DosR’s multifaceted role on Mycobacterium bovis BCG revealed through multi-omics

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is an intracellular bacterium that causes a highly contagious and potentially lethal tuberculosis (TB) in humans. It can maintain a dormant TB infection within the host. DosR (dormancy survival regulator) (Rv3133c) has been recognized as one of the key transcriptional proteins regulating bacterial dormancy and participating in various metabolic processes. In this study, we extensively investigate the still not well-comprehended role and mechanism of DosR in Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) through a combined omics analysis. Our study finds that deleting DosR significantly affects the transcriptional levels of 104 genes and 179 proteins. Targeted metabolomics data for amino acids indicate that DosR knockout significantly upregulates L-Aspartic acid and serine synthesis, while downregulating seven other amino acids, including L-histidine and lysine. This suggests that DosR regulates amino acid synthesis and metabolism. Taken together, these findings provide molecular and metabolic bases for DosR effects, suggesting that DosR may be a novel regulatory target

Does Serum Vitamin D Level Affect COVID-19 Infection and Its Severity?-A Case-Control Study

Background: As effective medication to treat COVID-19 is currently unavailable, preventive remedies may be particularly important. Objective: To examine the relationship between serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D (25(OH)D) level and COVID-19 infection, its severity, and its clinical case characteristics. Methods: This case-control study compared serum 25(OH)D levels and rates of vitamin D deficiency (VDD) between 80 healthy controls and 62 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and admitted to Guangxi People’s Hospital, China, 2/16/2020–3/16/2020. Cases were categorized into asymptomatic, mild/moderate, and severe/critical disease. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to examine the associations between 25(OH)D level, or VDD, and case status/severity of COVID-19 while controlling for demographics and comorbidities. A threshold level of vitamin D for conveying COVID-19 risk was estimated. Results: Severe/critical COVID-19 cases were significantly older and had higher percentages of comorbidity (renal failure) compared to mild cases. The serum 25(OH)D concentration in COVID-19 patient was much lower than that in healthy control. And 25(OH)D level was the lowest in severe/ critical cases, compared with mild cases. In further, significantly higher rates of VDD were found in COVID-19 cases (41.9%) compared to healthy controls (11.1%). And VDD was the greatest in severe/critical cases (80%), compared with mild cases (36%). These statistically significant associations remained even after controlling for demographics and comorbidities. A potential threshold of 25(OH)D (41.19nmol/L) to protect against COVID-19 was identified. Conclusion: Elderly and people with comorbidities were susceptible to severe COVID-19 infection. VDD was a risk factor for COVID-19, especially for severe/critical cases. While further confirmation is needed, vitamin D supplementation may have prevention or treatment potential for COVID- 19 disease

MiR-378a-5p Regulates Proliferation and Migration in Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell by Targeting CDK1

Objective: Abnormal proliferation or migration of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) can lead to vessel lesions, resulting in atherosclerosis and in stent-restenosis (IRS). The purpose of our study was to establish the role of miR-378a-5p and its targets in regulating VSMCs function and IRS.Methods: EdU assays and Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assays were applied to evaluate VSMCs proliferation, wound healing assays and transwell assays were applied to assess cells migration. Furthermore, quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was performed to investigate the expression level of miR-378a-5p IRS patients and healthy individuals. Target genes were predicted using Target Scan and miRanda software, and biological functions of candidate genes were explored through bioinformatics analysis. Moreover, RNA-binding protein immunoprecipitation (RIP) was carried out to analyze the miRNAs interactions with proteins. We also used Immunofluorescence (IF) and fluorescence microscopy to determine the binding properties, localization and expression of miR-378a-5p with downstream target CDK1.Results: The expression of miR-378a-5p was increased in the group with stent restenosis compared with healthy people, as well as in the group which VSMCs stimulated by platelet-derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB) compared with NCs. MiR-378a-5p over-expression had significantly promoted proliferative and migratory effects, while miR-378a-5p inhibitor suppressed VSMC proliferation and migration. CDK1 was proved to be the functional target of miR-378a-5p in VSMCs. Encouragingly, the expression of miR-378a-5p was increased in patients with stent restenosis compared with healthy people, as well as in PDGF-BB-stimulated VSMCs compared with control cells. Furthermore, co-transfection experiments demonstrated that miR-378a-5p over-expression promoted proliferation and migration of VSMCs specifically by reducing CDK1 gene expression levels.Conclusion: In this investigatory, we concluded that miR-378a-5p is a critical mediator in regulating VSMC proliferation and migration by targeting CDK1/p21 signaling pathway. Thereby, interventions aimed at miR-378a-5p may be of therapeutic application in the prevention and treatment of stent restenosis

Hydrothermally synthesized CeO2 nanowires for H2S sensing at room temperature

CeO2 nanowires were synthesized using a facile hydrothermal process without any surfactant, and their morphological, structural and gas sensing properties were systematically investigated. The CeO2 nanowires with an average diameter of 12.5 nm had a face-centered cubic fluorite structure and grew along [111] of CeO2. At the room temperature of 25 °C, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas sensor based on the CeO2 nanowires showed excellent sensitivity, low detection limit (50 ppb), and short response and recovery time (24 s and 15 s for 50 ppb H2S, respectively)

Electrochemical and Mechanical Failure of Graphite-Based Anode Materials in Li-Ion Batteries for Electric Vehicles

Graphite-based anode materials undergo electrochemical reactions, coupling with mechanical degradation during battery operation, can affect or deteriorate the performance of Li-ion batteries dramatically, and even lead to the battery failure in electric vehicle. First, a single particle model (SPM) based on kinetics of electrochemical reactions was built in this paper. Then the Li-ion concentration and evolution of diffusion induced stresses (DISs) within the SPM under galvanostatic operating conditions were analyzed by utilizing a mathematical method. Next, evolution of stresses or strains in the SPM, together with mechanical degradation of anode materials, was elaborated in detail. Finally, in order to verify the hypothesis aforementioned surface and morphology of the graphite-based anode dismantled from fresh and degraded cells after galvanostatic charge/discharge cycling were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results show that large volume changes of anode materials caused DISs during Li-ion insertion and extraction within the active particles. The continuous accumulations of DISs brought about mechanical failure of the anode eventually

Recognition of 3D Shapes Based on 3V-DepthPano CNN

This paper proposes a convolutional neural network (CNN) with three branches based on the three-view drawing principle and depth panorama for 3D shape recognition. The three-view drawing principle provides three key views of a 3D shape. A depth panorama contains the complete 2.5D information of each view. 3V-DepthPano CNN is a CNN system with three branches designed for depth panoramas generated from the three key views. This recognition system, i.e., 3V-DepthPano CNN, applies a three-branch convolutional neural network to aggregate the 3D shape depth panorama information into a more compact 3D shape descriptor to implement the classification of 3D shapes. Furthermore, we adopt a fine-tuning technique on 3V-DepthPano CNN and extract shape features to facilitate the retrieval of 3D shapes. The proposed method implements a good tradeoff state between higher accuracy and training time. Experiments show that the proposed 3V-DepthPano CNN with 3 views obtains approximate accuracy to MVCNN with 12/80 views. But the 3V-DepthPano CNN frame takes much shorter time to obtain depth panoramas and train the network than MVCNN. It is superior to all other existing advanced methods for both classification and shape retrieval

Preparation of palladium nanoparticles and carboxylated MWNTs modified glassy carbon electrode and its application for the electrochemical determination of Cr (VI)

This study described a simple and rapid method for the electrochemical determination of Cr (VI) based on palladium nanoparticles and carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) (written as PdNPs-MWNT/GCE) .The prepared PdNPs-MWNT/GCE was characterized by FE-SEM,CV,EIS and DPV.It was found that many other metal ions such as Cr3+,Pd2+,Zn2+,Pb2+,Cu2+,Al3+,Ba2+,Ca2+,Mg2+ had no influence on Cr (VI) determination.Under the optimal conditions,the reduction current of Cr (VI) increased linearly with increasing the concentration of Cr (VI) in the range of 8×10-7~ 5×10-8mol/L with a correlation coefficient of 0.9960,and the detection limit of 3×10-8mol/L (based on S/N=3).The present method has the following advantages such as simple,rapid,good selectivity and sensitivity