Energy-Efficient Electrosynthesis of High Value-Added Active Chlorine Coupled with H2 Generation from Direct Seawater Electrolysis through Decoupling Electrolytes.

Direct saline (seawater) electrolysis is a well-recognized system to generate active chlorine species for the chloride-mediated electrosynthesis, environmental remediation and sterilization over the past few decades. However, the large energy consumption originated from the high cell voltage of traditional direct saline electrolysis system, greatly restricts its practical application. Here, we report an acid-saline hybrid electrolysis system for energy-saving co-electrosynthesis of active chlorine and H2. We demonstrate that this system just requires a low cell voltage of 1.59 V to attain 10 mA cm-2 with a large energy consumption decrease of 27.7 % compared to direct saline electrolysis system (2.20 V). We further demonstrate that such acid-saline hybrid electrolysis system could be extended to realize energy-saving and sustainable seawater electrolysis. The acidified seawater in this system can absolutely avoid the formation of Ca/Mg-based sediments that always form in the seawater electrolysis system. We also prove that this system in the half-flow mode can realize real-time preparation of active chlorine used for sterilization and pea sprout production.

Discovery and excavation of lichen bioactive natural products.

Lichen natural products are a tremendous source of new bioactive chemical entities for drug discovery. The ability to survive in harsh conditions can be directly correlated with the production of some unique lichen metabolites. Despite the potential applications, these unique metabolites have been underutilized by pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries due to their slow growth, low biomass availability, and technical challenges involved in their artificial cultivation. At the same time, DNA sequence data have revealed that the number of encoded biosynthetic gene clusters in a lichen is much higher than in natural products, and the majority of them are silent or poorly expressed. To meet these challenges, the one strain many compounds (OSMAC) strategy, as a comprehensive and powerful tool, has been developed to stimulate the activation of silent or cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters and exploit interesting lichen compounds for industrial applications. Furthermore, the development of molecular network techniques, modern bioinformatics, and genetic tools is opening up a new opportunity for the mining, modification, and production of lichen metabolites, rather than merely using traditional separation and purification techniques to obtain small amounts of chemical compounds. Heterologous expressed lichen-derived biosynthetic gene clusters in a cultivatable host offer a promising means for a sustainable supply of specialized metabolites. In this review, we summarized the known lichen bioactive metabolites and highlighted the application of OSMAC, molecular network, and genome mining-based strategies in lichen-forming fungi for the discovery of new cryptic lichen compounds.

Chloroplast genome sequence of triploid Toxicodendron vernicifluum and comparative analyses with other lacquer chloroplast genomes.

BACKGROUND: Toxicodendron vernicifluum, belonging to the family Anacardiaceae, is an important commercial arbor species, which can provide us with the raw lacquer, an excellent adhesive and painting material used to make lacquer ware. Compared with diploid, triploid lacquer tree has a higher yield of raw lacquer and stronger resistance to stress. Triploid T. vernicifluum was a newly discovered natural triploid lacquer tree. However, the taxonomy of triploid T. vernicifluum has remained uncertain. Here, we sequenced and analyzed the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of triploid T. vernicifluum and compared it with related species of Toxicodendron genus based on chloroplast genome and SSR markers. RESULTS: The plastome of triploid T. vernicifluum is 158,221 bp in length, including a pair of inverted repeats (IRs) of 26,462 bp, separated by a large single-copy region of 86,951 bp and a small single-copy region of 18,346 bp. In total, 132 genes including 87 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes and 8 rRNA genes were identified in the triploid T. vernicifluum. Among these, 16 genes were duplicated in the IR regions, 14 genes contain one intron, while three genes contain two introns. After nucleotide substitutions, seven small inversions were analyzed in the chloroplast genomes, eight hotspot regions were found, which could be useful molecular genetic markers for future population genetics. Phylogenetic analyses showed that triploid T. vernicifluum was a sister to T. vernicifluum cv. Dahongpao and T. vernicifluum cv. Hongpigaobachi. Moreover, phylogenetic clustering based on the SSR markers showed that all the samples of triploid T. vernicifluum, T. vernicifluum cv. Dahongpao and T. vernicifluum cv. Hongpigaobachi in one group, while the samples of T. vernicifluum and T. succedaneum in another group, which is consistent with the cp genome and morphological analysis. CONCLUSIONS: The current genomic datasets provide pivotal genetic resources to determine the phylogenetic relationships, variety identification, breeding and resource exploitation, and future genetic diversity-related studies of T. vernicifluum.

Harmony Loss for Unbalanced Prediction.

In medical image analysis, in order to reduce the impact of unbalanced data sets on data-driven deep learning models, according to the characteristic that the area under the Precision-Recall curve (AUCPR) is sensitive to each category of samples, a novel Harmony loss function with fast convergence speed and high stability was constructed. Since AUCPR needs to be calculated in discrete domain, in order to ensure the continuous differentiability and gradient existence of the Harmony loss, first, the Logistic function was used to approximate the Logical function in AUCPR. Then, to improve the optimization speed of the Harmony loss during model training, a method of manually setting a certain number of classification thresholds was proposed to further approximate the calculation of AUCPR. After the above two approximate calculation processes, the Harmony loss with stable gradient and high computational efficiency was designed. In the optimization process of the model, since Harmony loss can reconcile recall and precision of each category under different classification thresholds, thereby, it can not only improve the model's ability to recognize categories with less samples, but also maintain the stability of the training curve. To comprehensively evaluate the effects of Harmony loss function, we performed experiments on image 3D reconstruction, 2D segmentation, and unbalanced classification tasks. Experimental results showed that the Harmony loss achieved the state-of-the-art results on four unbalanced data sets. Moreover, the Harmony loss can be easily combined with existing loss functions, and is suitable for most common deep learning models.

Zuogui Wan alleviated maternal kidney-yin deficiency-induced thymic epithelial cell dysfunction in newborn rats through Wnt/ß-catenin signaling pathway.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Kidney-yin deficiency (KYD) during pregnancy is common and associated with possibility of thymus hypoplasia in neonates. Zuogui Wan (ZGW) is a classic traditional medicine to treat KYD. AIM OF STUDY: The Wnt/ß-catenin signaling pathway is essential for thymic epithelial cell (TEC) viability, function and for thymus integrity. We evaluated whether maternal diets with ZGW in KYD rats ameliorates epithelial cell dysfunction in the fetal thymus, and investigated its underlying mechanism in which the Wnt/ß-catenin signaling pathway is involved. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Rats were randomly assigned to four groups (n = 8). Two experimental groups received KYD induction with or without ZGW supplementation. The other 2 vehicle groups were sham operated and administrated with normal saline or ZGW. KYD was established using periodically chronic shaken stimulus and threaten stress. Success of the model induction was evaluated by the general observation, changing of the body weight and plasma thyroxine level. Then, pregnant of vehicle and KYD rats were fed with or without ZGW-supplemented diet throughout the F1 gestation. Postnatal thymi samples were obtained after delivery for histological examination. In vitro, TECs of the newborn rats whose mother suffered KYD were isolated, and cultured using the serum containing ZGW with or without the supplement of Wnt4/ß-catenin pathway inhibitor ICG-001. Cell viability was evaluated by CCK-8 assay. Meanwhile, the thymi tissues and TECs were collected for biochemical analysis. Levels of thymosin ß4 (TMSß4) and thymosin α1 (Tα1) were detected by ELISA assay. The mRNA and protein expression of Wnt4, ß-catenin, and Foxn1 were determined by RT-qPCR and Western blot respectively. RESULTS: In vivo, KYD resulted in significantly increased apoptosis of TECs and atrophy of the thymi, especially in the medullary zone. The morphological changes observed in KYD rats were ameliorated by ZGW treatment. Meanwhile, the decreased TMSß4, Tα1, Wnt4, ß-catenin, and Foxn1 levels in KYD rats were also significantly alleviated by ZGW administration. In vitro, elevated TMSß4 and Tα1 levels accompanied with upregulated Wnt4, ß-catenin, and Foxn1 expressions in the TECs were observed after ZGW intervention, however, which were significantly downregulated by ICG-001 supplement. CONCLUSIONS: Maternal kidney-yin deficiency could result in TEC dysfunction in newborn rats. ZGW was able to improve the growth and development of TEC, potentially by regulating the Wnt/ß-catenin pathway.

Taxonomic study of the lichen genus lobaria in South Korea.

Lobaria (Schreb.) Hoffm is a common foliose lichen genus found on the Korean Peninsula, yet until now, no revision study has been done on this genus. After careful examination of specimens deposited in the Korean Lichen Research Institute (KoLRI), nine distinct species of Lobaria were confirmed. Morphological characteristics such as the presence or absence of isidia, or whether or not the surface was ridged or smooth, and chemical characteristics such as the result of the medulla reaction were of significant importance in the differentiation of species. Here, we provided detailed descriptions together with a key to all the known Korean species.

Antioxidative Activity of Lichen Thamnolia vermicularis in vitro.

This study was aimed at evaluating the antioxidant activities of methanol extract of Thamnolia vermicularis. The antioxidant activity, reducing power, superoxide anion radical scavenging and free radical scavenging activities were studied. The antioxidant activity of the extract correlated with its concentration (0.2~2 mg/ml) in the reaction mixtures containing linoleic acid. Upto 67% of lipid peroxidation was inhibited by 2 mg/ml of the lichen extract. The extract showed strong free radical scavenging activity similar to that of BHA (positive control) in a manner of concentration dependent. The lichen extract also showed moderate effects on superoxide anoin scavenging activity and reducing power, which was not so effective as that of Quercetin and BHA used as positive controls. This study suggests that T. vermicularis lichen can be used as a novel source of natural antioxidant.