Co-occurrence network of microbial communities affected by application of anaerobic fermentation residues during phytoremediation of ionic rare earth tailings area.

The long-term exploitation of ionic rare earth elements (REEs) in southern China has produced a large-scale of abandoned tailings area. While the application of anaerobic fermentation residues to cultivate economically valuable remediation plants (e.g. energy plant) has become a hotspot due to their merits in low-cost and sustainability in recent years, the succession and co-occurrence patterns of these microbial communities remain unclear. In this study, soil samples were collected from the sustainable restoration area, natural restoration area and tailings area. The composition and diversity of bacterial and fungal communities on five soil samples were evaluated using high-throughput sequencing technology. The results shown that the phytoremediation with anaerobic fermentation residues could significantly improve the physicochemical properties (especially for soil nutrients) and microbial diversity of soil within 3 years, while these parameters in natural restoration area were lower. The nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordinations revealed the shifts of microbial communities depending on soil physicochemical properties and plant species, and soil nutrients were the main factors affecting the microbial variation explained by the variation partition analysis (VPA). The soil nutrient accumulation obviously changed the proportion of oligotrophic and copiotrophic groups, among which the copiotrophic groups were significantly increased, such as Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Gemmatimonadetes and Glomeromycota. The microbial co-occurrence network analysis indicated that application of anaerobic fermentation residues could significantly improve the topological properties and the stability of microbial network. The copiotrophic groups (e.g. Proteobacteria, Ascomycota) became the key to assemble stable network structure. Moreover, herbaceous plants could increase the proportion of fungi (e.g. Ascomycota) in microbial network, which improved the topological properties with bacteria synergistically. Therefore, the soil environment of REEs tailings area was effectively optimized by anaerobic fermentation residues and herbaceous plants, which furthered understanding of co-occurrence pattern and mutualistic relationships of microbial communities during sustainable restoration.

IL-6 accelerates renal fibrosis after acute kidney injury via DNMT1-dependent FOXO3a methylation and activation of Wnt/ß-catenin pathway.

Maladaptive repair following acute kidney injury (AKI) can trigger inflammation and fibrosis, while progressive renal interstitial fibrosis is critical for the transition of AKI to chronic kidney disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of pro-inflammatory IL-6 on the renal fibrosis after AKI as well as the underlying mechanism. Bioinformatics analysis was performed to identify potential genes related to renal fibrosis. An in vitro model of AKI was established by hypoxia-reoxygenation (H/R) in mouse renal tubular epithelial cells (mRTECs). Gain- and loss-of-function approaches were employed to identify the effects of IL-6/FOXO3a on the renal fibrosis following AKI. The methylation level of FOXO3a promoter was assessed by methylation specific PCR. An AKI mouse model was established by ischemia-reperfusion. Adenovirus-packaged shRNA targeting IL-6 or FOXO3a was utilized for further exploration of their roles in vivo. IL-6 was highly expressed in H/R-exposed mRTECs and kidney tissues of AKI mice rendered with renal fibrosis. Knockdown of IL-6 slowed the renal fibrosis after AKI. IL-6 induced DNMT1 to promote FOXO3a promoter methylation and thus inhibited FOXO3a expression. This inhibition led to promotion of renal fibrosis through activating the Wnt/ß-catenin pathway. Further in vivo results verified that loss of IL-6 disrupted the Wnt/ß-catenin pathway through reversing DNMT1-mediated inhibition of FOXO3a and consequently attenuated renal fibrosis. All in all, these results suggest that targeting IL-6 contributes to protection against renal fibrosis after AKI through mediating the DNMT1/FOXO3a/Wnt/ß-catenin axis, which may serve as promising target for the treatment of AKI and prevention against chronic kidney disease.

Circ_0067835 Knockdown Enhances the Radiosensitivity of Colorectal Cancer by miR-296-5p/IGF1R Axis.

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common malignant cancers globally. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been implicated in the development of CRC. In this paper, we set to explore the precise action of circ_0067835 in CRC progression and radioresistance. METHODS: Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to evaluate the expression of circ_0067835, microRNA-296-5p (miR-296-5p) and insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R). Western blot was used to measure the level of IGF1R protein. Cell proliferation, cell cycle distribution and apoptosis were determined by Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8), colony formation, flow cytometry and caspase-3 activity assays, respectively. The direct relationship between miR-296-5p and circ_0067835 or IGF1R was verified by dual-luciferase reporter assays. Additionally, in vivo assays were applied to confirm the role of circ_0067835 in vivo. RESULTS: Exosomal circ_0067835 was upregulated in the serum of CRC patients after radiotherapy. Exosome-mediated circ_0067835 knockdown repressed cell proliferation, cell cycle progression, and enhanced cell apoptosis and radiosensitivity in vitro. Circ_0067835 sponged miR-296-5p to regulate IGF1R expression in CRC cells. Moreover, the knockdown of circ_0067835 regulated CRC cell behaviors by up-regulating miR-296-5p and down-regulating IGF1R in vitro. Furthermore, circ_0067835 knockdown diminished tumor growth and promoted cell radiosensitivity in vivo. CONCLUSION: Circ_0067835 knockdown suppressed CRC progression and enhanced CRC cell radiosensitivity partially by the miR-296-5p/IGF1R axis. The findings established a rationale that targeting circ_0067835 might be a promising point for improving CRC treatment.

Revealing Facts and Avoiding Biases: A Review of Several Common Problems in Statistical Analyses of Epidemiological Data.

This paper reviews several common challenges encountered in statistical analyses of epidemiological data for epidemiologists. We focus on the application of linear regression, multivariate logistic regression, and log-linear modeling to epidemiological data. Specific topics include: (a) deletion of outliers, (b) heteroscedasticity in linear regression, (c) limitations of principal component analysis in dimension reduction, (d) hazard ratio vs. odds ratio in a rate comparison analysis, (e) log-linear models with multiple response data, and (f) ordinal logistic vs. multinomial logistic models. As a general rule, a thorough examination of a model's assumptions against both current data and prior research should precede its use in estimating effects.

Parental divorce, sibship size, family resources, and children's academic performance.

Using data from 19,839 adolescents from the National Education Longitudinal Study, this study investigates whether the effects of parental divorce on adolescents' academic test performance vary by sibship size. Analyses show that the negative effect of divorce on adolescent performance attenuates as sibship size increases. On the other side of the interaction, the inverse relationship between sibship size and test performance is weaker in disrupted than in two-biological-parent families. Trends of such interactions are evident when sibship size is examined either as a continuous or a categorical measure. Finally, the observed interactions on adolescents' academic performance are completely explained by variations in parental financial, human, cultural, and social resources. In sum, this study underlines the importance of treating the effect of parental divorce as a variable and calls for more research to identify child and family features that may change the magnitude of such an effect.

Parents' marital disruption and its uneven effect on children's academic performance--a simulation model.

Although a substantial amount of social science research has examined the consequences of various life events, much less has been done to examine how the effect may be unevenly distributed. The present research takes children's experiences of parents' marital disruption as an example and demonstrates how a contaminated-distribution model may simulate a scenario in which the effect of parents' marital disruption on children's academic performance is unevenly distributed. Using test performance data from a nationally representative sample of 10,045 American adolescents, the study partitions the overall performance distribution among adolescents of divorce into an unaffected and a severe-effect distribution. The analyses report the estimated proportions of adolescents whose academic performance is severely affected by various levels. The findings also show that the proportions of adolescents whose school performance is affected by a fixed level remain relatively stable in three consecutive post-divorce waves.