The Notch1/Hes1 pathway regulates Neuregulin 1/ErbB4 and participates in microglial activation in rats with VPA-induced autism.

The core clinical characteristics of autism, which is a neurodevelopmental disease, involve repetitive behavior and impaired social interactions. Studies have shown that the Notch and Neuregulin1 (NRG1) signaling pathways are abnormally activated in autism, but the mechanism by which these two signaling pathways interact to contribute to the progression of autism has not been determined. Our results suggest that the levels of Notch1, Hes1, NRG1, and phosphorylated ErbB4 in the cerebellum (CB), hippocampus (HC), and prefrontal cortex (PFC) were increased in rats with valproic acid (VPA)-induced autism compared to those in the Con group. However, 3, 5-difluorophenyl-L-alanyl-L-2-phenylglycine tert-butyl (DAPT), which is a Notch pathway inhibitor, ameliorated autism-like behavioral abnormalities and decreased the protein levels of NRG1 and phosphorylated ErbB4 in rats with VPA-induced autism; these results demonstrated that the Notch1/Hes1 pathway could participate in the pathogenesis of autism by regulating the NRG1/ErbB4 signaling pathway. Studies have shown that the Notch pathway regulates microglial differentiation and activation during the onset of neurological disorders and that microglia affect autism-like behavior via synaptic pruning. Therefore, we hypothesized that the Notch1/Hes1 pathway could regulate the NRG1/ErbB4 pathway and thus participate in the development of autism by regulating microglial functions. The present study showed that AG1478, which is an ErbB4 inhibitor, ameliorated the autism-like behaviors in a VPA-induced autism rat model, reduced abnormal microglial activation, and decreased NRG1 and Iba-1 colocalization; however, AG1478 did not alter Notch1/Hes1 activity. These results demonstrated that Notch1/Hes1 may participate in the microglial activation in autism by regulating NRG1/ErbB4, revealing a new mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of autism.

Plant-derived strategies to fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused an unprecedented crisis, which has been exacerbated because specific drugs and treatments have not yet been developed. In the post-pandemic era, humans and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) will remain in equilibrium for a long time. Therefore, we still need to be vigilant against mutated SARS-CoV-2 variants and other emerging human viruses. Plant-derived products are increasingly important in the fight against the pandemic, but a comprehensive review is lacking. This review describes plant-based strategies centered on key biological processes, such as SARS-CoV-2 transmission, entry, replication, and immune interference. We highlight the mechanisms and effects of these plant-derived products and their feasibility and limitations for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. The development of emerging technologies is driving plants to become production platforms for various antiviral products, improving their medicinal potential. We believe that plant-based strategies will be an important part of the solutions for future pandemics.

Targeting ferroptosis by poly(acrylic) acid coated Mn3O4 nanoparticles alleviates acute liver injury.

Ferroptosis, a newly characterized form of regulated cell death, is induced by excessive accumulation of lipid peroxidation catalyzed by intracellular bioactive iron. Increasing evidence has suggested that ferroptosis is involved in the pathogenesis of several human diseases, including acute liver injury. Targeted inhibition of ferroptosis holds great promise for the clinical treatment of these diseases. Herein, we report a simple and one-pot synthesis of ultrasmall poly(acrylic) acid coated Mn3O4 nanoparticles (PAA@Mn3O4-NPs, PMO), which perform multiple antioxidant enzyme-mimicking activities and can scavenge broad-spectrum reactive oxygen species. PMO could potently suppress ferroptosis. Mechanistically, after being absorbed mainly through macropinocytosis, PMO are largely enriched in lysosomes, where PMO detoxify ROS, inhibit ferritinophagy-mediated iron mobilization and preserve mTOR activation, which collectively confer the prominent inhibition of ferroptosis. Additionally, PMO injection potently counteracts lipid peroxidation and alleviates acetaminophen- and ischaemia/reperfusion-induced acute liver injury in mice. Collectively, our results reveal that biocompatible PMO act as potent ferroptosis inhibitors through multifaceted mechanisms, which ensures that PMO have great translational potential for the clinical treatment of ferroptosis-related acute liver injury.

A multi-scale evolutionary deep learning model based on CEEMDAN, improved whale optimization algorithm, regularized extreme learning machine and LSTM for AQI prediction.

With the rapid development of economy, air pollution occurs frequently, which has a huge negative impact on human health and urban ecosystem. Air quality index (AQI) can directly reflect the degree of air pollution. Accurate AQI trend prediction can provide reliable information for the prevention and control of air pollution, but traditional forecasting methods have limited performance. To this end, a dual-scale ensemble learning framework is proposed for the complex AQI time series prediction. First, complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) and sample entropy (SE) are used to decompose and reconstruct AQI series to reduce the difficulty of direct modeling. Then, according to the characteristics of high and low frequencies, the high-frequency components are predicted by the long short-term memory neural network (LSTM), and the low-frequency items are predicted by the regularized extreme learning machine (RELM). At the same time, the improved whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is used to optimize the hyper-parameters of RELM and LSTM models. Finally, the hybrid prediction model proposed in this paper predicts the AQI of four cities in China. This work effectively improves the prediction accuracy of AQI, which is of great significance to the sustainable development of the cities.

Carbon-Based Nanomaterials for Sustainable Agriculture: Their Application as Light Converters, Nanosensors, and Delivery Tools.

Nano-enabled agriculture is now receiving increasing attentions. Among the used nanomaterials, carbon-based nanomaterials are good candidates for sustainable agriculture. Previous review papers about the role of carbon-based nanomaterials in agriculture are either focused on one type of carbon-based nanomaterial or lack systematic discussion of the potential wide applications in agriculture. In this review, different types of carbon-based nanomaterials and their applications in light converters, nanosensors, and delivery tools in agriculture are summarized. Possible knowledge gaps are discussed. Overall, this review helps to better understand the role and the potential of carbon-based nanomaterials for nano-enabled agriculture.

Screening and Identification of Transcription Factors Potentially Regulating Foxl2 Expression in Chlamys farreri Ovary.

Foxl2 is an evolutionarily conserved female sex gene, which is specifically expressed in the ovary and mainly involved in oogenesis and ovarian function maintenance. However, little is known about the mechanism that regulates Foxl2 specific expression during the ovary development. In the present study, we constructed the gonadal yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) library of Chlamysfarreri with ovaries and testes at different developmental stages using the Gateway technology. The library capacity was more than 1.36 × 107 CFU, and the length of the inserted fragment was 0.75 Kb~2 Kb, which fully met the demand of yeast library screening. The highly transcriptional activity promoter sequence of C. farreri Foxl2 (Cf-Foxl2) was determined at -1000~-616 bp by dual-luciferase reporter (DLR) assay and was used as bait to screen possible transcription factors from the Y1H library. Eleven candidate factors, including five unannotated factors, were selected based on Y1H as well as their expressional differences between ovaries and testes and were verified for the first time to be involved in the transcriptional regulation of Cf-Foxl2 by RT-qPCR and DLR. Our findings provided valuable data for further studying the specific regulation mechanism of Foxl2 in the ovary.

Engineering Mn atomic sites in multi-dimensional nitrogen-doped carbon for highly efficient oxygen reduction reaction.

Nitrogen-coordinated single-atom manganese in multi-dimensional nitrogen-doped carbon electrocatalysts (Mn-NC) were successfully constructed by combining two-dimensional nanosheets and one-dimensional nanofibers. The Mn-NC exhibited excellent oxygen reduction reaction catalytic activity with a half-wave potential of 0.88 V, which is higher than the 0.85 V of Pt/C.

SOX2 participates in spermatogenesis of Zhikong scallop Chlamys farreri.

As an important transcription factor, SOX2 involves in embryogenesis, maintenance of stem cells and proliferation of primordial germ cell (PGC). However, little was known about its function in mature gonads. Herein, we investigated the SOX2 gene profiles in testis of scallop, Chlamys farreri. The level of C. farreri SOX2 (Cf-SOX2) mRNA increased gradually along with gonadal development and reached the peak at mature stage, and was located in all germ cells, including spermatogonia, spermatocytes, spermatids and spermatozoa. Knockdown of Cf-SOX2 using RNAi leaded to a mass of germ cells lost, and only a few spermatogonia retained in the nearly empty testicular acini after 21 days. TUNEL assay showed that apoptosis occurred in spermatocytes. Furthermore, transcriptome profiles of the testes were compared between Cf-SOX2 knockdown and normal scallops, 131,340 unigenes were obtained and 2,067 differential expression genes (DEGs) were identified. GO and KEGG analysis showed that most DEGs were related to cell apoptosis (casp2, casp3, casp8), cell proliferation (samd9, crebzf, iqsec1) and spermatogenesis (htt, tusc3, zmynd10, nipbl, mfge8), and enriched in p53, TNF and apoptosis pathways. Our study revealed Cf-SOX2 is essential in spermatogenesis and testis development of C. farreri and provided important clues for better understanding of SOX2 regulatory mechanisms in bivalve testis.

Spatial and Seasonal Dynamics of Ship Emissions over the Yangtze River Delta and East China Sea and Their Potential Environmental Influence.

The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) port cluster is one of five major port clusters in China and is home to Shanghai port, the largest port worldwide. In this study, an automatic identification system-based model was built to estimate the ship exhaust emissions in the YRD and the East China Sea within 400 km of the coastline. In 2010, the total emissions of SO2, NOX, and PM2.5 were 3.8 × 10(5) tonnes/yr, 7.1 × 10(5) tonnes/yr, and 5.1 × 10(4) tonnes/yr, respectively. More than 60% and 85% of the ship emissions occurred within 100 km and 200 km of the coastline, respectively. Ship emissions also showed distinct seasonal variability. The emission of SO2 and NOX by ships in hot spots, such as ports and vessel traffic hubs was much higher than that on land, with maximum SO2 and NOX intensities from ships that were 36 times and 17 times greater, respectively, than the maximal land-based emissions. The potential impact of ship emissions at six hot spots on the surrounding atmospheric environment was estimated with the HYSPLIT model. Our study demonstrated that ship emissions have an important impact on both the entire YRD region and on greater East China.

Quantitative analysis of the neonicotinoid insecticides imidacloprid and thiamethoxam in fruit juices by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays.

Rapid and sensitive ELISAs have been applied to analyze imidacloprid and thiamethoxam residues in apple, grape, orange, and peach juices after simple dilution of the samples without any extraction and cleanup. The matrix interference of the fruit juices was eliminated after 100-fold dilution, and the ELISAs gave method LODs of imidacloprid and thiamethoxam in fruit juices down to 20 and 5 ng/g, respectively. Average recoveries of imidacloprid and thiamethoxam from the spiked fruit juices were in the range of 92-115% and 87-118%, respectively. The CVs of the recoveries ranged from 3 to 19% and from 6 to 19% for imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, respectively. The ELISA results were comparable to those obtained by a reference HPLC/MS method using pesticide-spiked samples, with reasonable correlation coefficients between 0.89 and 0.93 and regression coefficients (slopes) between 0.75 and 0.94.

Application of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for quantification of the insecticides imidacloprid and thiamethoxam in honey samples.

An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used for the determination of residues of imidacloprid and thiamethoxam insecticides in honey after simple dilution of the samples without either extraction or cleanup. The ELISA enabled accurate determination of imidacloprid and thiamethoxam down to limits of 20 and 5 ng g(-1) in honey, respectively. Average recoveries of imidacloprid and thiamethoxam from the fortified honey samples were 90-120 and 96-122%, and coefficients of variation ranged 5-12 and 3-15%, respectively. The results from the ELISA agreed well with those by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) for the insecticide-spiked samples, with a correlation coefficient (r(2)) of 0.96 and a regression coefficient (slope) of 1.03. The results indicate that ELISA is a suitable tool for the quantification of imidacloprid and thiamethoxam in honey.