Mutual Voting for Ranking 3D Correspondences.

Consistent correspondences between point clouds are vital to 3D vision tasks such as registration and recognition. In this paper, we present a mutual voting method for ranking 3D correspondences. The key insight is to achieve reliable scoring results for correspondences by refining both voters and candidates in a mutual voting scheme. First, a graph is constructed for the initial correspondence set with the pairwise compatibility constraint. Second, nodal clustering coefficients are introduced to preliminarily remove a portion of outliers and speed up the following voting process. Third, we model nodes and edges in the graph as candidates and voters, respectively. Mutual voting is then performed in the graph to score correspondences. Finally, the correspondences are ranked based on the voting scores and top-ranked ones are identified as inliers. Feature matching, 3D point cloud registration, and 3D object recognition experiments on various datasets with different nuisances and modalities verify that MV is robust to heavy outliers under different challenging settings, and can significantly boost 3D point cloud registration and 3D object recognition performance. Code will be available at: https://github.com/NWPU-YJQ-3DV/2022_Mutual_Voting.

Microbial succession and its correlation with the dynamics of volatile compounds involved in fermented minced peppers.

Fermented minced peppers are a traditional fermented food that has a unique flavor due to various microbial communities involved in fermentation. Understanding the changes in microbial communities and volatile components of fermented minced peppers is particularly important to unveil the formation of unique flavor of fermented peppers. In this study, the microbial communities and volatile compounds in fermented minced pepper was analyzed by high-throughput sequencing and GC-MS, as well as their underlying correlations were also established. Results indicated that 17 genera were identified as dominant microorganisms in the fermentation of minced pepper, accompanied by the detection of 64 volatile compounds. Further hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) displayed that dynamic change of volatile metabolites were involved in the fermentation process, where alkane volatile components were mainly generated in the early stage (3-5 days), and alcohols volatile components were in the middle stage (7-17 days), while ester volatile components were mainly produced in both the early stage (3-5 days) and last stage (17-20 days). Bidirectional orthogonal partial least squares (O2PLS) analysis revealed that 11 genera were core functional microorganisms of fermented minced pepper. Cladosporium and Hansenpora were significantly correlated with the formation of 9 and 6 volatiles, respectively. These findings provide new insights into aroma profile variation of fermented minced peppers and underlying mechanism of characteristic aroma formation during fermentation.

A novel bacteriocin isolated from Lactobacillus plantarum W3-2 and its biological characteristics.

In this study, screening bacteriocin-producing strains from 2,000 plant-derived strains by agar well diffusion method was conducted. The corresponding produced bacteriocin was purified and identified by Sephadex gel chromatography, reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), and liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Meanwhile, the biological characteristics of bacteriocin were investigated. The targeted strain W3-2 was obtained and identified as Lactobacillus plantarum by morphological observation and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. Correspondingly, a novel bacteriocin (named plantaricin W3-2) produced by L. plantarum W3-2 with a molecular weight of 618.26 Da, and an amino acid sequence of AVEEE was separated, purified by Sephadex gel chromatography and RP-HPLC, and identified by LC-MS/MS. Further characteristics analysis displayed that plantaricin W3-2 had good thermal, pH stability, and broad-spectrum antimicrobial ability. In conclusion, plantaricin W3-2 can be used as a new food preservative.

Identifying Common Genes, Cell Types and Brain Regions Between Diseases of the Nervous System.

Background: Diseases of the nervous system are widely considered to be caused by genetic mutations, and they have been shown to share pathogenic genes. Discovering the shared mechanisms of these diseases is useful for designing common treatments. Method: In this study, by reviewing 518 articles published after 2007 on 20 diseases of the nervous system, we compiled data on 1607 mutations occurring in 365 genes, totals that are 1.9 and 3.2 times larger than those collected in the Clinvar database, respectively. A combination with the Clinvar data gives 2434 pathogenic mutations and 424 genes. Using this information, we measured the genetic similarities between the diseases according to the number of genes causing two diseases simultaneously. Further detection was carried out on the similarity between diseases in terms of cell types. Disease-related cell types were defined as those with disease-related gene enrichment among the marker genes of cells, as ascertained by analyzing single-cell sequencing data. Enrichment profiles of the disease-related genes over 25 cell types were constructed. The disease similarity in terms of cell types was obtained by calculating the distances between the enrichment profiles of these genes. The same strategy was applied to measure the disease similarity in terms of brain regions by analyzing the gene expression data from 10 brain regions. Results: The disease similarity was first measured in terms of genes. The result indicated that the proportions of overlapped genes between diseases were significantly correlated to the DMN scores (phenotypic similarity), with a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.40 and P-value = 6.0×10-3. The disease similarity analysis for cell types identified that the distances between enrichment profiles of the disease-related genes were negatively correlated to the DMN scores, with Spearman correlation coefficient = -0.26 (P-value = 1.5 × 10-2). However, the brain region enrichment profile distances of the disease-related genes were not significantly correlated with the DMN score. Besides the similarity of diseases, this study identified novel relationships between diseases and cell types. Conclusion: We manually constructed the most comprehensive dataset to date for genes with mutations related to 20 nervous system diseases. By using this dataset, the similarities between diseases in terms of genes and cell types were found to be significantly correlated to their phenotypic similarity. However, the disease similarities in terms of brain regions were not significantly correlated with the phenotypic similarities. Thus, the phenotypic similarity between the diseases is more likely to be caused by dysfunctions of the same genes or the same types of neurons rather than the same brain regions. The data are collected into the database NeurodisM, which is available at http://biomed-ai.org/neurodism.

Earthworm protease in anti-thrombosis and anti-fibrosis.

BACKGROUND: Earthworms are widely used in basic and applied research in medicine, food, environment and agriculture, in which for instance earthworm protease has its own biochemical features. SCOPE OF REVIEW: This review summarizes earthworm protease biochemical features in anti-thrombosis and anti-fibrosis, and provides new perspectives for earthworm to be used in biochemical and pharmaceutical studies. MAJOR CONCLUSIONS: Earthworm protease functions in anti-thrombosis by its fibrinolytic activity and inhibiting platelets aggregation, and anti-fibrosis by its decreasing fibronectin, collagen and laminin, showing a broad substrate specificity. The protease regulators (U3EE) from earthworm also has multiple functions acting as an activator and an inhibitor on different target proteins. Nonetheless, the protease improves the substrate selectivity through substrate-induced changes in the protease active site conformation impact on subsequent reactions with substrates. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE: It is predictable that both biochemical and applied studies of earthworm proteins including protease will be wider and deeper in the future.

Ophthalmic artery visualization and morphometry by computed tomography angiography.

We assessed the feasibility of using computed tomography angiography (CTA) to visualize the opthalmic artery (OA) and conducted three-dimensional (3D) morphometry. A retrospective analysis of 171 patients was performed using CTA-confirmed normal internal carotid arteries. To identify the OA, multiplanar CT reformations were performed. The OA diameter was compared in patients of different age groups and between males and females. All ophthalmic arteries were detected by 3D volume-rendering (VR) CTA. Bone subtraction was successful in all patients. The mean OA diameter was 1.37 ±0.25 mm in men, 1.35 ±0.16 mm in women (P = 0.188 for gender), 1.38 ±0.25 mm in the <40 years-old group, 1.37 ±0.14 mm in the 40-49 years-old group, 1.36 ±0.16 mm in the 50-59 years-old group, 1.38 ±0.19 mm in the 60-69 years-old group, and 1.34 ±0.17 mm in the > 70 years-old group (P = 0.662 for age group). CTA is a reliable method for visualizing the ophthalmic artery (OA). There are no major differences in OA diameter among gender or age.

Bilateral Common Carotid Artery Occlusion in the Rat as a Model of Retinal Ischaemia.

Ocular ischaemic syndrome is a devastating eye disease caused by severe carotid artery stenosis. The purpose of the study was to develop a reliable rat model for this syndrome by means of common carotid artery occlusion and a controllable needle suture method. Adult Wistar rats were subjected to common carotid artery occlusion and sham surgery. The common carotid artery was ligated unilaterally or bilaterally with needles of different diameters, and ocular arterial filling time was examined by fluorescein fundus angiography at different time points. Haematoxylin-eosin staining of vessels and degree of stenosis were considered outcome measures. The ocular blood flow was monitored and measured by laser doppler flowmetry. Needles with a diameter of 0.4 mm were more effective in developing severe stenosis of the common carotid arteries compared with needles of other diameters. Bilateral common carotid artery occlusion was a more effective model than unilateral occlusion. The arterial filling time was significantly increased at 14 and 21 days after ligation (5.75 ± 0.45 and 6.27 ± 0.95 s, respectively) compared with arterial filling time before surgery (5.22 ± 0.64 s). The total blood flow in the sham surgery group was significantly higher than in the bilateral common carotid artery occlusion group. The fundus blood flow was statistically different between the two groups, whereas that of the anterior segment was not. In conclusion, the authors have established a rat model of ocular ischaemic syndrome via a controllable needle suture method, which was reliable up to 2-3 weeks after surgery.