Probiotics into outer space: feasibility assessments of encapsulated freeze-dried probiotics during 1 month’s storage on the International Space Station

Suppression of immune function during long spaceflights is an issue that needs to be overcome. The well-established probiotic Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota (LcS) could be a promising countermeasure, and we have launched a project to investigate the efficacy of its use on the International Space Station (ISS). As a first step, we developed a specialist probiotic product for space experiments, containing freeze-dried LcS in capsule form (Probiotics Package), and tested its stability through 1 month of storage on the ISS. The temperature inside the ISS ranged from 20.0 to 24.5 °C. The absorbed dose rate of the flight sample was 0.26 mGy/day and the dose equivalent rate was 0.52 mSv/day. The number of live LcS was 1.05 × 1011 colony-forming units/g powder (49.5% of the initial value) 6 months after the start of the study; this value was comparable to those in the two ground controls. Profiles of randomly amplified polymorphic DNA, sequence variant frequency, carbohydrate fermentation, reactivity to LcS-specific antibody, and the cytokine-inducing ability of LcS in the flight sample did not differ from those of the ground controls. We can therefore maintain the viability and basic probiotic properties of LcS stored as a Probiotics Package on the ISS

Involvement of resistin-like molecule β in the development of methionine-choline deficient diet-induced non-alcoholic steatohepatitis in mice

Resistin-like molecule β (RELMβ) reportedly has multiple functions including local immune responses in the gut. In this study, we investigated the possible contribution of RELMβ to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) development. First, RELMβ knock-out (KO) mice were shown to be resistant to methionine-choline deficient (MCD) diet-induced NASH development. Since it was newly revealed that Kupffer cells in the liver express RELMβ and that RELMβ expression levels in the colon and the numbers of RELMβ-positive Kupffer cells were both increased in this model, we carried out further experiments using radiation chimeras between wild-type and RELMβ-KO mice to distinguish between the contributions of RELMβ in these two organs. These experiments revealed the requirement of RELMβ in both organs for full manifestation of NASH, while deletion of each one alone attenuated the development of NASH with reduced serum lipopolysaccharide (LPS) levels. The higher proportion of lactic acid bacteria in the gut microbiota of RELMβ-KO than in that of wild-type mice may be one of the mechanisms underlying the lower serum LPS level the former. These data suggest the contribution of increases in RELMβ in the gut and Kupffer cells to NASH development, raising the possibility of RELMβ being a novel therapeutic target for NASH

Extraordinary transmission of gigahertz surface acoustic waves

Extraordinary transmission of waves, i.e. a transmission superior to the amount predicted by geometrical considerations of the aperture alone, has to date only been studied in the bulk. Here we present a new class of extraordinary transmission for waves confined in two dimensions to a flat surface. By means of acoustic numerical simulations in the gigahertz range, corresponding to acoustic wavelengths lambda similar to 3-50 mu m, we track the transmission of plane surface acoustic wave fronts between two silicon blocks joined by a deeply subwavelength bridge of variable length with or without an attached cavity. Several resonant modes of the structure, both one-and two-dimensional in nature, lead to extraordinary acoustic transmission, in this case with transmission efficiencies, i.e. intensity enhancements, up to similar to 23 and similar to 8 in the two respective cases. We show how the cavity shape and bridge size influence the extraordinary transmission efficiency. Applications include new metamaterials and subwavelength imaging

Additional file 1: Table S1. of Comprehensive analysis of the fecal microbiota of healthy Japanese adults reveals a new bacterial lineage associated with a phenotype characterized by a high frequency of bowel movements and a lean body type

English translation of the lifestyle questionnaire and the scoring system used for each question. Table S2. Subject characteristics and the results of the Illumina sequencing. Table S3. Operational taxonomic unit table for the whole subjects (% in whole reads). Table S4. Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) results and representative sequences for the operational taxonomic units. Table S5. Abundance and prevalence of the 66 identified bacterial families and alpha-diversity scores stratified by area of residence. Table S6. Abundance and prevalence of the 66 identified bacterial families and alpha-diversity scores stratified by gender. Table S7. Abundance and prevalence of the 66 identified bacterial families and alpha-diversity scores in the two clusters identified in the male subjects. Table S8. Raw questionnaire data. Table S9. Questionnaire scores stratified by area of residence. Table S10. Questionnaire scores stratified by gender. Table S11. Questionnaire scores in the two clusters identified in the male subjects. Table S12. Detailed Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) search results for the operational taxonomic units shown in Table 8. Table S13. Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) bioinformatics pipeline scripts used in the present study. (XLSX 8232 kb

Additional file 3: Figure S1. of Comprehensive analysis of the fecal microbiota of healthy Japanese adults reveals a new bacterial lineage associated with a phenotype characterized by a high frequency of bowel movements and a lean body type

Distribution of subjects’ genders stratified by area of residence. Gender ratios of female to male represent in brackets. Among the areas sharing the same letter above their bar graphs, significant difference was not observed (P ≥ 0.05) in the gender ratio. (PPTX 144 kb