Vascular endothelial glycocalyx shedding in ventilator-induced lung injury in rats.

Endothelial permeability deterioration is involved in ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI). The integrality of vascular endothelial glycocalyx (EG) is closely associated with endothelial permeability. The hypothesis was that vascular EG shedding participates in VILI through promoting endothelial permeability. In the present study, male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were ventilated with high tidal volume (VT =40 ml/kg) or low tidal volume (VT =8 ml/kg) to investigate the effects of different tidal volume and ventilation durations on EG in vivo. We report disruption of EG during the period of high tidal volume ventilation characterized by increased glycocalyx structural components (such as syndecan-1, heparan sulfate, hyaluronan) in the plasma and decreased the expression of syndecan-1 in the lung tissues. Mechanistically, the disruption of EG was associated with increased proinflammatory cytokines and matrix metalloproteinase in the lung tissues. Collectively, these results demonstrate that the degradation of EG is involved in the occurrence and development of VILI in rats, and the inflammatory mechanism mediated by activation of the NF-κB signaling pathway may be partly responsible for the degradation of EG in VILI in rats. This study enhances our understanding of the pathophysiological processes underlying VILI, shedding light on potential therapeutic targets to mitigate VILI.

Long amplicon HiFi sequencing for mitochondrial DNA genomes.

Long-read sequencing technology is a powerful approach with application in various genetic and genomic research. Herein, we developed the pipeline for long amplicon high-fidelity (HiFi) sequencing and then applied it for sequencing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes from pools of 79 Tibetan Mastiffs. We amplified the mtDNA genome with long-range PCR using two pairs of primers. Two rounds of circular consensus sequencing (CCS) were conducted and their accuracy was evaluated. The results indicate that the second round of CCS can improve the accuracy of HiFi reads. In addition, the analysis of 79 high-quality mtDNA genomes shows the Tibetan Mastiffs from outside of the Tibetan Plateau experienced hybridization with other dogs. The high quality reads generator (HQGR) software is provided to facilitate data analyses, which is publicly accessible on GitHub (https://github.com/Caizf-script/HQGR). Our long amplicon HiFi sequencing pipeline can also be applied in various target enrichment strategies for small genomes and candidate genes.