Bio-inspired bimetallic models for electrochemical CO2 reduction.

Inspired by the carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) active site where two metal ions synergistically catalyze the interconversion between CO2 and CO, we have developed a family of rhenium dipyridine derivatives (1-3), in which potassium 1-aza-18-crown-6-ether (KN18C6) moiety functions as a Lewis acid to assist the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR). We found that such design leads to dramatically strong deposition on the electrode under CO2 in the presence of potassium cation, and a clear trend for the deposition rate was observed following the flexibility of linkage between the framework and the KN18C6 moiety; the more flexible, the faster. The origin of deposition was further characterized by a series of control experiments and infrared spectroelectrochemistry (IR-SEC). Unfortunately, the deposition suppresses the subsequent C-O bond cleavage reaction.

Catgut embedding in acupoints combined with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for the treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis: study protocol for a randomized clinical trial.

Background: To date, the clinical modulation for bone metabolism based on the neuro-bone mass regulation theory is still not popular. The stimulation of nerve systems to explore novel treatments for Postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMOP) is urgent and significant. Preliminary research results suggested that changes brain function and structure may play a crucial role in bone metabolism with PMOP. Thus, we set up a clinical trial to investigate the effect of the combination of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and catgut embedding in acupoints (CEA) for PMOP and to elucidate the central mechanism of this neural stimulation in regulating bone metabolism. Method: This trial is a prospective and randomized controlled trial. 96 PMOP participants will be randomized in a 1:1:1 ratio into a CEA group, an rTMS group, or a combined one. Participants will receive CEA, rTMS, or combined therapy for 3 months with 8 weeks of follow-up. The primary outcomes will be the changes in Bone Mineral Density scores, total efficiency of Chinese Medicine Symptoms before and after treatment. Secondary outcomes include the McGill Pain Questionnaire Short-Form, Osteoporosis Symptom Score, Mini-Mental State Examination, and Beck Depression Inventory-II. The leptin, leptin receptor, and norepinephrine levels of peripheral blood must be measured before and after treatment. Adverse events that occur during the trial will be recorded. Discussion: CEA achieves brain-bone mass regulation through the bottom-up way of peripheral-central while rTMS achieves it through the top-down stimulation of central-peripheral. CEA combined with rTMS can stimulate the peripheral-central at the same time and promote peripheral bone mass formation. The combination of CEA and rTMS may play a coordinating, synergistic, and side-effect-reducing role, which is of great clinical significance in exploring better treatment options for PMOP.Clinical trial registration: https://www.chictr.org.cn/, identifier ChiCTR2300073863.

The arousal effect of An-Gong-Niu-Huang-Wan on alcoholic-induced coma rats: A research based on EEG.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Acute alcohol intoxication is one of the leading causes of coma. A well-regarded Chinese herbal formula, known as An-Gong-Niu-Huang-Wan (AGNHW), has garnered recognition for its efficacy in treating various brain disorders associated with impaired consciousness, including acute alcohol-induced coma. Despite its clinical effectiveness, the scientific community lacks comprehensive research on the mechanistic aspects of AGNHW's impact on the electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns observed during alcohol-induced coma. Gaining a deeper understanding of AGNHW's mechanism of action in relation to EEG characteristics would hold immense importance, serving as a solid foundation for further advancing its clinical therapeutic application. AIM OF THE STUDY: The study sought to investigate the impact of AGNHW on EEG activity and sleep EEG patterns in rats with alcoholic-induced coma. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A rat model of alcohol-induced coma was used to examine the effects of AGNHW on EEG patterns. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were intraperitoneally injected with 32% ethanol to induce a coma, followed by treatment with AGNHW. Wireless electrodes were implanted in the cortex of the rats to obtain EEG signals. Our analysis focused on evaluating alterations in the Rat Coma Scale (RCS), as well as assessing changes in the frequency and distribution of EEG patterns, sleep rhythms, and body temperature subsequent to AGNHW treatment. RESULTS: The study found a significant increase in the δ-band power ratio, as well as a decrease in RCS scores and ß-band power ratio after modeling. AGNHW treatment significantly reduced the δ-band power ratio and increased the ß-band power ratio compared to naloxone, suggesting its superior arousal effects. The results also revealed a decrease in the time proportion of WAKE and REM EEG patterns after modeling, accompanied by a significant increase in the time proportion of NREM EEG patterns. Both naloxone and AGNHW effectively counteracted the disordered sleep EEG patterns. Additionally, AGNHW was more effective than naloxone in improving hypothermia caused by acute alcohol poisoning in rats. CONCLUSION: Our study provides evidence for the arousal effects of AGNHW in alcohol-induced coma rats. It also suggests a potential role for AGNHW in regulating post-comatose sleep rhythm disorders.

Electrochemical CO2 Reduction by Urea Hangman Mn Terpyridine species.

Based on our previous study in chemical subtleties of the proton tunneling distance for metal hydride formation (PTD-MH) to regulate the selectivity of CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR), we have developed a family of Mn terpyridine derivatives, in which urea groups functions as multipoint hydrogen-bonding hangman to accelerate the reaction rate. We found that such changes to the second coordination sphere significantly increased the turnover frequency (TOF) for CO2 reduction to ca. 360 s - 1 ${{s}^{-1}}$ with this family of molecular catalysts while maintaining high selectivity (ca. 100 %±3) for CO even in the presence of a large amount of phenol as proton source. Notably, the compounds studied in this manuscript all exhibit large value for i c a t / i p ${{{\bf i}}_{{\bf c a t}}/{{\bf i}}_{{\bf p}}}$ as that achieved by Fe porphyrins derivates, while saving up to 0.55 V in overpotential with respect to the latter.

Biased Bowl-Direction of Monofluorosumanene in the Solid State.

A new curved π-conjugated molecule 1-fluorosumanene (1) was designed and synthesized that possesses one fluorine atom on the benzylic carbon of sumanene. This compound can exhibit bowl inversion in solution, leading to the formation of two diastereomers, 1endo and 1exo, with different dipole moments. Experimental and theoretical investigation revealed an energetical relationship among 1exo, 1endo, and solvent to realize the various endo:exo ratios in the single crystals of 1 depending on the crystallization solvent. Significantly, the molecular dynamics (MD) simulations revealed that 1exo positively worked for the elongation of the stacking structure and the final endo:exo ratio was affected by the relative stability difference between 1endo and 1exo derived by solvation. Such an arrangeable endo:exo ratio of 1 realized the preparation of unique materials showing a different dielectric response from the same molecule 1 just by changing the crystallization solvent.

Deep Learning Enabled SERS Identification of Gaseous Molecules on Flexible Plasmonic MOF Nanowire Films.

Through the capture of a target molecule at the metal surface with a highly confined electromagnetic field induced by surface plasmon, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) emerges as a spectral analysis technology with high sensitivity. However, accurate SERS identification of a gaseous molecule with low density and high velocity is still a challenge due to its difficulty in capture. In this work, a flexible paper-based plasmonic metal-organic framework (MOF) film consisting of Ag nanowires@ZIF-8 (AgNWs@ZIF-8) is fabricated for SERS detection of gaseous molecules. Benefiting from its micronanopores generated by the nanowire network and ZIF-8 shell, the effective capture of the gaseous molecule is achieved, and its SERS spectrum is obtained in this paper-based flexible plasmonic MOF nanowire film. With optimal structure parameters, spectra of gaseous 4-aminothiophenol, 4-mercaptophenol, and dithiohydroquinone demonstrate that this film has good SERS performance, which could maintain obvious Raman signals within 30 days during reproducible detection. To realize SERS identification of gaseous molecules, deep learning is performed based on the SERS spectra of the mixed gaseous analyte obtained in this flexible porous film. The results point out that an artificial neural network algorithm could identify gaseous aldehydes (gaseous biomarker of colorectal cancer) in simulated exhaled breath with high accuracy at 93.7%. The integration of the flexible paper-based film sensors with deep learning offers a promising new approach for noninvasive colorectal cancer screening. Our work explores SERS applications in gaseous analyte detection and has broad potential in clinical medicine, food safety, environmental monitoring, etc.

Multi-scale feature selection network for lightweight image super-resolution.

Recently, many super-resolution (SR) methods based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved superior performance by utilizing deep and heavy models, which may not be suitable for real-world low-budget devices. To address this issue, we propose a novel lightweight SR network called a multi-scale feature selection network (MFSN). As the basic building block of MFSN, the multi-scale feature selection block (MFSB) is presented to extract the rich multi-scale features from a coarse-to-fine receptive field level. For a better representation ability, a wide-activated residual unit is adopted in each branch of MFSB except the last one. In MFSB, the scale selection module (SSM) is designed to effectively fuse the features from two adjacent branches by adjusting receptive field sizes adaptively. Further, a comprehensive channel attention mechanism (CCAM) is integrated into SSM to learn the dynamic selection weight by considering the local and global inter-channel dependencies. Extensive experimental results illustrate that the proposed MFSN is superior to other lightweight methods.

Cells of the renin lineage promote kidney regeneration post-release of ureteral obstruction in neonatal mice.

AIM: Ureteral obstruction leads to significant changes in kidney renin expression. It is unclear whether those changes are responsible for the progression of kidney damage, repair, or regeneration. In the current study, we aimed to elucidate the contribution of renin-producing cells (RPCs) and the cells of the renin lineage (CoRL) towards kidney damage and regeneration using a model of partial and reversible unilateral ureteral obstruction (pUUO) in neonatal mice. METHODS: Renin cells are progenitors for other renal cell types collectively called CoRL. We labeled the CoRL with green fluorescent protein (GFP) using genetic approaches. We performed lineage tracing to analyze the changes in the distribution of CoRL during and after the release of obstruction. We also ablated the RPCs and CoRL by cell-specific expression of Diphtheria Toxin Sub-unit A (DTA). Finally, we evaluated the kidney damage and regeneration during and after the release of obstruction in the absence of CoRL. RESULTS: In the obstructed kidneys, there was a 163% increase in the renin-positive area and a remarkable increase in the distribution of GFP+ CoRL. Relief of obstruction abrogated these changes. In addition, DTA-expressing animals did not respond to pUUO with increased RPCs and CoRL. Moreover, reduction in CoRL significantly compromised the kidney's ability to recover from the damage after the release of obstruction. CONCLUSIONS: CoRL play a role in the regeneration of the kidneys post-relief of obstruction.

Altered gut microbiota profile in patients with perimenopausal panic disorder.

Introduction: Females in the perimenopausal period are susceptible to mood disorders. Perimenopausal panic disorder (PPD) is characterized by repeated and unpredictable panic attacks during perimenopause, and it impacts the patient's physical and mental health and social function. Pharmacotherapy is limited in the clinic, and its pathological mechanism is unclear. Recent studies have demonstrated that gut microbiota is strongly linked to emotion; however, the relation between PPD and microbiota is limitedly known. Methods: This study aimed to discover specific microbiota in PPD patients and the intrinsic connection between them. Gut microbiota was analyzed in PPD patients (n = 40) and healthy controls (n = 40) by 16S rRNA sequencing. Results: The results showed reduced α-diversity (richness) in the gut microbiota of PPD patients. ß-diversity indicated that PPD and healthy controls had different intestinal microbiota compositions. At the genus level, 30 species of microbiota abundance had significantly different between the PPD and healthy controls. In addition, HAMA, PDSS, and PASS scales were collected in two groups. It was found that Bacteroides and Alistipes were positively correlated with PASS, PDSS, and HAMA. Discussion: Bacteroides and Alistipes dysbiosis dominate imbalanced microbiota in PPD patients. This microbial alteration may be a potential pathogenesis and physio-pathological feature of PPD. The distinct gut microbiota can be a potential diagnostic marker and a new therapeutic target for PPD.

A 3-D Chromosome Structure Reconstruction Method With High Resolution Hi-C Data Using Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction and Divide-and-Conquer Strategy.

Chromosomes are fundamental components of genetic material, and their structural characteristics play an essential role in the regulation of gene expression. The advent of high-resolution Hi-C data has enabled scientists to explore the three-dimensional structure of chromosomes. However, most of the currently available methods for reconstructing chromosome structures are unable to achieve high resolutions, such as 5 Kilobase (KB). In this study, we present NeRV-3D, an innovative method that utilizes a nonlinear dimensionality reduction visualization algorithm to reconstruct 3D chromosome structures at low resolutions. Additionally, we introduce NeRV-3D-DC, which employs a divide-and-conquer technique to reconstruct and visualize 3D chromosome structures at high resolutions. Our results demonstrate that both NeRV-3D and NeRV-3D-DC outperform existing methods in terms of 3D visualization effects and evaluation metrics on simulated and actual Hi-C datasets. The implementation of NeRV-3D-DC can be found at https://github.com/ghaiyan/ NeRV-3D-DC.

Phylogenomics and integrative taxonomy reveal two new species of Amana (Liliaceae).

Until now the genus Amana (Liliaceae), known as 'East Asian tulips', has contained just seven species. In this study, a phylogenomic and integrative taxonomic approach was used to reveal two new species, Amana nanyueensis from Central China and A. tianmuensis from East China. A. nanyueensis resembles Amana edulis in possessing a densely villous-woolly bulb tunic and two opposite bracts, but differs in its leaves and anthers. Amana tianmuensis resembles Amana erythronioides in possessing three verticillate bracts and yellow anthers, but differs in aspects of its leaves and bulbs. These four species are clearly separated from each other in principal components analysis based on morphology. Phylogenomic analyses based on plastid CDS further support the species delimitation of A. nanyueensis and A. tianmuensis and suggests they are closely related to A. edulis. Cytological analysis shows that A. nanyueensis and A. tianmuensis are both diploid (2n = 2x = 24), different from A. edulis, which is either diploid (northern populations) or tetraploid (southern populations, 2n = 4x = 48). The pollen morphology of A. nanyueensis is similar to other Amana species (single-groove germination aperture), but A. tianmuensis is quite different because of the presence of a sulcus membrane, which creates the illusion of double grooves. Ecological niche modelling also revealed a niche differentiation between A. edulis, A. nanyueensis and A. tianmuensis.

Calculating the spatial density of regulatory chromatin interactions using multi-modal datasets from the same cell line.

Here, we present a protocol for calculating the spatial density of regulatory chromatin interactions (SD-RCI) using Hi-C, ATAC-seq, and ChIP-seq datasets from the same cell line. We describe steps for selecting and preprocessing datasets, training and predicting a model to obtain regulatory chromatin interactions, and evaluating model performance. We then detail calculation of SD-RCI and visualization of the correlation between SD-RCI and gene expression. This protocol is applicable to Hi-C, ATAC-seq, and ChIP-seq data from the human cell line. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Gong et al. (2023).1.

MINE is a method for detecting spatial density of regulatory chromatin interactions based on a multi-modal network.

Chromatin interactions play essential roles in chromatin conformation and gene expression. However, few tools exist to analyze the spatial density of regulatory chromatin interactions (SD-RCI). Here, we present the multi-modal network (MINE) toolkit, including MINE-Loop, MINE-Density, and MINE-Viewer. The MINE-Loop network aims to enhance the detection of RCIs, MINE-Density quantifies the SD--RCI, and MINE-Viewer facilitates 3D visualization of the density of chromatin interactions and participating regulatory factors (e.g., transcription factors). We applied MINE to investigate the relationship between the SD-RCI and chromatin volume change in HeLa cells before and after liquid-liquid phase separation. Changes in SD-RCI before and after treating the HeLa cells with 1,6-hexanediol suggest that changes in chromatin organization was related to the degree of activation or repression of genes. Together, the MINE toolkit enables quantitative studies on different aspects of chromatin conformation and regulatory activity.

Landslide susceptibility prediction considering land use change and human activity: A case study under rapid urban expansion and afforestation in China.

China has been subject to rapid urban expansion and afforestation since the economic reform in 1978. However, the influence of land use and cover changes (LUCCs) and human activities on landslide occurrence is often ignored in landslide susceptibility mapping and zonation (LSMZ). In this study, Enshi City, China, was selected as the study area because of dramatic LUCCs during the last two decades. This study divided landslide affecting factors (AFs) into base affecting factors (BAFs) and land-related affecting factors (LAFs), and 15 landslide susceptibility maps were created by three different types of models. The results showed that the combination 6 of heuristic multi-layer perceptron model with LAFs (HMLP-LAFC6) model obtained the highest model performance. In addition, any factor combinations of HMLP-LAF model outperformed other two types of models, and the use of land use and cover (LULC) in different periods as well as LUCCs may significantly impact the model performance. Given that land policy adjustments are normally core drivers of LUCC in China, a land planning based LSMZ framework was proposed, which is suitable for LSMZ in rapid LUCC regions with radical land policies. Finally, this paper strongly suggests developing more hybrid models that coupling dynamic AFs, clarifying the quantitative boundaries of time-irrelevant and dynamic AFs, increasing the accuracy of LULC prediction, and improving the abilities of bilateral understanding for effective, integrated, and systematic management of land planning and landslide hazards.

CASPIAN: A method to identify chromatin topological associated domains based on spatial density cluster.

With the development of Hi-C technology, the detection of topologically associated domains (TADs) boundaries plays an important role in exploring the relationship between gene structure and expression. However, a method that can identify accurate TAD boundaries from the Hi-C contact matrix with different resolutions is currently lacking. We proposed a method named CASPIAN that can identify chromatin TAD boundaries based on the spatial density clustering algorithm. CASPIAN requires few parameters to call TADs. This method is realized using the hierarchical density-based clustering method HDBSCAN, where the distance of pairwise bins is calculated based on three distance metrics (Euclidean, Manhattan, and Chebyshev distance metric) to adapt to the characteristics of the Hi-C contact matrix generated from simulation experiments or normalized methods. Our results show that, same as standard methods (e.g., Insulation Score, TopDom), CASPIAN can enrich factors related to promoting the gene expression, such as CTCF, H3K4me1, H3K4me3, RAD21, POLR2A, and SMC3. We also calculated the approximate proportion of various factors anchored at the TAD boundaries to observe the distribution of these factors surrounding the TAD boundaries. In conclusion, CASPIAN is an easy method to explore the relationship between transcription factors and TAD boundaries. CASPIAN is available online (https://gitee.com/ghaiyan/caspian).

Refined Zoning of Landslide Susceptibility: A Case Study in Enshi County, Hubei, China.

At present, landslide susceptibility assessment (LSA) based on the characteristics of landslides in different areas is an effective prevention measure for landslide management. In Enshi County, China, the landslides are mainly triggered by high-intensity rainfall, which causes a large number of casualties and economic losses every year. In order to effectively control the landslide occurrence in Enshi County and mitigate the damages caused by the landslide. In this study, eight indicators were selected as assessment indicators for LSA in Enshi County. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model, information value (IV) model and analytic hierarchy process-information value (AHP-IV) model were, respectively, applied to assess the landslide distribution of landslides in the rainy season (RS) and non-rainy season (NRS). Based on the three models, the study area was classified into five levels of landslide susceptibility, including very high susceptibility, high susceptibility, medium susceptibility, low susceptibility, and very low susceptibility. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to verify the model accuracy. The results showed that the AHP-IV model (ROC = 0.7716) was more suitable in RS, and the IV model (ROC = 0.8237) was the most appropriate model in NRS. Finally, combined with the results of landslide susceptibility in RS and NRS, an integrated landslide susceptibility map was proposed, involving year-round high susceptibility, RS high susceptibility, NRS high susceptibility and year-round low susceptibility. The integrated landslide susceptibility results provide a more detailed division in terms of the different time periods in a year, which is beneficial for the government to efficiently allocate landslide management funds and propose effective landslide management strategies. Additionally, the focused arrangement of monitoring works in landslide-prone areas enable collect landslide information efficiently, which is helpful for the subsequent landslide preventive management.

Tuning the dielectric response by co-crystallisation of sumanene and its fluorinated derivative.

A series of co-crystals of 1,1-difluorosumanene (F2-Sum) and sumanene (Sum) were obtained. The co-crystallization successfully tuned their structural and physical properties, especially the dielectric response, without any chemical modifications. X-ray analyses and theoretical calculations revealed the reduction of intermolecular interaction energy due to the presence of F2-Sum.

Correction: The hangman effect boosts hydrogen production by a manganese terpyridine complex.

Correction for 'The hangman effect boosts hydrogen production by a manganese terpyridine complex' by Qianqian Wu et al., Chem. Commun., 2022, 58, 5128-5131, https://doi.org/10.1039/D2CC00757F.

The hangman effect boosts hydrogen production by a manganese terpyridine complex.

The manganese terpyridine complex 1 with a coordinated carboxylate in the axial position was obtained in situ. By virtue of a hangman effect, complex 1 catalyzes electrochemical hydrogen evolution from phenol in acetonitrile solution with a turnover frequency of 525 s-1 at a low overpotential of ca. 230 mV.

Long Non-coding RNA PVT1 Inhibits miR-30c-5p to Upregulate Rock2 to Modulate Cerebral Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury Through MAPK Signaling Pathway Activation.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a key role in a variety of disease processes. Plasmacytoma variant translocation 1 (PVT1), a lncRNA, is known to regulate cell functions and play a key role in the pathogenesis of many malignant tumors. The function and molecular mechanisms of lncRNA-PVT1 in cerebral ischemia remain unknown. Real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to detect lncRNA-PVT1 and microRNA-30c-5p (miR-30c-5p) expression in the brain tissues of mice underwent middle cerebral artery occlusion/reperfusion (MCAO/R) and oxygen-glucose deprivation/reperfusion (OGD/R)-treated mouse primary brain neurons. Gain- or loss-of-function approaches were used to manipulate PVT1, miR-30c-5p, and Rho-associated protein kinase 2 (Rock2). The mechanism of PVT1 in ischemic stroke was evaluated both in vivo and in vitro via bioinformatics analysis, CCK-8, flow cytometry, TUNEL staining, luciferase activity assay, RNA FISH, and Western blot. PVT1 was upregulated in the brain tissues of mice treated with MCAO/R and primary cerebral cortex neurons of mice treated with OGD/R. Mechanistically, PVT1 knockdown resulted in a lower infarct volume and ameliorated neurobehavior in MCAO mice. Consistent with in vivo results, PVT1 upregulation significantly decreased the viability and induced apoptosis of neurons cultured in OGD/R. Moreover, we demonstrated that PVT1 acts as a competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) that competes with miR-30c-5p, thereby negatively regulating its endogenous target Rock2. Overexpression of miR-30c-5p significantly promoted cell proliferation and inhibited apoptosis. Meanwhile, PVT1 was confirmed to target miR-30c-5p, thus activating Rock2 expression, which finally led to the activation of MAPK signaling. We demonstrated that PVT1, as a ceRNA of miR-30c-5p, could target and regulate the level of Rock2, which aggravates cerebral I/R injury via activation of the MAPK pathway. These findings reveal a new function of PVT1, which helps to broadly understand cerebral ischemic stroke and provide a new treatment strategy for this disease.