Transcriptome analysis provides insights into the response of Lotus corniculatus roots to low-phosphorus stress.

Introduction: A lack of soil phosphorus (P) is a principal factor restricting the normal growth of Lotus corniculatus in the karst area of Guizhou Province, China, but the response mechanism of L. corniculatus under low-phosphorus stress remains unclear. Methods: Therefore, we treated two selected L. corniculatus lines (low-P-intolerant line 08518 and low-P-tolerant line 01549) from 13 L. corniculatus lines with normal phosphorus (0.5 mmol/L KH2PO4, NP) and low phosphorus (0.005 mmol/L KH2PO4, LP) concentrations to study changes in morphological, physiological and transcriptome data under low-phosphorus stress. Results: The low-P-tolerant line 01549 exhibited better performance under low-phosphorus stress. Compared with the NP treatment, all root morphological indicators of the low-P-tolerant line 01549 increased, and those of the low-P-intolerant line 08518 decreased under low-P stress. Compared with the NP treatment, acid phosphatase (ACP), catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and peroxidase (POD) activities, and the malondialdehyde (MDA), soluble sugar (SS), soluble protein (SP) and proline (Pro) contents of the two L. corniculatus lines increased under low-P stress. A transcriptome analysis of L. corniculatus showed that a total of 656 and 2243 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in line 01549 and line 08518, respectively. Meanwhile, the main pathways, such as carbohydrate metabolism, acid phosphatases, phosphate transporters and biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, as well as related genes were also screened by performing a KEGG enrichment analysis. Discussion: The findings provide an essential point of reference for studying the physiological and molecular mechanism of the response to low-P stress in L. corniculatus.

Combined physiological responses and differential expression of drought-responsive genes preliminarily explain the drought resistance mechanism of Lotus corniculatus.

Lotus corniculatus L. is a perennial high-quality legume forage species but is vulnerable to drought, and water deficit reduces productivity. To understand the drought response mechanism of L. corniculatus , we investigated physiological responses under drought stress and constructed suppression subtractive hybridisation (SSH) cDNA libraries to isolate drought-inducible genes and quantitatively study the expression levels of candidate drought- responsive genes. Genes encoding calmodulin-like protein, mitogen-activated protein kinase, indole-3-acetic acid-induced protein, ser/thr-protein phosphatase homolog-related proteins, and ß -galactosidase-related protein with hydrolysis activity were isolated and considered the main factors that explained the resistance of L. corniculatus to drought. Approximately 632 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were identified and confirmed in the constructed SSH library. The Gene Ontology (GO) analysis revealed that these genes were involved mainly in transcription processes, protein synthesis, material metabolism, catalytic reactions, sugar metabolism, and photosynthesis. The interaction between the functions of these drought-related genes and the physiological responses preliminarily explains the drought resistance mechanisms of L. corniculatus .

Aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 rs671 polymorphism and multiple diseases: protocol for a quantitative umbrella review of meta-analyses.

BACKGROUND: The mutant allele (*2) of aldehyde dehydrogenase type 2 (ALDH2) caused by a single nucleotide variant (rs671) inhibits enzymatic activity and is associated with multiple diseases. In recent years, an explosive number of original studies and meta-analyses have been conducted to examine the associations of ALDH2 rs671 polymorphism with diseases. Due to conflicting results, the overall associations of ALDH2 rs671 polymorphism and multiple diseases remain unclear. METHODS: A quantitative umbrella review will be conducted on meta-analyses of genetic association studies to examine the pleiotropic effects of ALDH2 rs671, mainly including cardio-cerebral vascular disease, diabetes mellitus, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and alcohol-induced medical disease. A search of relevant literature according to comprehensive search strategies will be performed on studies published before July 1st, 2022 in PubMed, MEDLINE Ovid, Embase, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Web of Science. Study selection, data extraction, methodology quality assessment, and strength of evidence assessment will be conducted by two reviewers independently and in duplicate. Included meta-analyses will be grouped by outcomes. Data conflicts and overlap between meta-analyses will be managed through updated standardized and customized methods including the calculation of CCA for study selection reference, application of Doi plots to assess small-study effects and others. Evidence from included meta-analyses will be quantitatively synthesized by overlap-corrected analyses and meta-analysis using primary studies. DISCUSSION: This umbrella review is expected to generate systematic evidence on the association between ALDH2 rs671 and diseases. Specific approaches were developed to address key challenges in conducting an umbrella review, including assessment tools of methodology and evidence quality of meta-analyses, methods to manage overlap between meta-analyses, a "stop-light" plot to summarize key findings. These approaches provide applicable methods for future umbrella reviews of meta-analyses on genetic association studies. TRIAL REGISTRATION: CRD42021223812.

Integrating tuberculosis and noncommunicable diseases care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs): A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are facing a combined affliction from both tuberculosis (TB) and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which threatens population health and further strains the already stressed health systems. Integrating services for TB and NCDs is advantageous in tackling this joint burden of diseases effectively. Therefore, this systematic review explores the mechanisms for service integration for TB and NCDs and elucidates the facilitators and barriers for implementing integrated service models in LMIC settings. METHODS AND FINDINGS: A systematic search was conducted in the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, Bibliography of Asian Studies, and the Global Index Medicus from database inception to November 4, 2021. For our search strategy, the terms "tuberculosis" AND "NCDs" (and their synonyms) AND ("delivery of healthcare, integrated" OR a range of other terms representing integration) were used. Articles were included if they were descriptions or evaluations of a management or organisational change strategy made within LMICs, which aim to increase integration between TB and NCD management at the service delivery level. We performed a comparative analysis of key themes from these studies and organised the themes based on integration of service delivery options for TB and NCD services. Subsequently, these themes were used to reconfigure and update an existing framework for integration of TB and HIV services by Legido-Quigley and colleagues, which categorises the levels of integration according to types of services and location where services were offered. Additionally, we developed themes on the facilitators and barriers facing integrated service delivery models and mapped them to the World Health Organization's (WHO) health systems framework, which comprises the building blocks of service delivery, human resources, medical products, sustainable financing and social protection, information, and leadership and governance. A total of 22 articles published between 2011 and 2021 were used, out of which 13 were cross-sectional studies, 3 cohort studies, 1 case-control study, 1 prospective interventional study, and 4 were mixed methods studies. The studies were conducted in 15 LMICs in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Our synthesised framework explicates the different levels of service integration of TB and NCD services. We categorised them into 3 levels with entry into the health system based on either TB or NCDs, with level 1 integration offering only testing services for either TB or NCDs, level 2 integration offering testing and referral services to linked care, and level 3 integration providing testing and treatment services at one location. Some facilitators of integrated service include improved accessibility to integrated services, motivated and engaged providers, and low to no cost for additional services for patients. A few barriers identified were poor public awareness of the diseases leading to poor uptake of services, lack of programmatic budget and resources, and additional stress on providers due to increased workload. The limitations include the dearth of data that explores the experiences of patients and providers and evaluates programme effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: Integration of TB and NCD services encourages the improvement of health service delivery across disease conditions and levels of care to address the combined burden of diseases in LMICs. This review not only offers recommendations for policy implementation and improvements for similar integrated programmes but also highlights the need for more high-quality TB-NCD research.

Systematic review and meta-analysis: Prevalence of diabetes among patients with tuberculosis in China.

OBJECTIVE: Tuberculosis (TB) and diabetes mellitus (DM) are both significant public health problems in China. Results of previous studies on the prevalence of DM among TB patients in China are inconsistent. We conducted this systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the overall prevalence of DM among TB patients in China. METHODS: We systematically searched Excerpta Medica Database, PubMed, Global Health, Ovid MEDLINE(R), Chinese Biomedical Literature Service System, and China Online Journals -Health & Medicine and included all observational studies reporting prevalence of DM among TB patients in China. The Cochran's Q-statistic and I2 were used to test heterogeneity. Finally, a random-effect model meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the pooled prevalence of DM among TB patients in China using R studio. RESULTS: We screened 7043 articles and identified 43 eligible studies. The pooled prevalence was 7.8% (95% prediction interval 1.6-30.5, I2  = 99.2%). The highest prevalence was observed in Northeast China (21.9%) among four economic regions of China, followed by East Coast (8.3%), Western China (5.9%), with Central China having the lowest prevalence (5.1%). Higher prevalence was observed in urban (10.1%) than in rural (7.8%) areas, and in hospital-based (9.0%) than in population-based studies (6.9%). CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that the prevalence of DM among TB patients in China aligns with the overall DM prevalence among the public in China. Public health strategies to reduce the burden of TB-DM comorbidity and inequity are needed.

Deep Stacking Network for Intrusion Detection.

Preventing network intrusion is the essential requirement of network security. In recent years, people have conducted a lot of research on network intrusion detection systems. However, with the increasing number of advanced threat attacks, traditional intrusion detection mechanisms have defects and it is still indispensable to design a powerful intrusion detection system. This paper researches the NSL-KDD data set and analyzes the latest developments and existing problems in the field of intrusion detection technology. For unbalanced distribution and feature redundancy of the data set used for training, some training samples are under-sampling and feature selection processing. To improve the detection effect, a Deep Stacking Network model is proposed, which combines the classification results of multiple basic classifiers to improve the classification accuracy. In the experiment, we screened and compared the performance of various mainstream classifiers and found that the four models of the decision tree, k-nearest neighbors, deep neural network and random forests have outstanding detection performance and meet the needs of different classification effects. Among them, the classification accuracy of the decision tree reaches 86.1%. The classification effect of the Deeping Stacking Network, a fusion model composed of four classifiers, has been further improved and the accuracy reaches 86.8%. Compared with the intrusion detection system of other research papers, the proposed model effectively improves the detection performance and has made significant improvements in network intrusion detection.