separation is currently the most popular method for EEG denoising, but most of the sources it separates often contain both artifacts and brain activity, which may lead to substantial information loss if handled improperly. In this paper, we introduce a dual-threshold denoising method combining spatial filtering with frequency-domain filtering to automatically eliminate electrooculogram (EOG) and electromyogram (EMG) artifacts from multi-channel EEG. The proposed method employs a fusion of second-order blind identification (SOBI) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to enhance source separation quality, followed by adaptive threshold to localize the artifact sources, and strict fixed threshold to remove strong artifact sources. Stationary wavelet transform (SWT) is utilized to decompose the weak artifact sources, with subsequent adjustment of wavelet coefficients in respective frequency bands tailored to the distinct characteristics of each artifact. The results of synthetic and real datasets show that our proposed method maximally retains the time-domain and frequency-domain information in the EEG during denoising. Compared with existing techniques, the proposed method achieves better denoising performance, which establishes a reliable foundation for subsequent clinical analyses.

Fast identification of the BmNPV infected silkworms by portable NIR spectroscopy and chemometrics.

A convenient, low-cost, and rapid detection of BmNPV-infected silkworms is of great significance for the safety of the sericulture industry. In this study, a portable NIR system was used to collect the spectra of normal silkworms and the infected silkworms induced by the administration of Bombyx mori nuclear polyhedrosis virus (BmNPV). Different spectral pretreatment methods were applied, then principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLSDA) were used for the classification analysis. The results showed that PCA and LDA were unable to achieve the purpose. For the PLSDA calibration, after the pretreatment of SNV combining 2nd derivative, it had a high identification performance, and obtained low classification errors of 0.023, 0.033, and 0.030 for the calibration set, cross-validation set, and test set, respectively, with higher sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, the BmNPV-infected silkworms can be identified by portable NIR spectroscopy, which will effectively reduce losses for the sericulture industry.

Citrus Carotenoid Extracts Promote ROS Accumulation and Induce Oxidative Stress to Exert Anti-Proliferative and Pro-Apoptotic Effects in MDA-MB-231 Cells.

Citrus fruits are economically significant crops worldwide, as they contain various bioactive compounds that possess health-promoting properties. Carotenoids, as the most important component in citrus, exhibit notable pharmacological activities, such as antioxidation and anticancer, which make carotenoids valuable in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer. In this study, after treatment with carotenoid extracts from XiYou (XY) and ZaoHongQiCheng (ZH), we evaluated the cytotoxicity, apoptosis, antioxidant system, and oxidative stress induced by ROS overproduction and MMP damage in MDA-MB-231 cells. The analysis confirmed that cell proliferation was inhibited in a concentration-dependent manner, accompanied by G0/G1 arrest and cell apoptosis. XY and ZH promoted the accumulation of ROS, decreased MMP, increased malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, consumed glutathione (GSH), and reduced the activity of antioxidant enzymes (peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT), glutathione reductase (GR), and superoxide dismutase (SOD)). Meanwhile, XY and ZH induced apoptosis through the mitochondrial pathway by significantly upregulated P53, BAX, caspase-3, caspase-7, and caspase-9 gene expression levels and downregulated Bcl-2. Carotenoid-rich extracts were found to cause oxidative stress by enhancing ROS production through their pro-oxidative potential, and the aggravation of oxidative processes promotes apoptosis in MDA-MB-231 cells. These results indicate that citrus carotenoids can be used as potential pro-oxidants and have the potential to be developed into products for the prevention or treatment of breast cancer.

Immune Persistence following Primary Immunization and the Immunogenicity and Safety of a Booster Dose of a Multidose Sabin Strain-Based Inactivated Polio Vaccine in Infants Aged 18 Months.

BACKGROUND: The multidose Sabin-strain inactivated poliovirus vaccine (sIPV) has the potential to significantly aid in the eradication of poliomyelitis, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. As part of a phase III clinical trial in which infants were given three doses of primary immunization at 2, 3, and 4 months of age, this study aimed to evaluate immune persistence following primary immunization, as well as the safety and immunogenicity of a booster of the 5-dose sIPV in infants aged 18 months. METHODS: Infants aged 18 months were given one booster dose of 5-dose sIPV in stage one, which was open-label. Unblinding was performed for stage two after completing primary immunization, which was randomized, blinded, and controlled; infants aged 18 months in the test group I-III, IPV group, and single-dose sIPV group were given one booster dose of 5-dose sIPV, conventional IPV, and single-dose sIPV, respectively, in stage two. RESULTS: This study included 1438 infants in the immune persistence and safety set and 1387 infants in the booster per-protocol set. Fourteen months after primary immunization, the seropositivity rates (≥1:8) for types 1-3 were 100%, 99.88%, and 99.53% in the 5-dose sIPV groups; 100%, 98.97%, and 97.23% in the IPV group; and 99.66%, 100%, and 99.66% in the single-dose sIPV group. A total of 30 days after booster immunization, the seropositivity rates (≥1:8) of 3 serotypes in all the groups reached 100%. The geometric mean titers of neutralizing antibodies for types 1-3 in the 5-dose sIPV group were 9962.89, 10273, and 7870.21, with geometric mean increases of 15.76, 33.15, and 24.5, compared to the pre-booster level. The overall incidence of adverse reactions was 8.97%, with fever being the most common, observed at rates of 7.1%, 5.52%, and 7.96% in the 5-dose sIPV, IPV, and single-dose groups, respectively (p = 0.4845). CONCLUSIONS: The 5-dose sIPV has shown promising immune persistence and robust immune response following a booster immunization, coupled with an acceptable safety profile.

Simultaneous enhancement of strength and conductivity via self-assembled lamellar architecture.

Simultaneous improvement of strength and conductivity is urgently demanded but challenging for bimetallic materials. Here we show by creating a self-assembled lamellar (SAL) architecture in W-Cu system, enhancement in strength and electrical conductivity is able to be achieved at the same time. The SAL architecture features alternately stacked Cu layers and W lamellae containing high-density dislocations. This unique layout not only enables predominant stress partitioning in the W phase, but also promotes hetero-deformation induced strengthening. In addition, the SAL architecture possesses strong crack-buffering effect and damage tolerance. Meanwhile, it provides continuous conducting channels for electrons and reduces interface scattering. As a result, a yield strength that doubles the value of the counterpart, an increased electrical conductivity, and a large plasticity were achieved simultaneously in the SAL W-Cu composite. This study proposes a flexible strategy of architecture design and an effective method for manufacturing bimetallic composites with excellent integrated properties.

Transparent injectable sericin-honey hydrogel with antioxidant and antibacterial activities combined with feeding sericin accelerates diabetic wound healing.

Wound healing in diabetics is often impaired or delayed due to the presence of high reactive oxygen species and low antioxidant levels. Here, a sericin-honey semi-interpenetrating network hydrogel with excellent antioxidant activity was prepared. Besides, the sericin-honey hydrogel is transparent, injectable, sticky, highly porous, and has good swelling properties, antibacterial activity, and cell compatibility. Based on its good performancein vitro, sericin-honey hydrogel achieved effectivein vivotreatment on a mouse diabetic wound model, significantly accelerating the wound healing process. Furthermore, the combined effect of feeding sericin solution played a positive role in strengthening the effect of diabetic wound repair.

Attenuation of phytofungal pathogenicity of Ascomycota by autophagy modulators.

Autophagy in eukaryotes functions to maintain homeostasis by degradation and recycling of long-lived and unwanted cellular materials. Autophagy plays important roles in pathogenicity of various fungal pathogens, suggesting that autophagy is a novel target for development of antifungal compounds. Here, we describe bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET)-based high-throughput screening (HTS) strategy to identify compounds that inhibit fungal ATG4 cysteine protease-mediated cleavage of ATG8 that is critical for autophagosome formation. We identified ebselen (EB) and its analogs ebselen oxide (EO) and 2-(4-methylphenyl)-1,2-benzisothiazol-3(2H)-one (PT) as inhibitors of fungal pathogens Botrytis cinerea and Magnaporthe oryzae ATG4-mediated ATG8 processing. The EB and its analogs inhibit spore germination, hyphal development, and appressorium formation in Ascomycota pathogens, B. cinerea, M. oryzae, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Monilinia fructicola. Treatment with EB and its analogs significantly reduced fungal pathogenicity. Our findings provide molecular insights to develop the next generation of antifungal compounds by targeting autophagy in important fungal pathogens.

MicroRNA-129-1-3p protects chicken granulosa cells from cadmium-induced apoptosis by down-regulating the MCU-mediated Ca2+ signaling pathway.

Cadmium (Cd) is known as a female reproductive toxicant. Our previous study has shown that Cd can influence the proliferation and cell cycle of granulosa cells and induce apoptosis. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in the regulation of Cd-induced granulosa cell damage in chickens. However, the mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the mechanisms by which microRNA-129-1-3p (miR-129-1-3p) regulates Cd-induced cytotoxicity in chicken granulosa cells. As anticipated, exposure to Cd resulted in the induction of oxidative stress in granulosa cells, accompanied by the downregulation of antioxidant molecules and/or enzymes of Nrf2, Mn-SOD, Cu-Zn SOD and CAT, and the upregulation of Keap1, GST, GSH-Px, GCLM, MDA, hydrogen peroxide and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS). Further studies found that Cd exposure causes mitochondrial calcium ions (Ca2+) overload, provoking mitochondrial damage and apoptosis by upregulating IP3R, GRP75, VDAC1, MCU, CALM1, MFF, caspase 3, and caspase 9 gene and/or protein expressions and mitochondrial Ca2+ levels, while downregulating NCX1, NCLX and MFN2 gene and/or protein expressions and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP). The Ca2+ chelator BAPTA-AM or the MCU inhibitor MCU-i4 significantly rescued Cd-induced mitochondrial dysfunction, thereby attenuating apoptosis. Additionally, a luciferase reported assay and western blot analysis confirmed that miR-129-1-3p directly target MCU. MiR-129-1-3p overexpression almost completely inhibited protein expression of MCU, increased the gene and protein expressions of NCLX and MFN2 downregulated by Cd, and attenuated mitochondrial Ca2+ overload, MMP depression and mitochondria damage induced by Cd. Moreover, the overexpression of miR-129-1-3p led to a reduction in mtROS and cell apoptosis levels, and a suppression of the gene and protein expressions of caspase 3 and caspase 9. As above, these results provided the evidence that IP3R-MCU signaling pathway activated by Cd plays a significant role in inducing mitochondrial Ca2+ overload, mitochondrial damage, and apoptosis. MiR-129-1-3p exerts a protective effect against Cd-induced granulosa cell apoptosis through the direct inhibition of MCU expression in the ovary of laying hens.

A novel injectable sericin hydrogel with strong fluorescence for tracing.

Hydrogel systems with strong fluorescence, as convenient tracers or bio-probes, have attracted much attention in biomedical engineering. Currently, most hydrogels endowed fluorescent properties due to modifying additional fluorophores. However, these fluorophores owing to photobleaching and toxicity limit the practical applications of hydrogels. Herein, we prepared a novel self-luminescence hydrogel through double crosslinking glutaraldehyde and hydrogen peroxide/horseradish peroxidase (H2O2/HRP) with sericin protein. The double cross-linked sericin hydrogel exhibits strong green and red intrinsic fluorescence which can be excited over a wide range of wavelengths. Moreover, this hydrogel with strong intrinsic fluorescence could penetrate thick pigskin tissue, which has potential application in implantable bio-tracer areas. In addition to the above unique properties, this sericin hydrogel possesses two types of micropore structures with high porosity, swelling properties, pH-responsive degradability, super elasticity, injectability, viscosity, and excellent biocompatibility. The investigation could significantly expand the scope of protein hydrogels in biomedical applications.

ELTS-Net: An enhanced liver tumor segmentation network with augmented receptive field and global contextual information.

The liver is one of the organs with the highest incidence rate in the human body, and late-stage liver cancer is basically incurable. Therefore, early diagnosis and lesion location of liver cancer are of important clinical value. This study proposes an enhanced network architecture ELTS-Net based on the 3D U-Net model, to address the limitations of conventional image segmentation methods and the underutilization of image spatial features by the 2D U-Net network structure. ELTS-Net expands upon the original network by incorporating dilated convolutions to increase the receptive field of the convolutional kernel. Additionally, an attention residual module, comprising an attention mechanism and residual connections, replaces the original convolutional module, serving as the primary components of the encoder and decoder. This design enables the network to capture contextual information globally in both channel and spatial dimensions. Furthermore, deep supervision modules are integrated between different levels of the decoder network, providing additional feedback from deeper intermediate layers. This constrains the network weights to the target regions and optimizing segmentation results. Evaluation on the LiTS2017 dataset shows improvements in evaluation metrics for liver and tumor segmentation tasks compared to the baseline 3D U-Net model, achieving 95.2% liver segmentation accuracy and 71.9% tumor segmentation accuracy, with accuracy improvements of 0.9% and 3.1% respectively. The experimental results validate the superior segmentation performance of ELTS-Net compared to other comparison models, offering valuable guidance for clinical diagnosis and treatment.

Machine-learning-algorithms-based diagnostic model for influenza A in children.

BACKGROUND: At present, nucleic acid testing is the gold standard for diagnosing influenza A, however, this method is expensive, time-consuming, and unsuitable for promotion and use in grassroots hospitals. This study aimed to establish a diagnostic model that could accurately, quickly, and simply distinguish between influenza A and influenza like diseases. METHODS: Patients with influenza-like symptoms were recruited between December 2019 and August 2023 at the Children's Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University and basic information, nasopharyngeal swab and blood routine test data were included. Computer algorithms including random forest, GBDT, XGBoost and logistic regression (LR) were used to create the diagnostic model, and their performance was evaluated using the validation data sets. RESULTS: A total of 4188 children with influenza-like symptoms were enrolled, of which 1992 were nucleic acid test positive and 2196 were matched negative. The diagnostic models based on the random forest, GBDT, XGBoost and logistic regression algorithms had AUC values of 0.835,0.872,0.867 and 0.784, respectively. The top 5 important features were lymphocyte (LYM) count, age, serum amyloid A (SAA), white blood cells (WBC) count and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR). GBDT model had the best performance, the sensitivity and specificity were 77.23% and 80.29%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: A computer algorithm diagnosis model of influenza A in children based on blood routine test data was established, which could identify children with influenza A more accurately in the early stage, and was easy to popularize.

A Sterile, Injectable, and Robust Sericin Hydrogel Prepared by Degraded Sericin.

The application of sericin hydrogels is limited mainly due to their poor mechanical strength, tendency to be brittle and inconvenient sterilization. To address these challenges, a sericin hydrogel exhibiting outstanding physical and chemical properties along with cytocompatibility was prepared through crosslinking genipin with degraded sericin extracted from fibroin deficient silkworm cocoons by the high temperature and pressure method. Our reported sericin hydrogels possess good elasticity, injectability, and robust behaviors. The 8% sericin hydrogel can smoothly pass through a 16 G needle. While the 12% sericin hydrogel remains intact until its compression ratio reaches 70%, accompanied by a compression strength of 674 kPa. 12% sericin hydrogel produce a maximum stretch of 740%, with breaking strength and tensile modulus of 375 kPa and 477 kPa respectively. Besides that, the hydrogel system demonstrated remarkable cell-adhesive capabilities, effectively promoting cell attachment and, proliferation. Moreover, the swelling and degradation behaviors of the hydrogels are pH responsiveness. Sericin hydrogel releases drugs in a sustained manner. Furthermore, this study addresses the challenge of sterilizing sericin hydrogels (sterilization will inevitably lead to the destruction of their structures). In addition, it challenges the prior notion that sericin extracted under high temperature and pressure is difficult to directly cross-linked into a stable hydrogel. This developed hydrogel system in this study holds promise to be a new multifunctional platform expanding the application area scope of sericin.

Spatial-temporal evolution and correlation analysis between habitat quality and landscape patterns based on land use change in Shaanxi Province, China.

Regional habitat quality is an important reflection of ecosystem services and ecosystem health. Exploring the characteristics of habitat quality changes and revealing the vulnerability of regional ecosystems caused could provide reference for the improvement of ecological service functions and the protection of regional ecological environment. Based on remote sensing data of Shaanxi Province from 2000 to 2015, InVEST model and grid analysis were used to analyze the evolution characteristics of habitat quality and landscape pattern, and spatial autocorrelation was also used to analyze the spatial correlation and temporal evolution characteristics. The results showed: (1) Arable land, grassland, and forest land were the main landscape types in Shaanxi province, accounting for more than 94% of the total area, and the arable land and unused land showed a decreasing trend, while the grassland and forest land showed an increasing trend, and the proportion of construction land continued to increase with the rapid economic development from 2000 to 2015; (2) The spatial distribution characteristics of habitat quality was similar to land use cover change, which was "high in the southern and central forest areas, low in the northern sandy land and central urban agglomeration", and habitat quality value showed a steady increase, indicating that the habitat quality was getting better; (3) The landscape pattern index values of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration changed significantly, which tended to be fragmented, and the landscape types were more diverse and uniform; (4) There were obvious spatial correlation between habitat quality and landscape pattern, and the spatial differentiation of clustering was obvious, and the clustering effect of habitat quality and landscape pattern characteristics would weaken with the increase in urbanization degree. The analysis of the spatial association between habitat quality and landscape pattern could provide scientific support for ecological protection and landscape planning.

The oomycete-specific BAG subfamily maintains protein homeostasis and promotes pathogenicity in an atypical HSP70-independent manner.

Protein homeostasis is vital for organisms and requires chaperones like the conserved Bcl-2-associated athanogene (BAG) co-chaperones that bind to the heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) through their C-terminal BAG domain (BD). Here, we show an unconventional BAG subfamily exclusively found in oomycetes. Oomycete BAGs feature an atypical N-terminal BD with a short and oomycete-specific α1 helix (α1'), plus a C-terminal small heat shock protein (sHSP) domain. In oomycete pathogen Phytophthora sojae, both BD-α1' and sHSP domains are required for P. sojae BAG (PsBAG) function in cyst germination, pathogenicity, and unfolded protein response assisting in 26S proteasome-mediated degradation of misfolded proteins. PsBAGs form homo- and heterodimers through their unique BD-α1' to function properly, with no recruitment of HSP70s to form the common BAG-HSP70 complex found in other eukaryotes. Our study highlights an oomycete-exclusive protein homeostasis mechanism mediated by atypical BAGs, which provides a potential target for oomycete disease control.