Apoptotic mechanism of propofol-induced developmental toxicity in zebrafish embryos.

General anesthetics can cause neurological damage and long-term behavioral/cognitive impairment during fetal and early postnatal life. However, the adverse influence on embryo development induced by propofol is unclear. We used embryonic zebrafish to explore the effects of propofol on embryonic and larval growth and development, and the related apoptotic mechanism. Zebrafish embryos were immersed in propofol (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 µg/ml) dissolved in E3 medium from 6 to 48 hours post fertilization (hpf). The survival rate, locomotion, heart rate, hatchability, deformity rate, and body length were analyzed at defined stages. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase nick-end-labeling was used to detect zebrafish embryo apoptosis, and the expression levels of apoptosis-related genes were determined using quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR and whole-mount in situ hybridization. Larvae at 48 hpf were anesthetized by immersion in E3 culture medium containing 2 µg/ml propofol, the reasonable anesthetic concentration for zebrafish embryos, which caused significant caudal fin dysplasia, light pigmentation, edema, hemorrhage, and spinal deformity, and decreased the hatchability, body length, and heart rate. The numbers of apoptotic cells in propofol-treated 12, 48 and 72 hpf embryos increased significantly, and the mRNA expression levels of intrinsic apoptosis pathway-related casp3a, casp3b, casp9, and baxb genes were upregulated, mainly in the head and tail. Propofol decreased apoptosis in the head and back of 24 hpf zebrafish, which was consistent with the mRNA expression analysis. Our findings demonstrated that zebrafish embryos and larvae exposed to propofol experienced developmental toxicity, which correlated with the intrinsic apoptosis pathway with casp3a, casp3b, casp9, and baxb as the key genes.

Horizontal Transfer and Evolutionary Profiles of Two Tc1/DD34E Transposons (ZB and SB) in Vertebrates.

Both ZeBrafish (ZB), a recently identified DNA transposon in the zebrafish genome, and SB, a reconstructed transposon originally discovered in several fish species, are known to exhibit high transposition activity in vertebrate cells. Although a similar structural organization was observed for ZB and SB transposons, the evolutionary profiles of their homologs in various species remain unknown. In the present study, we compared their taxonomic ranges, structural arrangements, sequence identities, evolution dynamics, and horizontal transfer occurrences in vertebrates. In total, 629 ZB and 366 SB homologs were obtained and classified into four distinct clades, named ZB, ZB-like, SB, and SB-like. They displayed narrow taxonomic distributions in eukaryotes, and were mostly found in vertebrates, Actinopterygii in particular tended to be the major reservoir hosts of these transposons. Similar structural features and high sequence identities were observed for transposons and transposase, notably homologous to the SB and ZB elements. The genomic sequences that flank the ZB and SB transposons in the genomes revealed highly conserved integration profiles with strong preferential integration into AT repeats. Both SB and ZB transposons experienced horizontal transfer (HT) events, which were most common in Actinopterygii. Our current study helps to increase our understanding of the evolutionary properties and histories of SB and ZB transposon families in animals.

The Annotation of Zebrafish Enhancer Trap Lines Generated with PB Transposon.

An enhancer trap (ET) mediated by a transposon is an effective method for functional gene research. Here, an ET system based on a PB transposon that carries a mini Krt4 promoter (the keratin4 minimal promoter from zebrafish) and the green fluorescent protein gene (GFP) has been used to produce zebrafish ET lines. One enhancer trap line with eye-specific expression GFP named EYE was used to identify the trapped enhancers and genes. Firstly, GFP showed a temporal and spatial expression pattern with whole-embryo expression at 6, 12, and 24 hpf stages and eye-specific expression from 2 to 7 dpf. Then, the genome insertion sites were detected by splinkerette PCR (spPCR). The Krt4-GFP was inserted into the fourth intron of the gene itgav (integrin, alpha V) in chromosome 9 of the zebrafish genome, with the GFP direction the same as that of the itgav gene. By the alignment of homologous gene sequences in different species, three predicted endogenous enhancers were obtained. The trapped endogenous gene itgav, whose overexpression is related to hepatocellular carcinoma, showed a similar expression pattern as GFP detected by in situ hybridization, which suggested that GFP and itgav were possibly regulated by the same enhancers. In short, the zebrafish enhancer trap lines generated by the PB transposon-mediated enhancer trap technology in this study were valuable resources as visual markers to study the regulators and genes. This work provides an efficient method to identify and isolate tissue-specific enhancer sequences.

Advances in Smart Sensing and Medical Electronics by Self-Powered Sensors Based on Triboelectric Nanogenerators.

With the rapid progress of artificial intelligence, humans are moving toward the era of the intelligent connection of all things. Therefore, the demand for sensors is drastically increasing with developing intelligent social applications. Traditional sensors must be triggered by an external power source and the energy consumption is high for equipment that is widely distributed and working intermittently, which is not conducive to developing sustainable green and healthy applications. However, self-powered sensors based on triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) can autonomously harvest energy from the surrounding environment and convert this energy into electrical energy for storage. Sensors can also be self-powered without an external power supply, which is vital for smart cities, smart homes, smart transportation, environmental monitoring, wearable devices, and bio-medicine. This review mainly summarizes the working mechanism of TENG and the research progress of self-powered sensors based on TENG about the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, human-computer interaction, and intelligent medical fields in recent years.