Characterization of Four Complete Mitogenomes of Monolepta Species and Their Related Phylogenetic Implications.

Monolepta is one of the diverse genera in the subfamily Galerucinae, including 708 species and 6 sub-species worldwide. To explore the information on the mitogenome characteristics and phylogeny of the section "Monoleptites", especially the genus Monolepta, we obtained the newly completed mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of four Monolepta species using high-throughput sequencing technology. The lengths of these four new mitochondrial genomes are 16,672 bp, 16,965 bp, 16,012 bp, and 15,866 bp in size, respectively. All four mitochondrial genomes include 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs), and one control region, which is consistent with other Coleoptera. The results of the nonsynonymous with synonymous substitution rates showed that ND6 had the highest evolution rate, while COI displayed the lowest evolution rate. The substitution saturation of three datasets (13 PCGs_codon1, 13 PCGs_codon2, 13 PCGs_codon3) showed that there was no saturation across all datasets. Phylogenetic analyses based on three datasets (ND1, 15 genes of mitogenomes, and 13 PCGs_AA) were carried out using maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) methods. The results showed that mitogenomes had a greater capacity to resolve the main clades than the ND1 gene at the suprageneric and species levels. The section "Monoleptites" was proven to be a monophyletic group, while Monolepta was a non-monophyletic group. Based on ND1 data, the newly sequenced species whose antennal segment 2 was shorter than 3 were split into several clades, while, based on the mitogenomic dataset, the four newly sequenced species had close relationships with Paleosepharia. The species whose antennal segment 2 was as long as 3 were split into two clades, which indicated that the characteristic of "antennal segment 2 as long as 3" of the true "Monolepta" evolved multiple times in several subgroups. Therefore, to explore the relationships among the true Monolepta, the most important thing is to perform a thorough revision of Monolepta and related genera in the future.

[Stable angina pectoris of coronary heart disease treated with different acupuncture and moxibustion therapies: a network Meta-analysis].

To compare the clinical efficacy among different acupuncture and moxibustion therapies on stable angina pectoris (SAP) of coronary heart disease by means of network Meta-analysis. The articles of randomized controlled trial (RCT) for SAP of coronary heart disease treated with acupuncture and moxibustion therapies were searched from PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang database and VIP database from May 1, 2002 to May 1, 2022. The quality of them was assessed with the risk of bias assessment tool of Cochrane 5.3, and the network Meta-analysis was undertaken with Stata 13.1 software. A total of 29 articles were included with the acupuncture and moxibustion therapies involved, e.g. acupuncture, acupoint application and moxibustion. In comparison with the simple routine western medication, the effective rate was better on SAP treated with the combined treatments, in which, acupoint application, moxibustion, acupuncture and intradermal needling were combined with routine western medication (P<0.05). Of those combined treatments, the combination of the acupoint application with routine western medication had high probability, suggesting the optimal regimen (area under the curve [SUCRA]=0.711, P<0.05). The effective rate of acupuncture combined with routine western medication for ECG improvement was better than that of routine western medication (P<0.05), and such combined treatment was high in probability, underlying its optimal treatment (SUCRA=0.800, P<0.05). Combined with routine western medication, acupuncture, acupoint application, moxibustion and intradermal needling all improve the clinical efficacy on SAP of coronary heart disease. But, with different outcomes considered, the optimal treatments may be different. It needs more multi-central and large-sample randomized controlled trials to validate these results.

Complete mitochondrial genome of Distenia punctulatoides (Coleoptera: Chrysomeloidea: Disteniinae) and its phylogenetic implications.

The family Disteniidae is a moderately large and widely distributed lineage. Distenia punctulatoides belongs to the family Disteniidae from the cerambycoid assemblage. Here, we report the complete mitogenome of D. punctulatoides, which is 15,675 bp in length. It contains 37 genes and a noncoding control region, which are arranged in the same order as that of the putative ancestor of beetles. The total base composition of the new mitogenome is 40.2% for A, 17.1% for C, 10.0% for G, and 32.7% for T. The new mitogenomic organization, nucleotide composition, and codon usage do not differ significantly from other beetles. Using available complete mitogenomes, the high-level phylogeny of the family Disteniidae was explored. The phylogenetic analyses showed that Disteniidae were monophyletic, and the genus Distenia grouped with the genus Clytomelegena as sister groups. Combining the morphological and molecular data, Typodryas Thomson, 1864 is suggested to be a junior synonym of Distenia Lepeletier and Audinet-Serville, 1828.

BN-Anthracene for High-Mobility Organic Optoelectronic Materials through Periphery Engineering.

Despite the remarkable synthetic accomplishments in creating diverse polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with B-N bonds (BN-PAHs), their optoelectronic applications have been less exploited. Herein, we report the achievement of high-mobility organic semiconductors based on existing BN-PAHs through a "periphery engineering" strategy. Tetraphenyl- and diphenyl-substituted BN-anthracenes (TPBNA and DPBNA, respectively) are designed and synthesized. DPBNA exhibits the highest hole mobility of 1.3 cm2  V-1 s-1 in organic field-effect transistors, significantly outperforming TPBNA and all the reported BN-PAHs. Remarkably, this is the first BN-PAH with mobility over 1 cm2  V-1 s-1 , which is a benchmark value for practical applications as compared with amorphous silicon. Furthermore, high-performance phototransistors based on DPBNA are also demonstrated, implying the high potential of BN-PAHs for optoelectronic applications when the "periphery engineering" strategy is implemented.

Specialised metabolites as chemotaxonomic markers of Coptosapelta diffusa, supporting its delimitation as sisterhood phylogenetic relationships with Rubioideae.

From the aerial extracts of Coptosapelta diffusa (Champ. ex Benth.) Steenis, twenty-one compounds were isolated and identified by means of column chromatography and NMR and MS techniques, respectively. Amongst, ten ones were determined to be undescribed compounds including six seco-iridoid glucosides (1-6), 2-(hydroxymethyl)-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroanthracene-9,10-dione (7) and three guaiane-type sesquiterpenes (15-17). Compounds 7, 8 and 9 exhibited inhibitory activities against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC25923 with MIC of 8, 4 and 8 µg/mL. The use of 1-6 (iridoids), 7-14 (anthraquinones) and 15-17 (sesquiterpenes) as chemotaxonomic markers for this species was evidenced. Structurally, 7-14 are similar to those anthraquinones isolated from other species of the family Rubiaceae, confirming their close phylogenetic relationship. Whereas, these iridoids and sesquiterpenes with unique structures provided chemotaxonomic evidence to support the genus Coptosapelta (the tribe Coptosapelteae) as a sister of the subfamily Rubioideae. These results contrast with the general producing tendency of indole alkaloids by the species of the subfamily Cinchonoideae, and merit chemotaxonomic significance for the delimitation of Coptosapelta.

Demand for longer quarantine period among common and uncommon COVID-19 infections: a scoping review.

BACKGROUND: As one of the non-pharmacological interventions to control the transmission of COVID-19, determining the quarantine duration is mainly based on the accurate estimates of the incubation period. However, patients with coarse information of the exposure date, as well as infections other than the symptomatic, were not taken into account in previously published studies. Thus, by using the statistical method dealing with the interval-censored data, we assessed the quarantine duration for both common and uncommon infections. The latter type includes the presymptomatic, the asymptomatic and the recurrent test positive patients. METHODS: As of 10 December 2020, information on cases have been collected from the English and Chinese databases, including Pubmed, Google scholar, CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) and Wanfang. Official websites and medias were also searched as data sources. All data were transformed into doubly interval-censored and the accelerated failure time model was applied. By estimating the incubation period and the time-to-event distribution of worldwide COVID-19 patients, we obtain the large percentiles for determining and suggesting the quarantine policies. For symptomatic and presymptomatic COVID-19 patients, the incubation time is the duration from exposure to symptom onset. For the asymptomatic, we substitute the date of first positive result of nucleic acid testing for that of symptom onset. Furthermore, the time from hospital discharge or getting negative test result to the positive recurrence has been calculated for recurrent positive patients. RESULTS: A total of 1920 laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases were included. Among all uncommon infections, 34.1% (n = 55) of them developed symptoms or were identified beyond fourteen days. Based on all collected cases, the 95th and 99th percentiles were estimated to be 16.2 days (95% CI 15.5-17.0) and 22.9 days (21.7‒24.3) respectively. Besides, we got similar estimates based on merely symptomatic and presymptomatic infections as 15.1 days (14.4‒15.7) and 21.1 days (20.0‒22.2). CONCLUSIONS: There are a certain number of infected people who require longer quarantine duration. Our findings well support the current practice of the extended active monitoring. To further prevent possible transmissions induced and facilitated by such infectious outliers after the 14-days quarantine, properly prolonging the quarantine duration could be prudent for high-risk scenarios and in regions with insufficient test resources.

[Variation analysis of genomic methylation induced by high temperature stress in Pinellia ternata].

Pinellia ternata belongs to the Araceae family and is a medicinal herb. The tuber is the medicinal organ with antitussive, antiemetic and anti-tumor activities. It is easy to encounter high temperature environment during the growth periods, leading to decrease of tuber production. At present, the mechanism of response to high temperature stress in P. ternata is still unknown. DNA methylation plays a vital role in plant protection against adversity stress as a way of epigenetic regulation. In this study, P. ternata was used as material for treatment of high temperature stress at 0 h, 6 h and 80 h, and methylation sensitive amplification polymorphism(MSAP) analysis was conducted on the changes of DNA methylation in its genome. The results showed that 20 pairs of MSAP primers were selected from 100 MSAP primers with multiple clear and uniform bands, and 353, 355 and 342 loci were amplified from materials of P. ternata treated in the high temperature stress 0 h, 6 h and 80 h, respectively. Cytosine methylation levels of CCGG context in the above materials were characterized as 60.91%, 44.79% and 44.74%, respectively. And the full methylation ratios were 16.71%, 22.25% and 29.24, respectively. It demonstrated that high temperature stress significantly induced the down-regulation of DNA methylation level and up-regulation of the full methylation rate in P. ternata genome. This study provides a preliminary theoretical reference for analyzing the mechanism of P. ternata responding to high temperature stress from the epigenetic perspective.

Traditional Chinese medicine Qiliqiangxin attenuates phenylephrine-induced cardiac hypertrophy via upregulating PPARγ and PGC-1α.

BACKGROUND: Clinical study has demonstrated that the traditional Chinese medicine Qiliqiangxin (QLQX) has protective effects on heart failure. Phenylephrine (PE) is an important inducing factor for cardiac hypertrophy and our previous studies have showed that QLQX attenuates PE-induced cardiac hypertrophy. Besides, QLQX protects against cardiac remodeling after myocardial infarction via activating PPARγ. However, whether QLQX prevents PE-induced cardiac hypertrophy through PPARγ and its coactivator PGC-1α is still unknown. METHODS: The effects of QLQX were investigated based on PE induced cardiac hypertrophy mouse models. Echocardiography and hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining were used to determine cardiac function and cross-sectional area, respectively. Quantitative real time PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to determine ANP and BNP expressions. Based on primary neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocytes (NRVMs) treated with PE, the cell size and expressions of ANP and BNP were determined by immunofluorescent staining and qRT-PCR, respectively. In addition, western blot was used to determine PPARγ and PGC-1α expressions. RESULTS: In present study, we confirmed that QLQX could significantly attenuate cardiac hypertrophy in mice treated with PE. Then we showed that PPARγ and PGC-1α were downregulated in PE-induced cardiac hypertrophy, and QLQX could block the decrease of PPARγ and PGC-1α both in vitro and in vivo. Importantly, we found that PPARγ inhibitors or PGC-1α siRNAs eliminated the protective effects of QLQX on PE-induced cardiac hypertrophy. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggested that QLQX prevents from PE-induced cardiac hypertrophy by activating PPARγ and its coactivator PGC-1α.

AK048794 maintains the mouse embryonic stem cell pluripotency by functioning as an miRNA sponge for miR-592.

MiR-592 has been identified as a neural-enriched microRNA, plays an important role in mNPCs differentiation, could induce astrogliogenesis differentiation arrest or/and enhance neurogenesis in vitro Previous studies showed that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) were involved in the neuronal development and activity. To investigate the role of miR-592 in neurogenesis, we described the expression profile of lncRNAs in miR-592 knockout mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) and the corresponding normal mESCs by microarray. By the microarray analysis and luciferase reporter assays, we demonstrated that lncRNA - AK048794, regulated by transcription factor GATA1, functioned as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) for miR-592 and led to the de-repression of its endogenous target FAM91A1, which is involved in mESC pluripotency maintenance. Taken together, these observations imply that AK048794 modulated the expression of multiple genes involved in mESC pluripotency maintenance by acting as a ceRNA for miR-592, which may build up the link between the regulatory miRNA network and mESC pluripotency.

Hyper-methylated miR-203 dysregulates ABL1 and contributes to the nickel-induced tumorigenesis.

Nickel compounds have been found to be carcinogenic based upon epidemiological, animal and cell culture studies. Previous studies suggest that epigenetic mechanisms play a role in Nickel-induced carcinogenesis such as DNA methylation and histone modification. In this study, we investigated the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in nickel-induced carcinogenesis. The expression of several miRNAs which may function as tumor suppressor genes revealed a strong downregulation of miR-203 in Ni3S2-transformed 16HBE cells (NSTCs). Meanwhile, we observed hypermethylation of CpGs in miR-203 promoter and first exon area, and proved that the hyper-methylated miR-203 was involved in the Nickel-induced tumorigenesis. Moreover, we identified that miR-203 may suppress the tumorigenesis at least in part through negatively regulating its target gene ABL1. Our findings indicate that DNA methylation-associated silencing of tumor suppressor miRNAs contributes to the development of Nickel-induced cancer.