Chronotoxicity of Acrylamide in Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet: The Involvement of Liver CYP2E1 Upregulation and Gut Leakage.

Acrylamide (ACR) is produced under high-temperature cooking of carbohydrate-rich foods via the Maillard reaction. It has been reported that ACR has hepatic toxicity and can induce liver circadian disorder. A high fat diet (HFD) could dysregulate liver detoxification. The current study showed that administration of ACR (100 mg/kg) reduced the survival rate in HFD-fed mice, which was more pronounced when treated during the night phase than during the day phase. Furthermore, ACR (25 mg/kg) treatment could cause chronotoxicity in mice fed a high-fat diet, manifested as more severe mitochondrial damage of liver during the night phase than during the day phase. Interestingly, HFD induced a higher CYP2E1 expressions for those treated during the night phase, leading to more severe DNA damage. Meanwhile, the expression of gut tight junction proteins also significantly decreases at night phase, leading to the leakage of LPSs and exacerbating the inflammatory response at night phase. These results indicated that a HFD could induce the chronotoxicity of ACR in mice liver, which may be associated with increases in CYP2E1 expression in the liver and gut leak during the night phase.

Movement-induced hypoalgesia: behavioral characteristics and neural mechanisms.

Pain is essential for our survival because it helps to protect us from severe injuries. Nociceptive signals may be exacerbated by continued physical activities but can also be interrupted or overridden by physical movements, a process called movement-induced hypoalgesia. Several neural mechanisms have been proposed to account for this effect, including the reafference principle, non-nociceptive interference, and top-down descending modulation. Given that the hypoalgesic effects of these mechanisms temporally overlap during movement execution, it is unclear whether movement-induced hypoalgesia results from a single neural mechanism or from the joint action of multiple neural mechanisms. To address this question, we conducted five experiments on 129 healthy humans by assessing the hypoalgesic effect after movement execution. Combining psychophysics and electroencephalographic recordings, we quantified the relationship between the strength of voluntary movement and the hypoalgesic effect, as well as the temporal and spatial characteristics of the hypoalgesic effect. Our findings demonstrated that movement-induced hypoalgesia results from the joint action of multiple neural mechanisms. This investigation is the first to disentangle the distinct contributions of different neural mechanisms to the hypoalgesic effect of voluntary movement, which extends our understanding of sensory attenuation arising from voluntary movement and may prove instrumental in developing new strategies for pain management.

Characteristics and mechanism of all-optical switching based on a one-dimensional two-connected periodic triangle optical waveguide network.

In this study, an all-optical switch is designed using a one-dimensional two-segment-connected periodic triangular optical waveguide network, and its switching characteristics and mechanism are investigated. The performance of the switch is numerically calculated by using the network equation and the generalized eigenfunction method and we find it relatively excellent. Its switching efficiency ratio reached 3.7202×1016, which is 5 orders of magnitude larger than the best reported result. The switching threshold control energy is approximately 1.8×10-20J, which is 1 order of magnitude larger than the best reported result. The switch size is approximately 0.0672µm2 and the integration degree is up to 14per/µm2, and it can be used for micrometer chip integration. The switching time is close to 209 fs, which is the same order of magnitude as the previously reported results. In addition, the all-optical switching designed in this study not only exhibits excellent switching performance and a novel working mechanism, but also provides a new technology for the design of pump-free all-optical switching devices.