The emerging tumor microbe microenvironment: From delineation to multidisciplinary approach-based interventions.

Intratumoral microbiota has become research hotspots, and emerges as a non-negligent new component of tumor microenvironments (TME), due to its powerful influence on tumor initiation, metastasis, immunosurveillance and prognosis despite in low-biomass. The accumulations of microbes, and their related components and metabolites within tumor tissues, endow TME with additional pluralistic features which are distinct from the conventional one. Therefore, it's definitely necessary to comprehensively delineate the sophisticated landscapes of tumor microbe microenvironment, as well as their functions and related underlying mechanisms. Herein, in this review, we focused on the fields of tumor microbe microenvironment, including the heterogeneity of intratumor microbiota in different types of tumors, the controversial roles of intratumoral microbiota, the basic features of tumor microbe microenvironment (i.e., pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), typical microbial metabolites, autophagy, inflammation, multi-faceted immunomodulation and chemoresistance), as well as the multidisciplinary approach-based intervention of tumor microbiome for cancer therapy by applying wild-type or engineered live microbes, microbiota metabolites, antibiotics, synthetic biology and rationally designed biomaterials. We hope our work will provide valuable insight to deeply understand the interplay of cancer-immune-microbial, and facilitate the development of microbes-based tumor-specific treatments.

Molecular Engineering and Morphology Control of Covalent Organic Frameworks for Enhancing Activity of Metal-Enzyme Cascade Catalysis.

Metal-enzyme integrated catalysts (MEICs) that combine metal and enzyme offer great potential for sustainable chemoenzymatic cascade catalysis. However, rational design and construction of optimal microenvironments and accessible active sites for metal and enzyme in individual nanostructures are necessary but still challenging. Herein, Pd nanoparticles (NPs) and Candida antarctica lipase B (CALB) are co-immobilized into the pores and surfaces of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) with tunable functional groups, affording Pd/COF-X/CALB (X = ONa, OH, OMe) MEICs. This strategy can regulate the microenvironment around Pd NPs and CALB, and their interactions with substrates. As a result, the activity of the COF-based MEICs in catalyzing dynamic kinetic resolution of primary amines is enhanced and followed COF-OMe > COF-OH > COF-ONa. The experimental and simulation results demonstrated that functional groups of COFs modulated the conformation of CALB, the electronic states of Pd NPs, and the affinity of the integrated catalysts to the substrate, which contributed to the improvement of the catalytic activity of MEICs. Further, the MEICs are prepared using COF with hollow structure as support material, which increased accessible active sites and mass transfer efficiency, thus improving catalytic performance. This work provides a blueprint for rational design and preparation of highly active MEICs.

Photoperiodic and lighting treatments for flowering control and its genetic regulation in sugarcane breeding.

Improvement of sugarcane is hampered due to its narrow genetic base, and the difficulty in synchronizing flowering further hinders the exploitation of the genetic potential of available germplasm resources. Therefore, the continuous evaluation and optimization of flowering control and induction techniques are vital for sugarcane improvement. In view of this, the review was conducted to investigate the current understanding of photoperiodic and lighting treatment effects on sugarcane flowering and its genetic regulation. Photoperiod facilities have made a significant contribution to flowering control in sugarcane; however, inductive photoperiods are still unknown for some genotypes, and some intended crosses are still impossible to produce because of unresponsive varieties. The effectiveness of lower red/far-red ratios in promoting sugarcane flowering has been widely understood. Furthermore, there is vast potential for utilizing blue, red, and far-red light wavelengths in the flowering control of sugarcane. In this context, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) remain efficient sources of light. Therefore, the combined use of photoperiod regimes with different light wavelengths and optimization of such treatment combinations might help to control and induce flowering in sugarcane parental clones. In sugarcane, FLOWERING LOCUS T (ScFT) orthologues from ScFT1 to ScFT13 have been identified, and interestingly, ScFT3 has evidently been identified as a floral inducer in sugarcane. However, independent assessments of different FT-like gene family members are recommended to comprehensively understand their role in the regulation of flowering. Similarly, we believe this review provides substantial information that is vital for the manipulation of flowering and exploitation of germplasm resources in sugarcane breeding.

Current perspectives on the regulatory mechanisms of sucrose accumulation in sugarcane.

Sugars transported from leaves (source) to stems (sink) energize cell growth, elongation, and maintenance. which are regulated by a variety of genes. This review reflects progress and prospects in the regulatory mechanism for maximum sucrose accumulation, including the role of sucrose metabolizing enzymes, sugar transporters and the elucidation of post-transcriptional control of sucrose-induced regulation of translation (SIRT) in the accumulation of sucrose. The current review suggests that SIRT is emerging as a significant mechanism controlling Scbzip44 activities in response to endogenous sugar signals (via the negative feedback mechanism). Sucrose-controlled upstream open reading frame (SC-uORF) exists at the 5' leader region of Scbzip44's main ORF, which inhibits sucrose accumulation through post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms. Sucrose transporters (SWEET1a/4a/4b/13c, TST, SUT1, SUT4 and SUT5) are crucial for sucrose translocation from source to sink. Particularly, SWEET13c was found to be a major contributor to the efflux in the transportation of stems. Tonoplast sugar transporters (TSTs), which import sucrose into the vacuole, suggest their tissue-specific role from source to sink. Sucrose cleavage has generally been linked with invertase isozymes, whereas sucrose synthase (SuSy)-catalyzed metabolism has been associated with biosynthetic processes such as UDP-Glc, cellulose, hemicellulose and other polymers. However, other two key sucrose-metabolizing enzymes, such as sucrose-6-phosphate phosphohydrolase (S6PP) and sucrose phosphate synthase (SPS) isoforms, have been linked with sucrose biosynthesis. These findings suggest that manipulation of genes, such as overexpression of SPS genes and sucrose transporter genes, silencing of the SC-uORF of Scbzip44 (removing the 5' leader region of the main ORF that is called SIRT-Insensitive) and downregulation of the invertase genes, may lead to maximum sucrose accumulation. This review provides an overview of sugarcane sucrose-regulating systems and baseline information for the development of cultivars with higher sucrose accumulation.

Unlocking Double Redox Reaction of Metal-Organic Framework for Aqueous Zinc-Ion Battery.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) show wide application as the cathode of aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) in the future owning to their high porosity, diverse structures, abundant species, and controllable morphology. However, the low energy density and poor cycling stability hinder the feasibility in practical application. Herein, an innovative strategy of organic/inorganic double electroactive sites is proposed and demonstrated to obtain extra capacity and enhance the energy density in a manganese-based metal-organic framework (Mn-MOF-74). Simultaneously, its energy storage mechanism is systematically investigated. Moreover, profiting from the coordination effect, the Mn-MOF-74 features with stable structure in ZnSO4 electrolyte. Therefore, the Zn/Mn-MOF-74 batteries exhibit a high energy density and superior cycling stability. This work aids in the future development of MOFs in AZIBs.

MSRMNet: Multi-scale skip residual and multi-mixed features network for salient object detection.

The current models for the salient object detection (SOD) have made remarkable progress through multi-scale feature fusion strategies. However, the existing models have large deviations in the detection of different scales, and the target boundaries of the prediction images are still blurred. In this paper, we propose a new model addressing these issues using a transformer backbone to capture multiple feature layers. The model uses multi-scale skip residual connections during encoding to improve the accuracy of the model's predicted object position and edge pixel information. Furthermore, to extract richer multi-scale semantic information, we perform multiple mixed feature operations in the decoding stage. In addition, we add the structure similarity index measure (SSIM) function with coefficients in the loss function to enhance the accurate prediction performance of the boundaries. Experiments demonstrate that our algorithm achieves state-of-the-art results on five public datasets, and improves the performance metrics of the existing SOD tasks. Codes and results are available at: https://github.com/xxwudi508/MSRMNet.

A Comprehensive Analysis of Transcriptomics and Metabolomics Revealed Key Pathways Involved in Saccharum spontaneum Defense against Sporisorium scitamineum.

Sugarcane smut, caused by Sporisorium scitamineum, poses a severe threat to sugarcane production. The genetic basis of sugarcane resistance to S. scitamineum remains elusive. A comparative transcriptomic and metabolomic study was conducted on two wild Saccharum species of S. spontaneum with contrast smut resistance. Following infection, the resistant line exhibited greater down-regulation of genes and metabolites compared to the susceptible line, indicating distinct biological processes. Lignan and lignin biosynthesis and SA signal transduction were activated in the resistant line, while flavonoid biosynthesis and auxin signal transduction were enhanced in the susceptible line. TGA2.2 and ARF14 were identified as playing positive and negative roles, respectively, in plant defense. Exogenous auxin application significantly increased the susceptibility of S. spontaneum to S. scitaminum. This study established the significant switching of defense signaling pathways in contrast-resistant S. spontaneum following S. scitamineum infection, offering a hypothetical model and candidate genes for further research into sugarcane smut disease.

Genome-wide DNase I-hypersensitive site assay reveals distinct genomic distributions and functional features of open chromatin in autopolyploid sugarcane.

The characterization of cis-regulatory DNA elements (CREs) is essential for deciphering the regulation of gene expression in eukaryotes. Although there have been endeavors to identify CREs in plants, the properties of CREs in polyploid genomes are still largely unknown. Here, we conducted the genome-wide identification of DNase I-hypersensitive sites (DHSs) in leaf and stem tissues of the auto-octoploid species Saccharum officinarum. We revealed that DHSs showed highly similar distributions in the genomes of these two S. officinarum tissues. Notably, we observed that approximately 74% of DHSs were located in distal intergenic regions, suggesting considerable differences in the abundance of distal CREs between S. officinarum and other plants. Leaf- and stem-dependent transcriptional regulatory networks were also developed by mining the binding motifs of transcription factors (TFs) from tissue-specific DHSs. Four TEOSINTE BRANCHED 1, CYCLOIDEA, and PCF1 (TCP) TFs (TCP2, TCP4, TCP7, and TCP14) and two ethylene-responsive factors (ERFs) (ERF109 and ERF03) showed strong causal connections with short binding distances from each other, pointing to their possible roles in the regulatory networks of leaf and stem development. Through functional validation in transiently transgenic protoplasts, we isolate a set of tissue-specific promoters. Overall, the DHS maps presented here offer a global view of the potential transcriptional regulatory elements in polyploid sugarcane and can be expected to serve as a valuable resource for both transcriptional network elucidation and genome editing in sugarcane breeding.

In Situ Vaccination with An Injectable Nucleic Acid Hydrogel for Synergistic Cancer Immunotherapy.

Recently, therapeutic cancer vaccines have emerged as promising candidates for cancer immunotherapy. Nevertheless, their efficacies are frequently impeded by challenges including inadequate antigen encapsulation, insufficient immune activation, and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Herein, we report a three-in-one hydrogel assembled by nucleic acids (NAs) that can serve as a vaccine to in situ trigger strong immune response against cancer. Through site-specifically grafting the chemodrug, 7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin (also known as SN38), onto three component phosphorothioate (PS) DNA strands, a Y-shaped motif (Y-motif) with sticky ends is self-assembled, at one terminus of which an unmethylated cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) segment is introduced as an immune agonist. Thereafter, programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) siRNA that performs as immune checkpoint inhibitor is designed as a crosslinker to assemble with the CpG- and SN38-containing Y-motif, resulting in the formation of final NA hydrogel vaccine. With three functional agents inside, the hydrogel can remarkably induce the immunogenic cell death to enhance the antigen presentation, promoting the dendritic cell maturation and effector T lymphocyte infiltration, as well as relieving the immunosuppressive tumor environment. When inoculated twice at tumor sites, the vaccine demonstrates a substantial antitumor effect in melanoma mouse model, proving its potential as a general platform for synergistic cancer immunotherapy.

Phytic acid cross-linked and Hofmeister effect strengthened polyvinyl alcohol hydrogels for zinc ion storage.

It is a big challenge to retain the water and thus reduce the charge impedance for solid electrolytes used in flexible and wearable zinc ion batteries. Here, we propose novel phytic acid (PA) cross-linked polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogels as high-performanced solid electrolytes strengthened by the Hofmeister effect. In this approach, freeze-thawing followed by a salting-out procedure via anions to induce the Hofmeister effect can greatly improve the tensile strain and flexibility of the hydrogels. The PA addition dramatically enhances the ionic conductivity and increases the affinity between the electrolyte and zinc plate. Consequently, the PVA/PA hydrogels exhibit remarkable electrochemical performances with stable full-cell cycling in zinc ion storage and capability in inhibiting Zn dendrite growth.

Pulmonary vagus nerve transection for chronic cough after video-assisted lobectomy: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Chronic cough is common after lobectomy. Vagus nerves are part of the cough reflex. Accordingly, transection of the pulmonary branches of vagus nerve may prevent chronic cough. And there are no clear recommendations on the management of the pulmonary branches of vagus in any thoracic surgery guidelines. METHODS: This is a single-center, randomized controlled trial. Adult patients undergoing elective video-assisted thoracoscopic lobectomy and lymphadenectomy were randomized at a 1:1 ratio to undergo a sham procedure (control group) or transection of the pulmonary branches of the vagus nerve that innervate the bronchial stump plus the caudal-most large pulmonary branch of the vagus nerve. The primary outcome was the rate of chronic cough, as assessed at 3 months after surgery in the intent-to-treat population. RESULTS: Between 1 February 2020 and 1 August 2020, 116 patients (59.6±10.1 years of age; 45 men) were randomized (58 in each group). All patients received designated intervention. The rate of chronic cough at 3 months was 19.0% (11/58) in the vagotomy group versus 41.4% (24/58) in the control group (OR=0.332, 95% CI: 0.143-0.767; P =0.009). In the 108 patients with 2-year assessment, the rate of persistent cough was 12.7% (7/55) in the control and 1.9% (1/53) in the vagotomy group ( P =0.032). The two groups did not differ in postoperative complications and key measures of pulmonary function, for example, maximal voluntary ventilation, diffusing capacity of the lungs for carbon monoxide, and forced expiratory volume. CONCLUSION: Transecting the pulmonary branches of vagus nerve that innervate the bronchial stump plus the caudal-most large pulmonary branch decreased the rate of chronic cough without affecting pulmonary function in patients undergoing video-assisted lobectomy and lymphadenectomy.

Expression of sucrose metabolizing enzymes in different sugarcane varieties under progressive heat stress.

Studying the thermal stress effect on sucrose-metabolizing enzymes in sugarcane is of great importance for understanding acclimation to thermal stress. In this study, two varieties, S2003-US-633 and SPF-238, were grown at three different temperatures ( ± 2°C): 30°C as a control, 45°C for various episodes of high temperature treatments and recovery conditions at 24, 48 and 72 hours. Data showed that reducing sugar content increased until the grand growth stage but sharply declined at the maturity stage in both cultivars. On the other hand, sucrose is enhanced only at the maturity stage. The expression of all invertase isozymes declined prominently; however, the expression of SPS was high at the maturity stage. Hence, the sucrose accumulation in mature cane was due to increased SPS activity while decreased invertase isozymes (vacuolar, cytoplasmic and cell wall) activities at maturity stage in both cultivars. Heat shock decreased the sucrose metabolizing enzymes, sucrose content and sugar recovery rate in both cultivars. In contrast, heat-shock treatments induced maximum proline, MDA, H2O2 and EC in both cultivars. Notably, this is the first report of diverse invertase isozyme molecular weight proteins, such as those with 67, 134 and 160 kDa, produced under heat stress, suggesting that these enzymes have varied activities at different developmental stages. Overall, S2003-US-633 performs better than the cultivar SPF-238 under heat stress conditions at all development stages, with increased sucrose content, enzyme expression, proline and sugar recovery rate. This work will provide a new avenue regarding sugarcane molecular breeding programs with respect to thermal stress.

A Multifunctional Zwitterion Electrolyte Additive for Highly Reversible Zinc Metal Anode.

Although zinc metal anode is promising for zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) owing to high energy density, its reversibility is significantly obstructed by uncontrolled dendrite growth and parasitic reactions. Optimizing electrolytes is a facile yet effective method to simultaneously address these issues. Herein, 2-(N-morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid (MES), a pH buffer as novel additive, is initially introduced into conventional ZnSO4 electrolyte to ensure a dendrite-free zinc anode surface, enabling a stable Zn/electrolyte interface, which is achieved by controlling the solvated sheath through H2 O poor electric double layer (EDL) derived from zwitterionic groups. Moreover, this zwitterionic additive can balance localized H+ concentration of the electrolyte system, thus preventing parasitic reactions in damaging electrodes. DFT calculation proves that the MES additive has a strong affinity with Zn2+ and induces uniform deposition along (002) orientation. As a result, the Zn anode in MES-based electrolyte exhibits exceptional plating/stripping lifespan with 1600 h at 0.5 mA cm-2 (0.5 mAh cm-2 ) and 430 h at 5.0 mA cm-2 (5.0 mAh cm-2 ) while it maintains high coulombic efficiency of 99.8%. This work proposes an effective and facile approach for designing dendrite-free anode for future aqueous Zn-based storage devices.

NHC-catalyzed radical acylation of cycloalkyl silyl peroxides to access 1,6-,1,7-, and 1,8-diketones.

An unprecedented N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC)-catalyzed radical acylation of cycloalkyl silyl peroxides was developed using readily available aldehydes as the acylating agents. This protocol provides an exceptionally useful method for the efficient and rapid synthesis of long-chain 1,6-/1,7-/1,8-diketones, especially unsymmetrical ones. This strategy also has the advantages of mild conditions, good functional group compatibility, and potential applications in the late-stage functionalization of aldehydes with bioactive fragments and in the construction of long-chain complex bioactive molecules.

Magnetic Core@Shell Fe3O4@Polypyrrole@Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate Composite for Enhanced Selective Removal of Dyestuffs and Heavy Metal Ions from Complex Wastewater.

Adsorption materials have demonstrated huge potential in treating sewage; however, it is a great challenge to fabricate an adsorbent effectively adsorbing multiple dyestuffs and heavy metal ions simultaneously. Here, a magnetic core@shell Fe3O4@polypyrrole@sodium dodecyl sulfate (Fe3O4@PPy@SDS) composite is prepared through the combination of a hydrothermal method, an in situ polymerization method, and modification, exhibiting enhanced selective removal of five dyestuffs (methylene blue (MB), malachite green (MG), rhodamine B (RhB), Congo red (CR), acid red 1 (AR1)), and heavy metal ions (Mn(VII)). The effects of adsorbent type, time, initial concentration of the adsorbate, and temperature on adsorption performances are investigated in detail. Kinetics and isotherm studies indicate that all adsorption processes are more in line with the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and the Langmuir model, the diffusion behavior is controlled by intraparticle diffusion and liquid film diffusion, and research of thermodynamics reveals a spontaneous endothermic behavior. The removal efficiency after five desorption-adsorption cycles can still reach more than 90%. The prepared Fe3O4@PPy@SDS composite is an efficient and promising renewable adsorbent for the treatment of dyestuffs and Mn(VII), exhibiting a wide range of applications in the field of adsorption.

Deep Learning Network of Amomum villosum Quality Classification and Origin Identification Based on X-ray Technology.

A machine vision system based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) was proposed to sort Amomum villosum using X-ray non-destructive testing technology in this study. The Amomum villosum fruit network (AFNet) algorithm was developed to identify the internal structure for quality classification and origin identification in this manuscript. This network model is composed of experimental features of Amomum villosum. In this study, we adopted a binary classification method twice consecutive to identify the origin and quality of Amomum villosum. The results show that the accuracy, precision, and specificity of the AFNet for quality classification were 96.33%, 96.27%, and 100.0%, respectively, achieving higher accuracy than traditional CNN under the condition of faster operation speed. In addition, the model can also achieve an accuracy of 90.60% for the identification of places of origin. The accuracy of multi-category classification performed later with the consistent network structure is lower than that of the cascaded CNNs solution. With this intelligent feature recognition model, the internal structure information of Amomum villosum can be determined based on X-ray technology. Its application will play a positive role to improve industrial production efficiency.

Infrared linear polarization small target enhancement algorithm in the cloudy background.

With the development of infrared polarization sensors, image enhancement algorithms have been developed. Although using polarization information quickly distinguishes man-made objects from natural backgrounds, cumulus clouds would become detection noise because of their similar characteristics to targets in the sky scene. In this paper, we propose an image enhancement algorithm based on polarization characteristics and the atmospheric transmission model. The algorithm utilizes the principle of polarization imaging and atmospheric transmission theory to enhance the target in the image while suppressing the interference of clutter. We compare with other algorithms through the data we collected. The experimental results show that our algorithm significantly improves the target brightness and reduces clutter at the same time with real-time performance.

Breaking Spatiotemporal Barriers of Immunogenic Chemotherapy via an Endoplasmic Reticulum Membrane-Assisted Liposomal Drug Delivery.

Immunogenic chemotherapy is a promising approach in cancer treatment, but the number of drugs capable of inducing immunogenic cell death is limited, and chronic immunogenic exposure can delay antitumor immune response and be counteracted by immunosuppressive factors. In this study, we used single-cell and multilevel analyses to highlight the critical importance of the first exposure to calreticulin (CRT) in eliciting immunogenicity. We then developed the ERASION (endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane to assist (AS) the presentation of intrinsic onco-immunogenicity (ION)) strategy, leveraging the high expression of functional proteins, including CRT, on the ER membrane. ER membrane-coated liposome (ER@PLip) was able to target the tumor and immune effectors and promoted dendritic cell maturation and T cell infiltration. This enabled eliciting an immunogenic effect from a nonimmunogenic chemotherapeutic drug. By utilizing the ER membrane-associated STING protein, ERASION enabled activating the STING pathway and the generation of adaptive antitumor immunity. This study presents a potential universal platform for integrating traditional chemotherapy and therapeutic modalities.

The influence of pyroptosis-related genes on the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Increasing evidences have demonstrated that pyroptosis exerts key roles in the occurrence, development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. However, the mechanisms of pyroptosis in COPD remain largely unknown. In our research, Statistics were performed using R software and related packages in this study. Series matrix files of small airway epithelium samples were downloaded from the GEO database. Differential expression analysis with FDR < 0.05 was performed to identify COPD-associated pyroptosis-related genes. 8 up-regulated genes (CASP4, CASP5, CHMP7, GZMB, IL1B, AIM2, CASP6, GSDMC) and 1 down-regulated genes (PLCG1) was identified as COPD-associated pyroptosis-related genes. Twenty-six COPD key genes was identified by WGCNA analysis. PPI analysis and gene correlation analysis showed their relationship clearly. KEGG and GO analysis have revealed the main pyroptosis-related mechanism of COPD. The expression of 9 COPD-associated pyroptosis-related genes in different grades was also depicted. The immune environment of COPD was also explored. Furthermore, the relationship of pyroptosis-related genes and the expression of immune cells was also be shown in the end. In the end, we concluded that pyroptosis influences the development of COPD. This study may provide new insight into the novel therapeutic targets for COPD clinical treatment.