ABSTRACT
Ferroptosis is a new type of iron-dependent cell death caused by lipid peroxide (LPO) accumulation and involved in disease of pulmonary infection. The dysregulation of iron metabolism, the accumulation of LPO, and the inactivation and consumption of glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4) are the crucial cause of ferroptosis. Pulmonary infectious diseases caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA), Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are associated with ferroptosis. Ferroptosis may be a potential therapeutic target for pulmonary infectious diseases. However, the mechanisms by which these infections are involved in ferroptosis and whether pulmonary infectious diseases caused by Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Leishmania spp are related to ferroptosis are unclear. Accordingly, more researches are needed.Copyright © 2023 Yurong Zhang et al.
ABSTRACT
Objective To effectively express the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in Pichia pastoris and to evaluate its immunogenicity. Methods The gene encoding the RBD protein was synthesized and cloned into the pPICZalphaA plasmid. After linearization, the plasmid was transferred and integrated into the genome of Pichia pastoris. The expressed RBD protein in culture supernatant was analyzed by Western blot and Biolayer interferometry. After screening, a single clone expressing the RBD protein was selected. The high-level expression of RBD protein was achieved by optimizing the fermentation process, including the salt concentration adjusting of the medium and induction condition optimization (pH, temperature and duration) . The immunogenicity of the expressed RBD protein was evaluated in a mouse model. Results A single clone with a high expression level of RBD protein was obtained and named RBD-X33. The expression level of RBD protein in the fermentation supernatant reached up to 240 mg / L after optimization of the induction condition (HBSM medium, pH = 6. 5 +/- 0. 3, 22 and 120 h) . In the mouse experiment, the recombinant RBD protein was formulated with Alum + CpG dual adjuvant and injected into mice. The binding IgG antibody levels were up to 2. 7 x 106 tested by ELISA and the neutralizing antibody levels were up to 726. 8 tested by live virus neutralizing antibody assay (prototype) . Conclusions The RBD protein could be efficiently expressed in Pichia pastoris and induce stronger immune response in animals. This study suggested that the recombinant SARS-CoV-2 RBD protein expressed in Pichia pastoris could serve as a candidate antigen in the development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.Copyright © 2022 Society of Microbiology and Immunology. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The application and development of the new generation information technology is a vital support to realize the modernization of emergency management. At present, the new generation information technology such as big data and artificial intelligence has been widely used in natural disasters, safe production, and other fields. It has improved the monitoring and early warning, regulation and law enforcement, command and decision support, rescue, and social mobilization capabilities of governments, promoted the level of intrinsic safety of enterprises, provided important support for the precise prevention and control of the COVID-19, and increased the efficiency of China's emergency management and sense of security of the public. In the process of comprehensively promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with the Chinese modernization, driven by the strategic need of using the new security paradigm to ensure the new development paradigm, the application of the new generation information technology shall not only meet single and specific needs of operations, but also pay more attention to the management of unconventional emergencies, the value guidance of the overall national security concept, the support to the institutional advantages of China's emergency management, and the standard articulation, open innovation of data resources, and intelligent utilization, so as to realize the co-evolution between emergency management and information technology based on the decrease of uncertainty. The modernization of emergency management supported by the new generation information technology also needs to play an important role in developing independent knowledge, promoting interdisciplinary integration, leading information technology innovation, facilitating industrial prosperity and development, and making more contributions to the Chinese modernization. © 2022, Science Press. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Objective To effectively express the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in Pichia pastoris and to evaluate its immunogenicity. Methods The gene encoding the RBD protein was synthesized and cloned into the pPICZαA plasmid. After linearization, the plasmid was transferred and integrated into the genome of Pichia pastoris. The expressed RBD protein in culture supernatant was analyzed by Western blot and Biolayer interferometry. After screening, a single clone expressing the RBD protein was selected. The high-level expression of RBD protein was achieved by optimizing the fermentation process, including the salt concentration adjusting of the medium and induction condition optimization (pH, temperature and duration) . The immunogenicity of the expressed RBD protein was evaluated in a mouse model. Results A single clone with a high expression level of RBD protein was obtained and named RBD-X33. The expression level of RBD protein in the fermentation supernatant reached up to 240 mg / L after optimization of the induction condition (HBSM medium, pH = 6. 5 ± 0. 3, 22℃ and 120 h) . In the mouse experiment, the recombinant RBD protein was formulated with Alum + CpG dual adjuvant and injected into mice. The binding IgG antibody levels were up to 2. 7 × 106 tested by ELISA and the neutralizing antibody levels were up to 726. 8 tested by live virus neutralizing antibody assay (prototype) . Conclusions The RBD protein could be efficiently expressed in Pichia pastoris and induce stronger immune response in animals. This study suggested that the recombinant SARS-CoV-2 RBD protein expressed in Pichia pastoris could serve as a candidate antigen in the development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. © 2022 Society of Microbiology and Immunology. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Mobile communication technology is an important information science and technology. With the development and wide application of mobile communication technology, the security of mobile communication has become an important research field, and its security connotation is constantly enriched. First of all, this paper introduces the current situation of people’s life safety and the development of 5G communication technology in the face of COVID-19. Based on this situation, a positioning method is proposed and a method of constructing the association graph between mobile communication devices is designed. A health and safety monitoring system based on mobile communication positioning technology is designed. This paper applies mobile communication positioning technology to health and safety monitoring, and expands the security technology scope of mobile communication technology. © 2022, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Background: Frailty is associated with increased risk for postoperative complications and mortality. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many preoperative assessments have shifted to telehealth assessments, precluding the use of frailty tools that require in-person assessment. The FRAIL scale is a brief (5-item) assessment that can be conducted via telehealth or self-report;however, its accuracy to predict postoperative complications in older surgical patients is unclear. We performed a systematic review of the accuracy of the FRAIL scale1 to predict postoperative complications in older surgical patients. Methods: A search strategy was conducted within Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases from 2011 to May 4th, 2021. A backwards citation search was built identifying studies that cited the validation study1. The search terms included surgical or perioperative care, elderly, and FRAIL scale. Studies not reporting mortality, postoperative complications, functional outcomes, length of stay (LOS), or case reports, case studies and non-English publications were excluded. All stages of the review were completed by two reviewers. The primary outcome was mortality, and secondary outcomes included functional outcomes, LOS, and postoperative complications. Risk of bias was assessed via the QUIPS tool. Results: A total of 3,049 studies were identified (Fig.1). Fifteen studies (n=3592)were included in the final review. Four of the 7 studies reporting mortality as a primary outcome, found associations with frailty defined by FRAIL score (>2). Three studies showed frail patients more likely to experience longer LOS, four showed worse functional recovery, and five showed greater likelihood to develop post-operative delirium or complications. Only six of the studies used a comparator with the FRAIL scale. Fourteen studies had low risk of bias. Conclusion: There is prognostic value for the FRAIL scale as it is associated with negative postoperative outcomes.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant negative influence on energy consumption in 2020. On April 7, 2020, in response to the rapid spread of the infection, the Japanese government imposed a state of emergency. This action impacted energy consumption, energy production, and electricity prices. This study compares the impact of a reduction in load demand on renewable energy in the Japan public power grid under a state of emergency declaration (April to May 2020). Using publicly available data, comparisons are made for Kyushu, Tokyo, Kansai, and Hokkaido and assessed in relation to epidemic severity and geographical distribution. The results can be summarized as follows. (1) The consumption profiles and amounts of power consumption reduction are different in different areas. Tokyo shows the largest share of reduced load, followed by Kansai, Kyushu, and Hokkaido. The load reduction was mainly seen during the day, which reflects the differences in people's activities relative to the same period in 2019. (2) Different means of power dispatch, including power generators, energy storage systems, and transmission lines are used and compared in terms of responses to the changes in electricity consumption profile. (3) The overall fall in total load demand and the change in load sequence affected the integration and curtailment of photovoltaic power generation and consequentially caused the electricity price to drop. This paper clarifies the effects of COVID-19 on the public power grids of Japan. Further, it establishes the impact on policymakers in relation to the development of renewable energy. © 2021 Author(s).
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Infection segmentation is essential for quantitative assessment in computer-aided management of COVID-19. However, clinical CT images are usually heterogeneous, which are reconstructed by different protocols with varying appearance and voxel spacing due to radiologist preference. Most existing infection segmentation models are only trained using specific types of CT images, which would undermine the performance when applied to other types of CT images. Therefore, it is highly desirable to construct a model that could be applied to heterogeneous CT images in the urgent COVID-19 applications. In this paper, we present a two-stage mapping-segmentation framework for delineating COVID-19 infections from CT images. To compensate for heterogeneity of CT images obtained from different imaging centers, we develop an image-level domain-adaptive process to transform all kinds of images into a target type, and then segment COVID-19 infections accordingly. Experiments show that the infection delineation performance based on our proposed method is superior to the model trained jointly using mixture of all types of images, and is also comparable to those models supervised by using only specific types of images (if applicable). © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.