Optimizing liquid fermentation for Wolfiporia cocos: gene expression and biosynthesis of pachymic acid and mycelial biomass.

Wolfiporia cocos, a versatile fungus acclaimed for its nutritional and therapeutic benefits in Traditional Chinese Medicine, holds immense potential for pharmaceutical and industrial applications. In this study, we aimed to optimize liquid fermentation techniques and culture medium composition to maximize mycelial biomass (MB) yield, pachymic acid (PA) concentration, and overall PA production. Additionally, we investigated the molecular basis of our findings by quantifying the expression levels of genes associated with PA and MB biosynthesis using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Under the optimized fermentation conditions, significant results were achieved, with maximum MB reaching 6.68 g l-1, PA content peaking at 1.25 mg g-1, and a total PA yield of 4.76 g l-1. Notably, among the four examined genes, squalene monooxygenase, exhibited enhanced expression at 0.06 ratio under the optimized conditions. Furthermore, within the realm of carbohydrate-active enzymes, the glycoside hydrolases 16 family displayed elevated expression levels at 21 ratios, particularly during MB production. This study enhances understanding of genetic mechanism governing MB and PA production in W. cocos, highlighting the roles of squalene monooxygenase and glycoside hydrolases 16 carbohydrate-active enzymes.

Microbiome Diversity in Cotton Rhizosphere Under Normal and Drought Conditions.

Climate change contributes to drought stress and subsequently affects crop growth, development, and yield. The microbial community, such as fungi and bacteria in the rhizosphere, is of special importance to plant productivity. In this study, soil collected from a cotton research field was used to grow cotton plants (Gossypium hirsutum cv. Jin668) under controlled environment conditions. Drought stress was applied at flowering stage, while control plants were regularly watered. At the same time, the soil without plants was also subjected to drought, while control pots were regularly watered. The soil was collected in sterilized tubes and microbial DNA was isolated and high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes was carried out. The alpha diversity of bacteria community significantly increased in the soil with cotton plants compared to the soil without cotton plants. Taxonomic analysis revealed that the bacterial community structure of the cotton rhizosphere predominantly consisted of the phyla Proteobacteria (31.7%), Actinobacteria (29.6%), Gemmatimonadetes (9.8%), Chloroflexi (9%), Cyanobacteria (5.6%), and Acidobacteria. In the drought-treated rhizosphere, Chloroflexi and Gemmatimonadetes were the dominant phyla. This study reveals that the cotton rhizosphere has a rich pool of bacterial communities even under drought stress, and which may improve drought tolerance in plants. These data will underpin future improvement of drought tolerance of cotton via the soil microbial community.

Drought tolerance improvement in plants: an endophytic bacterial approach.

Climate change is a crucial issue among the serious emerging problems which got a global attention in the last few decades. With the climate change, worldwide crop production has been seriously affected by drought stress. In this regard, various technologies including traditional breeding and genetic engineering are used to cope with drought stress. However, the interactions between plants and endophytic bacteria emerged as an interesting era of knowledge that can be used for novel agriculture practices. Endophytic bacteria which survive within plant tissues are among the most appropriate technologies improving plant growth and yield under drought conditions. These endophytic bacteria live within plant tissues and release various phytochemicals that assist plant to withstand in harsh environmental conditions, i.e., drought stress. Their plant growth-promoting characteristics include nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, mineral uptake, and the production of siderophore, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase, and various phytohormones. These plant growth promoting characteristics of endophytic bacteria improve root length and density, which lead to the enhance drought tolerance. In addition, plant-endophytic bacteria assist plant to withstand against drought stress by producing drought-tolerant substances, for instance, abscisic acid, indole-3-acetic acid, ACC deaminase, and various volatile compounds. Indirectly, endophytic bacteria also improve osmotic adjustment, relative water content, and antioxidant activity of inoculated plants. Altogether, these bacterial-mediated drought tolerance and plant growth-promoting processes continue even under severe drought conditions which lead to enhanced plant growth promotion and yield. The present review highlights a natural and environment-friendly strategy in the form of drought-tolerant and plant growth-promoting endophytic bacteria to improve drought tolerance in plants.

CT cerebral blood flow maps optimally correlate with admission diffusion-weighted imaging in acute stroke but thresholds vary by postprocessing platform.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Admission infarct core lesion size is an important determinant of management and outcome in acute (<9 hours) stroke. Our purposes were to: (1) determine the optimal CT perfusion parameter to define infarct core using various postprocessing platforms; and (2) establish the degree of variability in threshold values between these different platforms. METHODS: We evaluated 48 consecutive cases with vessel occlusion and admission CT perfusion and diffusion-weighted imaging within 3 hours of each other. CT perfusion was acquired with a "second-generation" 66-second biphasic cine protocol and postprocessed using "standard" (from 2 vendors, "A-std" and "B-std") and "delay-corrected" (from 1 vendor, "A-dc") commercial software. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was performed comparing each CT perfusion parameter-both absolute and normalized to the contralateral uninvolved hemisphere-between infarcted and noninfarcted regions as defined by coregistered diffusion-weighted imaging. RESULTS: Cerebral blood flow had the highest accuracy (receiver operating characteristic area under the curve) for all 3 platforms (P<0.01). The maximal areas under the curve for each parameter were: absolute cerebral blood flow 0.88, cerebral blood volume 0.81, and mean transit time 0.82 and relative Cerebral blood flow 0.88, cerebral blood volume 0.83, and mean transit time 0.82. Optimal receiver operating characteristic operating point thresholds varied significantly between different platforms (Friedman test, P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Admission absolute and normalized "second-generation" cine acquired CT cerebral blood flow lesion volumes correlate more closely with diffusion-weighted imaging-defined infarct core than do those of CT cerebral blood volume or mean transit time. Although limited availability of diffusion-weighted imaging for some patients creates impetus to develop alternative methods of estimating core, the marked variability in quantification among different postprocessing software limits generalizability of parameter map thresholds between platforms.

Identifying Cancer Drivers Using DRIVE: A Feature-Based Machine Learning Model for a Pan-Cancer Assessment of Somatic Missense Mutations.

Sporadic cancer develops from the accrual of somatic mutations. Out of all small-scale somatic aberrations in coding regions, 95% are base substitutions, with 90% being missense mutations. While multiple studies focused on the importance of this mutation type, a machine learning method based on the number of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) has not been fully explored. This study aims to develop an improved computational method for driver identification, validation and evaluation (DRIVE), which is compared to other methods for assessing its performance. DRIVE aims at distinguishing between driver and passenger mutations using a feature-based learning approach comprising two levels of biological classification for a pan-cancer assessment of somatic mutations. Gene-level features include the maximum number of protein-protein interactions, the biological process and the type of post-translational modifications (PTMs) while mutation-level features are based on pathogenicity scores. Multiple supervised classification algorithms were trained on Genomics Evidence Neoplasia Information Exchange (GENIE) project data and then tested on an independent dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) study. Finally, the most powerful classifier using DRIVE was evaluated on a benchmark dataset, which showed a better overall performance compared to other state-of-the-art methodologies, however, considerable care must be taken due to the reduced size of the dataset. DRIVE outlines the outstanding potential that multiple levels of a feature-based learning model will play in the future of oncology-based precision medicine.

Ellagic Acid Suppresses the Oxidative Stress Induced by Dietary-Oxidized Tallow.

Dietary tallow was thermally oxidized at 180°C in an open fryer. The oxidized tallow (OT) and unoxidized tallow were characterized for oxidation parameters and fatty acid composition using GC-MS. Tallow samples were fed to rabbits along with 50, 100, and 150 mg/kg/day of ellagic acid (EA) for three weeks. Results revealed that the peroxide value (PV) and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) significantly increased, while radical scavenging activity (RSA) of the tallow decreased significantly with oxidation. GC-MS analysis showed eight fatty acids in the tallow samples, where palmitic acid (48.5-49.7 g/100 g), linoleic acid (18.7-23.7 g/100 g), stearic acid (13.5-15.6 g/100 g), and margaric acid (6.32-6.42 g/100 g) were the major fatty acids. Animal studies showed that oxidized tallow (OT) alone or in combination with EA significantly altered the body weight of the rabbits. Serum biochemical parameters and renal function tests were affected by OT and ameliorated by EA. The toxic effects of OT on haematological indices were minimized by EA. The supplementation of OT alone had significant effects on the liver structure and functions. The coadministration of EA reduced the toxic properties of OT on the liver, by increasing the antioxidant (GSH) system. The rabbit heart was also affected by the OT, which was ameliorated by EA supplementation. These results suggested that the supplementation of EA was beneficial against the OT-induced oxidative stress and may be considered for foods containing oxidized lipids.

Phytohormones enhanced drought tolerance in plants: a coping strategy.

Drought stress is a severe environmental constraint among the emerging problems. Plants are highly vulnerable to drought stress and a severe decrease in yield was recorded in the last few decades. So, it is highly desirable to understand the mechanism of drought tolerance in plants and consequently enhance the tolerance against drought stress. Phytohormones are known to play vital roles in regulating various phenomenons in plants to acclimatize to varying drought environment. Abscisic acid (ABA) is considered the main hormone which intensifies drought tolerance in plants through various morpho-physiological and molecular processes including stomata regulation, root development, and initiation of ABA-dependent pathway. In addition, jasmonic acid (JA), salicylic acid (SA) ethylene (ET), auxins (IAA), gibberellins (GAs), cytokinins (CKs), and brassinosteroids (BRs) are also very important phytohormones to congregate the challenges of drought stress. However, these hormones are usually cross talk with each other to increase the survival of plants in drought conditions. On the other hand, the transgenic approach is currently the most accepted technique to engineer the genes responsible for the synthesis of phytohormones in drought stress response. Our present review highlights the regulatory circuits of phytohormones in drought tolerance mechanism.

Transarterial chemoembolization with Doxorubicin-eluting microspheres for inoperable hepatocellular carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Therapy with drug-eluting microspheres was recently introduced with an aim to decrease the high postoperative morbidity associated with chemoembolization with lipiodol. The purpose of our study was to assess the safety and efficacy of chemoembolization with doxorubicin-eluting microspheres (DEB-TACE) for inoperable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). MATERIAL AND METHODS: In this IRB-approved retrospective study, 54 patients (44 men; median age, 61 years) with inoperable HCC were treated with DEB-TACE. HCC was diagnosed by biopsy in 43 and with a combination of α-fetoprotein (AFP) and imaging in 11. Patients with Child-Pugh A, B, C cirrhosis were 27, 25, 2, respectively. Twenty-one patients had received local therapies prior to DEB-TACE. Tumor was multifocal in 30. Eight patients had branch portal vein thrombosis. DEB-TACE was performed using 300-500µ LC Beads™ mixed with 100 mg of doxorubicin. Twenty-two patients had one DEB-TACE procedure, 23 patients had 2, 8 patients had 3, and 1 had four procedures. Response rate (RR) was assessed using AFP, RECIST, and EASL criteria on CT/MRI at 1 and 3 months. Overall median survival and survival rates at 6, 12, and 24 months were calculated. RESULTS: DEB-TACE was technically successful in all. Mean hospital stay after the procedure was 1.59 days. Thirty-day mortality was 0%. RR based on AFP was 26%. At 1 and 3 months, CR + PR were 14.8% and 35%, SD 74.1% and 50%, and PD 11.1% and 15%. Overall median survival was 445 days (95% CI 312-590). The survival rates at 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years were 77%, 59%, and 32% respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Chemoembolization with doxorubicin-eluting microspheres is safe and well tolerated in patients with inoperable HCC. Its efficacy is comparable to the historical controls. However, further prospective studies are required to confirm its efficacy.