Quorum sensing effect of chiral d-glutamine on the modulation of the intestinal microbiota of mice by Lactiplantibacillus plantarum A3.

BACKGROUND: Amino acids (AAs) are the building blocks of proteins, but they also serve as biological compounds in biochemical processes, and d-AA isomers are increasingly being recognized as important signaling molecules. As the main organic substrate used by cells in the intestinal tract, the role of the chiral specificity of glutamine is still largely ignored. RESULTS: In a previous study, we found that d-glutamine affected the quorum sensing of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum A3, promoted the release of signaling molecule AI-2 and up-regulated the expression of the LuxS gene. The results showed that when d-glutamine and L. plantarum A3 were simultaneously applied to a mouse model, the diversity and abundance of intestinal flora in both male and female mice were increased. Interestingly, the simultaneous effect of d-glutamine and L. plantarum A3 on the bacterial diversity and abundance of male mice was significantly higher than that of female mice. In addition, the combination of d-glutamine and L. plantarum A3 can improve the host microecology by enhancing the population of Firmicutes such as Lactobacillus and Lachnospiraceae, reducing the population of Fusobacterium and Bacteroides and affecting metabolic pathways such as AA metabolism and transporter transport. CONCLUSION: d-Glutamine, as a signaling molecule, can better stimulate the endogenous d-glutamine synthesis in mice and be utilized by L. plantarum A3. Furthermore, sex differences in the changes of intestinal microflora are also found in this research. This research sheds some light on the adoption of d-AAs combined with lactic acid bacteria in intestinal tract health treatment. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.

Ternary-metal Prussian blue analogues as high-quality sodium ion capturing electrodes for rocking-chair capacitive deionization.

Prussian blue analogs (PBAs) have gained much attention in the capacitive deionization (CDI) field because of their rigid open structure and good energy storage capacity. However, their desalination performance is still to be improved for practical application. Herein, we reported the NiCoFe ternary-metal PBAs materials and explored their application as Na+ capturing electrode in rocking-chair capacitive deionization (RCDI) system. On the one hand, the introduction of Ni2+ into CoFe PBA can effectively reduce the lattice changes in the (dis)charging process.On the other hand, the RCDI system with symmetrical structure could avoid the performance deficiency caused by the unbalanced capacity of common HCDI system. Due to the rationalized RCDI cell configuration and ternary-metal PBAs with improved stability, the NiCoFe-PBAs-based RCDI exhibits amazing desalination performance with maximum capacity of 131.4 mg·g-1 and rate of 0.46 mg·g-1·s-1 as well as optimum stability with 90.7 % capacity retention over 300 cycles, surpassing those of PBAs based CDI system reported previously. The special strategy in this work offers inspiration via optimizing the cell structure and electrode materials for the promising development of CDI systems.