ALLENE OXIDE SYNTHASE (AOS) induces petal senescence through a novel JA-associated regulatory pathway in Arabidopsis.

Flowers are crucial for the reproduction of flowering plants and their senescence has drastic effects on plant-animal interactions as well as pollination. Petal senescence is the final phase of flower development which is regulated by hormones and genes. Among these, jasmonic acid (JA) has emerged as a major contributor to petal senescence, but its molecular mechanisms remain elusive. Here, the role of JA in petal senescence in Arabidopsis was investigated. We showed that petal senescence in aos mutant was significantly delayed, which also affected petal cell size and proliferation. Similar significant delays in petal senescence were observed in dad1 and coi1 mutants. However, MYB21/24 and MYC2/3/4, known downstream regulators of JA in flower development, played no role in petal senescence. This indicated that JA regulates petal senescence by modulating other unknown transcription factors. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that AOS altered the expression of 3681 genes associated, and identified groups of differentially expressed transcription factors, highlighting the potential involvement of AP-2, WRKY and NAC. Furthermore, bHLH13, bHLH17 and URH2 were identified as potential new regulators of JA-mediated petal senescence. In conclusion, our findings suggest a novel genetic pathway through which JA regulates petal senescence in Arabidopsis. This pathway operates independently of stamen development and leaf senescence, suggesting the evolution of specialized mechanisms for petal senescence. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-024-01425-w.

The effects of mental fatigue on fine motor performance in humans and its neural network connectivity mechanism: a dart throwing study.

While it is well known that mental fatigue impairs fine motor performance, the investigation into its neural basis remains scant. Here, we investigate the impact of mental fatigue on fine motor performance and explore its underlying neural network connectivity mechanisms. A total of 24 healthy male university students were recruited and randomly divided into two groups: a mental fatigue group (MF) and a control group (Control). Both groups completed 50 dart throws, while electroencephalography (EEG) data were collected. Following the Stroop intervention, participants in the MF group exhibited a decrease in Stroop task accuracy and throwing performance, and an increase in reaction time along with VAS and NASA scores. The EEG data during dart-throwing revealed that the network connectivity strength of theta oscillations in the frontal and left central regions was significantly higher in the MF group compared with the Control group, while the network connectivity strength of alpha oscillations in the left parietal region was significantly enhanced. The interregional connectivity within the theta and alpha rhythm bands, particularly in the frontal-central-parietal network connections, also showed a significant increase in the MF group. Mental fatigue impairs dart throwing performance and is accompanied by increased connectivity in alpha and theta.

A study on pharmaceutical text relationship extraction based on heterogeneous graph neural networks.

Effective information extraction of pharmaceutical texts is of great significance for clinical research. The ancient Chinese medicine text has streamlined sentences and complex semantic relationships, and the textual relationships may exist between heterogeneous entities. The current mainstream relationship extraction model does not take into account the associations between entities and relationships when extracting, resulting in insufficient semantic information to form an effective structured representation. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous graph neural network relationship extraction model adapted to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) text. First, the given sentence and predefined relationships are embedded by bidirectional encoder representation from transformers (BERT fine-tuned) word embedding as model input. Second, a heterogeneous graph network is constructed to associate words, phrases, and relationship nodes to obtain the hidden layer representation. Then, in the decoding stage, two-stage subject-object entity identification method is adopted, and the identifier adopts a binary classifier to locate the start and end positions of the TCM entities, identifying all the subject-object entities in the sentence, and finally forming the TCM entity relationship group. Through the experiments on the TCM relationship extraction dataset, the results show that the precision value of the heterogeneous graph neural network embedded with BERT is 86.99% and the F1 value reaches 87.40%, which is improved by 8.83% and 10.21% compared with the relationship extraction models CNN, Bert-CNN, and Graph LSTM.

Gender differences in brain region activation during verbal fluency task as detected by fNIRS in patients with depression.

BACKGROUND: Gender plays a role in the mechanisms of depression, but fewer studies have focused on gender differences in the abnormal activation of brain regions when patients perform specific cognitive tasks. METHODS: A total of 110 major depressive disorder (MDD) patients and 106 healthy controls were recruited. The relative change in oxygen-haemoglobin (oxy-Hb) concentration during the verbal fluency task were measured by a 52-channel near-infra-red spectroscopy (NIRS) system. Differences in brain region activation between patients and healthy controls and between genders of depression patients were compared. RESULTS: MDD patients demonstrated significantly decreased [oxy-Hb] changes in the right inferior frontal gyrus (p = 0.043) compared to healthy controls. A marked increase in leftward functional language lateralisation in the inferior frontal gyrus was observed in the MDD group in contrast to the HC group (p = 0.039). Furthermore, female patients in the MDD group exhibited significant reductions in [oxy-Hb] changes in the right frontal region (specifically, the superior and middle frontal gyrus; p = 0.037) compared with male patients. CONCLUSIONS: Gender impacts depression-related brain activation during cognitive tasks, potentially influencing depression's pathogenesis.

Multiple prescription pattern recognition model based on Siamese network.

Prescription data is an important focus and breakthrough in the study of clinical treatment rules, and the complex multidimensional relationships between Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prescription data increase the difficulty of extracting knowledge from clinical data. This paper proposes a complex prescription recognition algorithm (MTCMC) based on the classification and matching of TCM prescriptions with classical prescriptions to identify the classical prescriptions contained in the prescriptions and provide a reference for mining TCM knowledge. The MTCMC algorithm first calculates the importance level of each drug in the complex prescriptions and determines the core prescription combinations of patients through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) combined with drug dosage. Secondly, a drug attribute tagging strategy was used to quantify the functional features of each drug in the core prescriptions; finally, a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory Network (BiLSTM) was used to extract the relational features of the core prescriptions, and a vector representation similarity matrix was constructed in combination with the Siamese network framework to calculate the similarity between the core prescriptions and the classical prescriptions. The experimental results show that the accuracy and F1 score of the prescription matching dataset constructed based on this paper reach 94.45% and 94.34% respectively, which is a significant improvement compared with the models of existing methods.

Glycerol-weighted chemical exchange saturation transfer nanoprobes allow 19F/1H dual-modality magnetic resonance imaging-guided cancer radiotherapy.

Recently, radiotherapy (RT) has entered a new realm of precision cancer therapy with the introduction of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging guided radiotherapy systems into the clinic. Nonetheless, identifying an optimized radiotherapy time window (ORTW) is still critical for the best therapeutic efficacy of RT. Here we describe pH and O2 dual-sensitive, perfluorooctylbromide (PFOB)-based and glycerol-weighted chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) nano-molecular imaging probes (Gly-PFOBs) with dual fluorine and hydrogen proton based CEST MR imaging properties (19F/1H-CEST). Oxygenated Gly-PFOBs ameliorate tumor hypoxia and improve O2-dependent radiotherapy. Moreover, the pH and O2 dual-sensitive properties of Gly-PFOBs could be quantitatively, spatially, and temporally monitored by 19F/1H-CEST imaging to optimize ORTW. In this study, we describe the CEST signal characteristics exhibited by the glycerol components of Gly-PFOBs. The pH and O2 dual-sensitive Gly-PFOBs with19F/1H-CEST MR dual-modality imaging properties, with superior therapeutic efficacy and biosafety, are employed for sensitive imaging-guided lung cancer RT, illustrating the potential of multi-functional imaging to noninvasively monitor and enhance RT-integrated effectiveness.

Dose-effect relationship analysis of TCM based on deep Boltzmann machine and partial least squares.

A dose-effect relationship analysis of traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is crucial to the modernization of TCM. However, due to the complex and nonlinear nature of TCM data, such as multicollinearity, it can be challenging to conduct a dose-effect relationship analysis. Partial least squares can be applied to multicollinearity data, but its internally extracted principal components cannot adequately express the nonlinear characteristics of TCM data. To address this issue, this paper proposes an analytical model based on a deep Boltzmann machine (DBM) and partial least squares. The model uses the DBM to extract nonlinear features from the feature space, replaces the components in partial least squares, and performs a multiple linear regression. Ultimately, this model is suitable for analyzing the dose-effect relationship of TCM. The model was evaluated using experimental data from Ma Xing Shi Gan Decoction and datasets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. The experimental results demonstrate that the prediction accuracy of the model based on the DBM and partial least squares method is on average 10% higher than that of existing methods.

Remarkably enhanced catalytic performance in CoOx/Bi4Ti3O12 heterostructures for methyl orange degradation via piezocatalysis and piezo-photocatalysis.

A novel heterojunction composite of CoOx/Bi4Ti3O12 was synthesized through a combination of molten salt and photodeposition methods. The optimal sample exhibited superior performance in the piezocatalytic degradation of methyl orange (MO) dye with a degradation rate of 1.09 h-1, which was 2.4 times higher than that of pristine Bi4Ti3O12. Various characterizations were conducted to reveal the fundamental nature accountable for the outstanding piezocatalytic performance of CoOx/Bi4Ti3O12. The investigation of the band structure indicated that the CoOx/Bi4Ti3O12 composite formed a type-I p-n heterojunction structure, with CoOx acting as a hole trapper to effectively separate and transfer piezogenerated carriers. Significantly, the MO degradation rate of the best CoOx/Bi4Ti3O12 sample further increased to 2.96 h-1 under combined ultrasonic vibration and simulated sunlight. The synergy between piezocatalysis and photocatalysis can be ascribed to the following factors. The photoexcitation process ensures the sufficient generation of charge carriers in the CoOx/Bi4Ti3O12, while the piezoelectric field within Bi4Ti3O12 promotes the separation of electron-hole pairs in the bulk phase. Furthermore, the heterojunction structure between Bi4Ti3O12 and CoOx significantly facilitates the surface separation of charge carriers. This increased involvement of free electrons and holes in the reaction leads to a remarkable enhancement in catalytic MO degradation. This work contributes to the understanding of the coupling mechanism between the piezoelectric effect and photocatalysis, and also provides a promising strategy for the development of efficient catalysts for wastewater treatment.

A Study on the Efficacy of Ω Toenail Correction Treating Paronychia.

To study the clinical effects of Ω toenail correction in the treatment of paronychia. One hundred thirty-six cases of 130 patients during the period from August 2018 to August 2021 were treated with Ω toenail correction according to clinical stages, the clinical therapeutic effects of which were evaluated in terms of the operation time, the time to resume movement, treatment cycle, 1-y recurrence rate, and visual analogue scale (VAS) scores before and after treatment. The clinical efficacy was analyzed and compared of Ω toenail correction in treating paronychia of different clinical stages. It has been demonstrated that there was no significant difference in operation time, time to resume movement, treatment cycle and recurrence rate among different stages of paronychia, while there existed the significant difference (p < .05) in VAS score of resting-state pain before and after correction which stood at 6.43 ± 0.29 points with the after-treatment VAS scores at 1.10 ± 0.22. There is a statistical difference (p < .05) in VAS score of movement-evoked pain between before and after treatment. The VAS scores of movement-evoked pain stood at 7.55 ± 0.42, which is in contrast with the after-treatment VAS at 1.74 ± 0.93. It has been concluded that Ω toenail correction characterized by easy operation can relieve the pain immediately, which can achieve satisfactory clinical efficacy for treating paronychia of different stages.

Alveolar Macrophages-Mediated Translocation of Intratracheally Delivered Perfluorocarbon Nanoparticles to Achieve Lung Cancer 19F-MR Imaging.

Recent advances in intratracheal delivery strategies have sparked considerable biomedical interest in developing this promising approach for lung cancer diagnosis and treatment. However, there are very few relevant studies on the behavior and mechanism of imaging nanoparticles (NPs) after intratracheal delivery. Here, we found that nanosized perfluoro-15-crown-5-ether (PFCE NPs, ∼200 nm) exhibite significant 19F-MRI signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement than perfluorooctyl bromide (PFOB NPs) up to day 7 after intratracheal delivery. Alveolar macrophages (AMs) engulf PFCE NPs, become PFCE NPs-laden AMs, and then migrate into the tumor margin, resulting in increased tumor PFCE concentration and 19F-MRI signals. AMs-mediated translocation of PFCE NPs to lung draning lymph nodes (dLNs) decreases the background PFCE concentration. Our results shed light on the dynamic AMs-mediated translocation of intratracheally delivered PFC NPs for effective lung tumor visualization and reveal a pathway to develop and promote the clinical translation of an intratracheal delivery-based imaging strategy.

Self-assembled nanomaterials for ferroptosis-based cancer theranostics.

Most ferroptosis nanomedicines based on organic or inorganic carriers have difficulties in further clinical translation due to their serious side effects and complicated preparation. Self-assembled nanomedicines can reduce the biological toxicity caused by additional chemical modifications and excipients, offering better biocompatibility and safety. Ferroptosis therapy is an iron-associated programmed cell death dependent on lipid peroxidation with efficient tumor selectivity and biosafety. Therefore, the application of self-assembled nanomedicines with good biosafety in the ferroptosis treatment of tumors has attracted extensive attention. In this review, recent advances in the field of ferroptosis-based self-assembled nanomaterials for cancer therapy are presented, with emphasis on how these nanomaterial components interact and their distinct mechanisms for inducing ferroptosis in tumor cells, including iron metabolism, amino acid metabolism and CoQ/FSP1, as well as their respective advantages and challenges. This review would therefore help the spectrum of advanced and novice researchers interested in this area to quickly zoom in on the essential information and glean some thought-provoking ideas to advance this subfield in cancer nanomedicine.

Peptide functionalized actively targeted MoS2 nanospheres for fluorescence imaging-guided controllable pH-responsive drug delivery and collaborative chemo/photodynamic therapy.

The combination of imaging and different therapeutic strategies into one single nanoplatform often demonstrates improved efficacy over monotherapy in cancer treatments. Herein, a multifunctional nanoplatform (labelled as MPRD) based on molybdenum disulfide quantum dots (MoS2 QDs) is developed to achieve enhanced antitumor efficiency by integrating fluorescence imaging, tumor-targeting and synergistic chemo/photodynamic therapy (PDT) into one system. First, polyethylene glycol (PEG)ylated MoS2 QDs (MP) with desirable stability are synthesized via a hydrothermal process using MoS2 QDs and carboxyamino-terminated oligomeric PEG as raw materials. Then, MP were conjugated with arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) peptide via amidation to form a novel nanocarrier (MPR), which possesses strong blue fluorescence, good biocompatibility and ανß3 receptor-mediated targeting ability. More importantly, MPR generated reactive oxygen species under 808 nm laser activation to realize targeted antitumor PDT. Further doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded onto MPR, which endows MPRD with localized chemotherapy and pH-responsive drug release. The MPRD exhibits improved chemotherapy performance on HepG2 cells (overexpressing integrin ανß3) owing to enhanced cellular uptake mediated by ανß3 receptor and effective drug release triggered by intracellular pH. Notably, MPRD with efficient tumor targeting ability and high chemo/PDT efficacy under NIR laser irradiation is capable of inhibiting HepG2 tumor cell growth both in vitro and in vivo, which is significantly superior to each individual therapy. These findings demonstrate that MPRD holds great potential in effective cancer therapy.

RA-DENet: Reverse Attention and Distractions Elimination Network for polyp segmentation.

To address the problems of polyps of different shapes, sizes, and colors, low-contrast polyps, various noise distractions, and blurred edges on colonoscopy, we propose the Reverse Attention and Distraction Elimination Network, which includes Improved Reverse Attention, Distraction Elimination, and Feature Enhancement. First, we input the images in the polyp image set, and use the five levels polyp features and the global polyp feature extracted from the Res2Net-based backbone as the input of the Improved Reverse Attention to obtain augmented representations of salient and non-salient regions to capture the different shapes of polyp and distinguish low-contrast polyps from background. Then, the augmented representations of salient and non-salient areas are fed into the Distraction Elimination to obtain the refined polyp feature without false positive and false negative distractions for eliminating noises. Finally, the extracted low-level polyp feature is used as the input of the Feature Enhancement to obtain the edge feature for supplementing missing edge information of polyp. The polyp segmentation result is output by connecting the edge feature with the refined polyp feature. The proposed method is evaluated on five polyp datasets and compared with the current polyp segmentation models. Our model improves the mDice to 0.760 on the most challenge dataset (ETIS).

An efficient calcium-based sorbent for flue gas dry-desulfurization: promotion roles of nitrogen oxide and oxygen.

The development of sorbents for flue gas desulfurization in a dry mode is essential to control emission of sulfur dioxide. Based on the novel concept of "treating waste with waste", a low-cost and highly activated calcium-based sorbent (ACS) was prepared using coal fly ash, CaO and waste gypsum as the raw materials via the one-step incipient wetness impregnation method. Based on characterization using scanning electron microscopy and nitrogen adsorption-desorption, the ACS possessed a fibrous and netted structure with high porosity, which improved SO2 adsorption greatly. The SO2 adsorption capacity of ACS with coal fly ash/CaO/CaSO4 = 1/2/1 was high, up to 44.26 mg g-1, with 100% removal efficiency at 150 °C. In the absence of O2, SO2 was rapidly adsorbed on the sorbent to form CaSO3 according to in situ DRIFTS analysis, while when O2 was present in the flue gas, SO2/SO3 2- tended to be oxidized into SO4 2- species. Moreover, the presence of NO can further enhance the SO2 adsorption capacity of the ACS due to the formation of adsorbed NO2 or nitrate species with strong oxidizing properties. Therefore, the ACS can be considered as a sustainable sorbent with the advantage of employing fly ash for the removal of sulfur dioxide.

Dye-cored polylysine dendrimer as luminescent nanoplatform for imaging-guided anticancer drug delivery.

Dendrimers have numerous applications in imaging and drug delivery. Designing a dendrimer diagnostic platform with a well-defined structure and controlled drug delivery is a formidable challenge. Here, we design dendritic polymer-platinum conjugates (G5-PEG-Pt) as pH-responsive nanovesicles for imaging-guided platinum drug delivery. The G5-PEG-Pt have a well-defined structure, intrinsically bright fluorescence, and acid-responsive drug release. The pH-responsive G5-PEG-Pt could rapidly release the platinum drug at acidic pH (5.0) than neutral pH (7.4). The G5-PEG-Pt could enter SKOV-3 human ovarian cancer cells by the endocytosis pathway and exhibited comparative cytotoxicity to free cisplatin. By virtue of the prolonged blood circulation time and the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, a 4.4-fold higher tumor platinum uptake than that of free cisplatin was achieved, potentially enhancing the therapeutic indexes of the platinum drug. Therefore, these pH-responsive platinum and fluorescent dendrimer conjugates are expected to be potent in vivo cancer optical imaging and therapy platforms.

Novel Bi2WO6/ZnSnO3 heterojunction for the ultrasonic-vibration-driven piezocatalytic degradation of RhB.

This study designed and prepared a new piezoelectric catalytic nanomaterial, Bi2WO6/ZnSnO3, and applied it in piezocatalytic water purification. Results indicated that the composite had superior piezocatalytic efficiency and stability in rhodamine B (RhB) degradation under ultrasonic vibration. The Bi2WO6/ZnSnO3 sample with 10% Bi2WO6 had the optimum activity with a degradation rate of 2.15 h-1, which was 7.4 and 11.3 times that of ZnSnO3 and Bi2WO6, respectively. Various characterizations were conducted to study the morphology, structure, and piezoelectric properties of the Bi2WO6/ZnSnO3 composites and reveal the reasons for their improved piezocatalytic performance. Results showed that ZnSnO3 cubes were dispersed throughout the surface of Bi2WO6 nanosheets, which enhanced the specific surface area and facilitated the piezocatalytic reaction. Additionally, type-II heterojunction structures formed at the contact interface of Bi2WO6 and ZnSnO3, driving the migration of piezoelectric-induced electrons and holes. Accordingly, the separation efficiency of charge carriers improved, and the piezoelectric catalytic activity was significantly enhanced. This study may provide a potential composite catalyst and a promising idea for the design of highly efficient piezoelectric catalyst.

A novel NiO/BaTiO3 heterojunction for piezocatalytic water purification under ultrasonic vibration.

This work designed and prepared a novel heterojunction composite NiO/BaTiO3 through a method of photodeposition and used it in piezocatalytic dye removal for the first time. Results of the piezocatalytic test indicated that the NiO/BaTiO3 composite presented superior efficiency and stability in the RhB degradation under the vibration of ultrasonic waves. The best NiO/BaTiO3 sample synthesized under light irradiation for 2 h displayed an RhB degradation rate of 2.41 h-1, which was 6.3 times faster than that of pure BaTiO3. By optimizing the piezocatalytic reaction conditions, the degradation rate constant of NiO/BaTiO3 can further reach 4.14 h-1 A variety of systematic characterizations were executed to determine the reason for the excellent piezocatalytic performance of NiO/BaTiO3. The band potentials of NiO and BaTiO3 are found to coincide, and at their contact interface, they may create a type-II p-n heterojunction structure. Driven by the potential difference and the built-in electric field, piezoelectrically enriched charge carriers can migrate between NiO and BaTiO3, resulting in improved efficiency in charge separation and an increase in the piezoelectric catalytic performance. This study may provide a potential composite catalyst and a promising idea for the design of highly efficient catalysts in the field of piezoelectric catalysis.

Molecularly Precise, Bright, Photostable, and Biocompatible Cyanine Nanodots as Alternatives to Quantum Dots for Biomedical Applications.

Fluorescent imaging with fluorophores has become a powerful way to explore complex biological systems and visualize nanoparticles for drug delivery. However, it is challenging to develop fluorophores with ideal physical and optical properties. We report a method to synthesize cyanine nanodots with a single-molecule structure, well-defined particle size, customizable fluorescent spectrum, and bright and stable fluorescence. These cyanine nanodots are acquired by the divergent synthesis of cyanine-dye-cored polylysine (PLL) dendrimers. We demonstrated the feasibility of the method by synthesizing cyanine 3 (Cy3), cyanine 5 (Cy5), or cyanine 7 (Cy7) cored single-molecule nanodots up to eight generations with a size of around 11 nm. We show that these cyanine nanodots are capable of multiple biomedical applications, including multicolor cellular tracing and cancer imaging. These cyanine nanodots possess many merits of organic dots and quantum dots that are promising for future application.

A near-infrared triggered upconversion/MoS2 nanoplatform for tumour-targeted chemo-photodynamic combination therapy.

The combination of photodynamic therapy and chemotherapy has shown a great potential in cancer treatment. As a promising photosensitizer, MoS2 quantum dots (QDs) have limited application due to the low tissue penetration of its light absorbing wavelength in the ultraviolet and visible regions. For the purpose of utilizing MoS2QDs in higher NIR absorption region, herein, we constructed a core/shell nano-photosensitizer upconversion@MoS2 with doxorubicin loading. This nanoplatform can convert 980 nm NIR into visible light, activating MoS2QDs to produce reactive oxygen species through fluorescence resonance energy transfer. In addition, this nanoplatform presented good biocompatibility and tumor targeting after polyethylene glycol and folic acid modification. Interestingly, with pH-responsive drug release performance, this nanoplatform presented efficient chemotherapy effects. Thus, the tumour-targeted nanoplatform can achieve up-converted luminescence imaging guided chemo-photodynamic synergistic therapy effectively.

Delayed callose degradation restores the fertility of multiple P/TGMS lines in Arabidopsis.

Photoperiod/temperature-sensitive genic male sterility (P/TGMS) is widely applied for improving crop production. Previous investigations using the reversible male sterile (rvms) mutant showed that slow development is a general mechanism for restoring fertility to P/TGMS lines in Arabidopsis. In this work, we isolated a restorer of rvms-2 (res3), as the male sterility of rvms-2 was rescued by res3. Phenotype analysis and molecular cloning show that a point mutation in UPEX1 l in res3 leads to delayed secretion of callase A6 from the tapetum to the locule and tetrad callose wall degradation. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay and chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis demonstrated that the tapetal transcription factor ABORTED MICROSPORES directly regulates UPEX1 expression, revealing a pathway for tapetum secretory function. Early degradation of the callose wall in the transgenic line eliminated the fertility restoration effect of res3. The fertility of multiple known P/TGMS lines with pollen wall defects was also restored by res3. We propose that the remnant callose wall may broadly compensate for the pollen wall defects of P/TGMS lines by providing protection for pollen formation. A cellular mechanism is proposed to explain how slow development restores the fertility of P/TGMS lines in Arabidopsis.