Temporal characterization of biocycles of mycelium-bound composites made from bamboo and Pleurotus ostreatus for indoor usage

Mycelium-bound composites (MBCs) are materials obtained by growing fungi on a ligno-cellulosic substrate which have various applications in packaging, furniture, and construction industries. MBCs are particularly interesting as they are sustainable materials that can integrate into a circular economy model. Indeed, they can be subsequently grown, used, degraded, and re-grown. Integrating in a meaningful biocycle for our society therefore demands that MBCs fulfil antagonistic qualities which are to be at the same time durable and biodegradable. In this study, we conduct experiments using MBCs made from the fungus species Pleurotus ostreatus grown on bamboo microfibers substrate. By measuring the variations of the mechanical properties with time, we provide an experimental demonstration of a biocycle for such composites for in-door applications. We found that the biocycle can be as short as 5 months and that the use of sustainable coatings is critical to increase the durability of the composites while maintaining biodegradability. Although there are many scenarios of biocycles possible, this study shows a tangible proof-of-concept example and paves the way for optimization of the duration of each phase in the biocycle depending on the intended application and resource availability

Molecular insights of nickel binding to therapeutic antibodies as a possible new antibody superantigen

The binding of nickel by immune proteins can manifest as Type IV contact dermatitis (Ni-specific T cells mediated) and less frequently as Type I hypersensitivity with both mechanisms remaining unknown to date. Since there are reports of patients co-manifesting the two hypersensitivities, a common mechanism may underlie both the TCR and IgE nickel binding. Focusing on Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab IgE variants as serendipitous investigation models, we found Ni-NTA interactions independent of Her2 binding to be due to glutamine stretches. These stretches are both Ni-inducible and in fixed pockets at the antibody complementarity-determining regions (CDRs) and framework regions (FWRs) of both the antibody heavy and light chains with influence from the heavy chain constant region. Comparisons with TCRs structures revealed similar interactions, demonstrating the possible underlying mechanism in selecting for Ni-binding IgEs and TCRs respectively. With the elucidation of the interaction, future therapeutic antibodies could also be sagaciously engineered to utilize such nickel binding for biotechnological purposes

Fungal effector SIB1 of Colletotrichum orbiculare has unique structural features and can suppress plant immunity in Nicotiana benthamiana

Fungal plant pathogens secrete virulence-related proteins, called effectors, to establish host infection, however, the details are not fully understood yet. Functional screening of effector candidates using Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression assay in Nicotiana benthamiana identified two virulence-related effectors, named SIB1 and SIB2 (Suppression of Immunity in N. benthamiana), of an anthracnose fungus Colletotrichum orbiculare, which infects both cucurbits and N. benthamiana. The Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression of SIB1 or SIB2 increased the susceptibility of N. benthamiana to C. orbiculare, which suggested these effectors can suppress immune responses in N. benthamiana. The presence of SIB1 and SIB2 homologs was found to be limited to the genus Colletotrichum. SIB1 suppressed both (i) the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) triggered by two different pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), chitin and flg22, and (ii) the cell death response triggered by the Phytophthora infestans INF1 elicitin in N. benthamiana. We determined the NMR-based structure of SIB1 to obtain its structural insights. The three-dimensional structure of SIB1 comprises five β-strands, each containing three disulfide bonds. The overall conformation was found to be a cylindrical shape, such as the well-known antiparallel β-barrel structure. However, the β-strands were found to display a unique topology, one pair of these β-strands formed a parallel β-sheet. These results suggest that the effector SIB1 present in Colletotrichum fungi has unique structural features and can suppress PAMP-triggered immunity (PTI) in N. benthamiana

Variable-heavy (VH) families influencing IgA1&2 engagement to the antigen, FcαRI and superantigen proteins G, A, and L

Interest in IgA as an alternative antibody format has increased over the years with much remaining to be investigated in relation to interactions with immune cells. Considering the recent whole antibody investigations showing significant distal effects between the variable (V) and constant (C)- regions that can be mitigated by the hinge regions of both human IgA subtypes A1 and A2, we performed an in-depth mechanistic investigation using a panel of 28 IgA1s and A2s of both Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab models. FcαRI binding were found to be mitigated by the differing glycosylation patterns in IgA1 and 2 with contributions from the CDRs. On their interactions with antigen-Her2 and superantigens PpL, SpG and SpA, PpL was found to sterically hinder Her2 antigen binding with unexpected findings of IgAs binding SpG at the CH2-3 region alongside SpA interacting with IgAs at the CH1. Although the VH3 framework (FWR) is commonly used in CDR grafting, we found the VH1 framework (FWR) to be a possible alternative when grafting IgA1 and 2 owing to its stronger binding to antigen Her2 and weaker interactions to superantigen Protein L and A. These findings lay the foundation to understanding the interactions between IgAs and microbial superantigens, and also guide the engineering of IgAs for future antibody applications and targeting of superantigen-producing microbes

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in East Asian-ancestry populations identifies four new loci for body mass index

Recent genetic association studies have identified 55 genetic loci associated with obesity or body mass index (BMI). The vast majority, 51 loci, however, were identified in European-ancestry populations. We conducted a meta-analysis of associations between BMI and ∼2.5 million genotyped or imputed single nucleotide polymorphisms among 86 757 individuals of Asian ancestry, followed by in silico and de novo replication among 7488–47 352 additional Asian-ancestry individuals. We identified four novel BMI-associated loci near the KCNQ1 (rs2237892, P = 9.29 × 10−13), ALDH2/MYL2 (rs671, P = 3.40 × 10−11; rs12229654, P = 4.56 × 10−9), ITIH4 (rs2535633, P = 1.77 × 10−10) and NT5C2 (rs11191580, P = 3.83 × 10−8) genes. The association of BMI with rs2237892, rs671 and rs12229654 was significantly stronger among men than among women. Of the 51 BMI-associated loci initially identified in European-ancestry populations, we confirmed eight loci at the genome-wide significance level (P < 5.0 × 10−8) and an additional 14 at P < 1.0 × 10−3 with the same direction of effect as reported previously. Findings from this analysis expand our knowledge of the genetic basis of obesity

Comparison of customized spin-column and salt-precipitation finger-prick blood DNA extraction

gDNA (genomic DNA extraction from blood is a fundamental process in many diagnostic, identification and research applications. Numerous extraction methods have been reported and are available commercially. However, there is insufficient understanding of the impact of chemical buffers on DNA yield from either whole or nucleated blood. Moreover, these commercial kits are often costly, constraining less well-funded laboratories to traditional and more cost-effective salt-precipitation methods. Towards this, we compared a salt-precipitation and a customized cost-effective spin-column-based method, studying the impact of different chemical constituents on the yields. This customized method resulted in a shortening of the extraction process, higher gDNA yields, and more successful PCR amplification of gDNA genes compared with the salt-precipitation method. Optimizing different chemical buffers on whole- and nucleated blood materials further revealed that certain chemicals boosted extractions from whole- but not nucleated blood. These findings may be useful to laboratories that do not have ready access to commercial kits, and improve their nucleic acid extractions from blood economically

Find the centroid: a vision-based approach for optimal object grasping

Recently, the booming development of deep learning techniques facilitates remarkable progress in a wide range of applications, has provided insightful cues in today's modern industry and research societies. For instance, the manufacturing and agricultural industries have witnessed the unparallel dominance in AI vision to integrate the production management. Therefore, owing to its impressive learning capability, this article aims to develop an automated system that can integrate data processing and packaging operations. Notably, the inspection system can capture the geometric properties of an ellipsoidal ham and thus can be grasped by the robotic arm. Prior to the centroid detection, a series of instant segmentation procedures is introduced to determine the position of the object, which incorporates both the object localization and semantic segmentation processes. As a result, the proposed model yields a promising segmentation accuracy when experimented on the ham dataset that consists of 293 images. The best Sørensen–Dice coefficient achieved is 91%, which indicates the compelling performance. To further verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework, quantitative and qualitative visualization are presented to demonstrate the quality of the image segmentation task. The proposed algorithm and the raw data are publicly available at https://github.com/jason2303779/Ham-Centroid. Practical Applications: Recently, the booming development of deep learning techniques facilitates remarkable progress in a wide range of applications has provided insightful cues in today's modern industry and research societies. For instance, the manufacturing and agricultural industries have witnessed the unparallel dominance in AI vision to integrate production management. Therefore, this paper aims to develop an automated system that can integrate data processing and packaging operations due to its impressive learning capability. In brief, this paper introduces the first plausible mechanism to precisely identify the geometric center of an irregular-shaped object, viz, ellipsoidal ham. A novel pipeline that composes both the object detection and semantic segmentation architectures is proposed to facilitate the vision understanding process. Succinctly, the inspection system can capture an ellipsoidal ham's geometry properties and thus facilitate the robotics vision for food products, especially in stimulating automatic industrial manufacturing development

Effect of VH–VL Families in Pertuzumab and Trastuzumab Recombinant Production, Her2 and FcγIIA Binding

Many therapeutic antibodies are humanized from animal sources. In the humanization process, complementarity determining region grafting is tedious and highly prone to failure. With seven known VH families, and up to six known κ VL families, there are choices aplenty. However, the functions of these families remain largely enigmatic. To study the role of these V-region families, we made 84 recombinant combinations of the various VH and VL family whole IgG1 variants of both Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab. We managed to purify 66 of these to investigate the biophysical characteristics: recombinant protein production, and both Her2 and FcγIIA binding. Our findings revealed combinations that showed improved recombinant antibody production and both antigen and receptor binding kinetics. These findings show the need to rethink antibodies as a whole protein, relooking of the functions of the antibody domains, and the need to include immunoglobulin receptor investigations for effective antibody therapeutics development

What makes one civil?: the associations between civility scores, gender, rational-experiential processing styles, self-consciousness and socioeconomic factors in Singapore

In studying the topic of civility and its association to other parameters, we modified Forni’s Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct into an inventory for assessing civility. 220 Singapore residents completed an online survey that included a demographic survey, the civility inventory, SCS-R, and REI-40. Self-reported civility was correlated with age (r (214) = .134, p = .049), and experientiality (r (210) = .255, p < .001), but inversely correlated with social anxiety (r (210) = -.172, p = .013). There were no gender effects for civility (p = .014, r = .11), self-consciousness dimensions, and experientiality, even though males scored significantly higher on rationality (p = .013, r = .17). No effects were found for indicators of SES on civility scores. Our findings suggest that social standing may not necessarily be the most important factor as often presumed