Comparative analysis of sipeimine content, metabolome and chloroplast genome in cultivated and wild varieties of Fritillaria taipaiensis.

BACKGROUND: The wild variety Fritillaria taipaiensis E.B (EB) is known for its superior therapeutic effects, but its limited production cannot meet demand. As a result, the cultivated variety F. taipaiensis P. Y. Li (PY) has been widely grown. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive analysis comparing EB and PY in terms of external features, sipeimine content, metabolome and chloroplast genome to differentiate these two varieties. RESULTS: Our research revealed that the petals and pods of EB are green, while those of PY have purple markings. The bulbs of EB contain significantly higher levels of sipeimine compared to those of PY. Metabolomic analysis identified 56 differentially expressed metabolites (DMs), with 23 upregulated and 33 downregulated in EB bulbs. Particularly, 3-hydroxycinnamic acid and secoxyloganin may serve as distinctive DMs. These DMs were associated with 17 KEGG pathways, including pyrimidine metabolism, alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism, and galactose metabolism. Differences in the length of the chloroplast genome were primarily observed in the large single-copy (LSC) region, with the largest variation in the trnH-GUC-psbA region. The placement of the trnH gene and the rps gene in proximity to the LSC/IRb boundary differs between EB and PY. CONCLUSION: The results of this study provide valuable insights for the introduction and comprehensive development of wild F. taipaiensis from a scientific perspective. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.

Nitrogen Fertilizers Affect Microbial Hitchhiking to the Plant Roots.

The phenomenon of microbial hitchhiking, where nonmotile microbes utilize transspecies motility to navigate within their environment, has been observed. However, the underlying factors driving microbial hitchhiking remain unclear. Our study explored how nitrogen fertilizers affect microbial hitchhiking in soil through an in situ planting experiment. We established twelve treatments encompassing the presence and absence of plants, the presence and absence of a filter membrane that is used to prevent hitchhiking, and three nitrogen levels. Results showed that nitrogen influenced bacterial diversity in all soils, an effect thwarted by filter membranes. In the presence of plants, nitrogen significantly affected the bacterial mobility, Bacillus abundance, and plant biomass, but these effects vanished when filters were used. The correlation between motile Bacillus and rhizosphere bacteria was strong without filters at the proper nitrogen levels but weakened with membrane treatments. Thus, plants and nitrogen together, not nitrogen alone, alter the soil microbiome via hitchhiking.

Evaluation of new robust silk fibroin hydrogels for posterior scleral reinforcement in rabbits.

Background: Currently, there is no ideal material available for posterior scleral reinforcement (PSR) to prevent the progression of high myopia. In this study, we investigated robust regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) hydrogels as potential grafts for PSR in animal experiments to evaluate their safety and biological reactions. Methods: PSR surgery was performed on the right eye of twenty-eight adult New Zealand white rabbits, with the left eye serving as a self-control. Ten rabbits were observed for 3 months, while 18 rabbits were observed for 6 months. The rabbits were evaluated using intraocular pressure (IOP), anterior segment and fundus photography, A- and B-ultrasound, optical coherence tomography (OCT), histology, and biomechanical tests. Results: No complications such as significant IOP fluctuation, anterior chamber inflammation, vitreous opacity, retinal lesion, infection, or material exposure were observed. Furthermore, no evidence of pathological changes in the optic nerve and retina, or structural abnormalities on OCT, were found. The RSF grafts were appropriately located at the posterior sclera and enclosed in fibrous capsules. The scleral thickness and collagen fiber content of the treated eyes increased after surgery. The ultimate stress of the reinforced sclera increased by 30.7%, and the elastic modulus increased by 33.0% compared to those of the control eyes at 6 months after surgery. Conclusion: Robust RSF hydrogels exhibited good biocompatibility and promoted the formation of fibrous capsules at the posterior sclera in vivo. The biomechanical properties of the reinforced sclera were strengthened. These findings suggest that RSF hydrogel is a potential material for PSR.

A Bio-Inspired Decision-Making Method of UAV Swarm for Attack-Defense Confrontation via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning.

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm is regarded as having a significant role in modern warfare. The demand for UAV swarms with the capability of attack-defense confrontation is urgent. The existing decision-making methods of UAV swarm confrontation, such as multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), suffer from an exponential increase in training time as the size of the swarm increases. Inspired by group hunting behavior in nature, this paper presents a new bio-inspired decision-making method for UAV swarms for attack-defense confrontation via MARL. Firstly, a UAV swarm decision-making framework for confrontation based on grouping mechanisms is established. Secondly, a bio-inspired action space is designed, and a dense reward is added to the reward function to accelerate the convergence speed of training. Finally, numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of our method. The experiment results show that the proposed method can be applied to a swarm of 12 UAVs, and when the maximum acceleration of the enemy UAV is within 2.5 times ours, the swarm can well intercept the enemy, and the success rate is above 91%.

MicroRNA-210-3p mediates trabecular meshwork extracellular matrix accumulation and ocular hypertension - Implication for novel glaucoma therapy.

Elevation of intraocular pressure (IOP) is a major, controllable risk factor of primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). Transforming growth factor-ß2 (TGF-ß2)-induced excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) in the trabecular meshwork (TM) has been demonstrated to contribute significantly to the development of high IOP. We previously showed that treatment with salidroside (Sal), a plant-derived glucoside, can ameliorate the TGF-ß2-induced ECM expression in cultured human TM cells and reduce TGF-ß2-induced ocular hypertension in mice. In the current study, its underlying molecular mechanism associated with microRNA-210-3p (miR-210-3p) was characterized. We discovered that, in TM tissues of POAG patients, there was an increase in miR-210-3p. And miR-210-3p mediated a portion of the pathological effects of TGF-ß2 in vitro (excessive accumulation of ECM in cultured human TM cells) and in vivo (mouse ocular hypertension and ECM accumulation in the TM). Most interestingly, miR-210-3p was down-regulated by Sal, which appeared to mediate a significant portion of its IOP-lowering effect. Thus, these results shed light on the probable molecular mechanisms of TGF-ß2 and Sal and indicate that manipulation of miR-210-3p level/activity represents a potential new therapeutic strategy for POAG.

Genetic U-Net: Automatically Designed Deep Networks for Retinal Vessel Segmentation Using a Genetic Algorithm.

Recently, many methods based on hand-designed convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved promising results in automatic retinal vessel segmentation. However, these CNNs remain constrained in capturing retinal vessels in complex fundus images. To improve their segmentation performance, these CNNs tend to have many parameters, which may lead to overfitting and high computational complexity. Moreover, the manual design of competitive CNNs is time-consuming and requires extensive empirical knowledge. Herein, a novel automated design method, called Genetic U-Net, is proposed to generate a U-shaped CNN that can achieve better retinal vessel segmentation but with fewer architecture-based parameters, thereby addressing the above issues. First, we devised a condensed but flexible search space based on a U-shaped encoder-decoder. Then, we used an improved genetic algorithm to identify better-performing architectures in the search space and investigated the possibility of finding a superior network architecture with fewer parameters. The experimental results show that the architecture obtained using the proposed method offered a superior performance with less than 1% of the number of the original U-Net parameters in particular and with significantly fewer parameters than other state-of-the-art models. Furthermore, through in-depth investigation of the experimental results, several effective operations and patterns of networks to generate superior retinal vessel segmentations were identified. The codes of this work are available at https://github.com/96jhwei/Genetic-U-Net.

Osthole Reduces Mouse IOP Associated With Ameliorating Extracellular Matrix Expression of Trabecular Meshwork Cell.

Purpose: Elevation of IOP in POAG is thought to involve excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix in the trabecular meshwork (TM), leading to an increase in outflow resistance of the aqueous humor. Osthole, a coumarin derivative extracted from the fruit of a variety of plants, such as Cnidium monnieri, is reported to prevent profibrotic responses by inhibiting Smad signaling pathway activated by TGF-ß in liver, kidney, and cardiac tissues. We tested if osthole can (1) inhibit TGF-ß2-induced extracellular matrix expression in cultured human TM (HTM) cells, and (2) lower TGF-ß2-induced ocular hypertension in the mouse. Methods: Cultured HTM cells were treated with 5 ng/mL TGF-ß2 for 48 hours, then with osthole for 24 hours. The expressions of fibronectin, collagen type IV, and laminin were assessed by quantitative PCR, Western blot, and immunocytochemistry. BALB/cJ mice were injected intravitreally with an adenoviral vector encoding a bioactive mutant of TGF-ß2 (Ad.hTGF-ß2226/228) in one eye to induce ocular hypertension, with the uninjected contralateral or Ad.Empty-injected eye serving as controls. Mice were then treated with a daily intraperitoneal injection of 30 mg/kg osthole. Conscious mouse IOP values were measured using a TonoLab rebound tonometer. Results: In cultured HTM cells, stimulation with TGF-ß2 increased expressions of fibronectin, collagen IV, and laminin. These in vitro changes were significantly and completely mitigated by osthole (10 µM). Daily intraperitoneal injections of 30 mg/kg osthole, starting either at day 0 (same day as Ad.hTGF-ß2226/228 injection) or at day 14, significantly decreased TGF-ß2-induced ocular hypertension in the mouse. In contrast, osthole did not affect IOP of control eyes. Conclusions: These results demonstrated that osthole is capable of reducing TGF-ß2-induced extracellular matrix expression in cultured HTM cells. It also reduced TGF-ß2-induced ocular hypertension in the mouse. These findings indicate that this natural product may be useful as a novel treatment for POAG.

Automatic Crack Detection on Road Pavements Using Encoder-Decoder Architecture.

Automatic crack detection from images is an important task that is adopted to ensure road safety and durability for Portland cement concrete (PCC) and asphalt concrete (AC) pavement. Pavement failure depends on a number of causes including water intrusion, stress from heavy loads, and all the climate effects. Generally, cracks are the first distress that arises on road surfaces and proper monitoring and maintenance to prevent cracks from spreading or forming is important. Conventional algorithms to identify cracks on road pavements are extremely time-consuming and high cost. Many cracks show complicated topological structures, oil stains, poor continuity, and low contrast, which are difficult for defining crack features. Therefore, the automated crack detection algorithm is a key tool to improve the results. Inspired by the development of deep learning in computer vision and object detection, the proposed algorithm considers an encoder-decoder architecture with hierarchical feature learning and dilated convolution, named U-Hierarchical Dilated Network (U-HDN), to perform crack detection in an end-to-end method. Crack characteristics with multiple context information are automatically able to learn and perform end-to-end crack detection. Then, a multi-dilation module embedded in an encoder-decoder architecture is proposed. The crack features of multiple context sizes can be integrated into the multi-dilation module by dilation convolution with different dilatation rates, which can obtain much more cracks information. Finally, the hierarchical feature learning module is designed to obtain a multi-scale features from the high to low- level convolutional layers, which are integrated to predict pixel-wise crack detection. Some experiments on public crack databases using 118 images were performed and the results were compared with those obtained with other methods on the same images. The results show that the proposed U-HDN method achieves high performance because it can extract and fuse different context sizes and different levels of feature maps than other algorithms.

Effect of astragaloside IV on cognitive dysfunction in rats with cerebrally infarcted via TGF-ß / Smad signaling pathway.

Cerebral infarction is an acute cerebrovascular disease caused by abnormal blood circulation in the brain. In the present study, we investigate the effect of astragaloside IV on cognitive dysfunction in cerebrally infarcted rats via transforming growth factor-ß (TGF-ß) / Smad signaling pathway. For this purpose, 45 rats were divided into three groups including astragaloside, model, and control. 30 of 45 healthy adult male SD rats were randomly selected to establish an acute cerebral infarction model. 15 modeled rats were enrolled as a model and astragaloside group, and another 15 rats as a blank control group. The rats in the astragaloside group were fed with astragaloside IV according to 1.08 g/kg body weight, and those in the blank group and model group were given matching normal saline. The levels of TGF-ß, Smad1, Smad3 and Smad7 of TGF-ß/Smad signaling transduction pathway at T0 (week 0), T1 (week 3) and T2 (week 6) were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The modified neurological severity score (mNSS) was used to evaluate the improvement of cognitive dysfunction in rats. The mNSS of rats with cerebral infarction in the astragaloside group was lower than that in the control group and model group (P< 0.05). While the levels of TGF-ß, Smad1, Smad3 and Smad7 in the astragaloside group were higher than those in the control group and model group (P< 0.05). Astragaloside IV plays an important role in improving cognitive dysfunction in rats with cerebral infarction while affecting the levels of TGF-ß, Smad1, Smad3 and Smad7 and activating TGF-ß / Smad signaling pathway.

Aqueous humor levels of TGFß2 and SFRP1 in different types of glaucoma.

BACKGROUND: To assess bioactive transforming growth factor-ß2 (TGFß2) and secreted frizzled-related protein-1 (SFRP1) levels in aqueous humor (AH) of different types of glaucoma. METHODS: AH samples were obtained immediately before ophthalmic surgery with a 27-gauge needle attached to a microsyringe from 126 eyes (105 patients) divided into five groups: cataract (control), primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), chronic angle-closure glaucoma (CACG), primary angle-closure suspects (PACS), and acute angle-closure glaucoma (AACG). Bioactive TGFß2 and SFRP1 levels were assayed by ELISA. RESULTS: The concentration of TGFß2 in AH of POAG patients, but not CACG, PACS, or AACG patients, was significantly higher than control eyes. However, within the AACG group, although the TGFß2 levels in AH did not differ significantly from the control level when all AACG patients were grouped together, there were differences when the AACG patients were divided into high and normal intraocular pressure (IOP); TGFß2 of AACG patients with high IOP (> 21 mmHg) was significantly higher than those with normal IOP. AH levels of SFRP1 were not significantly different among the groups. However, a statistical significant, negative correlation between SFRP1 and IOP existed in the POAG group. POAG patients with high IOP had lower levels of SFRP1 than those with normal IOP. In contrast, a significant, positive correlation between SFRP1 level and IOP was detected in the AACG group. AACG patients with high IOP had a higher level of SFRP1 than those with normal IOP. Concentrations of TGFß2 and SFRP1 did not correlate significantly with each other, or with age. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that AH levels of TGFß2 and SFRP1 showed different profiles in different types of glaucomas.

Effects of Salidroside on Trabecular Meshwork Cell Extracellular Matrix Expression and Mouse Intraocular Pressure.

Purpose: Excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) in the trabecular meshwork (TM) reduces aqueous humor outflow, which likely contributes to elevation of IOP in primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). Salidroside, a phenolic glycoside isolated from Rhodiola rosea is reported to prevent profibrotic responses by inhibiting Smad signaling pathway activated by TGF-ß in liver, lung, and kidney tissues. We tested if salidroside can (1) inhibit TGF-ß2-induced ECM expression in cultured human TM cells, and (2) lower TGF-ß2-induced ocular hypertension in the mouse. Methods: Cultured human TM cells stimulated with 5 ng/mL TGF-ß2 for 48 hours were treated with salidroside for 24 hours. The expressions of fibronectin (FN), collagen type IV (COL-IV), and laminin (LN) were evaluated by quantitative PCR, Western blot, and immunocytochemistry. BALB/cJ mice were injected intravitreally with an adenoviral vector encoding a bioactive mutant of TGF-ß2 (Ad.hTGF-ß2226/228) in one eye to induce ocular hypertension, with the uninjected contralateral or Ad.Empty-injected eyes serving as controls. Mice were treated with a daily intraperitoneal injection of 40 mg/kg salidroside. Conscious mouse IOP values were measured using a TonoLab rebound tonometer. Results: In cultured human TM cells, treatment with TGF-ß2 increased expressions of FN, COL-IV, and LN, as assessed by quantitative PCR, Western blotting, and immunocytochemistry, all of which were significantly and completely ameliorated by 30 µM salidroside. Daily intraperitoneal injections of salidroside (40 mg/kg), starting either at day 0 (same day as Ad.hTGF-ß2226/228 injection) or at day 14, significantly lowered TGF-ß2-induced ocular hypertension in the mouse. In contrast, salidroside did not affect IOP of control eyes. Conclusions: These results demonstrated that salidroside is capable of minimizing TGF-ß2-induced ECM expression in cultured human TM cells. It also reduced TGF-ß2-induced ocular hypertension in the mouse. These findings indicate that this phenolic glycoside may be useful as a novel treatment for POAG.

Online Condition Monitoring of a Rail Fastening System on High-Speed Railways Based on Wavelet Packet Analysis.

The rail fastening system is an important part of a high-speed railway track. It is always critical to the operational safety and comfort of railway vehicles. Therefore, the condition detection of the rail fastening system, looseness or absence, is an important task in railway maintenance. However, the vision-based method cannot identify the severity of rail fastener looseness. In this paper, the condition of rail fastening system is monitored based on an automatic and remote-sensing measurement system. Meanwhile, wavelet packet analysis is used to analyze the acceleration signals, based on which two damage indices are developed to locate the damage position and evaluate the severity of rail fasteners looseness, respectively. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an experiment is performed on a high-speed railway experimental platform. The experimental results show that the proposed method is effective to assess the condition of the rail fastening system. The monitoring system significantly reduces the inspection time and increases the efficiency of maintenance management.