Manipulating the Flow of Nanoconfined Water by Temperature Stimulation.

The manipulation of a nanoconfined fluid flow is a great challenge and is critical in both fundamental research and practical applications. Compared with chemical or biochemical stimulation, the use of temperature as controllable, physical stimulation possesses huge advantages, such as low cost, easy operation, reversibility, and no contamination. We demonstrate an elegant, simple strategy by which temperature stimulation can readily manipulate the nanoconfined water flow by tuning interfacial and viscous resistances. We show that with an increase in temperature, the water fluidity is decreased in hydrophilic nanopores, whereas it is enhanced by at least four orders of magnitude in hydrophobic nanopores, especially in carbon nanotubes with a controlled size and atomically smooth walls. We attribute these opposing trends to a dramatic difference in varying surface wettability that results from a small temperature variation.

Studies on the molecular level changes and potential resistance mechanism of Coreius guichenoti under temperature stimulation.

In this study, we used transcriptome and proteome technology to analyze molecular level changes in tissues of Coreius guichenoti cultured at high temperature (HT) and low temperature (LT). We also screened for specific anti-stress genes and proteins and evaluated the relationships between them. We identified 201,803 unigenes and 10,623 proteins. Compared with the normal temperature (NT), 408 genes and 1,204 proteins were up- or down-regulated in brain tissues, respectively, at HT, and the numbers were 8 and 149 at LT. In gill tissues, the numbers were 101 and 1,745 at HT and 27 and 511 at LT. In gill tissues at both temperatures, the degree of down-regulation (average, HT 204.67-fold, LT 443.13-fold) was much greater than that of up-regulation (average, HT 28.69-fold, LT 17.68-fold). The protein expression in brain (average, up 52.67-fold, down 13.54-fold) and gill (average, up 73.02-fold, down 12.92-fold) tissues increased more at HT than at LT. The protein expression in brain (up 3.77-fold, down 4.79-fold) tissues decreased more at LT than at HT, whereas the protein expression in gill (up 8.64-fold, down 4.35-fold) tissues was up-regulated more at LT than at HT. At HT, brain tissues were mainly enriched in pathways related to metabolism and DNA repair; at LT, they were mainly enriched in cancer-related pathways. At both temperatures, gill tissues were mainly enriched in pathways related to cell proliferation, apoptosis, immunity, and inflammation. Additionally, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis showed more differentially expressed proteins in gill tissues than in brain tissues at HT and LT, and temperature stimulation led to the strengthening of metabolic pathways in both tissues. Of the 96 genes we identified as potentially being highly related to temperature stress (59 from transcriptome and 38 from proteome data), we detected heat shock protein 70 in both the transcriptome and proteome. Our results improved our understanding of the differential relationship between gene expression and protein expression in C. guichenoti. Identifying important temperature stress genes will help lay a foundation for cultivating C. guichenoti, and even other fish species, that are resistant to HT or LT.

Effects of Low-Ambient-Temperature Stimulation on Modifying the Intestinal Structure and Function of Different Pig Breeds.

Ambient temperature (Ta) fluctuation is a key factor affecting the growth performance and economic returns of pigs. However, whether the response of intestinal structure and function are related to pig breeds in low Ta has not been investigated yet. In this study, Large White (LW) pigs, Jinfen White (JFW) pigs and Mashen (MS) pigs were raised in artificial climate chambers under normal Ta (25 °C) and low Ta (4 °C) for 96 h. Afterwards, the decrease in body temperature and complete blood counts (CBC) of all pigs were measured. Hematoxylin-eosin, immunohistochemical staining, qPCR and ELISA were used to investigate their intestinal mucosa integrity and inflammatory response. The results showed that MS pigs could maintain a normal body temperature and villus structure after 4 °C stimulation compared with those of LW and JFW pigs. Villus height and villus height/crypt depth of MS pigs were significantly higher than those of LW and JFW pigs at 4 °C. Low-Ta stimulation increased the digestion of carbohydrates of all pigs. Meanwhile, low Ta enhanced the activity of lipase in LW pigs and increased trypsin activity in MS and JFW pigs. Furthermore, low-Ta stimulation significantly downregulated the protein of tight junction and upregulated the mRNA expression of inflammatory cytokines in MS pigs. MS pigs also showed stronger spleen immune function at 4 °C. These results indicated that the local MS pig breed had stronger intestinal function in low Ta by producing a stronger inflammatory response, which lays the foundation for further study on the mechanism of cold tolerance in pigs.

Signaling in temperature-induced resting cyst formation in the ciliated protozoan Colpoda cucullus.

The terrestrial ciliated protozoan Colpoda cucullus inhabits soil. When the habitat conditions become unfavorable, the vegetative cells of C. cucullus quickly transform into resting cysts. C. cucullus culture is established in our laboratory, and encystment is routinely induced by the addition of Ca2+ to overpopulated vegetative cells. However, an increase in Ca2+ concentration and overpopulation of vegetative cells do not always occur in natural. We investigated the effect of temperature and found that cyst formation was induced by a rapid increase of 5 °C within 2 min but not by a decrease. Moreover, an increase in intracellular Ca2+ concentrations is essential, but Ca2+ inflow does not necessarily occur during encystment. Ca2+ image analysis showed that Ca2+ is stored in vesicular structures and released into the cytoplasm within 60 s after temperature stimulation. Multiple signaling pathways are activated after the release of Ca2+ from vesicles, and cAMP is a candidate second messenger with a crucial role in the process of temperature-induced encystment. Further studies are needed to clarify the mechanism underlying the sensing of temperature and release of Ca2+ from vesicles.

RNA-seq data for olive flounder (Paralichthys olivaceus) according to water temperature.

We provide raw data from a transcriptomic analysis of olive flounder in response to changes in water temperature. At the time of this analysis, the olive flounder genome was not yet available in China, and there were no related references. Therefore, assembly was carried out using the de novo method to reveal the entire nucleotide sequence based on the nucleotide sequence information of the sequenced reads. The functions of expressed genes based on Gene Ontology analysis are also categorized and presented.