Pasture intake protects against commercial diet-induced lipopolysaccharide production facilitated by gut microbiota through activating intestinal alkaline phosphatase enzyme in meat geese

IntroductionDiet strongly affects gut microbiota composition, and gut bacteria can influence the intestinal barrier functions and systemic inflammation through metabolic endotoxemia. In-house feeding system (IHF, a low dietary fiber source) may cause altered cecal microbiota composition and inflammatory responses in meat geese via increased endotoxemia (lipopolysaccharides) with reduced intestinal alkaline phosphatase (ALP) production. The effects of artificial pasture grazing system (AGF, a high dietary fiber source) on modulating gut microbiota architecture and gut barrier functions have not been investigated in meat geese. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether intestinal ALP could play a critical role in attenuating reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and ROS facilitating NF-κB pathway-induced systemic inflammation in meat geese.MethodsThe impacts of IHF and AGF systems on gut microbial composition via 16 sRNA sequencing were assessed in meat geese. The host markers analysis through protein expression of serum and cecal tissues, hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining, localization of NF-қB and Nrf2 by immunofluorescence analysis, western blotting analysis of ALP, and quantitative PCR of cecal tissues was evaluated.Results and DiscussionIn the gut microbiota analysis, meat geese supplemented with pasture showed a significant increase in commensal microbial richness and diversity compared to IHF meat geese demonstrating the antimicrobial, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory ability of the AGF system. A significant increase in intestinal ALP-induced Nrf2 signaling pathway was confirmed representing LPS dephosphorylation mediated TLR4/MyD88 induced ROS reduction mechanisms in AGF meat geese. Further, the correlation analysis of top 44 host markers with gut microbiota showed that artificial pasture intake protected gut barrier functions via reducing ROS-mediated NF-κB pathway-induced gut permeability, systemic inflammation, and aging phenotypes. In conclusion, the intestinal ALP functions to regulate gut microbial homeostasis and barrier function appear to inhibit pro-inflammatory cytokines by reducing LPS-induced ROS production in AGF meat geese. The AGF system may represent a novel therapy to counteract the chronic inflammatory state leading to low dietary fiber-related diseases in animals

A Powerful Test of Parent-of-Origin Effects for Quantitative Traits Using Haplotypes

Imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon where the same alleles have unequal transcriptions and thus contribute differently to a trait depending on their parent of origin. This mechanism has been found to affect a variety of human disorders. Although various methods for testing parent-of-origin effects have been proposed in linkage analysis settings, only a few are available for association analysis and they are usually restricted to small families and particular study designs. In this study, we develop a powerful maximum likelihood test to evaluate the parent-of-origin effects of SNPs on quantitative phenotypes in general family studies. Our method incorporates haplotype distribution to take advantage of inter-marker LD information in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Our method also accommodates missing genotypes that often occur in genetic studies. Our simulation studies with various minor allele frequencies, LD structures, family sizes, and missing schemes have uniformly shown that using the new method significantly improves the power of detecting imprinted genes compared with the method using the SNP at the testing locus only. Our simulations suggest that the most efficient strategy to investigate parent-of-origin effects is to recruit one parent and as many offspring as possible under practical constraints. As a demonstration, we applied our method to a dataset from the Genetics of Lipid Lowering Drugs and Diet Network (GOLDN) to test the parent-of-origin effects of the SNPs within the PPARGC1A, MTP and FABP2 genes on diabetes-related phenotypes, and found that several SNPs in the MTP gene show parent-of-origin effects on insulin and glucose levels

Photocatalytic Reduction of CO2 Using TiO2-Graphene Nanocomposites

TiO2-graphene (TiO2-RGO) nanocomposites were prepared via a simple chemical method by using graphene oxide (GO) and TiO2 nanoparticles as starting materials. The morphologies and structural properties of the as-prepared composites were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, N2 adsorption-desorption measurements, and transmission electron microscopy. TiO2-RGO nanocomposites exhibited great photocatalytic activity toward reduction of CO2 into CH4 (2.10 μmol g−1 h−1) and CH3OH (2.20 μmol g−1 h−1), which is attributed to the synergistic effect between TiO2 and graphene

Effects of fine root length density and root biomass on soil preferential flow in forest ecosystems

Aim of study: The study was conducted to characterize the impacts of plant roots systems (e.g., root length density and root biomass) on soil preferential flow in forest ecosystems.Area of study: The study was carried out in Jiufeng National Forest Park, Beijing, China.Material and methods: The flow patterns were measured by field dye tracing experiments. Different species (Sophora japonica Linn, Platycladus orientalis Franco, Quercus dentata Thunb) were quantified in two replicates, and 12 soil depth were applied. Plant roots were sampled in the sieving methods. Root length density and root biomass were measured by WinRHIZO. Dye coverage was implied in the image analysis, and maximum depth of dye infiltration by direct measurement.Main results: Root length density and root biomass decreased with the increasing distance from soil surface, and root length density was 81.6% higher in preferential pathways than in soil matrix, and 66.7% for root biomass with respect to all experimental plots. Plant roots were densely distributed in the upper soil layers. Dye coverage was almost 100% in the upper 5-10 cm, but then decreased rapidly with soil depth. Root length density and root biomass were different from species: Platycladus orientalis Franco > Quercus dentata Thunb > Sophora japonica Linn.Research highlights: The results indicated that fine roots systems had strong effects on soil preferential flow, particularly root channels enhancing nutrition transport across soil profiles in forest dynamics.Key words: soil preferential flow; preferential pathways; soil matrix; root length density; root biomass

Oriented-attachment dimensionality build-up via van der Waals interaction

In this study, molecular static calculation is carried out to evaluate the van der Waals interaction (vdW) associated with different oriented attachment (OA) growth systems involving 1D nanorods (NRs), 2D nanoplates (NPts) and 3D nanostructures (NSts) for the first time. Our results show that the vdW is, to a large extent, determined by the attaching area at all OA growth stages of nanocrystals. The vdW increases significantly as the OA growth varies from 1D NR-NP, end-to-end NR-NR assemblies to 2D side-by-side NR-NR/3D NPt-NPt assemblies. Our study reveals the fundamental details in vdW, one of the governing inter-particle interactions involved in OA growth of NCs, and facilitates the analytical understanding of the OA growth thermodynamics

A Comparative Study on Gemological Characteristics and Color Formation Mechanism of Moqi Agate, Inner Mongolia Province, China

Agate attracts the attention of gem mineralogists because of its variable colors. The color of agate is closely related to its naming and classification, so it is necessary to study the color and mineral origin of agate. In this paper, the mineralogical characteristics and color origin of red, yellow and green Moqi agates from Inner Mongolia were systematically studied by means of Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, Raman spectrometer, X-ray powder diffractometer, electron probe microanalyzer and ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometer. It is found that the color of Moqi agate is related to the minerals and trace elements contained in it, and is associated with the electron transition or charge transfer of Fe ions in the contained minerals. Green agate has the highest Fe content, and its color is caused by celadonite inclusions. The red and yellow color in Moqi agate is mainly caused by hematite and goethite, while red agate contains more Fe than yellow agate. Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis show that the content of moganite in Moqi agate is 0–30%. It is calculated that the crystallinity of Moqi agate is 1.5–3.5. This work provides a theoretical basis for future research on the identification of Moqi agate

Gemmological Characteristics of the “Jin Gao Yu” from Shangluo City, Qinling Mountains, Shaanxi Province, China

In recent years, “Jin Gao Yu” that has been traded as a kind of jade has appeared in areas of the Luonan and Shangnan counties, Shangluo City, Shaanxi Province, attracting the attention of scholars and consumers for its delicate texture and warm color. In this study, infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis, and electron microprobe analysis were used to conduct a systematic gemmological test and an analysis of “Jin Gao Yu”. The results show that “Jin Gao Yu” is a compact mineral aggregate dominated by dolomite, which contains quartz mineral inclusions. The color of “Jin Gao Yu” is grayish-white to earthy-yellow, the refractive index is about 1.54, and the relative density is about 2.86. Its crystal structure is basically the same as that of dolomite, both of which are trigonal systems with granular crystalloblastic textures. It has good crystallinity. The recrystallization phenomenon can be seen under a polarizing microscope. This study determined the species of “Jin Gao Yu”, improved its gemological basic data, provided a theoretical basis for the identification of “Jin Gao Yu” in the future, and, also, provided a new direction for the use of dolomite