First Report of Pestalotiopsis trachicarpicola Causing Leaf Blight on Panax notoginseng in China.

Panax notoginseng (Burkill) F. H. Chen ex C. Y. Wu & K.M. Feng is a Chinese herbal medicinal plant for treating diseases of the central nervous system and cardiovascular system, widely used as a medicine and health-care product. In May 2022, leaf blight disease was found on leaves of 1-year-old P. notoginseng in the plantings （27.904°N, 112.918°E） of Xiangtan City (Hunan) with an area of 104 m2. Over 400 plants were investigated, up to 25% of the plants were symptomatic. From the margin of the leaf, the initial symptoms of water-soaked chlorosis and following dry yellow with slight shrinkage appeared. Later, leaf shrinkage became serious and chlorosis enlarged gradually, leading to leaf death and abscission. To identify the causal agent, 20 leaf lesions (4 mm2) collected from 20 individual 1-year-old plants were sterilized with 75% ethanol for 10 s, 5% NaOCl for 10 s, rinsed in sterilized water three times, placed on potato dextrose agar (PDA) with lactic acid (0.125%) for inhibition the growth of bacteria, and incubated at 28°C for 7 days (Fang, 1998). Five isolates were obtained from 20 leaf lesions of different plants with the isolation rate of 25% and purified by single sporing, which have similar colony and conidia morphology characteristics. One isolate PB2-a was selected randomly for further identification. Colonies of PB2-a on PDA were white with cottony mycelium, developing concentric circles (top view) or light yellow (back view). Conidia (23.1 ± 2.1 × 5.7 ± 0.8 µm, n=30)were fusiform, straight or slightly curved and contained conic basal cell, three light brown median cells and hyaline conic apical cell with appendages. The rDNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS), the translation elongation factor 1-alpha (tef1), and the ß-tubulin (TUB2) genes were amplified from genomic DNA of PB2-a using primers ITS4/ITS5 (White et al. 1990), EF1-526F/EF1-1567R (Maharachchikumbura et al. 2012), and Bt2a/Bt2b (Glass and Donaldson, 1995; O'Donnell and Cigelnik, 1997), respectively. BLAST search of sequenced ITS (OP615100), tef1 (OP681464) and TUB2 (OP681465) exhibited > 99% identity with the type strain of Pestalotiopsis trachicarpicola OP068 (JQ845947, JQ845946 and JQ845945). Phylogenetic tree of the concatenated sequences was constructed based on the maximum-likelihood method using MEGA-X. Isolate PB2-a was identified as P. trachicarpicola based on morphological and molecular data (Maharachchikumbura et al. 2011; Qi et al. 2022). PB2-a was tested for pathogenicity three times to confirm Koch's postulates. Twenty healthy leaves on 20 1-year-old plants were punctured with sterile needles and inoculated with 50 µl of conidial suspension (1×106 conidia/ml). The controls were inoculated with sterile water. All plants were placed in a greenhouse at 25°C under 80% relative humidity. After 7 days, all inoculated leaves developed leaf blight symptoms identical to those described above, whereas the control plants kept healthy. P. trachicarpicola were reisolated from infected leaves, and identical to those of the originals based on the colony characteristics and the sequenced data of ITS, tef1 and TUB2. P. trachicarpicola was reported as a pathogen of leaf blight on Photinia fraseri (Xu et al. 2022). To our knowledge, this is the first report of P. trachicarpicola causing leaf blight on P. notoginseng in Hunan, China. Leaf blight is one of the destructive diseases in P. notoginseng production, identification of the pathogen will be useful to develop effective disease management and protect P. notoginseng, a medical plant with economic value.

Current research trends, hotspots, and frontiers of medical nutrition therapy on cancer: a bibliometric analysis.

Background: There is a high prevalence of malnutrition in cancer patients, which seriously affects the anti-cancer therapy effect and outcomes, causing a huge disease burden worldwide. Appropriate nutritional support is important for cancer prevention and control. The aim of this study was to explore the development trends, hotspots, and frontiers of Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) on Cancer from a bibliometric perspective, and provide new insights for future research and clinic practices. Methods: The global literature of MNT on Cancer published between 1975 and 2022 were searched in the Web of Science Core Collection Database (WOSCC). After refining the data, descriptive analysis and data visualization were performed with bibliometric tools (CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and R package "bibliometrix"). Results: A total of 10,339 documents with a timespan from 1982 to 2022 were included in this study. The number of documents had increased continuously over the past 40 years, especially with a steep rise from 2016 to 2022. The majority of scientific production outputs were from the United States, which had the most core research institutions and authors. The published documents could be clustered into three themes respectively labeled by terms "double-blind", "cancer" and "quality-of-life". "gastric cancer", "outcome", "inflammation", "sarcopenia" and "exercise" were the most prominent keywords in recent years. "breast-cancer", "colorectal-cancer", "expression", "risk", "in-vitro", "quality-of-life", "cancer" and "life" might represent the newly emerged topics. Conclusions: There were a good research foundation and reasonable disciplinary structure in the field of medical nutrition therapy for cancer at present. The core research team was mainly located in the United States, England, and other developed countries. According to the current trends in publications, more articles shall be published in the future. Nutritional metabolism, malnutrition risk, and the impact of nutritional therapy on prognosis might be research hotspots. In particular, it was important to focus on specific cancer, such as breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and gastric cancer, which might be the frontiers.

YAP1 synergize with YY1 transcriptional co-repress DUSP1 to induce osimertinib resistant by activating the EGFR/MAPK pathway and abrogating autophagy in non-small cell lung cancer.

YAP1 is a well-known core effector of the Hippo pathway in tumors, but its potential role in osimertinib resistance remained unexplored. Our study provides evidence that YAP1 acts as a potent promoter of osimertinib resistance. By inhibiting YAP1 with a novel inhibitor, CA3, and combining it with osimertinib, we observed a significant suppression of cell proliferation and metastasis, induction of apoptosis and autophagy, and a delay in the emergence of osimertinib resistance. Interestingly, CA3 combined with osimertinib executed its anti-metastasis and pro-tumor apoptosis in part through autophagy. Mechanistically, we found that YAP1, in collaboration with YY1, transcriptionally represses DUSP1, leading to the dephosphorylation of the EGFR/MEK/ERK pathway and YAP1 phosphorylation in osimertinib-resistant cells. Our results also validate that CA3, in combination with osimertinib, executes its anti-metastasis and pro-tumor apoptosis partly through autophagy and the YAP1/DUSP1/EGFR/MEK/ERK regulatory feedback loop in osimertinib-resistant cells. Remarkably, our findings illustrate that YAP1 protein is upregulated in patients after osimertinib treatment and osimertinib resistance. Overall, our study confirms that the YAP1 inhibitor CA3 increases DUSP1 with concomitant activation of the EGFR/MAPK pathway and induces autophagy to enhance the efficacy of third-generation EGFR-TKI treatments for NSCLC patients.

Enteromorpha prolifera polysaccharide-zinc complex modulates the immune response and alleviates LPS-induced intestinal inflammation via inhibiting the TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway.

Enteromorpha prolifera polysaccharide-zinc (EP-Zn), a kind of polysaccharide-zinc complex, has been shown to improve the immune response and reduce the inflammatory factors in weaned piglets. Yet, the molecular mechanism remains unclear. The present study was conducted to investigate the immunomodulating activity and anti-inflammatory mechanism of EP-Zn in mice. Different doses (350 mg kg-1, 700 mg kg-1, 1050 mg kg-1 and 1400 mg kg-1) of EP-Zn were administered to C57BL/6J mice for 28 days. The results showed that under physiological conditions, 350 mg kg-1 EP-Zn stimulated cytokine (TNF-α, IL-1ß, IL-6 and IL-10) secrection, regulated the intestinal microbiota, and reduced the levels of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) (acetic acid and propionic acid). In addition, in the LPS-induced inflammation model, EP-Zn pretreatment effectively alleviated LPS-induced shortening of colonic length and increased MPO and DAO contents, improved intestinal physical barrier function by modulating mucosal structure, and attenuated intestinal inflammation via inhibiting the TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway. These findings suggested that EP-Zn exerted immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory activities under physiological and inflammatory conditions, respectively.

Enteromorpha polysaccharide-zinc replacing prophylactic antibiotics contributes to improving gut health of weaned piglets.

This research aimed to study whether Enteromorpha polysaccharide-zinc (EP-Zn) can act as an alternative to antibiotics in weaned piglet feeds. Two hundred and twenty-four weaned piglets from 14 pens were randomly assigned into 1 of 2 groups according to their body weight and litter size (7 pens/group). The piglets in the antibiotics group were fed with olaquindox at 400 mg/kg and enduracidin at 800 mg/kg basal diet, and piglets in the EP-Zn group were fed with EP-Zn at 800 mg/kg basal diet. One piglet per pen was selected to collect samples after 14 d of feeding. Results showed that EP-Zn supplementation significantly increased the plasma anti-oxidants level compared with the antibiotics group. However, a nonsignificant difference was observed in growth performance between treatment groups. Additionally, the intestinal tight junction (TJ) protein expression and the histopathologic evaluation data showed that EP-Zn contributed to improving intestinal development. Further, piglets in the EP-Zn group had a lower level of intestinal inflammation-related cytokines including IL-6 (P < 0.001), IL-8 (P < 0.05), IL-12 (P < 0.05) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) (P < 0.001), and showed an inhibition of the phosphorylation nuclear transcription factor-kappa B (p-NF-κB) (P < 0.05) and total NF-κB (P < 0.001) level in the jejunal mucosa. Taken together, it is supposed that EP-Zn, to some extent, would be a potent alternative to prophylactic antibiotics in improving the health status of weaned piglets.

Potential Protective Effects of the Water-Soluble Chinese Propolis on Hypertension Induced by High-Salt Intake.

High-salt (HS) intake is closely associated with the ignition and progression of hypertension. The mechanisms might be involved in endothelial dysfunction, nitric oxide deficiency, oxidative stress, and proinflammatory cytokines. Propolis is widely used as a natural antioxidant and is a well-known functional food for its biological activities, which includes anti-inflammation, antimicrobial, and liver detoxification. In this study, we successfully replicated a HS diet-induced hypertensive rat model. We found that in the long-term HS diet group, the myocardial function of the rats was altered and led to a significant decrease (around 49%) in heart function. However, doses of Chinese water-soluble propolis (WSP) were found directly proportional (11%, 60%, 91%, respectively) to the myocardial function improvement in hypertensive rats. The results from the blood circulation test and hematoxylin-eosin stains showed that propolis had protective effects on myocardial functions and blood vessels in hypertensive rats. Also, based on the results of western blot and polymerase chain reaction, WSP effectively regulated Nox2 and Nox4 levels and was responsible for a decrease in reactive oxygen species synthesis. Our findings demonstrate that Chinese WSP has a significant effect on the blood pressure of hypertensive rats and their cardiovascular functions that improved significantly. The improvement in the cardiovascular functions might be related to the process of anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, and the improvements of the endothelial function in hypertensive rats.

[TLR4/NF-kappaB p65 signaling pathway mediates protective effect of triptolide on endothelium in rats with endotoxemia].

The aim of this paper was to observe the effect of triptolide( TP) on cardiovascular function and its possible mechanism by intraperitoneal injection of bacterial lipopolysaccharide in rats with endotoxemia. Sixty male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided intonormal group( NC group),endotoxemia model group( LPS group),TP low concentration intervention group( LPS + TP-L group,25 µg·kg~(-1)),TP middle concentration intervention group( LPS+TP-M group,50 µg·kg~(-1)),TP high concentration intervention group( LPS+TP-H group,100 µg·kg~(-1)) and polymyxin B group( LPS+PMX-B group,0. 2 mg·kg~(-1)). 10 mg·kg~(-1) LPS was injected intraperitoneally for 6 h to replicate the endotoxemia rat model. The rats in TP intervention groups were pre-treated 15 min before intraperitoneal injection of LPS. Rats in each group underwent total arterial intubation to measure hemodynamic parameters: heart rate( HR),left ventricular diastolic pressure( LVDP),the maximum rate of the increase/decrease of left ventricular pressure( ±dp/dtmax). The levels of BNP,CK-MB and c Tn-Ⅰ in serum and levels of TNF-α and IL-6 in plasma were detected by ELISA. The contents of p65 protein in myocardium and contents of p65,TLR4,i NOS and e NOS protein in thoracic aorta were detected by Western blot. As compared with NC group,the hemodynamic indexes in LPS group were significantly decreased; the contents of BNP,CK-MB and c Tn-Ⅰ in serum,TNF-α and IL-6 in plasma,p65 in myocardium,i NOS,e NOS,TLR4 and p65 in vascular tissues were significantly increased. As compared with LPS group,the hemodynamic indexes were significantly improved in LPS+TP-M group,LPS+TP-H group and LPS+PMX-B group; the contents of BNP,CK-MB and c Tn-Ⅰ in serum,TNF-α and IL-6 in plasma,p65 in myocardium,i NOS,e NOS,TLR4 and p65 in vascular tissues were significantly decreased in each treatment group. Triptolide has a protective effect on cardiovascular damage in a dose-dependent manner in endotoxemia rats,probably through TLR4/NF-κB p65 signaling pathway to improve endothelial function.

Effects of earthworms and effective microorganisms on the composting of sewage sludge with cassava dregs in the tropics.

The present study revealed the role of earthworm-effective microorganisms (EM) in converting sewage sludge and cassava dregs into a valuable product. Sewage sludge was toxic to earthworm, therefore it was mixed with cassava dregs in 80:20 proportions (dry weight). Treatments included mixed substrate inoculated versus not inoculated with EM and treated with or without earthworms. The pH, total organic carbon, total nitrogen, and C:N ratio decreased from the initial measurements in the range of 17.43-18.46%, 25.48-33.82%, 19.60-25.37%, and 6.68-14.05% respectively; but electrical conductivity and available phosphorus increased in the range of 113.47-158.16% and 42.42-57.58%, respectively. In addition, they interactively increased total phosphorus from 19.84-63.01% and potassium from 16.41-50.78%, and decreased the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons content of substrate from 21.17% to 32.14% with an increase in earthworms from 51.71 to 57.69, respectively. Earthworms and EM could be used together as an efficient method for co-composting sewage sludge plus cassava dregs in the tropics. This could be expected to result in stabilization of waste, increase in nutrients, and reduction of pollutant content. Implications: The first reports of interaction of earthworms and effective microorganisms in the treatment of sewage sludge and cassava dregs in the tropics. Co-composting was an efficient technology for treating sewage sludge and cassava dregs at the same time, in the tropics. The survival rate of the earthworms both> 95%, the highest number of cocoons (640.33) and hatchlings (4694.33) both in EW+EM (Earthworms added and EM inoculated) treatment. Earthworms and EM (Only EM inoculated) interactively increased total phosphorus and potassium content, and decreased the PAH content of substrate with increase in earthworms.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in surface sediment from Yangpu Bay, China: Distribution, sources and risk assessment.

The study investigated the occurrence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the surface sediment from eleven sites in Yangpu Bay, China in December 2013 (winter) and July 2014 (summer). The 16 US EPA priority PAHs were found in the range of 1583.2-5701.7 ng/g dry weights with an average of 3134.7 ± 1241.3 ng/g in winter and ranged from 2161.8 to 4527.2 ng/g with an average of 3016.6 ± 748.0 ng/g in summer, respectively. The concentrations of the PAHs tended to be relatively high in comparison with other areas from the literatures. The identification using molecular indices analysis indicated that the PAHs originated mainly from pyrogenic and petrogenic sources in most of the sites. According to principle component analysis-multiple linear regression (PCA/MLR) for their source apportionment, the main sources of PAHs were vehicle emissions, petroleum products and biomass combustion. The risk assessment using international sediments quality guidelines and sediments quality criteria indicated that several PAHs, such as Nap, Flu, Phe, Ace, Acy and BghiP in most of the sites would potentially affect organisms in Yangpu Bay.

[Regulation Mechanism of Ginkgo-Dipyridamolum for Calcium Homeostasis on Cardioprotective Effect During Ischemia Reperfusion Injury].

OBJECTIVE: To explore regulatory mechanism of Ginkgo-dipyridamolum (GD) for calcium homeostasis on cardioprotective effect during ischemia reperfusion injury in the isolated rat heart. METHODS: 40 male SD-rats were randomly divided into five groups (n = 8): normal control group (NC), ischemia reperfusion group (IR), GD precondition group (GD + IR), Nicardipine and GD precondition group( Nic + GD + IR), and LaCl3 and GD precondition group (LaCl, + GD +IR). The hearts of rats were isolated after anesthesia and performed to profuse with Langendorff equipment. The heart functional indexes (HR, LVSP and ± dp/dt(max)) were detected at the five time points (stabilize point, ischemia 30 min, reperfusion 5 min, reperfusion 30 min, and reperfusion 60 min). The coronary effluents were also collected at the five time points. The activities of LDH and CK were measured, respectively, as well as the Ca2+ contents. After the experiments were finished,the myocardial mitochondria were isolated, homogenated and then the Ca2+ concentrations, the activities of IDH and α-OGDH were detected. The pathologic changes in myocardial tissues were also observed by histologic section. RESULTS: Compared with IR group, the heart functional indexes ( LVSP x HR and ± dp/dt(max)) of GD + IR group were improved at the five time points; the enzymes (LDH and CK) release, the Ca2+ concentrations, the activities of IDH and α-OGDH were reduced in mitochondrion. However, the protective effects above could be inhibited by Nic and LaCl3. Histologic sections showed that the myocardial tissue in IR group was damaged obviously, the damaged myocardial tissues were repaired in GD + IR, Nic + GD + IR and LaCl, + GD + IR) groups, especially in GD + IR group. CONCLUSION: Ginkgo-dipyridamolum can alleviate the myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury, the mechanism is probobaly related to maintaining calcium homeostasis and mitochondrial energy metabolism function.

[Detection of onion soluble solids content based on the near-infrared reflectance spectra].

Onion soluble solids content (SSC) was detected using near-infrared (924-1720 nm) reflectance spectra. Three cultivars of onions, harvested at different period, were selected for experiment and the total number of samples is 268. SSC reference value of onion juice was determined using the temperature compensated refractometer. Some pre-processing methods, such as S-G smoothing, scatter correction, and derivation, were compared to establish a statistical model based on partial least squares regression (PLSR) method. The results show that the avitzky-Golay smoothing with window 32 and span 10 is more efficient. The determination correlation coefficient of prediction R2 is 0.87 and root mean square error (RMSEP) is 2.42 degrees Brix. Compared to the 2nd derivation, the 1st derivation got better prediction result, but the spectra scatter correction is the best (R2 = 0.88, RMSEP of = 2.31 degrees Brix). The optimal prediction (R2 = 0.90, RMSEP = 1.84 degrees Brix and RPD = 3) was built based on crossing validation modeling, which shows that infrared reflectance spectroscopy with scatter correction pre-processing is feasible for onions soluble solids detection.