Mrc1+ macrophage-derived IGF1 mitigates crystal nephropathy by promoting renal tubule cell proliferation via the AKT/Rb signaling pathway.

Rationale: The present understanding of the cellular characteristics and communications in crystal nephropathy is limited. Here, molecular and cellular studies combined with single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) were performed to investigate the changes in cell components and their interactions in glyoxylate-induced crystallized kidneys to provide promising treatments for crystal nephropathy. Methods: The transcriptomes of single cells from mouse kidneys treated with glyoxylate for 0, 1, 4, or 7 days were analyzed via 10× Genomics, and the single cells were clustered and characterized by the Seurat pipeline. The potential cellular interactions between specific cell types were explored by CellChat. Molecular and cellular findings related to macrophage-to-epithelium crosstalk were validated in sodium oxalate (NaOx)-induced renal tubular epithelial cell injury in vitro and in glyoxylate-induced crystal nephropathy in vivo. Results: Our established scRNA atlas of glyoxylate-induced crystalline nephropathy contained 15 cell populations with more than 40000 single cells, including relatively stable tubular cells of different segments, proliferating and injured proximal tubular cells, T cells, B cells, and myeloid and mesenchymal cells. In this study, we found that Mrc1+ macrophages, as a subtype of myeloid cells, increased in both the number and percentage within the myeloid population as crystal-induced injury progresses, and distinctly express IGF1, which induces the activation of a signal pathway to dominate a significant information flow towards injured and proliferating tubule cells. IGF1 promoted the repair of damaged tubular epithelial cells induced by NaOx in vitro, as well as the repair of damaged tubular epithelial cells and the recovery of disease outcomes in glyoxylate-induced nephrolithic mice in vivo. Conclusion: After constructing a cellular atlas of glyoxylate-induced crystal nephropathy, we found that IGF1 derived from Mrc1+ macrophages attenuated crystal nephropathy through promoting renal tubule cell proliferation via the AKT/Rb signaling pathway. These findings could lead to the identification of potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of crystal nephropathy.

Analysis of Multiscale Corticomuscular Coupling Networks Based on Ordinal Patterns.

The coupled analysis of corticomuscular function based on physiological electrical signals can identify differences in causal relationships between electroencephalogram (EEG) and surface electromyogram (sEMG) in different motor states. The existing methods are mainly devoted to the analysis in the same frequency band, while ignoring the cross-band coupling, which plays an active role in motion control. Considering the inherent multiscale characteristics of physiological signals, a method combining Ordinal Partition Transition Networks (OPTNs) and Multivariate Variational Modal Decomposition (MVMD) was proposed in this paper. The EEG and sEMG were firstly decomposed on a time-frequency scale using MVMD, and then the coupling strength was calculated by the OPTNs to construct a corticomuscular coupling network, which was analyzed with complex network parameters. Experimental data were obtained from a self-acquired dataset consisting of EEG and sEMG of 16 healthy subjects at different sizes of constant grip force. The results showed that the method was superior in representing changes in the causal link among multichannel signals characterized by different frequency bands and grip strength patterns. Complex information transfer between the cerebral cortex and the corresponding muscle groups during constant grip force output from the human upper limb. Furthermore, the sEMG of the flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) in the low frequency band is the hub in the effective information transmission between the cortex and the muscle, while the importance of each frequency component in this transmission network becomes more dispersed as the grip strength grows, and the increase in coupling strength and node status is mainly in the γ band (30~60Hz). This study provides new ideas for deconstructing the mechanisms of neural control of muscle movements.

Nonlinear strict distance and similarity measures for intuitionistic fuzzy sets with applications to pattern classification and medical diagnosis.

In this paper, we propose a new type of nonlinear strict distance and similarity measures for intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs). Our proposed methods not only have good properties, but also improve the drawbacks proposed by Mahanta and Panda (Int J Intell Syst 36(2):615-627, 2021) in which, for example, their distance value of [Formula: see text] is always equal to the maximum value 1 for any intuitionistic fuzzy number [Formula: see text]. To resolve these problems in Mahanta and Panda (Int J Intell Syst 36(2):615-627, 2021), we establish a nonlinear parametric distance measure for IFSs and prove that it satisfies the axiomatic definition of strict intuitionistic fuzzy distances and preserves all advantages of distance measures. In particular, our proposed distance measure can effectively distinguish different IFSs with high hesitancy. Meanwhile, we obtain that the dual similarity measure and the induced entropy of our proposed distance measure satisfy the axiomatic definitions of strict intuitionistic fuzzy similarity measure and intuitionistic fuzzy entropy. Finally, we apply our proposed distance and similarity measures to pattern classification, decision making on the choice of a proper antivirus face mask for COVID-19, and medical diagnosis problems, to illustrate the effectiveness of the new methods.