Biocontrol potential of endophytic bacterium Bacillus altitudinis GS-16 against tea anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides.

Background: As one of the main pathogens causing tea anthracnose disease, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides has brought immeasurable impact on the sustainable development of agriculture. Given the adverse effects of chemical pesticides to the environment and human health, biological control has been a focus of the research on this pathogen. Bacillus altitudinis GS-16, which was isolated from healthy tea leaves, had exhibited strong antagonistic activity against tea anthracnose disease. Methods: The antifungal mechanism of the endophytic bacterium GS-16 against C. gloeosporioides 1-F was determined by dual-culture assays, pot experiments, cell membrane permeability, cellular contents, cell metabolism, and the activities of the key defense enzymes. Results: We investigated the possible mechanism of strain GS-16 inhibiting 1-F. In vitro, the dual-culture assays revealed that strain GS-16 had significant antagonistic activity (92.03%) against 1-F and broad-spectrum antifungal activity in all tested plant pathogens. In pot experiments, the disease index decreased to 6.12 after treatment with GS-16, indicating that strain GS-16 had a good biocontrol effect against tea anthracnose disease (89.06%). When the PE extract of GS-16 treated mycelial of 1-F, the mycelial appeared deformities, distortions, and swelling by SEM observations. Besides that, compared with the negative control, the contents of nucleic acids, protein, and total soluble sugar of GS-16 group were increased significantly, indicating that the PE extract of GS-16 could cause damage to integrity of 1-F. We also found that GS-16 obviously destroyed cellular metabolism and the normal synthesis of cellular contents. Additionally, treatment with GS-16 induced plant resistance by increasing the activities of the key defense enzymes PPO, SOD, CAT, PAL, and POD. Conclusions: We concluded that GS-16 could damage cell permeability and integrity, destroy the normal synthesis of cellular contents, and induce plant resistance, which contributed to its antagonistic activity. These findings indicated that strain GS-16 could be used as an efficient microorganism for tea anthracnose disease caused by C. gloeosporioides.

Multitask Attention-Based Neural Network for Intraoperative Hypotension Prediction.

Timely detection and response to Intraoperative Hypotension (IOH) during surgery is crucial to avoid severe postoperative complications. Although several methods have been proposed to predict IOH using machine learning, their performance still has space for improvement. In this paper, we propose a ResNet-BiLSTM model based on multitask training and attention mechanism for IOH prediction. We trained and tested our proposed model using bio-signal waveforms obtained from patient monitoring of non-cardiac surgery. We selected three models (WaveNet, CNN, and TCN) that process time-series data for comparison. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed model has optimal MSE (43.83) and accuracy (0.9224) compared to other models, including WaveNet (51.52, 0.9087), CNN (318.52, 0.5861), and TCN (62.31, 0.9045), which suggests that our proposed model has better regression and classification performance. We conducted ablation experiments on the multitask and attention mechanisms, and the experimental results demonstrated that the multitask and attention mechanisms improved MSE and accuracy. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed model in predicting IOH.

Isopropoxy Tetramethyl Dioxaborolane on TiO2: Reaction Pathway and Formation of a Visible-Light-Sensitive Photocatalyst.

Borate toxicity is a concern in agriculture since a high level of borates may likely exist in irrigation water systems. In this research, transmission infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy are employed to study the thermal and photochemical reactions of isopropoxy tetramethyl dioxaborolane (ITDB) on TiO2, with the aid of density functional theory calculations. In addition, the possibility for the formation of a boron-modified TiO2 (B/TiO2) surface, using ITDB as the boron source, is explored and the photocatalytic activity of the B/TiO2 is tested. After adsorption of ITDB on TiO2 at 35 °C and heating the surface to a temperature higher than ∼200 °C in a vacuum, the surface is found to be covered with both the organic components of OC(CH3)2-C(CH3)2O and OCH(CH3)2 and the inorganic components of (TiO2)BO and Ti-B-O. The organic intermediates can be further thermally transformed into pinacolone and acetone; however, the inorganic parts exist at 400 °C, forming a boron-modified surface. The thermal decomposition of ITDB is proposed to be initiated by breaking one B-O bond, forming -OC(CH3)2-C(CH3)2O-B-OCH(CH3)2 on the surface. In the case of photoreaction, the ITDB on TiO2 decomposes under photoirradiation at 325 nm to form acetone. The boron-modified TiO2 surface can absorb visible light, likely due to the presence of new states in the band gap, and shows a photocatalytical activity in degrading methylene blue, under 500 nm irradiation in air.

Discovery of 1,4-Benzodiazepine-2,5-dione (BZD) Derivatives as Dual Nucleotide Binding Oligomerization Domain Containing 1/2 (NOD1/NOD2) Antagonists Sensitizing Paclitaxel (PTX) To Suppress Lewis Lung Carcinoma (LLC) Growth in Vivo.

Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptors (NLRs) are intracellular sensors of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). Previously, we reported nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-containing protein 1 (NOD1) antagonists (11, 12) and a NOD2 antagonist (9) that sensitized docetaxel (DTX) or paclitaxel (PTX) treatment for breast or lung cancer. In this article, we describe for the first time a 1,4-benzodiazepine-2,5-dione (BZD) derivative (26bh) that acts as a dual NOD1/NOD2 antagonist and inhibits both nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) inflammatory signaling, thereby sensitizing PTX to suppress Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC) growth. After investigation of the compound's cytotoxicity, a systematic structure-activity relationship (SAR) was completed and revealed several key factors that were necessary to maintain antagonistic ability. This study establishes the possibility for using adjuvant treatment to combat cancer by antagonizing both NOD1 and NOD2 signaling.

Improved neuronal survival of focal ischemia after delipid extracorporeal lipoprotein treatment in hyperlipidemic rabbits.

A delipid extracorporeal lipoprotein filter (DELP) system has been used to treat patients with stroke and has shown favorable prognosis. However, the mechanism for the neuronal functional recovery remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the neuronal histological assessment, and the levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) after ischemic stroke following DELP treatment. Hyperlipidemic rabbits underwent middle cerebral artery occlusion. After 30 min, the animals received an extracorporeal apheresis treatment with a DELP filter. Total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) of the plasma were measured. The levels of CRP, TNF-α, and oxLDL in brain tissue were also measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Hematoxylin and eosin staining, cresyl violet staining, neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and glial fibrillary acidic protein immunohistochemistry, and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay were performed. DELP apheresis reduced TC and LDL by >30%. The number of neurons at day 7 (P < 0.01) and the integrated optical density of NSE at day 1 (P < 0.05) and day 7 (P < 0.01) were significantly increased in the DELP group. TUNEL-positive cells were significantly decreased (P < 0.05). Astrocytes were moderately activated, and this activation persisted up to 7 days. Gliosis was not found in the DELP group. After treatment, the level of CRP declined at day 1 (P < 0.05); TNF-α and oxLDL declined at day 7 (P < 0.05). DELP apheresis decreased neuronal apoptosis, reduced inflammatory markers and oxidative stress in cerebral ischemia, and improved neuronal survival.