The crosstalk between cell death and pregnancy related diseases: A narrative review.

Programmed cell death is intricately linked to various physiological phenomena such as growth, development, and metabolism, as well as the proper function of the pancreatic ß cell and the migration and invasion of trophoblast cells in the placenta during pregnancy. Traditional and recently identified programmed cell death include apoptosis, autophagy, pyroptosis, necroptosis, and ferroptosis. In addition to cancer and degenerative diseases, abnormal activation of cell death has also been implicated in pregnancy related diseases like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes mellitus, intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy, fetal growth restriction, and recurrent miscarriage. Excessive or insufficient cell death and pregnancy related diseases may be mutually determined, ultimately resulting in adverse pregnancy outcomes. In this review, we systematically describe the characteristics and mechanisms underlying several types of cell death and their roles in pregnancy related diseases. Moreover, we discuss potential therapeutic strategies that target cell death signaling pathways for pregnancy related diseases, hoping that more meaningful treatments will be applied in clinical practice in the future.

Microbiome and lung cancer: carcinogenic mechanisms, early cancer diagnosis, and promising microbial therapies.

Microbiomes in the lung, gut, and oral cavity are correlated with lung cancer initiation and progression. While correlations have been preliminarily established in earlier studies, delving into microbe-mediated carcinogenic mechanisms will extend our understanding from correlation to causation. Building upon the causative relationships between microbiome and lung cancer, a novel concept of microbial biomarkers has emerged, mainly encompassing cancer-specific bacteria and circulating microbiome DNA. They might function as noninvasive liquid biopsy techniques for lung cancer early detection. Furthermore, potential microbial therapies have displayed initial efficacy in lung cancer treatment, providing multiple avenues for therapeutic intervention. Herein, we will discuss the molecular mechanisms and signaling pathways through which microbes influence lung cancer initiation and development. Additionally, we will summarize recent findings on microbial biomarkers as a member of tumor liquid biopsy techniques and provide an overview of the latest advances in various microbe-assisted/mediated therapeutic approaches for lung cancer.

How does the temporal relationship between ecosystem services and human wellbeing change in space and time? Evidence from Inner Mongolian drylands.

Studies of the ecosystem services (ES) and human wellbeing (HWB) relationship have proliferated in recent decades, but few have examined how ES affect HWB over time in a region (i.e., the temporal ES-HWB relationship) and how this relationship varies between regions. Thus, this study was intended to address these questions using data from Inner Mongolia. We first quantified multiple indicators of ES and objective HWB from 1978 to 2019, and then quantified their temporal relationship with correlation analysis over the entire duration and during four development periods, respectively. Our results showed that, depending on the time periods of analysis, geographic locations, and indicators, the temporal ES-HWB relationship varied substantially in both correlation strength and directionality (r values ranged from -0.93 to +1). Specifically, food-related provisioning services and cultural services often showed significant positive relationships with income, consumption, and basic living needs (r values ranged from +0.43 to +1), but erratic relationships with equity, employment, and social relationships (r values ranged from -0.93 to +0.96). Also, the positive correlations between food-related provisioning services and HWB were generally weaker in the urbanized regions. Cultural services and HWB were more strongly correlated in later development periods, whereas the relationship between regulating services and HWB was quite variable in space and time. The variations in the relationship over different development periods may be attributable to changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions, while the variations between regions were likely due to spatial heterogeneity of influencing factors. Our findings have an important policy implication for Inner Mongolia and beyond: sustainable management based on the ES and HWB relationship must be temporally adaptive and spatially tailored.

A legendary landscape in peril: Land use and land cover change and environmental impacts in the Wulagai River Basin, Inner Mongolia.

The Mongolian Plateau, home to the world's largest contiguous temperate grasslands, has been known for its vast steppe landscapes and legendary history of the Mongol Empire. However, like temperate grasslands elsewhere around the world, the Mongolian steppe landscapes have been severely degraded by increasing human activities during the past several decades. The main objective of this study was to assess the landscape and ecosystem changes in the Wulagai River Basin (WRB) in Inner Mongolia, where China's last intact steppe ecosystem reportedly resides. Using remote sensing data and landscape metrics, we found that, during 1979-2016, WRB lost about 55 % of wetlands, 76 % of shrublands, and 46 % of sandy-land vegetation, with its most dominant vegetation type shifting from meadow steppe to dry steppe for the first time in history. Human land uses continued to intensify: cropland expanded by about 40 %; impervious surface area increased by almost 34 times; and surface coal mining rampaged through the heartland, tearing up vegetation and sucking up water near and far. The WRB landscape became more diverse compositionally (increasing land cover types), more fragmented ecologically (habitat loss and isolation), and more complex geometrically (anthropogenic and natural landscape elements entangled). Damming, mining, and overgrazing were the major direct drivers for the observed environmental changes. Government-sponsored restoration programs have had positive ecological changes across China, but landscape destruction and fragmentation in the Wulagai River Basin have continued. This dire situation demands urgent government policy intervention and stakeholder-involved governance actions to promote the sustainability of this legendary landscape.

Spatiotemporal patterns and ecological consequences of a fragmented landscape created by damming.

BACKGROUND: Damming disrupts rivers and destroys neighboring terrestrial ecosystems through inundation, resulting in profound and long-lasting impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem processes far beyond the river system itself. Archipelagos formed by damming are often considered ideal systems for studying habitat fragmentation. METHODS: Here we quantified the island attributes and landscape dynamics of the Thousand Island Lake (TIL) in China, which is one of the several long-term biodiversity/fragmentation research sites around the world. We also synthesized the major findings of relevant studies conducted in the region to further ecological understanding of damming and landscape fragmentation. RESULTS: Our results show that the vegetations on islands and the neighboring mainland were both recovering between 1985 and 2005 due to reforestation and natural succession, but the regeneration was partly interrupted after 2005 because of increasing human influences. While major changes in landscape composition occurred primarily in the lakefront areas and near-lakeshore islands, landscape patterns became structurally more complex and fragmented on both islands and mainland. About 80 studies from the TIL region show that the genetic, taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity on these islands were mainly influenced by island area at the patch scale, but fragmentation per se also affected species composition and related ecological processes at patch and landscape scales. In general, islands had lower species diversity but a steeper species-area relationship than the surrounding mainland. Fragmentation and edge effects substantially hindered ecological succession towards more densely vegetated forests on the islands. Environmental heterogeneity and filtering had a major impact on island biotic communities. We hypothesize that there are multiple mechanisms operating at different spatial scales that link landscape fragmentation and ecological dynamics in the TIL region, which beg for future studies. By focusing on an extensive spatiotemporal analysis of the island-mainland system and a synthesis of existing studies in the region, this study provides an important foundation and several promising directions for future studies.

Protection of wetlands as a strategy for reducing the spread of avian influenza from migratory waterfowl.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 has led to the death or destruction of millions of domesticated and wild birds and caused hundreds of human deaths worldwide. As with other HPAIs, H5N1 outbreaks among poultry have generally been caused by contact with infected migratory waterfowl at the interface of wildlands and human-dominated landscapes. Using a case-control epidemiological approach, we analyzed the relation between habitat protection and H5N1 outbreaks in China from 2004 to 2017. We found that while proximity to unprotected waterfowl habitats and rice paddy generally increased outbreak risk, proximity to the most highly protected habitats (e.g., Ramsar-designated lakes and wetlands) had the opposite effect. Protection likely involves two mechanisms: the separation of wild waterfowl and poultry populations and the diversion of wild waterfowl from human-dominated landscapes toward protected natural habitats. Wetland protection could therefore be an effective means to control avian influenza while also contributing to avian conservation.