Ruptured giant omphalocele with congenital short small intestine: a case report.

We herein present a case of a ruptured giant omphalocele with congenital short small intestine. Vacuum-sealing drainage and carboxymethylcellulose silver dressing promoted wound healing after repair, avoided abdominal compartment syndrome, and reduced the risks of multiple procedures. We review the perioperative management of omphaloceles in congenital short small intestines.

Peer or tutor? The congruity effects of service robot role and service type on usage intention.

The invention of service robots has reduced the labor cost and improved enterprises' efficiency and service quality. However, it is still difficult to enhance consumers' intention to use robot-by-robot design efficiently. Based on social roles of anthropomorphic cues, service robots can be divided into peer (e.g., kind and amiable friends) or tutor (e.g., authoritative and professional experts) robots. From a matching perspective, this paper investigates (1) whether robot role and service type have an impact on consumers' intention to employ service robots in different ways, and (2) how cognitive trust and affective trust can play a mediating role during this process. In this paper, the authors conducted an online a scenario-based experiment and collected a valid sample of 332 consumers. The results show that the participants are more willing to apply the tutor robot in the scenario of utilitarian service, and the peer robot in the scenario of hedonic service. In addition, cognitive trust and affective trust have a matching mediation effect. Specifically, for the utilitarian service, cognitive trust mediates the effect of robot role on consumers' intention to adopt the robots, while the mediating effect of affective trust is not significant. As for the hedonic service, affective trust mediated the effect of robot role on the intention to use, whereas the mediating effect of cognitive trust is not significant.

The Influence of Electrolytes on the Performance of Self-Powered Photoelectrochemical Photodetector Based on α-Ga2O3 Nanorods.

Photodetectors have a wide range of applications across various fields. Self-powered photodetectors that do not require external energy have garnered significant attention. The photoelectrochemical type of photodetector is a self-powered device that is both simple to fabricate and offers high performance. However, developing photoelectrochemical photodetectors with superior quality and performance remains a significant challenge. The electrolyte, which is a key component in these detectors, must maintain extensive contact with the semiconductor without degrading its material quality and efficiently catalyze the redox reactions of photogenerated electrons and holes, while also facilitating rapid charge carrier transport. In this study, α-Ga2O3 nanorod arrays were synthesized via a cost-effective hydrothermal method to achieve a self-powered solar-blind photodetector. The impacts of different electrolytes-Na2SO4, NaOH, and Na2CO3-on the photodetector was investigated. Ultimately, a self-powered photodetector with Na2SO4 as the electrolyte demonstrated a stable photoresponse, with the maximum responsivity of 0.2 mA/W at 262 nm with the light intensity of 3.0 mW/cm2, and it exhibited rise and decay times of 0.16 s and 0.10 s, respectively. The α-Ga2O3 nanorod arrays and Na2SO4 electrolyte provided a rapid pathway for the transport of photogenerated carriers and the built-in electric field at the semiconductor-liquid heterojunction interface, which was largely responsible for the effective separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs that provided the outstanding performance of our photodetector.

Mechanistic insights into phosphoactivation of SLAC1 in guard cell signaling.

Stomata in leaves regulate gas (carbon dioxide and water vapor) exchange and water transpiration between plants and the atmosphere. SLow Anion Channel 1 (SLAC1) mediates anion efflux from guard cells and plays a crucial role in controlling stomatal aperture. It serves as a central hub for multiple signaling pathways in response to environmental stimuli, with its activity regulated through phosphorylation via various plant protein kinases. However, the molecular mechanism underlying SLAC1 phosphoactivation has remained elusive. Through a combination of protein sequence analyses, AlphaFold-based modeling and electrophysiological studies, we unveiled that the highly conserved motifs on the N- and C-terminal segments of SLAC1 form a cytosolic regulatory domain (CRD) that interacts with the transmembrane domain(TMD), thereby maintaining the channel in an autoinhibited state. Mutations in these conserved motifs destabilize the CRD, releasing autoinhibition in SLAC1 and enabling its transition into an activated state. Our further studies demonstrated that SLAC1 activation undergoes an autoinhibition-release process and subsequent structural changes in the pore helices. These findings provide mechanistic insights into the activation mechanism of SLAC1 and shed light on understanding how SLAC1 controls stomatal closure in response to environmental stimuli.

Versatile Design of NO-Generating Proteolipid Nanovesicles for Alleviating Vascular Injury.

Vascular injury is central to the pathogenesis and progression of cardiovascular diseases, however, fostering alternative strategies to alleviate vascular injury remains a persisting challenge. Given the central role of cell-derived nitric oxide (NO) in modulating the endogenous repair of vascular injury, NO-generating proteolipid nanovesicles (PLV-NO) are designed that recapitulate the cell-mimicking functions for vascular repair and replacement. Specifically, the proteolipid nanovesicles (PLV) are versatilely fabricated using membrane proteins derived from different types of cells, followed by the incorporation of NO-generating nanozymes capable of catalyzing endogenous donors to produce NO. Taking two vascular injury models, two types of PLV-NO are tailored to meet the individual requirements of targeted diseases using platelet membrane proteins and endothelial membrane proteins, respectively. The platelet-based PLV-NO (pPLV-NO) demonstrates its efficacy in targeted repair of a vascular endothelium injury model through systemic delivery. On the other hand, the endothelial cell (EC)-based PLV-NO (ePLV-NO) exhibits suppression of thrombosis when modified onto a locally transplanted small-diameter vascular graft (SDVG). The versatile design of PLV-NO may enable a promising therapeutic option for various vascular injury-evoked cardiovascular diseases.

Greatly isolated heterogeneous circulating tumor cells using hybrid engineered cell membrane-camouflaged magnetic nanoparticles.

BACKGROUND: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are considered as a useful biomarker for early cancer diagnosis, which play a crucial role in metastatic process. Unfortunately, the tumor heterogeneity and extremely rare occurrence rate of CTCs among billions of interfering leukocytes seriously hamper the sensitivity and purity of CTCs isolation. METHODS: To address these, we firstly used microfluidic chips to detect the broad-spectrum of triple target combination biomarkers in CTCs of 10 types of cancer patients, including EpCAM, EGFR and Her2. Then, we constructed hybrid engineered cell membrane-camouflaged magnetic nanoparticles (HE-CM-MNs) for efficient capture of heterogeneous CTCs with high-purity, which was enabled by inheriting the recognition ability of HE-CM for various CTCs and reducing homologous cell interaction with leukocytes. Compared with single E-CM-MNs, HE-CM-MNs showed a significant improvement in the capture efficiency for a cell mixture, with an efficiency of 90%. And the capture efficiency of HE-CM-MNs toward 12 subpopulations of tumor cells was ranged from 70 to 85%. Furthermore, by using HE-CM-MNs, we successfully isolated heterogeneous CTCs with high purity from clinical blood samples. Finally, the captured CTCs by HE-CM-MNs could be used for gene mutation analysis. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated the promising potential of HE-CM-MNs for heterogeneous CTCs detection and downstream analysis.

Aspartyl proteases identified as candidate genes of a fiber length QTL, qFLD05, that regulates fiber length in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.).

KEY MESSAGE: GhAP genes were identified as the candidates involved in cotton fiber length under the scope of fine mapping a stable fiber length QTL, qFLD05. Moreover, the transcription factor GhWRKY40 positively regulated GhAP3 to decrease fiber length. Fiber length (FL) is an economically important fiber quality trait. Although several genes controlling cotton fiber development have been identified, our understanding of this process remains limited. In this study, an FL QTL (qFLD05) was fine-mapped to a 216.9-kb interval using a secondary F2:3 population derived from the upland hybrid cultivar Ji1518. This mapped genomic segment included 15 coding genes, four of which were annotated as aspartyl proteases (GhAP1-GhAP4). GhAPs were identified as candidates for qFLD05 as the sequence variations in GhAPs were associated with FL deviations in the mapping population, and functional validation of GhAP3 and GhAP4 indicated a longer FL following decreases in their expression levels through virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS). Subsequently, the potential involvement of GhWRKY40 in the regulatory network was revealed: GhWRKY40 positively regulated GhAP3's expression according to transcriptional profiling, VIGS, yeast one-hybrid assays and dual-luciferase experiments. Furthermore, alterations in the expression of the eight previously reported cotton FL-responsive genes from the above three VIGS lines (GhAP3, GhAP4 and GhWRKY40) implied that MYB5_A12 was involved in the GhWRKY40-GhAP network. In short, we unveiled the unprecedented FL regulation roles of GhAPs in cotton, which was possibly further regulated by GhWRKY40. These findings will reveal the genetic basis of FL development associated with qFLD05 and be beneficial for the marker-assisted selection of long-staple cotton.

Structure and activation mechanism of the rice Salt Overly Sensitive 1 (SOS1) Na+/H+ antiporter.

Salinity is one of the most severe abiotic stresses that adversely affect plant growth and agricultural productivity. The plant Na+/H+ antiporter Salt Overly Sensitive 1 (SOS1) located in the plasma membrane extrudes excess Na+ out of cells in response to salt stress and confers salt tolerance. However, the molecular mechanism underlying SOS1 activation remains largely elusive. Here we elucidate two cryo-electron microscopy structures of rice (Oryza sativa) SOS1, a full-length protein in an auto-inhibited state and a truncated version in an active state. The SOS1 forms a dimeric architecture, with an NhaA-folded transmembrane domain portion in the membrane and an elongated cytosolic portion of multiple regulatory domains in the cytoplasm. The structural comparison shows that SOS1 adopts an elevator transport mechanism accompanied by a conformational transition of the highly conserved Pro148 in the unwound transmembrane helix 5 (TM5), switching from an occluded conformation in the auto-inhibited state to a conducting conformation in the active state. These findings allow us to propose an inhibition-release mechanism for SOS1 activation and elucidate how SOS1 controls Na+ homeostasis in response to salt stress.

WeiTsing, a pericycle-expressed ion channel, safeguards the stele to confer clubroot resistance.

Plant roots encounter numerous pathogenic microbes that often cause devastating diseases. One such pathogen, Plasmodiophora brassicae (Pb), causes clubroot disease and severe yield losses on cruciferous crops worldwide. Here, we report the isolation and characterization of WeiTsing (WTS), a broad-spectrum clubroot resistance gene from Arabidopsis. WTS is transcriptionally activated in the pericycle upon Pb infection to prevent pathogen colonization in the stele. Brassica napus carrying the WTS transgene displayed strong resistance to Pb. WTS encodes a small protein localized in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and its expression in plants induces immune responses. The cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) structure of WTS revealed a previously unknown pentameric architecture with a central pore. Electrophysiology analyses demonstrated that WTS is a calcium-permeable cation-selective channel. Structure-guided mutagenesis indicated that channel activity is strictly required for triggering defenses. The findings uncover an ion channel analogous to resistosomes that triggers immune signaling in the pericycle.

Comparing the impact of comprehensive care with conventional care in children with congenital heart disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: This study compares the impact of comprehensive care and conventional care on interventional therapy in children with congenital heart disease and to provide a reference basis for clinical care. Methods: Clinical randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining care during interventional therapy in children with congenital heart disease were identified in the PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang databases using a combination of subject terms and free terms. The retrieval time was from the establishment of the database to November 27th, 2022. The control group was given conventional care and the experimental group was given comprehensive care on the basis of conventional care. The outcome indicators included one or more of postoperative complications (number of cases), puncture time (minutes), pain score (points), surgical operation time (minutes), X-ray exposure time (minutes) and length of hospital stay (days). Meta-analysis was performed using Stata 14.0 software. The publication bias test was conducted using Harbor's test. Results: A total of 24 RCTs were eventually included, and a total of 2,028 study subjects were enrolled, including 1,025 in the test group and 1,003 in the control group. Meta-analysis showed that comprehensive care resulted in a lower risk of complications [risk ratio (RR) =0.27; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.21 to 0.34]. Furthermore, subjects who received comprehensive care had lower puncture time [standardized mean difference (SMD) =-2.50; 95% CI: -3.23 to -1.77], lower operating time [SMD (95% CI): -2.50 (-3.31, -1.68)], lower X-ray exposition time [SMD (95% CI): -1.29 (-2.51, -0.07)], shorter length of hospital stay [SMD (95% CI): -1.57 (-2.04, -1.09)], and lower pain scores [SMD (95% CI): -2.43 (-3.20, -1.65)]. Conclusions: Comprehensive care has higher clinical utility, which is worthy of clinical application and popularization.

[Protective effect of breviscapine against brain injury induced by intrauterine inflammation in preterm rats and its mechanism]. / ç¯ç›èŠ±ç´ å¯¹å®«å† ç‚Žç—‡è‡´æ—©äº§å¤§é¼ è„‘æŸä¼¤çš„ä¿æŠ¤ä½œç”¨åŠå ¶æœºåˆ¶æŽ¢è®¨.

OBJECTIVES: To study the protective effect of breviscapine against brain injury induced by intrauterine inflammation in preterm rats and its mechanism. METHODS: A preterm rat model of brain injury caused by intrauterine inflammation was prepared by intraperitoneal injections of lipopolysaccharide in pregnant rats. The pregnant rats and preterm rats were respectively randomly divided into 5 groups: control, model, low-dose breviscapine (45 mg/kg), high-dose breviscapine (90 mg/kg), and high-dose breviscapine (90 mg/kg)+ML385 [a nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) inhibitor, 30 mg/kg] (n=10 each). The number and body weight of the live offspring rats were measured for each group. Hematoxylin-eosin staining was used to observe the pathological morphology of the uterus and placenta of pregnant rats and the pathological morphology of the brain tissue of offspring rats. Immunofluorescent staining was used to measure the co-expression of ionized calcium binding adaptor molecule-1 (IBA-1) and nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) in the cerebral cortex of offspring rats. ELISA was used to measure the levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8), and interleukin-1ß (IL-1ß) in the brain tissue of offspring rats. Western blotting was used to measure the expression of Nrf2 pathway-related proteins in the brain tissue of offspring rats. RESULTS: Pathological injury was found in the uterus, and placenta tissue of the pregnant rats and the brain tissue of the offspring rats, and severe microglia pyroptosis occurred in the cerebral cortex of the offspring rats in the model group. Compared with the control group, the model group had significant reductions in the number and body weight of the live offspring rats and the protein expression levels of Nrf2 and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in the brain tissue of the offspring rats (P<0.05), but significant increases in the relative fluorescence intensity of the co-expression of IBA-1 and NLRP3, the levels of the inflammatory factors IL-6, IL-8, and IL-1ß, and the protein expression levels of NLRP3 and caspase-1 in the brain tissue of the offspring rats (P<0.05). Compared with the model group, the breviscapine administration groups showed alleviated pathological injury of the uterus and placenta tissue of the pregnant rats and the brain tissue of the offspring rats, significant increases in the number and body weight of the live offspring rats and the protein expression levels of Nrf2 and HO-1 in the brain tissue of the offspring rats (P<0.05), and significant reductions in the relative fluorescence intensity of the co-expression of IBA-1 and NLRP3, the levels of the inflammatory factors IL-6, IL-8, and IL-1ß, and the protein expression levels of NLRP3 and caspase-1 in the brain tissue of the offspring rats (P<0.05). The high-dose breviscapine group had a significantly better effect than the low-dose breviscapine (P<0.05). ML385 significantly inhibited the intervention effect of high-dose breviscapine (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Breviscapine can inhibit inflammatory response in brain tissue of preterm rats caused by intrauterine inflammation by activating the Nrf2 pathway, and it can also inhibit microglial pyroptosis and alleviate brain injury.

Tumor Cell Nanovaccines Based on Genetically Engineered Antibody-Anchored Membrane.

Despite the promise in whole-tumor cell vaccines, a key challenge is to overcome the lack of costimulatory signals. Here, agonistic-antibody-boosted tumor cell nanovaccines are reported by genetically engineered antibody-anchored membrane (AAM) technology, capable of effectively activating costimulatory pathways. Specifically, the AAM can be stably constructed following genetic engineering of tumor cell membranes with anti-CD40 single chain variable fragment (scFv), an agonistic antibody to induce costimulatory signals. The nanovaccines are versatilely designed and obtained based on the anti-CD40 scFv-anchored membrane and nanotechnology. Following vaccination, the anti-CD40 scFv-anchored membrane nanovaccine (Nano-AAM/CD40) significantly facilitates dendritic cell maturation in CD40-humanized transgenic mice and subsequent adaptive immune responses. Compared to membrane-based nanovaccines alone, the enhanced antitumor efficacy in both "hot" and "cold" tumor models of the Nano-AAM/CD40 demonstrates the importance of agonistic antibodies in development of tumor-cell-based vaccines. To expand the design of nanovaccines, further incorporation of cell lysates into the Nano-AAM/CD40 to conceptually construct tumor cell-like nanovaccines results in boosted immune responses and improved antitumor efficacy against malignant tumors inoculated into CD40-humanized transgenic mice. Overall, this genetically engineered AAM technology provides a versatile design of nanovaccines by incorporation of tumor-cell-based components and agonistic antibodies of costimulatory immune checkpoints.

Targeted delivery of nanomedicines for promoting vascular regeneration in ischemic diseases.

Ischemic diseases, the leading cause of disability and death, are caused by the restriction or blockage of blood flow in specific tissues, including ischemic cardiac, ischemic cerebrovascular and ischemic peripheral vascular diseases. The regeneration of functional vasculature network in ischemic tissues is essential for treatment of ischemic diseases. Direct delivery of pro-angiogenesis factors, such as VEGF, has demonstrated the effectiveness in ischemic disease therapy but suffering from several obstacles, such as low delivery efficacy in disease sites and uncontrolled modulation. In this review, we summarize the molecular mechanisms of inducing vascular regeneration, providing the guidance for designing the desired nanomedicines. We also introduce the delivery of various nanomedicines to ischemic tissues by passive or active targeting manner. To achieve the efficient delivery of nanomedicines in various ischemic diseases, we highlight targeted delivery of nanomedicines and controllable modulation of disease microenvironment using nanomedicines.

Screening of Protein-Based Ultrasmall Nanozymes for Building Cell-Mimicking Catalytic Vesicles.

Enzymes are an important component for bottom-up building of synthetic/artificial cells. Nanozymes are nanomaterials with intrinsic enzyme-like properties, however, the construction of synthetic cells using nanozymes is difficult owing to their high surface energy or large size. Herein, the authors show a protein-based general platform that biomimetically integrates various ultrasmall metal nanozymes into protein shells. Specifically, eight metal-based ultrasmall nano-particles/clusters are in situ incorporated into ferritin nanocages that are self-assembled by 24 subunits of ferritin heavy chain. As a nanozyme generator, such a platform is suitable for screening the desired enzyme-like activities, including peroxidase (POD), oxidase (OXD), catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD). After screening, it is found that Ru intrinsically possesses the highest POD-like and CAT-like activities, while Mn and Pt show the highest OXD-like and SOD-like activities, respectively. Additionally, the inducers/inhibitors of various nanozymes are screened from more than 50 compounds to improve or inhibit their enzyme-like activities. Based on the screened nanozymes and their inhibitors, a proof-of-conceptually constructs cell-mimicking catalytic vesicles to mimic or modulate the events of redox homeostasis in living cells. This study offers a type of artificial metalloenzyme based on nanotechnology and shows a choice for bottom-up enzyme-based synthetic cell systems in a fully synthetic manner.

Genetic mapping, transcriptomic sequencing and metabolic profiling indicated a glutathione S-transferase is responsible for the red-spot-petals in Gossypium arboreum.

KEY MESSAGE: A GST for red-spot-petals in Gossypium arboreum was identified as the candidate under the scope of multi-omics approaches. Colored petal spots are correlated with insect pollination efficiency in Gossypium species. However, molecular mechanisms concerning the formation of red spots on Gossypium arboreum flowers remain elusive. In the current study, the Shixiya1-R (SxyR, with red spots) × Shixiya1-W (SxyW, without red spots) segregating population was utilized to determine that the red-spot-petal phenotype was levered by a single dominant locus. This phenotype was expectedly related to the anthocyanin metabolites, wherein the cyanidin and delphinidin derivatives constituted the major partition. Subsequently, this dominant locus was narrowed to a 3.27 Mb range on chromosome 7 by genomic resequencing from the two parents and the two segregated progeny bulks that have spotted petals or not. Furthermore, differential expressed genes generated from the two bulks at either of three sequential flower developmental stages that spanning the spot formation were intersected with the annotated ones that allocated to the 3.27 Mb interval, which returned eight genes. A glutathione S-transferase-coding gene (Gar07G08900) out of the eight was the only one that exhibited simultaneously differential expression among all three developmental stages, and it was therefore considered to be the probable candidate. Finally, functional validation upon this candidate was achieved by the appearance of scattered petal spots with inhibited expression of Gar07G08900. In conclusion, the current report identified a key gene for the red spotted petal in G. arboreum under the scope of multi-omics approaches, such efforts and embedded molecular resources would benefit future applications underlying the flower color trait in cotton.

Non-agricultural source dominates the ammonium aerosol in the largest city of South China based on the vertical δ15N measurements.

Ammonia (NH3) is the most prevalent alkaline gas in the atmosphere and plays a critical role in air pollution and public health. However, scientific debate remains over whether agricultural emissions (e.g., livestock and fertilizer application) dominate NH3 in urban atmosphere in China, which is one of the largest NH3 emitters in the world. In this study, we first simultaneously collected the fine atmospheric particles (PM2.5) at two heights (ground and 488 m) using the atmospheric observatories in Canton Tower, Guangzhou city, China for the measurements of stable nitrogen isotope composition in ammonium (δ15N-NH4+). Our results showed that the average δ15N-NH4+ value at the ground and the 488 m observatory were 16.9 ‰ and 3.8 ‰, respectively, implying that NH4+ aerosols between the two heights probably have different sources. Moreover, we found that the δ15N-NH4+ value would sharply decrease to -16.7 ‰ when the air masses came from western Guangzhou, where the urbanization is limited compared to other surrounding areas. The Bayesian mixing model indicated that NH4+ aerosol at the ground observatory was mainly derived from non-agricultural activities (76 %, e.g., vehicular exhaust), with the rest from agricultural sources (24 %). As for the 488 m observatory, the contribution of non-agricultural sources was 53 %, which is lower than the ground observatory. This is expected as the lower air receives more impacts from the local urban emission. However, the current "bottom-up" emission inventory illustrates that only ~20 % NH3 in Guangzhou is associated with non-agricultural emissions, which is significantly lower than our δ15N-based results. Overall, our findings strongly imply that non-agricultural sources dominate the urban NH3 in Guangzhou or maybe in adjacent cities of the Pearl River Delta region as well, suggesting that the emission inventory of NH3 in this region probably is urgently needed to be revisited in future studies.

Glomangiomatosis - immunohistochemical study: A case report.

BACKGROUND: Glomangiomatosis (also known as diffuse glomus tumor) is extremely rare, accounting for only 5% of glomus tumors. The prevalence of glomus tumors is only 2% of soft tissue tumors. Lesions can recur after resection. Although growth may be diffuse or infiltrating and invasive, definitive identifying standards for malignant glomus tumors are lacking. This article describes a case of glomangiomatosis with many nodular masses in the soft tissues of the right foot and calf. A review of the Chinese and English-language literature is included. CASE SUMMARY: A case of glomangiomatosis in a 55-year-old Chinese woman who presented clinically with many nodular masses in the soft tissues of the right foot and calf. The tumor was examined histologically and immunostaining was performed. CONCLUSION: Glomangiomatosis occurs most often in young people, in the distal extremities, but is rare. Multiple nodules are even rarer. Only 15 clinicopathological analyses of glomangiomatosis have been reported in the combined Chinese- and English-language literature. In the present case, microscopically, nested vascular globular cells were observed around the blood vessel wall. Immunohistochemistry revealed diffuse immunoreactivity for smooth muscle actin, vimentin, type IV collagen, and Bcl-2. Caldesmon, CD34, and calponin were weakly, partially, and slightly positive, respectively. There was no recurrence 1 year after resection.

Protein corona-coated immunomagnetic nanoparticles with enhanced isolation of circulating tumor cells.

Immunomagnetic nanoparticles (IMNs) have been widely developed as a detection tool to isolate rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from whole blood as a potential method for early cancer diagnosis, metastasis examination, and treatment guidance. However, a spontaneous interaction between nanoparticles and proteins results in the formation of a protein corona that reduces the performance of IMNs when they enter body fluids. To address this issue, the protein corona was precoated onto magnetic nanoparticles (C-MNs), and then their surfaces were conjugated with an immuno-antibody. The adsorption of proteins on C-MNs was decreased 6-fold and non-specific cell binding was reduced 5-fold, compared with magnetic nanoparticles (MNs). Furthermore, the immuno-antibody functionalized C-MNs (IC-MNs) maintained highly specific CTC capture performance when exposed to blood plasma. By using artificial spiked blood samples, IC-MNs exhibited 90.2% CTC isolation efficiency, compared with 60.3% by using IMNs. IC-MNs also successfully captured CTCs with high purity in 24 out of 26 female breast cancer patient blood samples. This work demonstrated that a novel preformed protein corona strategy can provide a useful clinically applicable diagnostic tool.

The deubiquitinases UBP12 and UBP13 integrate with the E3 ubiquitin ligase XBAT35.2 to modulate VPS23A stability in ABA signaling.

Ubiquitination-mediated protein degradation in both the 26S proteasome and vacuole is an important process in abscisic acid (ABA) signaling. However, the role of deubiquitination in this process remains elusive. Here, we demonstrate that two deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs), ubiquitin-specific protease 12 (UBP12) and UBP13, modulate ABA signaling and drought tolerance by deubiquitinating and stabilizing the endosomal sorting complex required for transport-I (ESCRT-I) component vacuolar protein sorting 23A (VPS23A) and thereby affect the stability of ABA receptors in Arabidopsis thaliana. Genetic analysis showed that VPS23A overexpression could rescue the ABA hypersensitive and drought tolerance phenotypes of ubp12-2w or ubp13-1. In addition to the direct regulation of VPS23A, we found that UBP12 and UBP13 also stabilized the E3 ligase XB3 ortholog 5 in A. thaliana (XBAT35.2) in response to ABA treatment. Hence, we demonstrated that UBP12 and UBP13 are previously unidentified rheostatic regulators of ABA signaling and revealed a mechanism by which deubiquitination precisely monitors the XBAT35/VPS23A ubiquitination module in the ABA response.

Prediction and Design of Nanozymes using Explainable Machine Learning.

An abundant number of nanomaterials have been discovered to possess enzyme-like catalytic activity, termed nanozymes. It is identified that a variety of internal and external factors influence the catalytic activity of nanozymes. However, there is a lack of essential methodologies to uncover the hidden mechanisms between nanozyme features and enzyme-like activity. Here, a data-driven approach is demonstrated that utilizes machine-learning algorithms to understand particle-property relationships, allowing for classification and quantitative predictions of enzyme-like activity exhibited by nanozymes. High consistency between predicted outputs and the observations is confirmed by accuracy (90.6%) and R2 (up to 0.80). Furthermore, sensitive analysis of the models reveals the central roles of transition metals in determining nanozyme activity. As an example, the models are successfully applied to predict or design desirable nanozymes by uncovering the hidden relationship between different periods of transition metals and their enzyme-like performance. This study offers a promising strategy to develop nanozymes with desirable catalytic activity and demonstrates the potential of machine learning within the field of material science.