Structural Modifications of Nature-Inspired Indoloquinolines: A Mini Review of Their Potential Antiproliferative Activity

Cryptolepine, neocryptolepine and isocryptolepine are naturally occurring indoloquinoline alkaloids with various spectrum of biological properties. Structural modification is an extremely effective means to improve their bioactivities. This review enumerates several neocryptolepine and isocryptolepine analogues with potent antiproliferative activity against MV4-11 (leukemia), A549 (lung cancer), HCT116 (colon cancer) cell lines in vitro. Its activity towards normal mouse fibroblasts BALB/3T3 was also evaluated. Furthermore, structure activity relationships (SAR) are briefly discussed. The anticancer screening of neocryptolepine derivatives was performed in order to determine their cytotoxic and growth inhibitory activities across the JFCR39 cancer cell line panel

An application of Pixel Interval Down-sampling (PID) for dense tiny microorganism counting on environmental microorganism images

This paper proposes a novel pixel interval down-sampling network (PID-Net) for dense tiny objects (yeast cells) counting tasks with higher accuracy. The PID-Net is an end-to-end CNN model with encoder to decoder architecture. The pixel interval down-sampling operations are concatenated with max-pooling operations to combine the sparse and dense features. It addresses the limitation of contour conglutination of dense objects while counting. Evaluation was done using classical segmentation metrics (Dice, Jaccard, Hausdorff distance) as well as counting metrics. Experimental result shows that the proposed PID-Net has the best performance and potential for dense tiny objects counting tasks, which achieves 96.97% counting accuracy on the dataset with 2448 yeast cell images. By comparing with the state-of-the-art approaches like Attention U-Net, Swin U-Net and Trans U-Net, the proposed PID-Net can segment the dense tiny objects with clearer boundaries and fewer incorrect debris, which shows the great potential of PID-Net in the task of accurate counting tasks

Techno-economic and environmental assessment of the hybrid energy system considering electric and thermal loads

Optimal sizing of hybrid energy systems has been considerably investigated in previous studies. Nevertheless, most studies only focused on providing AC electric loads by renewable energy sources (RESs) and energy storage systems (ESSs). In this paper, a hybrid energy system, including photovoltaic (PV) system, ESS, fuel cell (FC), natural gas (NG) boiler, thermal load controller (TLC), and converter is optimized for supplying different load demands. Three scenarios are introduced to investigate the feasibility of the energy system. Environmental aspects of each system are analyzed, as there are NG-consuming sources in the system structure. A sensitivity analysis is conducted on the influential parameters of the system, such as inflation rate and interest rate. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid energy system is economically and technically feasible. The net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE) of the system are obtained at 230,223 $and 0.0409$, respectively. The results indicate that the TLC plays a key role in the optimal operation of the PV system and the reduction in greenhouse gas emission productions.Acknowledgments: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61773120, 61802063), the Special Projects in Key Fields of Universities in Guangdong (2021ZDZX1019) and the Hunan Provincial Innovation Foundation for Postgraduate (CX20200585).Scopu

Temperature determines the diversity and structure of N2O-reducing microbial assemblages

Micro-organisms harbouring the nosZ gene convert N O to N and play a critical role in reducing global N O emissions. As higher denitrifier diversity can result in higher denitrification rates, here we aimed to understand the diversity, composition and spatial structure of N O-reducing microbial assemblages in forest soils across a large latitudinal and temperature gradient. We sequenced nosZ gene amplicons of 126 soil samples from six forests with mean annual soil temperatures (MAST) ranging from 3.7 to 25.3°C and tested predictions of the metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) and metabolic-niche theory (MNT). As predicted, α-diversity of nosZ communities increased with increasing MAST, within-site β-diversity decreased and two (pH and soil moisture) of the three niche widths examined were larger with increasing MAST. We calculated β-nearest taxon distance and Raup–Crick metric to quantify the relative influence of the assembly processes determining nosZ assemblage structure. Environmental selection was the primary process driving assemblage structure in all six forests. Homogenizing dispersal was also important at one site, which could be explained by the site's much lower variability in soil chemistry. We used canonical correspondence analysis and multiple regression on matrices to examine relationships between nosZ communities and environmental factors, and found that temperature and spatial distance were significant predictors of nosZ assemblage structure. Overall our results support both theories (MTE and MNT) tested, showing that higher temperatures are correlated with higher local diversity, wider niche breadths and lower within-site turnover rates. A plain language summary is available for this article. 2 2 2

Genome-Wide Mapping of DNA Methylation in Chicken

Cytosine DNA methylation is an important epigenetic modification termed as the fifth base that functions in diverse processes. Till now, the genome-wide DNA methylation maps of many organisms has been reported, such as human, Arabidopsis, rice and silkworm, but the methylation pattern of bird remains rarely studied. Here we show the genome-wide DNA methylation map of bird, using the chicken as a model organism and an immunocapturing approach followed by high-throughput sequencing. In both of the red jungle fowl and the avian broiler, DNA methylation was described separately for the liver and muscle tissue. Generally, chicken displays analogous methylation pattern with that of animals and plants. DNA methylation is enriched in the gene body regions and the repetitive sequences, and depleted in the transcription start site (TSS) and the transcription termination site (TTS). Most of the CpG islands in the chicken genome are kept in unmethylated state. Promoter methylation is negatively correlated with the gene expression level, indicating its suppressive role in regulating gene transcription. This work contributes to our understanding of epigenetics in birds

Pair-breaking quantum phase transition in superconducting nanowires

A quantum phase transition (QPT) between distinct ground states of matter is a wide-spread phenomenon in nature, yet there are only a few experimentally accessible systems where the microscopic mechanism of the transition can be tested and understood. These cases are unique and form the experimentally established foundation for our understanding of quantum critical phenomena. Here we report the discovery that a magnetic-field-driven QPT in superconducting nanowires - a prototypical 1d-system - can be fully explained by the critical theory of pair-breaking transitions characterized by a correlation length exponent $\nu \approx 1$ and dynamic critical exponent $z \approx 2$. We find that in the quantum critical regime, the electrical conductivity is in agreement with a theoretically predicted scaling function and, moreover, that the theory quantitatively describes the dependence of conductivity on the critical temperature, field magnitude and orientation, nanowire cross sectional area, and microscopic parameters of the nanowire material. At the critical field, the conductivity follows a $T^{(d-2)/z}$ dependence predicted by phenomenological scaling theories and more recently obtained within a holographic framework. Our work uncovers the microscopic processes governing the transition: The pair-breaking effect of the magnetic field on interacting Cooper pairs overdamped by their coupling to electronic degrees of freedom. It also reveals the universal character of continuous quantum phase transitions.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure

Citrus sinensis MYB Transcription Factor CsMYB85 Induce Fruit Juice Sac Lignification Through Interaction With Other CsMYB Transcription Factors

Varieties of Citrus are commercially important fruits that are cultivated worldwide and are valued for being highly nutritious and having an appealing flavor. Lignification of citrus fruit juice sacs is a serious physiological disorder that occurs during postharvest storage, for which the underlying transcriptional regulatory mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we identified and isolated a candidate MYB transcription factor, CsMYB85, that is involved in the regulation of lignin biosynthesis in Citrus sinensis, which has homologs in Arabidopsis and other plants. We found that during juice sac lignification, CsMYB85 expression levels increase significantly, and therefore, suspected that this gene may control lignin biosynthesis during the lignification process. Our results indicated that CsMYB85 binds the CsMYB330 promoter, regulates its expression, and interacts with CsMYB308 in transgenic yeast and tobacco. A transient expression assay indicated that Cs4CL1 expression levels and lignin content significantly increased in fruit juice sacs overexpressing CsMYB85. At4CL1 expression levels and lignin content were also significantly increased in Arabidopsis overexpressing CsMYB85. We accordingly present convincing evidence for the participation of the CsMYB85 transcription factor in fruit juice sac lignification, and thereby provide new insights into the transcriptional regulation of this process in citrus fruits

Assessment of NER solutions against the first and second CALBC Silver Standard Corpus

Background Competitions in text mining have been used to measure the performance of automatic text processing solutions against a manually annotated gold standard corpus (GSC). The preparation of the GSC is time-consuming and costly and the final corpus consists at the most of a few thousand documents annotated with a limited set of semantic groups. To overcome these shortcomings, the CALBC project partners (PPs) have produced a large-scale annotated biomedical corpus with four different semantic groups through the harmonisation of annotations from automatic text mining solutions, the first version of the Silver Standard Corpus (SSC-I). The four semantic groups are chemical entities and drugs (CHED), genes and proteins (PRGE), diseases and disorders (DISO) and species (SPE). This corpus has been used for the First CALBC Challenge asking the participants to annotate the corpus with their text processing solutions. Results All four PPs from the CALBC project and in addition, 12 challenge participants (CPs) contributed annotated data sets for an evaluation against the SSC-I. CPs could ignore the training data and deliver the annotations from their genuine annotation system, or could train a machine-learning approach on the provided pre-annotated data. In general, the performances of the annotation solutions were lower for entities from the categories CHED and PRGE in comparison to the identification of entities categorized as DISO and SPE. The best performance over all semantic groups were achieved from two annotation solutions that have been trained on the SSC-I. The data sets from participants were used to generate the harmonised Silver Standard Corpus II (SSC-II), if the participant did not make use of the annotated data set from the SSC-I for training purposes. The performances of the participants’ solutions were again measured against the SSC-II. The performances of the annotation solutions showed again better results for DISO and SPE in comparison to CHED and PRGE. Conclusions The SSC-I delivers a large set of annotations (1,121,705) for a large number of documents (100,000 Medline abstracts). The annotations cover four different semantic groups and are sufficiently homogeneous to be reproduced with a trained classifier leading to an average F-measure of 85%. Benchmarking the annotation solutions against the SSC-II leads to better performance for the CPs’ annotation solutions in comparison to the SSC-I

Functions of Some Capsular Polysaccharide Biosynthetic Genes in Klebsiella pneumoniae NTUH K-2044

The growing number of Klebsiella pneumoniae infections, commonly acquired in hospitals, has drawn great concern. It has been shown that the K1 and K2 capsular serotypes are the most detrimental strains, particularly to those with diabetes. The K1 cps (capsular polysaccharide) locus in the NTUH-2044 strain of the pyogenic liver abscess (PLA) K. pneumoniae has been identified recently, but little is known about the functions of the genes therein. Here we report characterization of a group of cps genes and their roles in the pathogenesis of K1 K. pneumoniae. By sequential gene deletion, the cps gene cluster was first re-delimited between genes galF and ugd, which serve as up- and down-stream ends, respectively. Eight gene products were characterized in vitro and in vivo to be involved in the syntheses of UDP-glucose, UDP-glucuronic acid and GDP-fucose building units. Twelve genes were identified as virulence factors based on the observation that their deletion mutants became avirulent or lost K1 antigenicity. Furthermore, deletion of kp3706, kp3709 or kp3712 (ΔwcaI, ΔwcaG or Δatf, respectively), which are all involved in fucose biosynthesis, led to a broad range of transcriptional suppression for 52 upstream genes. The genes suppressed include those coding for unknown regulatory membrane proteins and six multidrug efflux system proteins, as well as proteins required for the K1 CPS biosynthesis. In support of the suppression of multidrug efflux genes, we showed that these three mutants became more sensitive to antibiotics. Taken together, the results suggest that kp3706, kp3709 or kp3712 genes are strongly related to the pathogenesis of K. pneumoniae K1