Characteristics of the gut microbiome and metabolic profile in elderly patients with sarcopenia

Introduction: There is growing evidence of research indicating that the gut microbiota is involved in the development of sarcopenia. Nevertheless, there exists a notable deficiency in comprehension concerning the connection between irregularities in the intestinal microbiome and metabolic processes in older individuals suffering from sarcopenia.Methods: To analyze fecal samples obtained from a cohort of 30 older patients diagnosed with sarcopenia as well as 30 older patients without sarcopenia, this study employed 16S rDNA sequencing and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based non-targeted metabolomics profiling techniques.Results: As a result, we found that 29 genera and 172 metabolites were significantly altered in the sarcopenic patients. Among them, Blautia, Lachnospiraceae_unclassified, and Subdoligranulum were the bacteria with a potential diagnostic value for sarcopenia diagnosis. Correlation analysis between clinical indices and these gut bacteria suggested that the IL-6 level was negatively correlated with Blautia. Function prediction analysis demonstrated that 17 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways differ significantly between sarcopenic and non-sarcopenic patients. The primary classes of metabolites identified in the study included lipids and lipid-like molecules, organic acids and derivatives, and organoheterocyclic compounds. KEGG enrichment analysis showed that purine metabolism, arginine and proline metabolism, alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism, butanoate metabolism, and histidine metabolism may contribute to the development of sarcopenia. The correlation study on gut microbiota and metabolites found that Lachnospiraceae_unclassified was positively associated with seven metabolites that were more abundant in the non-sarcopenia group and negatively correlated with three metabolites that were more abundant in the sarcopenia group. In addition, Subdoligranulum was positively correlated with seven metabolites that were lacking in sarcopenia and negatively correlated with two metabolites that were enriching in sarcopenia. Moreover, Blautia was positively associated with xanthosine.Discussion: We conducted a study on the intestinal microbiota and metabolic profile of elderly individuals with sarcopenia, offering a comprehensive analysis of the overall ecosystem. Through this investigation, we were able to validate existing research on the gut–muscle axis and further investigate potential pathogenic processes and treatment options for sarcopenia

Association of long-term triglyceride-glucose index level and change with the risk of cardiometabolic diseases

ObjectiveThe triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index is considered as a pivotal factor for various metabolic, cardiovascular, and cerebrovascular diseases. However, there is currently a paucity of relevant studies on the association between long-term level and change of TyG-index and cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) risk. We aimed to explore the risk of CMDs in relation to the long-term level and change of TyG-index.MethodsBased on the prospective cohort study, a total of 36359 subjects who were free of CMDs, had complete data of triglyceride (TG) and fasting blood glucose (FBG) and underwent four health check-ups from 2006 to 2012 consecutively were followed up for CMDs until 2021. The associations between long-term level and change of TyG-index and CMDs risk were assessed by Cox proportional hazards regression models to compute hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The TyG-index was calculated as ln [TG, mg/dL) × FBG, mg/dL)/2].ResultsDuring the median observation period of 8 years, 4685 subjects were newly diagnosed with CMDs. In multivariable-adjusted models, a graded positive association was observed between CMDs and long-term TyG-index. Compared with the Q1 group, subjects with the Q2-Q4 group had increased progressively risk of CMDs, with corresponding HRs of 1.64(1.47-1.83), 2.36(2.13-2.62), 3.15(2.84-3.49), respectively. The association was marginally attenuated, after further adjustment for the baseline TyG level. In addition, compared with stable TyG level, both loss and gain in TyG level were associated with increased CMDs risk.ConclusionsLong-term elevated level and change of TyG-index are risk factors for the incident CMDs. Elevated TyG-index in the early stage remains to exert cumulative effects on the occurrence of CMDs even after accounting for the baseline TyG-index

Dynamics of carbendazim-resistant frequency of pathogen associated with the epidemic of Fusarium head blight

Carbendazim resistance was detected using 4701 Fusarium graminearum species complex (FGSC) isolates collected from major wheat producing regions in China from 2018 to 2020. A total of 348 carbendazim-resistant isolates were identified. The majority of carbendazim-resistant isolates were detected in Jiangsu and Anhui Provinces. 227 and 88 isolates were obtained from each of Jiangsu and Anhui Provinces with the high resistance frequency of 41.12% and 20.56%. The predominant resistant isolates harboring point mutation F167Y (79.31%), followed by E198Q (16.38%) and F200Y (4.31%). Compared with F. graminearum, F. asiaticum isolates were more likely to produce carbendazim resistance. In this study, we firstly detected carbendazim-resistant isolates in Hebei, Shaanxi, Sichuan and Hunan Province. In Jiangsu, Anhui and Zhejiang, the frequency of carbendazim-resistant isolates maintained a high level resulting in stable carbendazim-resistant populations. We also found the dynamic of carbendazim-resistant frequency in most provinces showed similar trend of the epidemic of FHB. Our results facilitate the understanding of the current situation of carbendazim resistance of FHB pathogens, and will be helpful for fungicides selection in different wheat producing areas in China

Metabolomics to identify fingerprints of carotid atherosclerosis in nonobese metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease

Abstract Background/aims Nonobese metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is paradoxically associated with improved metabolic and pathological features at diagnosis but similar cardiovascular diseases (CVD) prognosis to obese MAFLD. We aimed to utilize the metabolomics to identify the potential metabolite profiles accounting for this phenomenon. Methods This prospective multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted in China enrolling derivation and validation cohorts. Liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry were applied to perform a metabolomics measurement. Results The study involved 120 MAFLD patients and 60 non-MAFLD controls in the derivation cohort. Controls were divided into two groups according to the presence of carotid atherosclerosis (CAS). The MAFLD group was further divided into nonobese MAFLD with/without CAS groups and obese MAFLD with/without CAS groups. Fifty-six metabolites were statistically significant for discriminating the six groups. Among the top 10 metabolites related to CAS in nonobese MAFLD, only phosphatidylethanolamine (PE 20:2/16:0), phosphatidylglycerol (PG 18:0/20:4) and de novo lipogenesis (16:0/18:2n-6) achieved significant areas under the ROC curve (AUCs, 0.67, p = 0.03; 0.79, p = 0.02; 0.63, p = 0.03, respectively). The combination of these three metabolites and liver stiffness achieved a significantly higher AUC (0.92, p < 0.01). In obese MAFLD patients, cystine was found to be significant with an AUC of 0.69 (p = 0.015), followed by sphingomyelin (SM 16:1/18:1) (0.71, p = 0.004) and de novo lipogenesis (16:0/18:2n-6) (0.73, p = 0.004). The combination of these three metabolites, liver fat content and age attained a significantly higher AUC of 0.91 (p < 0.001). The AUCs of these metabolites remained highly significant in the independent validation cohorts involving 200 MAFLD patients and 90 controls. Conclusions Diagnostic models combining different metabolites according to BMI categories could raise the accuracy of identifying subclinical CAS. Trial registration The study protocol was approved by the local ethics committee and all the participants have provided written informed consent (Approval number: [2014] No. 112, registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR-ChiCTR2000034197) Graphical Abstrac

Observation of Bragg polaritons in monolayer tungsten disulphide

Strong light-matter interactions involved with photons and quasiparticles are fundamentally interesting to access the wealthy many-body physics in quantum mechanics. The emerging two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors with large exciton binding energies and strong quantum confinement allow to investigate exciton-photon coupling at elevated temperatures. Here we report room-temperature formation of Bragg polaritons in monolayer semiconductor on a dielectric mirror through the exciton-Bragg photon coupling. With the negative detuning energy of ∼ 30 meV, angle-resolved reflection signals reveal anti-crossing behaviors of lower and upper polariton branches at ±18° together with the Rabi splitting of 10 meV. Meanwhile, the strengthened photoluminescence appears in the lower polariton branch right below the anti-crossing angles, indicating the presence of the characteristic bottleneck effect caused by the slowing exciton-polariton energy relaxation towards the band minimum. The extracted coupling strength is between the ones of weak and distinct strong coupling regimes, where the eigenenergy splitting induced by the moderate coupling is resolvable but not large enough to fully separate two polaritonic components. Our work develops a simplified strategy to generate exciton-polaritons in 2D semiconductors and can be further extended to probe the intriguing bosonic characteristics of these quasiparticles, such as Bose-Einstein condensation, polariton lasing and superfluidity, directly at the material surfaces.[Figure not available: see fulltext.]Ministry of Education (MOE)National Research Foundation (NRF)Submitted/Accepted versionWe thank the support of the Ministry of Education of Singapore (MOE 2019-T2-1-044), Singapore National Research Foundation under the Competitive Research Programs (No. NRF-CRP-21- 2018-0007), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61904151 and 51173081), Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi (No. 2020JM-108), Joint Research Funds of Department of Science & Technology of Shaanxi Province and Northwestern Polytechnical University (No. 2020GXLHZ-020), Ministry of Education of China (IRT1148), and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. LGG19F040003)

Controllable design of MoS2 nanosheets anchored on nitrogen-doped graphene : toward fast sodium storage by tunable pseudocapacitance

Transition-metal disulfide with its layered structure is regarded as a kind of promising host material for sodium insertion, and intensely investigated for sodium-ion batteries. In this work, a simple solvothermal method to synthesize a series of MoS2 nanosheets@nitrogen-doped graphene composites is developed. This newly designed recipe of raw materials and solvents leads the success of tuning size, number of layers, and interplanar spacing of the as-prepared MoS2 nanosheets. Under cut-off voltage and based on an intercalation mechanism, the ultrasmall MoS2 nanosheets@nitrogen-doped graphene composite exhibits more preferable cycling and rate performance compared to few-/dozens-layered MoS2 nanosheets@nitrogen-doped graphene, as well as many other reported insertion-type anode materials. Last, detailed kinetics analysis and density functional theory calculation are also employed to explain the Na+ - storage behavior, thus proving the significance in surface-controlled pseudocapacitance contribution at the high rate. Furthermore, this work offers some meaningful preparation and investigation experiences for designing electrode materials for commercial sodium-ion batteries with favorable performance

Progressively Exposing Active Facets of 2D Nanosheets toward Enhanced Pseudocapacitive Response and High‐Rate Sodium Storage

Sodium-ion batteries are gradually regarded as a prospective alternative to lithium-ion batteries due to the cost consideration. Here, three kinds of tin (IV) sulfide nanosheets are controllably designed with progressively exposed active facets, leading to beneficial influences on the Na+ storage kinetics, resulting in gradient improvements of pseudocapacitive response and rate performance. Interestingly, different forms of kinetics results are generated accompanying with the morphology and structure evolution of the three nanosheets. Finally, detailed density functional theory simulations are also applied to analyze the above experimental achievements, proving that different exposed facets of crystalline anodes possess dissimilar Na+ storage kinetics. The investigation experiences and conclusions shown in this work are meaningful to explore many other proper structure design routes toward the high-rate and stable metal-ions storage.Ministry of Education (MOE)Accepted versionThis work was mainly supported by MoE Tier 1 (Grant No. RG19/17). W.H. thanks the supports by the National Basic Research Program of China-Fundamental Studies of Perovskite Solar Cells (Grant No. 2015CB932200), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BM2012010), Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (Grant No. YX03001), Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. IRT1148), Synergetic Innovation Center for Organic Electronics and Information Displays, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61136003 and 51173081). H.Z. acknowledges the financial support from NTU under Start-Up Grant (Grant No. M4081296.070.500000), Joint Research Fund for Overseas Chinese, Hong Kong and Macao Scholars (Grant No. 51528201)

Monolayer tungsten disulfide in photonic environment : angle-resolved weak and strong light-matter coupling

Light-matter interactions in two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are sensitive to the surrounding dielectric environment. Depending on the interacting strength, weak and strong exciton-photon coupling effects can occur when the exciton energy is resonant with the one of photon. Here we report angle-resolved spectroscopic signatures of monolayer tungsten disulfide (1L-WS2) in weak and strong exciton-photon coupling environments. Inherent optical response of 1L-WS2 in the momentum space is uncovered by employing a dielectric mirror as substrate, where the energy dispersion is angle-independent while the amplitudes increase at high detection angles. When 1L-WS2 sits on top of a dielectric layer on silicon, the resonant trapped photon weakly couples with the exciton, in which the minimum of reflection dip shifts at both sides of the crossing angle while the emitted exciton energy remains unchanged. The unusual shift of reflection dip is attributed to the presence of Fano resonance under white-light illumination. By embedding 1L-WS2 into a dielectric microcavity, strong exciton-photon coupling results in the formation of lower and upper polariton branches with an appreciable Rabi splitting of 34 meV at room temperature, where the observed blueshift of the lower polariton branch is indicative of the enhanced polariton-polariton scattering. Our findings highlight the effect of dielectric environment on angle-resolved optical response of exciton-photon interactions in a two-dimensional semiconductor, which is helpful to develop practical TMD-based architectures for photonic and polaritonic applications. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]National Research Foundation (NRF)Submitted/Accepted versionJ. Z. S. thanks the support of the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61904151), the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi (No. 2020JM-108), the Joint Research Funds of the Department of Science & Technology of Shaanxi Province and Northwestern Polytechnical University (No. 2020GXLH-Z-020). T. Y thanks the support of the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) under the Competitive Research Programs (No. NRF-CRP-21-2018-0007). X. W. Z. thanks the support of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12174422)

Three novel umami peptides derived from the alcohol extract of the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) : identification, characterizations and interactions with T1R1/T1R3 taste receptors

Oyster (Crassostrea gigas), the main ingredient of oyster sauce, has a strong umami taste. In this study, three potential umami peptides, FLNQDEEAR (FR-9), FNKEE (FE-5), and EEFLK (EK-5), were identified and screened from the alcoholic extracts of the oyster using nano-HPLC-MS/MS analysis, iUmami-Scoring Card Method (iUmami-SCM) database and molecular docking (MD). Sensory evaluation and electronic tongue analysis were further used to confirm their tastes. The threshold of the three peptides ranged from 0.38 to 0.55 mg/mL. MD with umami receptors T1R1/T1R3 indicated that the electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bond interaction were the main forces involved. Besides, the Phe592 and Gln853 of T1R3 were the primary docking site for MD and played an important role in umami intensity. Peptides with two Glu residues at the terminus had stronger umami, especially at the C-terminus. These results contribute to the understanding of umami peptides in oysters and the interaction mechanism between umami peptides and umami receptors. &amp; COPY; 2024 Beijing Academy of Food Sciences. Publishing services by Tsinghua University Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)