Uremia toxin helps to induce inflammation in intestines by activating the ATM/NEMO/ NF-B signalling pathway in human intestinal epithelial cells

638-642During progressive chronic kidney disease, toxic substances known as uremic toxins accumulate in body fluids. Uremia toxin has been documented to be involved in most inflammatory reactions, and indoxyl-sulfate (IS) a major serum metabolite of uremia is a key player in this. The mechanism by which uremia toxin establishes it inflammatory activity is scarcely known; however, researchers believes that a clear understanding of this process can serve as a guide to combat the situation. The study was designed to investigate the role played by uremia toxin in intestinal inflammation. SW480 was used as cell lines for this study. Luciferase assay was used to detect the cell viability of different concentrations of IS. RT-qPCR was used to detect the effect of IS on the expression of inflammatory factors. The comet assay was used as a tool to detect DNA damage. Western blot was used to detect the phosphorylation level of ATM/NEMO/NF-kB protein. The IS of 0.09 nM was determined to be the best experimental concentration by luciferase assay. Result showed that IS promotes the expression of inflammatory factors TNF-α and IL-6. In addition, IS led to enhanced DNA damage in cells. IS promoted ATM phosphorylation leading to phosphorylation of NEMO to activate the NF-kB signalling pathway. In conclusion, uremia toxin facilitates inflammation in intestines by activating the ATM/NEMO/ NF-kB signalling pathway in human intestinal epithelial cells

Doping and temperature dependence of electron spectrum and quasiparticle dispersion in doped bilayer cuprates

Within the t-t'-J model, the electron spectrum and quasiparticle dispersion in doped bilayer cuprates in the normal state are discussed by considering the bilayer interaction. It is shown that the bilayer interaction splits the electron spectrum of doped bilayer cuprates into the bonding and antibonding components around the $(\pi,0)$ point. The differentiation between the bonding and antibonding components is essential, which leads to two main flat bands around the $(\pi,0)$ point below the Fermi energy. In analogy to the doped single layer cuprates, the lowest energy states in doped bilayer cuprates are located at the $(\pi/2,\pi/2)$ point. Our results also show that the striking behavior of the electronic structure in doped bilayer cuprates is intriguingly related to the bilayer interaction together with strong coupling between the electron quasiparticles and collective magnetic excitations.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, updated references, added figures and discussions, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Uremia toxin helps to induce inflammation in intestines by activating the ATM/NEMO/NF-kB signalling pathway in human intestinal epithelial cells

During progressive chronic kidney disease, toxic substances known as uremic toxins accumulate in body fluids. Uremia toxin has been documented to be involved in most inflammatory reactions, and indoxyl-sulfate (IS) a major serum metabolite of uremia is a key player in this. The mechanism by which uremia toxin establishes it inflammatory activity is scarcely known; however, researchers believes that a clear understanding of this process can serve as a guide to combat the situation. The study was designed to investigate the role played by uremia toxin in intestinal inflammation. SW480 was used as cell lines for this study. Luciferase assay was used to detect the cell viability of different concentrations of IS. RT-qPCR was used to detect the effect of IS on the expression of inflammatory factors. The comet assay was used as a tool to detect DNA damage. Western blot was used to detect the phosphorylation level of ATM/NEMO/NF-kB protein. The IS of 0.09 nM was determined to be the best experimental concentration by luciferase assay. Result showed that IS promotes the expression of inflammatory factors TNF-α and IL-6. In addition, IS led to enhanced DNA damage in cells. IS promoted ATM phosphorylation leading to phosphorylation of NEMO to activate the NF-kB signalling pathway. In conclusion, uremia toxin facilitates inflammation in intestines by activating the ATM/NEMO/ NF-kB signalling pathway in human intestinal epithelial cells

Honghua Xiaoyao tablet combined with estradiol improves ovarian function in D-galactose-induced aging mice by reducing apoptosis and affecting the release of reproductive hormones: an in vivo study

Context: It is very necessary to delay ovarian aging and prevent age-related health problems. The active ingredient in Honghua Xiaoyao tablet (HHXYT) has the effects of anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, immune regulation and so on.Objective: To explore the effect and mechanism of Honghua Xiaoyao tablet on aging model mice.Materials and methods: The aging model was established by intraperitoneal injection of D-galactose in model mice. The mice in the HHXYT-L,M,H group were given 0.3 g/kg, 0.6 g/kg and 1.2 g/kg Honghua Xiaoyao tablet suspension respectively, and the HHXYT-M + E2 group was given 0.6 g/kg HHXYT +0.13 mg/kg estradiol valerate for 30 days. In this study, ELISA, HE, Western blot, IH and TUNEL were used.Results: HHXYT + E2 can improve the gonadal index, estrous cycle of aging mice. In HHXYT-M + E2 group, the level of FSH and LH decreased, while E2 and AMH increased significantly. The number of growing follicles in HHXYT-M + E2 group increased, which was better than that of HHXYT alone. Western blot results showed that HHXYT-M + E2 group decreased the expression of Bax, cleaved-Parp, cleaved-Casp-3 and CytC molecules and increased the expression of Bcl-2 in ovarian tissue. FSHR expression decreased in model group and increased in HHXYT group. TUNEL staining showed that the number of apoptotic cells in HHXYT group was reduced, and the HHXYT-M + E2 group was the most significantly.Discussion and conclusion: HHXYT can improve the level of sex hormones and increase the number of growing follicles in aging mice. HHXYT-M + E2 group has the best effect, and its mechanism may be related to reducing ovarian granulosa cell apoptosis

Development and validation of a three-dimensional deep learning-based system for assessing bowel preparation on colonoscopy video

BackgroundThe performance of existing image-based training models in evaluating bowel preparation on colonoscopy videos was relatively low, and only a few models used external data to prove their generalization. Therefore, this study attempted to develop a more precise and stable AI system for assessing bowel preparation of colonoscopy video.MethodsWe proposed a system named ViENDO to assess the bowel preparation quality, including two CNNs. First, Information-Net was used to identify and filter out colonoscopy video frames unsuitable for Boston bowel preparation scale (BBPS) scoring. Second, BBPS-Net was trained and tested with 5,566 suitable short video clips through three-dimensional (3D) convolutional neural network (CNN) technology to detect BBPS-based insufficient bowel preparation. Then, ViENDO was applied to complete withdrawal colonoscopy videos from multiple centers to predict BBPS segment scores in clinical settings. We also conducted a human-machine contest to compare its performance with endoscopists.ResultsIn video clips, BBPS-Net for determining inadequate bowel preparation generated an area under the curve of up to 0.98 and accuracy of 95.2%. When applied to full-length withdrawal colonoscopy videos, ViENDO assessed bowel cleanliness with an accuracy of 93.8% in the internal test set and 91.7% in the external dataset. The human-machine contest demonstrated that the accuracy of ViENDO was slightly superior compared to most endoscopists, though no statistical significance was found.ConclusionThe 3D-CNN-based AI model showed good performance in evaluating full-length bowel preparation on colonoscopy video. It has the potential as a substitute for endoscopists to provide BBPS-based assessments during daily clinical practice

Detection of Large Foreign Objects on Coal Mine Belt Conveyor Based on Improved

An algorithm based on the YOLOv5 model is proposed to address safety incidents such as tearing and blockage at transfer points on belt conveyors in coal mines caused by foreign objects mixed in with the coal flow. Given the tough underground conditions and images acquired with low quality, recursive filtering and MSRCR image enhancement algorithms were utilized to preprocess the dynamic images collected by underground monitoring devices, substantially enhancing image quality. The YOLOv5 model has been improved by introducing a multi-scale attention module (MSAM) during the channel map slicing, thereby increasing the model’s resistance to interference from redundant image features. Deep separable convolution was utilized in place of conventional convolution to detect, identify, and process large foreign objects on the belt conveyor as well as to increase detection speed. The MSAM-YOLOv5 model was trained before being installed on the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX platform and utilized to identify videos gathered from the coal mine belt conveyor. According to the experimental findings, the upgraded MSAM-YOLOv5 model has a greater recognition accuracy than YOLOv5L, with an average recall rate for different foreign objects of 96.27%, an average detection accuracy of 97.35%, and a recognition speed of 44 frames/s. The algorithm assures detection accuracy while increasing detection speed, satisfying the requirements for large foreign object detection on belt conveyors in coal mines

Heavy metal contamination in Shanghai agricultural soil

As heavy metals in soil could enrich in biomass and pose health risk to human, it is vital to monitor their contaminations to ensure qualified agricultural production. In this study, we collected >4000 soil samples from agricultural fields in Shanghai during 2010∼2020, and unveiled heavy metal contamination status in this metropolitan. We found that although Shanghai has a long industrialization history, the heavy metal levels in agricultural soil are within safe ranges according to national standard. Specifically, the median levels of Cd, Hg, As, Pb, Cr and Cu are 0.11, 0.13, 7.47, 23.80, 41.00 and 28.30 mg/kg, respectively, which are as good as, or even better than national averages. However, there are spatial and temporal heterogeneities for heavy metal contaminations in Shanghai. For example, the levels of Cd, Hg and Cr are relatively higher in some districts with high industry density, which should be further monitored in the future. Moreover, while the levels for Cd, Cr and Pb have decreased, the level for Hg has mildly increased during this period which needs counteractive measures. Correlation analysis of heavy metal levels and soil fertility parameters suggested overuse of fertilizers may be related to heavy metal contamination in some regions. In summary, our study present by far the largest and most comprehensive landscape of heavy metal contamination in Shanghai agricultural soil, which will be useful for future policy-design and land use planning to ensure safe agricultural production

Comparative and Phylogenetic Analyses of Complete Chloroplast Genomes of <i>Scrophularia incisa</i> Complex (Scrophulariaceae)

The Scrophularia incisa complex is a group of closely related desert and steppe subshrubs that includes S. incisa, S. kiriloviana and S. dentata, which are the only S. sect. Caninae components found in Northwest China. Based on earlier molecular evidence, the species boundaries and phylogenetic relationships within this complex remain poorly resolved. Here, we characterized seven complete chloroplast genomes encompassing the representatives of the three taxa in the complex and one closely related species, S. integrifolia, as well as three other species of Scrophularia. Comparative genomic analyses indicated that the genomic structure, gene order and content were highly conserved among these eleven plastomes. Highly variable plastid regions and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were identified. The robust and consistent phylogenetic relationships of the S. incisa complex were firstly constructed based on a total of 26 plastid genomes from Scrophulariaceae. Within the monophyletic complex, a S. kiriloviana individual from Pamirs Plateau was identified as the earliest diverging clade, followed by S. dentata from Tibet, while the remaining individuals of S. kiriloviana from the Tianshan Mountains and S. incisa from Qinghai–Gansu were clustered into sister clades. Our results evidently demonstrate the capability of plastid genomes to improve phylogenetic resolution and species delimitation, particularly among closely related species, and will promote the understanding of plastome evolution in Scrophularia

Enhanced methane production of vinegar residue by response surface methodology (RSM)

Abstract As the by-product of the vinegar production process, a large number of vinegar residue has been abandoned and caused a serious environmental pollution. Anaerobic digestion has been proved to be able to dispose and convert vinegar residue into bioenergy but still need to improve the efficiency. This study applied central composite design of response surface methodology to investigate the influences of feed to inoculum ratio, organic loading, and initial pH on methane production and optimize anaerobic digestion condition. The maximum methane yield of 203.91 mL gVS−1 and biodegradability of 46.99% were obtained at feed to inoculum ratio of 0.5, organic loading of 31.49 gVS L−1, and initial pH of 7.29, which was considered as the best condition. It has a very significant improvement of 69.48% for methane production and 52.02% for biodegradability compared with our previous study. Additionally, a high methane yield of 182.09 mL gVS−1 was obtained at feed to inoculum ratio of 1.5, organic loading of 46.22 gVS L−1, and initial pH of 7.32. And it is more appropriate to apply this condition in industrial application owing to the high feed to inoculum ratio and organic loading. Besides, a significant interaction was found between feed to inoculum ratio and organic loading. This study maximized the methane production of vinegar residue and made a good foundation for further study and future industrial application