Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world.

Habitat loss for food production is a key threat to global biodiversity. Despite the importance of dietary choices on our capacity to mitigate the on-going biodiversity crisis, unlike with specific ingredients or products, consumers have limited information on the biodiversity implications of choosing to eat a certain popular dish. Here we estimated the biodiversity footprints of 151 popular local dishes from around the world when globally and locally produced and after calorical content standardization. We find that specific ingredients (beef, legumes, rice) encroaching on biodiversity hotspots with already very high agricultural pressure (e.g. India) lead to high biodiversity footprint in the dishes. Examples of high-biodiversity-footprint popular dishes were beef dishes such as fraldinha (beef cut dish) originating from Brazil and legume dishes such as chana masala (chickpea curry) from India. Regardless of assuming locally or globally produced, feedlot or pasture livestock production, vegan and vegetarian dishes presented lower biodiversity footprints than dishes containing meat. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of analysing biodiversity footprint at the dish level across multiple countries, making sustainable eating decisions more accessible to consumers.

Expression Profile of miR-199a and Its Role in the Regulation of Intestinal Inflammation.

Early weaning stress impairs intestinal health in piglets. miRNAs are crucial for maintaining host homeostasis, while their implication for animal health remains unclear. To identify weaning-associated miRNAs, piglets were sampled at day 0, 1, 3, 7 and 14 after weaning. The data indicated that the highest levels of miR-199a-5p in jejunal villus upper cells were observed on day 14 after weaning, while the lowest levels in crypt cells were noted on day 7 and 14. In contrast, miR-199a-3p was down-regulated in both of these two cells on day 7 after weaning compared with day 0. Both miR-199a-5p and -3p were differently expressed along the villus-crypt axis. To further clarify the function of miR-199a, mice deficient in miR-199a were exposed to dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) to induce colitis. Results revealed that silencing of miR-199a enhanced sensitivity to DSS-induced colitis. Moreover, the increased morbidity and mortality were correlated with enhanced inflammatory cell infiltration, elevated pro-inflammatory cytokine expression, impaired barrier function, and a concomitant increase in permeability-related parameters. Bioinformatic analysis further demonstrated that lipid metabolism-related pathways were significantly enriched and Ndrg1 was verified as a target of miR-199a-3p. These findings indicate that miR-199a may be important for animal health management.

Unsupervised machine learning effectively clusters pediatric spastic cerebral palsy patients for determination of optimal responders to selective dorsal rhizotomy.

Selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR) can reduce the spasticity in patients with spastic cerebral palsy (SCP) and thus improve the motor function in these patients, but different levels of improvement in motor function were observed among patients after SDR. The aim of the present study was to subgroup patients and to predict the possible outcome of SDR based on the pre-operational parameters. A hundred and thirty-five pediatric patients diagnosed with SCP who underwent SDR from January 2015 to January 2021 were retrospectively reviewed. Spasticity of lower limbs, the number of target muscles, motor functions, and other clinical parameters were used as input variables for unsupervised machine learning to cluster all included patients. The postoperative motor function change is used to assess the clinical significance of clustering. After the SDR procedure, the spasticity of muscles in all patients was reduced significantly, and the motor function was promoted significantly at the follow-up duration. All patients were categorized into three subgroups by both hierarchical and K-means clustering methods. The three subgroups showed significantly different clinical characteristics except for the age at surgery, and the post-operational motor function change at the last follow-up in these three clusters was different. Three subgroups clustered by two methods could be identified as "best responders", "good responders" and "moderate responders" based on the increasement of motor function after SDR. Clustering results achieved by hierarchical and K-means algorithms showed high consistency in subgrouping the whole group of patients. These results indicated that SDR could relieve the spasticity and promote the motor function of patients with SCP. Unsupervised machine learning methods can effectively and accurately cluster patients into different subgroups suffering from SCP based on pre-operative characteristics. Machine learning can be used for the determination of optimal responders for SDR surgery.

Role of p40phox in host defense against Citrobacter rodentium infection.

NADPH oxidase (NOX) is a membrane-bound enzyme complex that generates reactive oxygen species (ROS). Mutations in NOX subunit genes have been implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), indicating a crucial role for ROS in regulating host immune responses. In this study, we utilize genetically deficient mice to investigate whether defects in p40phox , one subunit of NOX, impair host immune response in the intestine and aggravate disease in an infection-based (Citrobacter rodentium) model of colitis. We show that p40phox deficiency does not increase susceptibility of mice to C. rodentium infection, as no differences in body weight loss, bacterial clearance, colonic pathology, cytokine production, or immune cell recruitment were observed between p40phox-/- and wild-type mice. Interestingly, higher IL-10 levels were observed in the supernatants of MLN cells and splenocytes isolated from infected p40phox -deficient mice. Further, a higher expression level of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) was also noted in mice lacking p40phox . In contrast to wild-type mice, p40phox-/- mice exhibited greater NO production after LPS or bacterial antigen re-stimulation. These results suggest that p40phox-/- mice do not develop worsened colitis. While the precise mechanisms are unclear, it may involve the observed alteration in cytokine responses and enhancement in levels of iNOS and NO.

Role of miR-10b-5p in the prognosis of breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in women worldwide. Aberrant expression levels of miR-10b-5p in breast cancer has been reported while the molecular mechanism of miR-10b-5p in tumorigenesis remains elusive. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the role of miR-10b-5p in breast cancer and the network of its target genes using bioinformatics analysis. In this study, the expression profiles and prognostic value of miR-10b-5p in breast cancer were analyzed from public databases. Association between miR-10b-5p and clinicopathological parameters were analyzed by non-parametric test. Moreover, the optimal target genes of miR-10b-5p were obtained and their expression patterns were examined using starBase and HPA database. Additionally, the role of these target genes in cancer development were explored via Cancer Hallmarks Analytics Tool (CHAT). The protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks were constructed to further investigate the interactive relationships among these genes. Furthermore, GO, KEGG pathway and Reactome pathway analyses were carried out to decipher functions of these target genes. Results demonstrated that miR-10b-5p was down-regulated in breast cancer and low expression of miR-10b-5p was significantly correlated to worse outcome. Five genes, BIRC5, E2F2, KIF2C, FOXM1, and MCM5, were considered as potential key target genes of miR-10b-5p. As expected, higher expression levels of these genes were observed in breast cancer tissues than in normal tissues. Moreover, analysis from CHAT revealed that these genes were mainly involved in sustaining proliferative signaling in cancer development. In addition, PPI networks analysis revealed strong interactions between target genes. GO, KEGG, and Reactome pathway analysis suggested that these target genes of miR-10b-5p in breast cancer were significantly involved in cell cycle. Predicted target genes were further validated by qRT-PCR analysis in human breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 transfected with miR-10b mimic or antisense inhibitors. Taken together, our data suggest that miR-10b-5p functions to impede breast carcinoma progression via regulation of its key target genes and hopefully serves as a potential diagnostic and prognostic marker for breast cancer.