Cistadesertosides B-E, Four New Diastereomeric Lignan Glycosides from the Stems of Cultural Cistanche deserticola in Tarim Desert.

Four previously undescribed diastereomeric lignan glycosides, namely cistadesertosides B-E (1-4) were isolated from the stems of cultural Cistanche deserticola in Tarim desert. The structures of these compounds were elucidated on the basis of extensive spectroscopic analyses, including IR, HR-ESI-MS, 1D and 2D NMR, circular dichroism (CD) data and chemical degradation. The in vitro anti-inflammatory activity of the isolates was also investigated. It showed that compounds 3 and 4 exhibited potential effects with IC50 values of 21.17 µM and 26.97 µM, respectively (positive control quercetin, IC50 , 10.01 µM).

Niche shifts and range expansions after invasions of two major pests: the Asian longhorned beetle and the citrus longhorned beetle.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, the quarantine forestry pests the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) Anoplophora glabripennis and the citrus longhorned beetle (CLB) Anoplophora chinensis have spread across the Northern Hemisphere, triggering concern about their potential distribution. However, little is known about the niche shifts of the pests during the invasion, making it difficult to assess their potential ranges. We thus employed two distinct approaches (i.e., ordination-based and reciprocal model-based) to compare the native and invaded niches of ALB and CLB after their spread to new continents based on global occurrence records. We further constructed models with pooled occurrences from both the native and invaded ranges to analyze the effects of occurrence partitioning on predicted ranges. RESULTS: We detected expansions in the invaded niches of both pests, indicating that the niches shifted to varying extents after the invasion. Large shares of the native niches of ALB and CLB remained unfilled, revealing the potential for further invasion in new regions. The models calibrated with pooled occurrences clearly underestimated the potential ranges in invaded regions compared with the projections based on partitioned models considering native and invaded areas separately. CONCLUSIONS: These results emphasize the importance of elucidating the niche dynamics of invasive species for obtaining accurately predicted ranges, which may help identify risk areas masked by the assumption of niche conservatism. Furthermore, prevention and quarantine measures for ALB and CLB are clearly needed to avoid future serious damage to forest ecosystems. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

De novo synthesis of nervonic acid and optimization of metabolic regulation by Yarrowia lipolytica.

Nervonic acid, a natural fatty acid compound and also a core component of nerve fibers and nerve cells, has been widely used to prevent and treat related diseases of the brain nervous system. At present, fatty acids and their derivatives are mainly obtained by natural extraction or chemical synthesis which are limited by natural resources and production costs. In this study, the de novo synthetic pathway of nervonic acid was constructed in Yarrowia lipolytica by means of synthetic biology, and the yield of nervonic acid was further improved by metabolic engineering and fermentation optimization. Specially, heterologous elongases and desaturases derived from different organism were successfully expressed and evaluated for their potential for the production of nervonic acid in Y. lipolytica. Meanwhile, we overexpressed the genes involved in the lipid metabolism to increase the nervonic acid titer to 111.6 mg/L. In addition, the potential of adding oil as auxiliary carbon sources for nervonic acid production by the engineered Y. lipolytica was analyzed. The results indicated that supplementation with colleseed oil as an auxiliary carbon source can be beneficial for the nervonic acid productivity, which led to the highest concentration of 185.0 mg/L in this work. To summarize, this study describes that the Y. lipolytica can be used as a promising platform for the production of nervonic acid and other very long-chain fatty acids.

An Efficient and Simple Method for Collecting Haemolymph of Cerambycidae (Insecta: Coleoptera) Adults.

Cerambycid beetles (Cerambycidae) are major forest pests, posing a serious threat to the security of forest resources worldwide. Extensive research has focused on the control of cerambycid beetles from physiological and biochemical perspectives. Despite the important roles of insect haemolymph in physiological processes, efficient collection methods for Cerambycidae are lacking. For the efficient and easy collection of large amounts of pure haemolymph from adult cerambycid beetles, a new method, named net centrifugation, was developed. Three species of cerambycid beetles with large differences in size, Anoplophora chinensis, Monochamus saltuarius and Saperda populnea, were selected for the study. Haemolymph was collected by the newly developed net centrifugation method-in which an inner nylon net is used during centrifugation under optimised conditions, and a relatively small wound is generated on the insect-as well as the traditional tearing method and double centrifugation method. Among the three methods evaluated, the net centrifugation method caused the least damage to cerambycid beetles during the whole operation. This method resulted in the most haemolymph from a single beetle, with the lowest turbidity, mostly pure haemocytes in the precipitate, the clearest haemolymph smears by microscopy and the highest quality of RNA extracted from haemocytes. The net centrifugation method has a high collection efficiency, providing important technical support for haemolymph extraction and entomological research.

Yarrowia lipolytica as a Metabolic Engineering Platform for the Production of Very-Long-Chain Wax Esters.

The oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica is an attractive cell factory platform strain and can be used for sustainable production of high-value oleochemical products. Wax esters (WEs) have a good lubricating property and are usually used as a base for the production of advanced lubricants and emollient oils. In this study, we reported the metabolic engineering of Y. lipolytica to heterologously biosynthesize high-content very-long-chain fatty acids (VLCFAs) and fatty alcohols and efficiently esterify them to obtain very-long-chain WEs. Co-expression of fatty acid elongases from different sources in Y. lipolytica could yield VLCFAs with carbon chain lengths up to 24. Combining with optimization of the central metabolic modules could further enhance the biosynthesis of VLCFAs. Furthermore, through the screening of heterologous fatty acyl reductases (FARs), we enabled high-level production of fatty alcohols. Genomic integration and heterologous expression of wax synthase (WS) and FAR in a VLCFA-producing Y. lipolytica strain yielded 95-650 mg/L WEs with carbon chain lengths from 32 to 44. Scaled-up fermentation in 5 L laboratory bioreactors significantly increased the production of WEs to 2.0 g/L, the highest content so far in yeasts. This study contributes to the further efficient biosynthesis of VLCFAs and their derivatives.

Remodeling gut microbiota by Clostridium butyricum (C.butyricum) attenuates intestinal injury in burned mice.

BACKGROUND: The dysbiosis of gastrointestinal microbiome is an important reason for burn-induced intestinal injury. Clostridium butyricum (C.butyricum) and its production butyrate are beneficial for the homeostasis of intestinal microflora and suppression of inflammatory response. PURPOSE: The roles of C.butyricum and butyrate in burn-induced intestinal injury were explored. The effects of oral administration of C.butyricum on intestinal injury were observed in burned mice. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The skin surface of mice was exposed to 95 °C water to induce a burn injury. Then the intestinal microbiome structure, abundance of C.butyricum and level of butyrate were respectively observed. The correction between intestinal permeability indicated by FITC dextran level and abundance of C.butyricum or level of butyrate was analyzed. C.butyricum was cultured and orally administrated to burned mice. The levels of butyrate, FITC dextran and pro-inflammatory cytokines, including interleukin 6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) were respectively measured. RESULTS: Burn injury altered the intestinal microbiome structure of mice, and especially decreased the abundance of C.butyricum and level of butyrate. Both the abundance of C.butyricum and the level of butyrate were negatively correlated with the intestinal permeability. Oral administration of C.butyricum increased the level of butyrate, decreased levels of TNF-α and IL-6, and suppressed intestinal damage in burn-injured mice. CONCLUSION: Oral administration of C.butyricum significantly alleviated the intestinal damage induced by burn injury. The therapeutic effects of C.butyricum and butyrate on burn injury should be further explored, which deserves further investigation.

Overproduction of Fatty Acid Ethyl Esters by the Oleaginous Yeast Yarrowia lipolytica through Metabolic Engineering and Process Optimization.

Recent advances in the production of biofuels by microbes have attracted attention due to increasingly limited fossil fuels. Biodiesels, especially fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs), are considered a potentially fully sustainable fuel in the near future due to similarities with petrodiesels and compatibility with existing infrastructure. However, biosynthesis of FAEEs is limited by the supply of precursor lipids and acetyl-CoA. In the present study, we explored the production potential of an engineered biosynthetic pathway coupled to the addition of ethanol in the oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica. This type of yeast is able to supply a greater amount of precursor lipids than species typically used. To construct the FAEEs synthesis pathway, WS genes that encode wax ester synthases (WSs) from different species were codon-optimized and heterologously expressed in Y. lipolytica. The most productive engineered strain was found to express a WS gene from Marinobacter hydrocarbonoclasticus strain DSM 8798. To stepwisely increase FAEEs production, we optimized the promoter of WS overexpression, eliminated ß-oxidation by deleting the PEX10 gene in our engineered strains, and redirected metabolic flux toward acetyl-CoA. The new engineered strain, coupled with an optimized ethanol concentration, led to an approximate 5.5-fold increase in extracellular FAEEs levels compared to the wild-type strain and a maximum FAEEs titer of 1.18 g/L in shake flask cultures. In summary, the present study demonstrated that an engineered Y. lipolytica strain possessed a high capacity for FAEEs production and may serve as a platform for more efficient biodiesel production in the future.

Reconstructing spatial organizations of chromosomes through manifold learning.

Decoding the spatial organizations of chromosomes has crucial implications for studying eukaryotic gene regulation. Recently, chromosomal conformation capture based technologies, such as Hi-C, have been widely used to uncover the interaction frequencies of genomic loci in a high-throughput and genome-wide manner and provide new insights into the folding of three-dimensional (3D) genome structure. In this paper, we develop a novel manifold learning based framework, called GEM (Genomic organization reconstructor based on conformational Energy and Manifold learning), to reconstruct the three-dimensional organizations of chromosomes by integrating Hi-C data with biophysical feasibility. Unlike previous methods, which explicitly assume specific relationships between Hi-C interaction frequencies and spatial distances, our model directly embeds the neighboring affinities from Hi-C space into 3D Euclidean space. Extensive validations demonstrated that GEM not only greatly outperformed other state-of-art modeling methods but also provided a physically and physiologically valid 3D representations of the organizations of chromosomes. Furthermore, we for the first time apply the modeled chromatin structures to recover long-range genomic interactions missing from original Hi-C data.

A network integration approach for drug-target interaction prediction and computational drug repositioning from heterogeneous information.

The emergence of large-scale genomic, chemical and pharmacological data provides new opportunities for drug discovery and repositioning. In this work, we develop a computational pipeline, called DTINet, to predict novel drug-target interactions from a constructed heterogeneous network, which integrates diverse drug-related information. DTINet focuses on learning a low-dimensional vector representation of features, which accurately explains the topological properties of individual nodes in the heterogeneous network, and then makes prediction based on these representations via a vector space projection scheme. DTINet achieves substantial performance improvement over other state-of-the-art methods for drug-target interaction prediction. Moreover, we experimentally validate the novel interactions between three drugs and the cyclooxygenase proteins predicted by DTINet, and demonstrate the new potential applications of these identified cyclooxygenase inhibitors in preventing inflammatory diseases. These results indicate that DTINet can provide a practically useful tool for integrating heterogeneous information to predict new drug-target interactions and repurpose existing drugs.Network-based data integration for drug-target prediction is a promising avenue for drug repositioning, but performance is wanting. Here, the authors introduce DTINet, whose performance is enhanced in the face of noisy, incomplete and high-dimensional biological data by learning low-dimensional vector representations.

Visual tracking based on extreme learning machine and sparse representation.

The existing sparse representation-based visual trackers mostly suffer from both being time consuming and having poor robustness problems. To address these issues, a novel tracking method is presented via combining sparse representation and an emerging learning technique, namely extreme learning machine (ELM). Specifically, visual tracking can be divided into two consecutive processes. Firstly, ELM is utilized to find the optimal separate hyperplane between the target observations and background ones. Thus, the trained ELM classification function is able to remove most of the candidate samples related to background contents efficiently, thereby reducing the total computational cost of the following sparse representation. Secondly, to further combine ELM and sparse representation, the resultant confidence values (i.e., probabilities to be a target) of samples on the ELM classification function are used to construct a new manifold learning constraint term of the sparse representation framework, which tends to achieve robuster results. Moreover, the accelerated proximal gradient method is used for deriving the optimal solution (in matrix form) of the constrained sparse tracking model. Additionally, the matrix form solution allows the candidate samples to be calculated in parallel, thereby leading to a higher efficiency. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed tracker.

Assessing the suitability of 8-OHdG and micronuclei as genotoxic biomarkers in chromate-exposed workers: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to investigate suitable conditions of 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) and micronucleus (MN) as genotoxic biomarkers at different levels of occupational chromate exposure. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study was used. PARTICIPANTS: 84 workers who were exposed to chromate for at least 1 year were chosen as the chromate exposed group, while 30 non-exposed individuals were used as controls. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Environmental and biological exposure to chromate was respectively assessed by measuring the concentration of chromate in the air (CrA) and blood (CrB) by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) in all participants. MN indicators, including micronucleus cell count (MNCC), micro-nucleus count (MNC), nuclear bridge (NPB) and nuclear bud (NBUD) were calculated by the cytokinesis-block micronucleus test (CBMN), while the urinary 8-OHdG was measured by the ELISA method and normalised by the concentration of Cre. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, the levels of CrA, CrB, MNCC, MNC and 8-OHdG in the chromate-exposed group were all significantly higher (p<0.05). There were positive correlations between log(8-OHdG) and LnMNCC or LnMNC (r=0.377 and 0.362). The levels of LnMNCC, LnMNC and log (8-OHdG) all have parabola correlations with the concentration of CrB. However, there was a significantly positive correlation between log (8-OHdG) and CrB when the CrB level was below 10.50 µg/L (r=0.355), while a positive correlation was also found between LnMNCC or LnMNC and CrB when the CrB level was lower than 9.10 µg/L (r=0.365 and 0.269, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: MN and 8-OHdG can be used as genotoxic biomarkers in the chromate-exposed group, but it is only when CrB levels are lower than 9.10 and 10.50 µg/L, respectively, that they can accurately reflect the degree of genetic damage.

[Comparison of genetic damage in mice exposed to black carbon and ozone-oxidized black carbon].

OBJECTIVE: To make an assessment on the genotoxicity caused by black carbon (BC) and ozonized black carbon (O3-BC). METHODS: In this study, 74 healthy male ICR mice [weighed (28 ± 1.5) g] were randomly divided into 7 groups, including one phosphate buffer solution (PBS) control group and six particles exposed groups by intratracheal instillation with either BC or O3-BC at the doses of 50, 100, 200 µg/mouse, respectively. There were 12 mice in the groups of 200 µg/mouse and 10 mice in others. The mice were sacrificed 24 h after four intratrachealinstillations. The activities of catalase (CAT) in serum and the levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) in lung tissue homogenate were measured. As the DNA damage mark, 8-hydroxyguanosine (8-OHdG) in urine and serum were quantified with ELISA method. Micronucleus test was used for potential genotoxicity of BC and O3-BC. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was used to stain lung paraffin section. RESULTS: The mice were in good condition during instillation, and the liver coefficient of the test groups was significantly lower than that of the control group (P<0.05). The activities of CAT in serum significantly increased in the 100 µg/mouse and 200 µg/mouse groups after being exposed to these two kinds of particles. The micronucleus rate in allthe BC and O3-BC exposed groups increased (P<0.05), but there was no statistically significant difference among the groups in the levels of 8-OHdG in serum and urine and MDA in lung tissue homogenate. Inflammatory response was found in the lung tissue under the microscope after exposure to BC and O3-BC. CONCLUSION: Intratracheal instillation of BC and O3-BC induced increasing of oxidative stress and genetic damage in mice. But there was no significant difference between these two particles in toxicity. Whether the genotoxicity of O3-BC is higher than that of BC or not is uncertain. Further research is needed.

Genotoxic evaluation of titanium dioxide nanoparticles in vivo and in vitro.

With the extensive application of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles (NPs) in food industry, there is a rising debate concerning the possible risk associated with exposure to TiO2 NPs. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the genotoxicity of TiO2 NPs using in vivo and in vitro test systems. In vivo study, the adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to anatase TiO2 NPs (75 ± 15 nm) through intragastric administration at 0, 10, 50 and 200mg/kg body weight every day for 30 days. The γ-H2AX assay showed TiO2 NPs could induce DNA double strand breaks in bone marrow cells after oral administration. However, the micronucleus test revealed that the oral-exposed TiO2 NPs did not cause damage to chromosomes or mitotic apparatus observably in rat bone marrow cells. In vitro study, Chinese hamster lung fibroblasts (V79 cells) were exposed to TiO2 NPs at the dose of 0, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 µg/mL. Significant decreases in cell viability were detected in all the treated groups after 24h and 48h exposure. Significant DNA damage was only observed at the concentration of 100 µg/mL after 24h treatment using the comet assay. The obvious gene mutation was observed at the concentration of 20 and 100 µg/mL after 2h treatment using hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl transferase (HPRT) gene mutation assay. This study presented a comprehensive genotoxic evaluation of TiO2 NPs, and TiO2 NPs were shown to be genotoxic both in vivo and in vitro tests. The gene mutation and DNA strand breaks seem to be more sensitive genetic endpoints for the detection of TiO2 NPs induced genotoxic effects.

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition involved in pulmonary fibrosis induced by multi-walled carbon nanotubes via TGF-beta/Smad signaling pathway.

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) are a typical nanomaterial with a wide spectrum of commercial applications. Inhalation exposure to MWCNT has been linked with lung fibrosis and mesothelioma-like lesions commonly seen with asbestos. In this study, we examined the pulmonary fibrosis response to different length of MWCNT including short MWCNT (S-MWCNT, length=350-700nm) and long MWCNT (L-MWCNT, length=5-15µm) and investigated whether the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) occurred during MWCNT-induced pulmonary fibrosis. C57Bl/6J male mice were intratracheally instilled with S-MWCNT or L-WCNT by a single dose of 60µg per mouse, and the progress of pulmonary fibrosis was evaluated at 7, 28 and 56 days post-exposure. The in vivo data showed that only L-MWCNT increased collagen deposition and pulmonary fibrosis significantly, and approximately 20% of pro-surfactant protein-C positive epithelial cells transdifferentiated to fibroblasts at 56 days, suggesting the occurrence of EMT. In order to understand the mechanism, we used human pulmonary epithelial cell line A549 to investigate the role of TGF-ß/p-Smad2 signaling pathway in EMT. Our results showed that L-MWCNT downregulated E-cadherin and upregulated α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) protein expression in A549 cells. Taken together, both in vivo and in vitro study demonstrated that respiratory exposure to MWCNT induced length dependent pulmonary fibrosis and epithelial-derived fibroblasts via TGF-ß/Smad pathway.

[Evidence-based study of chromate exposed workers' health surveillance indexes].

OBJECTIVE: The health surveillance proposal for chromate exposed workers was provided and analyzed on the evidence-based study and then to be improved. METHOD: Firstly, the related literatures were searched about liver damage, micronuclei, urinary chromium and hexavalent chromium exposure in Evidence Based Medicine Reviews such as Cochran library, OVID Medline, Web of knowledge in December 2011; and then, these literatures were reviewed in according to inclusion and exclusion criteria; 22 articles totally were retrieved, evaluated and classified in according to the grading standard by Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine.Finally, field epidemiological investigation was further adopted to confirm the efficiency and feasibility of this proposal, combined with cost-effectiveness analysis:the ratio of total cost divided survival years was used to express the cost-effectiveness. RESULT: Only the glutamic pyruvic transaminase test could not reflect liver damage caused by chromate exposure well; Urinary chromium correlated well with the index reflecting body damage caused by chromate exposure; Binucleated cells micronucleus index in peripheral blood lymphocyte could reflect the genetic damage caused by chromate exposure. As for health economic evaluation of chromate lung cancer, the value of cost/effectiveness was ¥42 321.61 per year that was far below the value of common people (¥252 868.97 per year) . CONCLUSION: It was suggested that serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase test should be replaced by liver function test, urinary chromium should be classified as a compulsory index and binucleated cells micronucleus index in peripheral blood lymphocyte should be supplied as a recommended index.

Decreased histone H2B monoubiquitination in malignant gastric carcinoma.

AIM: To investigate H2B monoubiquitination (uH2B) and H3K4 di- and tri-methylation (H3K4-2me, H3K4-3me) levels and their clinical significance in gastric cancer (GC). METHODS: Immunohistochemistry (IGC) was used to detect the differential levels of uH2B, H3K4-2me and H3K4-3me modifications in GC specimens from chemo/radiotherapy-naïve patients who underwent potentially curative surgical resection (n = 159) and in a random sampling of non-tumor gastric epithelium specimens (normal controls, n = 20). The immunohistochemistry (IHC)-detected modifications were classified as negative, low-level, or high-level using a dual-rated (staining intensity and percentage of positively-stained cells) semi-quantitative method. The relationships between uH2B modification levels and clinicopathological parameters of GC were assessed by a Wilcoxon rank sum test (pairwise comparisons) and the Kruskal-Wallis H test (multiple comparisons). The correlation between uH2B modification and survival was estimated by Kaplan-Meier analysis, and the role of uH2B as an independent prognostic factor for survival was assessed by multivariate Cox regression analysis. RESULTS: The presence and level of H3K4-2me and H3K4-3me IHC staining was similar between the normal controls and GC specimens. In contrast, the level of uH2B was significantly lower in the malignant gastric tissues (vs normal control tissues) and decreased along with increases in dedifferentiation (well differentiated > moderately differentiated > poorly differentiated). The level of uH2B correlated with tumor differentiation (P < 0.001), Lauren's diffuse- and intestinal-type classification (P < 0.001), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.049) and tumor-node-metastasis stage (P = 0.005). Patients with uH2B+ staining had higher 5-year survival rates than patients with uH2B-staining (52.692 ± 2.452 vs 23.739 ± 5.207, P < 0.001). The uH2B level was an independent prognostic factor for cancer-specific survival (95%CI: 0.237-0.677, P = 0.001). CONCLUSION: uH2B displays differential IHC staining patterns corresponding to progressive stages of GC. uH2B may contribute to tumorigenesis and could be a potential therapeutic target.

[Dynamic observation of pulmonary ventilation function in workers contacting chromate].

OBJECTIVE: To explore changes of pulmonary ventilation function of chromate exposed workers. METHODS: Ninety-five chromate exposed workers were used as exposure group, and forty-two workers without chromate exposure as control group. Pulmonary ventilation function was performed two times in the winter of 2010 and 2011 respectively in one chromate manufactured factory in Henan Province. RESULTS: In 2010, pulmonary ventilation function of chromate exposed group compared with the control group, forced vital capacity [FVC, (75.38±15.23) L vs. (83.99±26.52)L], forced expiratory volume in one second [FEV1,(82.13±16.51)L vs.(91.24±30.03)L], FEV1/FVC(112.10±13.23 vs. 116.18±11.32), peak expiratory flow [PEF,(74.31±28.09) L/s vs.(78.13±28.34)L/s], maximal expiratory flow [MEF,(101.23±46.37) L/s vs. (110.02±41.40)L/s], maximum ventilation volume [MVV,(90.82± 16.89)L/min vs. (99.95±22.61)L/min]were significantly decreased(P<0.05). In 2011, pulmonary ventilation function of chromate exposed group compared with the control group, FVC[(72.34±14.18)L vs.(81.01±20.79)L], FEV1[(76.04±16.20)L vs.(86.71±24.53)L], FEV1/FVC(109.10±16.18 vs.114.08±10.79), PEF[(71.35±24.87 )L/s vs.(75.36±20.67)L/s], MEF[(96.51±30.17)L/s vs.(107.11±34.81)L/s], MVV[(84.85±21.22)L/min vs. (96.77±22.63)L/min] were also significantly decreased(P<0.05). 2011 compared with 2010, pulmonary ventilation function of chromate exposed group FEV1[(76.04±16.20)L vs.( 82.13±16.51)L], MEF[(96.51±30.17)L/s vs. (101.23±46.37)L/s], MVV[(84.85±21.22)L/min vs. (90.82±16.89)L/min] were significantly decreased(P<0.05). Comparing the classification and category of pulmonary dysfunction based on FVC, FEV1, FVC/ FEV1, no difference was found for classification between the two groups and the category of pulmonary dysfunction almost belongs to limit type, which did not change with exposed time. CONCLUSION: Chronic chromate exposure can cause significant effects on pulmonary function of the workers, and the types of work in production can affect the results.

catena-Poly[[bis-(µ-2-formyl-6-meth-oxy-phenolato-1:2κO,O:O,O)copper(II)sodium]-µ-tetra-fluorido-borate-1:1'κF:F'].

In the title heterodinuclear complex, [CuNa(BF(4))(C(8)H(7)O(3))(2)](n), the Cu(II) ion is four-coordinated by four O atoms of two 2-formyl-6-meth-oxy-phenolate ligands, giving rise to a square-planar geometry. The Na(+) ion is six-coordinated by four O atoms from the two ligands and two F atoms of two tetra-fluoridoborate anions. The tetra-fluoridoborate anion links the Na(+) ions, forming a one-dimensional structure along [001]. Three F atoms of the tetra-fluoridoborate anion are disordered over two sets of sites, with an occupancy ratio of 0.790 (11):0.210 (11).

Water-soluble taurine-functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes induce less damage to mitochondria of RAW 264.7 cells.

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are increasingly used and many studies have already showed their cytotoxicity in different kinds of cell lines, while their mechanism is not fully understood. Mitochondria are the relatively sensitive organelle in response to the stress challenged by the exogenous chemicals. The study aimed to evaluate mitochondrial injury and cytotoxicity in mouse peritoneal macrophage cell line (RAW 264.7) induced by the water-soluble taurine functionalized MWCNTs (tau-MWCNTs) and pristine raw MWCNTs (raw-MWCNTs). The different concentrations including 0, 5, 20, 40 and 80 microg/ml for both kinds of MWCNTs were adopted. The cytotoxicity and the mitochondrial function were assessed after 12 h and 24 h treatment. The results revealed that both MWCNTs could produce significantly dose-dependent cytotoxicity and mitochondrial injury including the decrease of mitochondrial membrane potential, the release of cytochrome c from mitochondria and the increase of cytoplasm Ca2+ content. The activities of adenosine triphosphatases (ATPase) and succinodehydrogenase (SDH) of mitochondria were all inhibited after MWCNTs treatment. In conclusion, MWCNTs could lead to mitochondrial injury, which might be one possible pathway of apoptotic cell induction. The findings that tau-MWCNTs exhibited less toxicity compared with raw-MWCNTs support a useful approach to reduce the toxicity of MWCNTs by surface-functionization with taurine.