Effects of Plasma-Activated Water on Skin Wound Healing in Mice

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has been widely used in biomedicine during the last two decades. While direct plasma treatment has been reported to promote wound healing, its application can be uneven and inconvenient. In this study, we first activated water with a portable dielectric barrier discharge plasma device and evaluated the inactivation effect of plasma-activated water (PAW) on several kinds of bacteria that commonly infect wounds. The results show that PAW can effectively inactivate these bacteria. Then, we activated tap water and examined the efficacy of PAW on wound healing in a mouse model of full-thickness skin wounds. We found that wound healing in mice treated with PAW was significantly faster compared with the control group. Histological analysis of the skin tissue of mice wounds showed a significant reduction in the number of inflammatory cells in the PAW treatment group. To identify the possible mechanism by which PAW promotes wound healing, we analyzed changes in the profiles of wound bacteria after PAW treatment. The results show that PAW can significantly reduce the abundance of wound bacteria in the treatment group. The results of biochemical blood tests and histological analysis of major internal organs in the mice show that PAW had no obvious side effects. Taken together, these results indicate that PAW may be a new and effective method for promoting wound healing without side effects

Interfacial Current Distribution Between Helium Plasma Jet and Water Solution

The plasma-liquid interaction holds great importance for a number of emerging applications such as plasma biomedicine, yet a main fundamental question remains about the nature of the physiochemical processes occurring at the plasma-liquid interface. In this paper, the interfacial current distribution between helium plasma jet and water solution was measured for the first time by means of the splitting electrode method, which was borrowed from the field of arc plasma. For a plasma plume in continuous mode, it was found that the mean absolute current distribution at the plasma-liquid interface typically had an annular shape. This shape could be affected by regulating the air doping from the surrounding atmosphere, the gas flow rate, the applied voltage and the conductivity of the water solution. However, only the air doping fraction and the water conductivity could fundamentally change the interfacial current distribution from the annular shape to the central maximum shape. It was deduced that a certain amount of ambient air doping (mainly N2 and O2) and a low conductivity (typically \u3c 300 μS/cm) of the treated water were essential for the formation of the annular current distribution at the plasma-liquid interface

In Vivo Metabolic Analysis of the Anticancer Effects of Plasma-Activated Saline in Three Tumor Animal Models

In recent years, the emerging technology of cold atmospheric pressure plasma (CAP) has grown rapidly along with the many medical applications of cold plasma (e.g., cancer, skin disease, tissue repair, etc.). Plasma-activated liquids (e.g., culture media, water, or normal saline, previously exposed to plasma) are being studied as cancer treatments, and due to their advantages, many researchers prefer plasma-activated liquids as an alternative to CAP in the treatment of cancer. In this study, we showed that plasma-activated-saline (PAS) treatment significantly inhibited tumor growth, as compared with saline, in melanoma, and a low-pH environment had little effect on tumor growth in vivo. In addition, based on an ultra-high-performance liquid tandem chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF-MS) analysis of tumor cell metabolism, the glycerophospholipid metabolic pathway was the most susceptible metabolic pathway to PAS treatment in melanoma in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, PAS also inhibited cell proliferation in vivo in oral tongue squamous-cell cancer and non-small-cell lung cancer. There were few toxic side effects in the three animal models, and the treatment was deemed safe to use. In the future, plasma-activated liquids may serve as a potential therapeutic approach in the treatment of cancer

CgGCS, Encoding a Glucosylceramide Synthase, Is Required for Growth, Conidiation and Pathogenicity in Colletotrichum gloeosporioides

Fungal glucosylceramide plays important role in cell division, hyphal formation and growth, spore germination and the modulation of virulence and has recently been considered as target for small molecule inhibitors. In this study, we characterized CgGCS, a protein encoding a glucosylceramide synthase (GCS) in Colletotrichum gloeosporioides. Disruption of CgGCS resulted in a severe reduction of mycelial growth and defects in conidiogenesis. Sphingolipid profile analysis revealed large decreases in glucosylceramide production in the mutant strains. Pathogenicity assays indicated that the ability of the ΔCgGCS mutants to invade both tomato and mango hosts was almost lost. In addition, the expression levels of many genes, especially those related to metabolism, were shown to be affected by the mutation of CgGCS via transcriptome analysis. Overall, our results demonstrate that C. gloeosporioides glucosylceramide is an important regulatory factor in fungal growth, conidiation, and pathogenesis in hosts

Fusaric acid instigates the invasion of banana by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense TR4

CITATION: Liu, S. et al. 2020. Fusaric acid instigates the invasion of banana by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense TR4. New Phytologist, 225:913–929, doi:10.1111/nph.16193.The original publication is available at https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.comFusaric acid (FSA) is a phytotoxin produced by several Fusarium species and has been associated with plant disease development, although its role is still not well understood. Mutation of key genes in the FSA biosynthetic gene (FUB) cluster in Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense tropical race 4 (Foc TR4) reduced the FSA production, and resulted in decreased disease symptoms and reduced fungal biomass in the host banana plants. When pretreated with FSA, both banana leaves and pseudostems exhibited increased sensitivity to Foc TR4 invasion. Banana embryogenic cell suspensions (ECSs) treated with FSA exhibited a lower rate of O2 uptake, loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation, and greater nuclear condensation and cell death. Consistently, transcriptomic analysis of FSA-treated ECSs showed that FSA may induce plant cell death through regulating the expression of genes involved in mitochondrial functions. The results herein demonstrated that the FSA from Foc TR4 functions as a positive virulence factor and acts at the early stage of the disease development before the appearance of the fungal hyphae in the infected tissues.https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.16193Publisher's versio

NOA1 Functions in a Temperature-Dependent Manner to Regulate Chlorophyll Biosynthesis and Rubisco Formation in Rice

NITRIC OXIDE-ASSOCIATED1 (NOA1) encodes a circularly permuted GTPase (cGTPase) known to be essential for ribosome assembly in plants. While the reduced chlorophyll and Rubisco phenotypes were formerly noticed in both NOA1-supressed rice and Arabidopsis, a detailed insight is still necessary. In this study, by using RNAi transgenic rice, we further demonstrate that NOA1 functions in a temperature-dependent manner to regulate chlorophyll and Rubisco levels. When plants were grown at 30°C, the chlorophyll and Rubisco levels in OsNOA1-silenced plants were only slightly lower than those in WT. However, at 22°C, the silenced plants accumulated far less chlorophyll and Rubisco than WT. It was further revealed that the regulation of chlorophyll and Rubisco occurs at the anabolic level. Etiolated WT seedlings restored chlorophyll and Rubisco accumulations readily once returned to light, at either 30°C or 15°C. Etiolated OsNOA1-silenced plants accumulated chlorophyll and Rubisco to normal levels only at 30°C, and lost this ability at low temperature. On the other hand, de-etiolated OsNOA1-silenced seedlings maintained similar levels of chlorophyll and Rubisco as WT, even after being shifted to 15°C for various times. Further expression analyses identified several candidate genes, including OsPorA (NADPH: protochlorophyllide oxidoreductase A), OsrbcL (Rubisco large subunit), OsRALyase (Ribosomal RNA apurinic site specific lyase) and OsPuf4 (RNA-binding protein of the Puf family), which may be involved in OsNOA1-regulated chlorophyll biosynthesis and Rubisco formation. Overall, our results suggest OsNOA1 functions in a temperature-dependent manner to regulate chlorophyll biosynthesis, Rubisco formation and plastid development in rice

Evolutionary Game Analysis on Cloud Providers and Enterprises’ Strategies for Migrating to Cloud-Native under Digital Transformation

Cloud-native is an innovative technology and methodology that is necessary to realize the digital transformation of enterprises. Promoting the wide adoption of cloud-native in cloud providers and enterprises has gained popularity in recent years. According to the technological and commercial characteristics of cloud-native, this paper analyzes the game relationship between cloud providers and enterprises on the selection of cloud-native, and combines evolutionary game theory to establish a model. In addition, empirical analysis indicates the impact of parameter changes on the dynamic evolution process. The results show that (1) enterprises are more vulnerable to the impact of direct benefit to adopt cloud-native, and cloud providers are especially affected by the cost of providing cloud-native; (2) enterprises are more likely to be impacted by the invisible benefit than cloud providers, but the impact has a marginal decreasing effect; (3) the low price is one of the reasons to attract enterprises; (4) enterprises are more concerned about the potential loss caused by the supply and demand mismatch. The results of the discussion provide a reference for all stakeholders to promote the implementation of cloud-native and the digital transformation of enterprises

Evolutionary Game Analysis on Cloud Providers and Enterprises’ Strategies for Migrating to Cloud-Native under Digital Transformation

Cloud-native is an innovative technology and methodology that is necessary to realize the digital transformation of enterprises. Promoting the wide adoption of cloud-native in cloud providers and enterprises has gained popularity in recent years. According to the technological and commercial characteristics of cloud-native, this paper analyzes the game relationship between cloud providers and enterprises on the selection of cloud-native, and combines evolutionary game theory to establish a model. In addition, empirical analysis indicates the impact of parameter changes on the dynamic evolution process. The results show that (1) enterprises are more vulnerable to the impact of direct benefit to adopt cloud-native, and cloud providers are especially affected by the cost of providing cloud-native; (2) enterprises are more likely to be impacted by the invisible benefit than cloud providers, but the impact has a marginal decreasing effect; (3) the low price is one of the reasons to attract enterprises; (4) enterprises are more concerned about the potential loss caused by the supply and demand mismatch. The results of the discussion provide a reference for all stakeholders to promote the implementation of cloud-native and the digital transformation of enterprises

Adversarial Alignment for Source Free Object Detection

Source-free object detection (SFOD) aims to transfer a detector pre-trained on a label-rich source domain to an unlabeled target domain without seeing source data. While most existing SFOD methods generate pseudo labels via a source-pretrained model to guide training, these pseudo labels usually contain high noises due to heavy domain discrepancy. In order to obtain better pseudo supervisions, we divide the target domain into source-similar and source-dissimilar parts and align them in the feature space by adversarial learning.Specifically, we design a detection variance-based criterion to divide the target domain. This criterion is motivated by a finding that larger detection variances denote higher recall and larger similarity to the source domain. Then we incorporate an adversarial module into a mean teacher framework to drive the feature spaces of these two subsets indistinguishable. Extensive experiments on multiple cross-domain object detection datasets demonstrate that our proposed method consistently outperforms the compared SFOD methods. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/ChuQiaosong