Concurrent antibiosis and anti-inflammation against bacterial pneumonia by zinc hexacyanoferrate nanocatalysts.

The bacterial pneumonia has been demonstrated to cause acute and severe pathological lung injury as well as the uncontrollable oxidative cytokine storms. The effective therapeutics against bacterial pneumonia demands highly efficient pathogen elimination, oxidative stress alleviation and anti-inflammation. Nevertheless, current therapeutics fail to achieve these goals by a single medicine with satisfactory performance. Herein, we report a self-assembled zinc-doped prussian blue-analogue - zinc hexacyanoferrate nanocatalysts (ZnPBA NCs) possessing excellent broad-spectrum anti-bacterial activity and antioxidative catalytic activities against multiple reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the associated cytokine storm as well. By employing various oxidative substances and in vivo murine bacterial pneumoniae models, we verified that the synthetic zinc hexacyanoferrate nanocatalysts could concurrently eliminate the bacterial infection and largely alleviate infection-induced oxidative stress and inflammation, demonstrating the promising clinical application potentials against diverse bacterial infection-related diseases.

Population dynamics of Sesamia inferens on transgenic rice expressing Cry1Ac and CpTI in southern China.

Genetically modified insect-resistant rice lines containing the cry1Ac gene from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) or the CpTI (cowpea trypsin inhibitor) gene developed for the management of lepidopterous pests are highly resistant to the major target pests, Chilo suppressalis (Walker), Cnaphalocrocis medinalis (Guenée), and Scirpophaga incertulas (Walker), in the main rice-growing areas of China. However, the effects of these transgenic lines on Sesamia inferens (Walker), an important lepidopterous rice pest, are currently unknown. Because different insect species have varying susceptibility to Bt insecticidal proteins that may affect population dynamics, research into the effects of these transgenic rice lines on the population dynamics of S. inferens was conducted in Fuzhou, southern China, in 2005 and 2006. The results of laboratory, field cage, and field plot experiments show that S. inferens has comparatively high susceptibility to the transgenic line during the early growing season, with significant differences observed in larval density and infestation levels between transgenic and control lines. Because of a decrease in Cry1Ac levels in the plant as it ages, the transgenic line provided only a low potential for population suppression late in the growing season. There is a correlation between the changing expression of Cry1Ac and the impact of transgenic rice on the population dynamics of S. inferens during the season. These results indicate that S. inferens may become a major pest in fields of prospective commercially released transgenic rice, and more attention should be paid to developing an effective alternative management strategy.