[Effect of 2-phenylethyl-beta-glucopyranoside isolated from Huaizhong No. 1 Rehmannia glutinosa on hypoxic pulmonary hypertension by regulating PI3K/Akt/m TOR/HIF-1α pathway].

The study investigated the protective effect and mechanism of 2-phenylethyl-beta-glucopyranoside(Phe) from Huaizhong No.1 Rehmannia glutinosa on hypoxic pulmonary hypertension(PH), aiming to provide a theoretical basis for clinical treatment of PAH. Male C57BL/6N mice were randomly divided into normal group, model group, positive drug(bosentan, 100 mg·kg~(-1)) group, and low-and high-dose Phe groups(20 and 40 mg·kg~(-1)). Except for the normal group, all other groups were continuously subjected to model induction in a 10% hypoxic environment for 5 weeks, with oral administration for 14 days starting from the 3rd week. The cardiopulmonary function, right ventricular pressure, cough and asthma index, lung injury, cell apoptosis, oxidative stress-related indicators, immune cells, and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase(PI3K)/protein kinase B(Akt)/mammalian target of rapamycin(mTOR)/hypoxic inducible factor 1α(HIF-1α) pathway-related proteins or mRNA levels were examined. Furthermore, hypoxia-induced pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cell(PASMC) were used to further explore the mechanism of Phe intervention in PH combined with PI3K ago-nist(740Y-P). The results showed that Phe significantly improved the cardiopulmonary function of mice with PH, decreased right ventricular pressure, cough and asthma index, and lung injury, reduced cell apoptosis, oxidative stress-related indicators, and nuclear levels of phosphorylated Akt(p-Akt) and phosphorylated mTOR(p-mTOR), inhibited the expression levels of HIF-1α and PI3K mRNA and proteins, and maintained the immune cell homeostasis in mice. Further mechanistic studies revealed that Phe significantly reduced the viability and migration ability of hypoxia-induced PASMC, decreased the expression of HIF-1α and PI3K proteins and nuc-lear levels of p-Akt and p-mTOR, and this effect was blocked by 740Y-P. Therefore, it is inferred that Phe may exert anti-PH effects by alleviating the imbalance of oxidative stress and apoptosis in lung tissues and regulating immune levels, and its mechanism may be related to the regulation of the PI3K/Akt/mTOR/HIF-1α pathway. This study is expected to provide drug references and research ideas for the treatment of PH.

Bioinspired molecular catalysts with a unique tricopper architecture for highly efficient oxygen reduction reaction.

In situ growth of intertwined trinuclear copper complexes (nCu3) on a cellulose-derived carbon support (CMC) produced a high-performance electrocatalyst (CMC-nCu3) for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which demonstrated superior performance in zinc-air batteries compared to a commercial Pt/C catalyst. This work highlights the importance of copper-based molecular catalysts with rich and intertwined tricopper structures for boosting both ORR activity and stability.

The viable but non-culturable (VBNC) status of Shewanella putrefaciens (S. putrefaciens) with thermosonication (TS) treatment.

Although thermosonication (TS) treatment has been widely used in food sterilization, the viable but non-culturable (VBNC) of bacteria with TS treatment has still concerned potential food safety and public health. The molecular mechanism of VBNC status of bacteria with TS treatment is not clearly known. Therefore, in this study, we used Shewanella putrefaciens, which was a common putrefactive bacteria in aquatic products, to study the VBNC state of bacteria with TS treatment. Firstly, our results revealed that S. putrefaciens still could enter the VBNC state after TS treatments: 50 kHz, 300 W, 30 min ultrasonic treatment and 70 °C heating; Subsequently, we found the VBNC state of S. putrefaciens can resist the damage of TS treatment, such as cell wall break, DNA degradation, etc; Finally, four-dimensional data-independent acquisition-based proteomics showed that under VBNC state, S. putrefaciens upregulated functional proteins to resist TS treatment, such as: ribosomal proteins to accelerate the synthesis of stress proteins to counteract TS treatments, ornithine decarboxylase SpeF and MraY to repair TS treatment-induced damage, etc. Meanwhile, S. putrefaciens downregulates metabolic and transport functional proteins such as dehydrogenase to reduce the metabolism. Importantly, among those proteins, the ribosomal transcriptional regulatory protein family, such as rpsB, etc, may be the key proteins for S. putrefaciens entering VBNC state. This finding can provide some new strategies for preventing VBNC status of bacteria with TS treatment, such as: inhibition of key proteins, etc.

Effects of humic electron mediators on reductive dechlorination of polychlorinated biphenyl by consortia enriched from terrestrial and marine environments.

Humic electron mediators can facilitate the reductive dehalogenation of organohalogenated compounds by accelerating electron transfer. To investigate the effect of humic electron mediators on the microbial anaerobic reductive dechlorination of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), three types of humic electron mediators, humin (HM), humic acid (HA), and anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonic acid (AQDS, HA analogs), were added to PCB dechlorination cultures enriched from different sources in terrestrial and marine environments (T and M cultures). The results showed that meta- and para-site dechlorination occurred in the M culture, while only meta-site dechlorination occurred in the T culture. The dechlorination process N and the dechlorination process H or H' are presented in both cultures. HM enhanced PCB dechlorination metabolic activity in both cultures mainly by promoting meta-site dechlorination. HA showed a weak promoting effect on the M culture by promoting para-chlorine removal but inhibited the dechlorination metabolism of the terrestrial-origin culture, inhibiting meta-chlorine removal. AQDS showed inhibitory effects on both cultures by inhibiting the microbial removal of meta-chlorine. High-throughput sequencing and qPCR results suggest that HM is not a carbon source for the potential dechlorinating metabolism of Dehalococcoides but may promote reductive dechlorination by changing the community structure, and AQDS may inhibit anaerobic reductive dechlorination of PCBs by inhibiting the growth of Dehalococcoides. This study provides insights into the mechanism of enhancing PCB microbial dechlorination mediated by humic substances and plays a significant role in extending the application prospects of PCBs bioremediation technology.

A Nanocapsule System Combats Aging by Inhibiting Age-Related Angiogenesis Deficiency and Glucolipid Metabolism Disorders.

Insufficient angiogenic stimulation and dysregulated glycolipid metabolism in senescent vascular endothelial cells (VECs) constitute crucial features of vascular aging. Concomitantly, the generation of excess senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) and active immune-inflammatory responses propagates within injured vessels, tissues, and organs. Until now, targeted therapies that efficiently rectify phenotypic abnormalities in senescent VECs have still been lacking. Here, we constructed a Pd/hCeO2-BMS309403@platelet membrane (PCBP) nanoheterostructured capsule system loaded with fatty acid-binding protein 4 (FABP4) inhibitors and modified with platelet membranes and investigated its therapeutic role in aged mice. PCBP showed significant maintenance in aged organs and demonstrated excellent biocompatibility. Through cyclic tail vein administration, PCBP extended the lifespan and steadily ameliorated abnormal phenotypes in aged mice, including SASP production, immune and inflammatory status, and age-related metabolic disorders. In senescent ECs, PCBP mediated the activation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) signaling and glycolysis and inhibition of FABP4 by inducing the synthesis of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α, thereby reawakening neovascularization and restoring glycolipid metabolic homeostasis. In conclusion, the PCBP nanocapsule system provides a promising avenue for interventions against aging-induced dysfunction.

A Fair Contribution Measurement Method for Federated Learning.

Federated learning is an effective approach for preserving data privacy and security, enabling machine learning to occur in a distributed environment and promoting its development. However, an urgent problem that needs to be addressed is how to encourage active client participation in federated learning. The Shapley value, a classical concept in cooperative game theory, has been utilized for data valuation in machine learning services. Nevertheless, existing numerical evaluation schemes based on the Shapley value are impractical, as they necessitate additional model training, leading to increased communication overhead. Moreover, participants' data may exhibit Non-IID characteristics, posing a significant challenge to evaluating participant contributions. Non-IID data have greatly affected the accuracy of the global model, weakened the marginal effect of the participants, and led to the underestimated contribution measurement results of the participants. Current work often overlooks the impact of heterogeneity on model aggregation. This paper presents a fair federated learning contribution measurement scheme that addresses the need for additional model computations. By introducing a novel aggregation weight, it enhances the accuracy of the contribution measurement. Experiments on the MNIST and Fashion MNIST dataset show that the proposed method can accurately compute the contributions of participants. Compared to existing baseline algorithms, the model accuracy is significantly improved, with a similar time cost.

Quasi-critical dynamics in large-scale social systems regulated by sudden events.

How do heterogeneous individual behaviors arise in response to sudden events and how do they shape large-scale social dynamics? Based on a five-year naturalistic observation of individual purchasing behaviors, we extract the long-term consumption dynamics of diverse commodities from approximately 2.2 million purchase orders. We subdivide the consumption dynamics into trend, seasonal, and random components and analyze them using a renormalization group. We discover that the coronavirus pandemic, a sudden event acting on the social system, regulates the scaling and criticality of consumption dynamics. On a large time scale, the long-term dynamics of the system, regardless of arising from trend, seasonal, or random individual behaviors, is pushed toward a quasi-critical region between independent (i.e., the consumption behaviors of different commodities are irrelevant) and correlated (i.e., the consumption behaviors of different commodities are interrelated) phases as the pandemic erupts. On a small time scale, short-term consumption dynamics exhibits more diverse responses to the pandemic. While the trend and random behaviors of individuals are driven to quasi-criticality and exhibit scale-invariance as the pandemic breaks out, seasonal behaviors are more robust against regulations. Overall, these discoveries provide insights into how quasi-critical macroscopic dynamics emerges in heterogeneous social systems to enhance system reactivity to sudden events while there may exist specific system components maintaining robustness as a reflection of system stability.

Extremely Large Anomalous Hall Conductivity and Unusual Axial Diamagnetism in a Quasi-1D Dirac Material La3MgBi5.

Anomalous Hall effect (AHE), one of the most important electronic transport phenomena, generally appears in ferromagnetic materials but is rare in materials without magnetic elements. Here, a study of La3MgBi5 is presented, whose band structure carries multitype Dirac fermions. Although magnetic elements are absent in La3MgBi5, the signals of AHE can be observed. In particular, the anomalous Hall conductivity is extremely large, reaching 42,356 Ω-1 cm-1 with an anomalous Hall angle of 8.8%, the largest one that has been observed in the current AHE systems. The AHE is suggested to originate from the combination of skew scattering and Berry curvature. Another unique property discovered in La3MgBi5 is the axial diamagnetism. The diamagnetism is significantly enhanced and dominates the magnetization in the axial directions, which is the result of the restricted motion of the Dirac fermion at the Fermi level. These findings not only establish La3MgBi5 as a suitable platform to study AHE and quantum transport but also indicate the great potential of 315-type Bi-based materials for exploring novel physical properties.

Creating Asymmetric Fe-N3C-N Sites in Single-Atom Catalysts Boosts Catalytic Performance for Oxygen Reduction Reaction.

Fine tuning of the metal site coordination environment of a single-atom catalyst (SAC) to boost its catalytic activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is of significance but challenging. Herein, we report a new SAC bearing Fe-N3C-N sites with asymmetric in-plane coordinated Fe-N3C and axial coordinated N atom for ORR, which was obtained by pyrolysis of an iron isoporphyrin on polyvinylimidazole (PVI) coated carbon black. The C@PVI-(NCTPP)Fe-800 catalyst exhibited significantly improved ORR activity (E1/2 = 0.89 V vs RHE) than the counterpart SAC with Fe-N4-N sites in 0.1 M KOH. Significantly, the Zn-air batteries equipped with the C@PVI-(NCTPP)Fe-800 catalyst demonstrated an open-circuit voltage (OCV) of 1.45 V and a peak power density (Pmax) of 130 mW/cm2, outperforming the commercial Pt/C catalyst (OCV = 1.42 V; Pmax = 119 mW/cm2). The density functional theory (DFT) calculations revealed that the d-band center of the asymmetric Fe-N3C-N structure shifted upward, which enhances its electron-donating ability, favors O2 adsorption, and supports O-O bond activation, thus leading to significantly promoted catalytic activity. This research presents an intriguing strategy for the designing of the active site architecture in metal SACs with a structure-function controlled approach, significantly enhancing their catalytic efficiency for the ORR and offering promising prospects in energy-conversion technologies.

U(VI) sorption on illite in the Co-existence of carbonates and humic substances.

The presence of carbonates or humic substances (HS) will significantly affect the species and chemical behavior of U(VI) in solution, but lacking systematic exploration of the coupling effect of carbonates and HS under near real environmental conditions at present. Herein, the sorption behavior of U(VI) on illite was systematically studied in the co-existence of carbonates and HS including both humic acid (HA) and fulvic acid (FA) by batch technique. The distribution coefficients (Kd) increased as function of time and temperature but decreased with increasing concentrations of initial U(VI), Ca2+, and Mg2+, as well as ion strength. At pH 2.0-10.5, the Kd values first increased rapidly and then decreased visibly, with its maximum value appearing at pH 5.0, owning to the changes in the interaction between illite and the dominant species of U(VI) from electrostatic attraction to electrostatic repulsion. The sorption was a heterogeneous, spontaneous, and endothermic chemical process, which could be well described by pseudo-second-order kinetic and Flory-Huggins isotherm models. When carbonates and HA/FA coexisted, the Kd values always increased first and then decreased as a function of pH, with the only difference for HA and FA being the key pH (pHkey) at which the promoting and inhibiting effects on the sorption of U(VI) onto illite undergo a transition. The carbonates and HS have a synergistic inhibitory effect on the U(VI) sorption onto illite at pH 7.8. FTIR and XPS spectra demonstrated that the hydroxyl groups on the illite surface and in the HS were involved in U(VI) sorption on illite in the presence of carbonates. These results provide valuable data for a deeper understanding of U(VI) migration in geological media.

Identification of NR3C2 as a functional diagnostic and prognostic biomarker and potential therapeutic target in non-small cell lung cancer.

Background: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including the lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) and lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) subtypes, is a malignant tumor type with a poor 5-year survival rate. The identification of new powerful diagnostic biomarkers, prognostic biomarkers, and potential therapeutic targets in NSCLC is urgently required. Methods: The UCSC Xena, UALCAN, and GEO databases were used to screen and analyze differentially expressed genes, regulatory modes, and genetic/epigenetic alterations in NSCLC. The UCSC Xena database, GEO database, tissue microarray, and immunohistochemistry staining analyses were used to evaluate the diagnostic and prognostic values. Gain-of-function assays were performed to examine the roles. The ESTIMATE, TIMER, Linked Omics, STRING, and DAVID algorithms were used to analyze potential molecular mechanisms. Results: NR3C2 was identified as a potentially important molecule in NSCLC. NR3C2 is expressed at low levels in NSCLC, LUAD, and LUSC tissues, which is significantly related to the clinical indexes of these patients. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis suggests that the altered NR3C2 expression patterns have diagnostic value in NSCLC, LUAD, and especially LUSC patients. Decreased NR3C2 expression levels can help predict poor prognosis in NSCLC and LUAD patients but not in LUSC patients. These results have been confirmed both with database analysis and real-world clinical samples on a tissue microarray. Copy number variation contributes to low NR3C2 expression levels in NSCLC and LUAD, while promoter DNA methylation is involved in its downregulation in LUSC. Two NR3C2 promoter methylation sites have high sensitivity and specificity for LUSC diagnosis with clinical application potential. NR3C2 may be a key participant in NSCLC development and progression and is closely associated with the tumor microenvironment and immune cell infiltration. NR3C2 co-expressed genes are involved in many cancer-related signaling pathways, further supporting a potentially significant role of NR3C2 in NSCLC. Conclusions: NR3C2 is a novel potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in NSCLC.

Single-nucleus transcriptome unveils the role of ferroptosis in ischemic stroke.

Multiple cell death pathways are involved in neuronal death in ischemic stroke (IS). However, the role of different cell death pathways in different cell types has not been elucidated. By analyzing three single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) data of IS, we first found that a variety of programmed cell death (PCD) -related genes were significantly changed in different cell types. Based on machine learning and virtual gene knockout, we found that ferroptosis related genes, ferritin heavy chain 1 (Fth1) and ferritin light chain (Ftl1), play a key role in IS. Ftl1 and Fth1 can promote microglia activation, as well as the production of inflammatory factors and chemokines. Cell communication analysis showed that activated microglia could enhance chemotactic peripheral leukocyte infiltration, such as macrophages and neutrophils, through Spp1-Cd44 and App-Cd74 signaling, thereby aggravating brain tissue damage. Furthermore, real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) showed that P2ry12 and Mef2c were significantly decreased in oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) group, while Ftl1, Fth1, Apoe, Ctsb, Cd44 and Cd74 were significantly increased in OGD group. Collectively, our findings suggested targeted therapy against microglia Ftl1 and Fth1 might improve the state of microglia, reduce the infiltration of peripheral immune cells and tissue inflammation, and then improve the ischemic brain injury in mouse.

Hemi-diaphragm detection of chest X-ray images based on convolutional neural network and graphics.

BACKGROUND: Chest X-rays (CXR) are widely used to facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of critically ill and emergency patients in clinical practice. Accurate hemi-diaphragm detection based on postero-anterior (P-A) CXR images is crucial for the diaphragm function assessment of critically ill and emergency patients to provide precision healthcare for these vulnerable populations. OBJECTIVE: Therefore, an effective and accurate hemi-diaphragm detection method for P-A CXR images is urgently developed to assess these vulnerable populations' diaphragm function. METHODS: Based on the above, this paper proposes an effective hemi-diaphragm detection method for P-A CXR images based on the convolutional neural network (CNN) and graphics. First, we develop a robust and standard CNN model of pathological lungs trained by human P-A CXR images of normal and abnormal cases with multiple lung diseases to extract lung fields from P-A CXR images. Second, we propose a novel localization method of the cardiophrenic angle based on the two-dimensional projection morphology of the left and right lungs by graphics for detecting the hemi-diaphragm. RESULTS: The mean errors of the four key hemi-diaphragm points in the lung field mask images abstracted from static P-A CXR images based on five different segmentation models are 9.05, 7.19, 7.92, 7.27, and 6.73 pixels, respectively. Besides, the results also show that the mean errors of these four key hemi-diaphragm points in the lung field mask images abstracted from dynamic P-A CXR images based on these segmentation models are 5.50, 7.07, 4.43, 4.74, and 6.24 pixels,respectively. CONCLUSION: Our proposed hemi-diaphragm detection method can effectively perform hemi-diaphragm detection and may become an effective tool to assess these vulnerable populations' diaphragm function for precision healthcare.

Characteristics of Umami Taste of Soy Sauce Using Electronic Tongue, Amino Acid Analyzer, and MALDI-TOF MS.

The objective of this study was to investigate the umami characteristics of soy sauce using electronic tongue evaluation and amino acid composition and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) analysis. The soy sauce peptides were isolated from soy sauce using XAD-16 macroporous resin combined with ethanol solution. The results showed that the soy sauce peptide fraction eluted by 60% ethanol (SS-60%) exhibited a prominent umami taste, and the umami scores were highly positively correlated with the amino acid nitrogen contents of soy sauces. The umami scores of SS-60% were significantly positively correlated with the contents of free amino acids. Especially, Phe showed the highest positive correlation with the umami scores. In addition, five characteristic ion peaks with m/z at 499, 561, 643, 649, and 855 were identified in the peptide mass fingerprinting. Therefore, this study provides new insights into the umami characteristics for the taste evaluation and reality identification of soy sauce.

Pharmacological mechanisms of puerarin in the treatment of Parkinson's disease: An overview.

Puerarin, a monomer of traditional Chinese medicine, is a key component of Pueraria radix. Both clinical and experimental researches demonstrated that puerarin has therapeutic effects on Parkinson's disease (PD). Puerarin's pharmacological mechanisms include: 1) Anti-apoptosis. Puerarin inhibits cell apoptosis through the phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (Akt) and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) signaling pathways. Puerarin also exerts a hormone-like effect against cell apoptosis; 2) Anti-oxidative stress injury. Puerarin inhibits the Nrf2 nuclear exclusion through the GSK-3ß/Fyn pathway to promote the Nrf2 accumulation in the nucleus, and then promotes the antioxidant synthesis through the Nrf2/ARE signaling pathway to protect against oxidative stress; 3) Neuroprotective effects by intervening in the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy-lysosomal pathway (ALP). Puerarin significantly enhances the activity of chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), which downregulates the expression of α-synuclein, reduces its accumulation, and thus improves the function of damaged neurons. Additionally, puerarin increases proteasome activity and decreases ubiquitin-binding proteins, thereby preventing toxic accumulation of intracellular proteins; 4) Alleviating inflammatory response. Puerarin inhibits the conversion of microglia to the M1 phenotype while inducing the transition of microglia to the M2 phenotype. Furthermore, puerarin promotes the secretion of anti-inflammatory factor and inhibits the expression of pro-inflammatory factors; 5) Increasing the levels of dopamine and its metabolites. Puerarin could increase the levels of dopamine, homovanillic acid (HVA) and 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) in the striatum; 6) Promoting neurotrophic factor expression and neuronal repair. Puerarin increases the expression of glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and nerve growth factor (NGF), thereby exerting a neuroprotective effect. Moreover, the regulation of the gut microbiota by puerarin may be a potential mechanism for the treatment of PD. The current review discusses the molecular mechanisms of puerarin, which may provide insight into the active components of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of PD.

Disintegration of Cav-1/ß-catenin complex attenuates neuronal death after ischemia-reperfusion injury by promoting ß-catenin nuclear translocation.

BACKGROUND: The roles of Caveolin-1 (Cav-1) and the Wnt/ß-catenin signaling pathways in cerebral ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury are well established. The translocation of ß-catenin into the nucleus is critical for regulating neuronal apoptosis, repair, and neurogenesis within the ischemic brain. It has been reported that the scaffold domain of Caveolin-1 (Cav-1) (residues 95-98) interacts with ß-catenin (residues 330-337). However, the specific contribution of the Cav-1/ß-catenin complex to I/R injury remains unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS: To investigate the mechanism underlying the involvement of the Cav-1/ß-catenin complex in the subcellular translocation of ß-catenin and its subsequent effects on cerebral I/R injury, we treated ischemic brains with ASON (Cav-1 antisense oligodeoxynucleotides) or FTVT (a competitive peptide antagonist of the Cav-1 and ß-catenin interaction). Our study demonstrated that the binding of Cav-1 to ß-catenin following I/R injury prevented the nuclear accumulation of ß-catenin. Treatment with ASON or FTVT after I/R injury significantly increased the levels of nuclear ß-catenin. Furthermore, ASON reduced the phosphorylation of ß-catenin at Ser33, Ser37, and Thr41, which contributes to its proteasomal degradation, while FTVT increased phosphorylation at Tyr333, which is associated with its nuclear translocation. CONCLUSIONS: The above results indicate that the formation of the Cav-1/ß-catenin complex anchors ß-catenin in the cytoplasm following I/R injury. Additionally, both ASON and FTVT treatments attenuated neuronal death in ischemic brains. Our study suggests that targeting the interaction between Cav-1 and ß-catenin serve as a novel therapeutic strategy to protect against neuronal damage during cerebral injury.

Wetting State Transition of Laser Direct Writing Aluminum Surface Based on Coupling Effect of Micro/Nanoscale Characteristics.

Micro/nanostructured metal surfaces fabricated by laser direct writing (LDW) have been widely used in wettability-related fields. Previous studies focused on the effects of surface structural patterns or chemical composition on wettability, while the coupling mechanism and respective contributions of the two are not distinct. This paper reveals the coupling effect of micro/nanoscale characteristics on the wettability of LDW aluminum surfaces and elucidates the transition mechanism between wetting states on the surfaces with linear laser energy density. Through the contact angle experiments, a wetting state transition of the LDW surface is found from a more hydrophilic than pristine rose petal effect to lotus effect. Based on the bionic analysis method of the superhydrophobicity factors of lotus leaves, the contributions to the wettability of LDW surfaces are divided into the micro/nanoscale characteristics. The theoretical model for identifying the wetting state of a rough surface is proposed. Based on this model, the average Young's contact angle, θ̅Y, is calculated, which indicates the contribution of the nanoscale characteristics. During the transition process from rose petal effect to lotus effect, θ̅Y > 90° is a necessary condition for detachment from the rose petal effect, which is contributed by the high specific surface organic adsorption at the nanoscale. What is more, the wetting state determined by the microscale characteristics further enhances its hydrophobicity, leading to the lotus effect. Based on the wetting state identification model and the Cassie-Baxter equation, the change of micro/nanoscale characteristics on aluminum surfaces after LDW treatment is presented, and the influence of micro/nanoscale characteristics on the wetting state is decoupled and quantified. This research helps to coordinate the effects of surface structure and chemical composition on wettability in the design of specific wettability functional surfaces and can also be applied to other high heat density surface processing fields.

Inhibitory effect and mechanism of oregano essential oil on Listeria monocytogenes cells, toxins and biofilms.

Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) is a prevalent foodborne pathogen with a remarkable capacity to form biofilms on utensil surfaces. The Listeriolysin O (LLO) exhibits hemolytic activity, which is responsible for causing human infections. In this study, we investigated the inhibitory effect and mechanism of oregano essential oil (OEO) on L. monocytogenes, evaluated the effects on its biofilm removal and hemolytic activity. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of OEO against L. monocytogenes was 0.03 % (v/v). L. monocytogenes was treated with OEO at 3/2 MIC for 30 min the bacteria was decreased below the detection limit (10 CFU/mL) in PBS and TSB (the initial bacterial load was about 6.5 log CFU/mL). The level of L. monocytogenes in minced pork co-cultured with OEO (15 MIC) about 2.5 log CFU/g lower than that in the untreated group. The inhibitory mechanisms of OEO against planktonic L. monocytogenes encompassed perturbation of cellular morphology, elevation in reactive oxygen species levels, augmentation of lipid oxidation extent, hyperpolarization of membrane potential, and reduction in intracellular ATP concentration. In addition, OEO reduced biofilm coverage on the surface of glass slides by 62.03 % compared with the untreated group. Meanwhile, OEO (1/8 MIC) treatment reduced the hemolytic activity of L. monocytogenes to 24.6 % compared with the positive control. Molecular docking suggested carvacrol and thymol might reduce the hemolytic activity of L. monocytogenes. The results of this study demonstrate that OEO exhibits inhibitory effects against L. monocytogenes, biofilms and LLO, which had potential as natural antimicrobial for the inhibition of L. monocytogenes.

Sesquiterpene lactones from Tithonia diversifolia with ferroptosis-inducing activities.

Eight previously undescribed sesquiterpene lactones (1-8), together with six known ones (9-14) were isolated from the aerial parts of Tithonia diversifolia (Hemsl.) A. Gray. The absolute configurations of these compounds were elucidated using HRMS, NMR spectroscopy, optical rotation measurements, X-ray crystallography, and ECD. Among them, sesquiterpene lactones 2-4 share a unique carbon skeleton with a rare C-3/C-4 ring-opened structure. Compounds 1 and 8 showed moderate inhibitory effects toward CT26 murine colon carcinoma cells by promoting lipid ROS production, highlighting their potential as ferroptosis inducers.

Identification of Wheat Glutamate Synthetase Gene Family and Expression Analysis under Nitrogen Stress.

Nitrogen (N), as the main component of biological macromolecules, maintains the basic process of plant growth and development. GOGAT, as a key enzyme in the N assimilation process, catalyzes α-ketoglutaric acid and glutamine to form glutamate. In this study, six GOGAT genes in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) were identified and classified into two subfamilies, Fd-GOGAT (TaGOGAT2s) and NADH-GOGAT (TaGOGAT3s), according to the type of electron donor. Subcellular localization prediction showed that TaGOGAT3-D was localized in mitochondria and that the other five TaGOGATs were localized in chloroplasts. Via the analysis of promoter elements, many binding sites related to growth and development, hormone regulation and plant stress resistance regulations were found on the TaGOGAT promoters. The tissue-specificity expression analysis showed that TaGOGAT2s were mainly expressed in wheat leaves and flag leaves, while TaGOGAT3s were highly expressed in roots and leaves. The expression level of TaGOGATs and the enzyme activity of TaGOGAT3s in the leaves and roots of wheat seedlings were influenced by the treatment of N deficiency. This study conducted a systematic analysis of wheat GOGAT genes, providing a theoretical basis not only for the functional analysis of TaGOGATs, but also for the study of wheat nitrogen use efficiency (NUE).