Stomatal Conductance and Morphology of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Wheat Plants Response to Elevated CO2 and NaCl Stress

Stomata play a critical role in the regulation of gas exchange between the interior of the leaf and the exterior environment and are affected by environmental and endogenous stimuli. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus, Rhizophagus irregularis, on the stomatal behavior of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) plants under combination with elevated CO2 and NaCl stress. Wheat seedlings were exposed to ambient (400 ppm) or elevated (700 ppm) CO2 concentrations and 0, 1, and 2 g kg−1 dry soil NaCl treatments for 10 weeks. AM symbiosis increased the leaf area and stomatal density (SD) of the abaxial surface. Stomatal size and the aperture of adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces were higher in the AM than non-AM plants under elevated CO2 and salinity stress. AM plants showed higher stomatal conductance (gs) and maximum rate of gs to water vapor (gsmax) compared with non-AM plants. Moreover, leaf water potential (Ψ) was increased and carbon isotope discrimination (Δ13C) was decreased by AM colonization, and both were significantly associated with stomatal conductance. The results suggest that AM symbiosis alters stomatal morphology by changing SD and the size of the guard cells and stomatal pores, thereby improving the stomatal conductance and water relations of wheat leaves under combined elevated CO2 and salinity stress

Gut dysbiosis contributes to chlamydial induction of hydrosalpinx in the upper genital tract

Chlamydia trachomatis is one of the most common sexually infections that cause infertility, and its genital infection induces tubal adhesion and hydrosalpinx. Intravaginal Chlamydia muridarum infection in mice can induce hydrosalpinx in the upper genital tract and it has been used for studying C. trachomatis pathogenicity. DBA2/J strain mice were known to be resistant to the chlamydial induction of hydrosalpinx. In this study, we took advantage of this feature of DBA2/J mice to evaluate the role of antibiotic induced dysbiosis in chlamydial pathogenicity. Antibiotics (vancomycin and gentamicin) were orally administrated to induce dysbiosis in the gut of DBA2/J mice. The mice with or without antibiotic treatment were evaluated for gut and genital dysbiosis and then intravaginally challenged by C. muridarum. Chlamydial burden was tested and genital pathologies were evaluated. We found that oral antibiotics significantly enhanced chlamydial induction of genital hydrosalpinx. And the antibiotic treatment induced severe dysbiosis in the GI tract, including significantly reduced fecal DNA and increased ratios of firmicutes over bacteroidetes. The oral antibiotic did not alter chlamydial infection or microbiota in the mouse genital tracts. Our study showed that the oral antibiotics-enhanced hydrosalpinx correlated with dysbiosis in gut, providing the evidence for associating gut microbiome with chlamydial genital pathogenicity

Treatment experience for different risk groups of Kaposiform hemangioendothelioma

BackgroundKaposiform hemangioendothelioma (KHE) is a rare vascular tumor with a high risk of mortality. Few studies with large samples of KHE have been reported. KHE may develop into the Kasabach–Merritt phenomenon (KMP), which is characterized by thrombocytopenia and consumptive coagulopathy. The features of severe symptomatic anemia and life-threatening low platelets make the management of KHE associated with KMP challenging.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to examine the clinical characteristics of patients with KHE and discuss the treatment experience for different risk groups of KHE.MethodsThrough a retrospective review of 70 patients diagnosed with KHE between 2017 and 2022 in our center, we classify lesions into three clinicopathological stages based on the tumor involving depth, and divided the severity of KHE into three levels by estimating clinicopathological stages and severity of thrombocytopenia. Treatments of different severity groups were estimated with sufficient data.ResultsIn our cohort, 27% were neonates, and KHE lesion occurred at birth in 84% of patients. There was a slight male predominance (32 girls and 38 boys). Common clinical characteristics included associated coagulation disorder (100%), locally aggressive cutaneous blue–purple mass (89%), thrombocytopenia (78%), and local pain or joint dysfunction (20%). The lower extremities were the dominant location (35%), followed by the trunk (29%), the maxillofacial region and neck (24%), and the upper extremities (10%). Of the total cohort, 78% developed KMP; the median age at which thrombocytopenia occurred was 27.8 days. The median platelet count of patients who were associated with KMP was 24,000/µL in our cohort. Ninety-two percent of patients were given surgery treatment and 89% of these patients were given high-dose methylprednisolone (5-6 mg/kg daily) before surgery. In 55 patients with KMP, 36% were sensitive to high-dose corticosteroid therapy. Patients from the low-risk group (eight cases) underwent operation, all of whom recovered without recurrence after a maximum follow-up of 5 years. Out of 26 patients from the high-risk group, 25 underwent surgery treatment, with 1 case undergoing secondary surgery after recurrence and 1 case taking sirolimus. Out of 36 cases from the extremely high-risk group, 32 underwent surgery (including 2 cases who underwent external carotid artery ligation and catheterization), 3 of whom underwent secondary operation after recurrence, and the remaining 4 cases took medicine. The mean length of having sirolimus was 21 months; two cases stopped taking sirolimus due to severe pneumonia. Two cases died at 1 and 3 months after discharge.ConclusionsOur study describes the largest assessment of high-risk patients with KHE who have undergone an operation to date, with 5 years of follow-up to track recovery, which provides invaluable knowledge for the future treatment of patients with KHE and KMP from different risk groups: Early surgical intervention may be the most definitive treatment option for most patients with KHE; multimodality treatment is the best choice for the extremely high-risk group

Identification of microtubule-associated biomarkers in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and prognosis prediction

Background: Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a genetically heterogeneous disease with a complicated prognosis. Even though various prognostic evaluations have been applied currently, they usually only use the clinical factors that overlook the molecular underlying DLBCL progression. Therefore, more accurate prognostic assessment needs further exploration. In the present study, we constructed a novel prognostic model based on microtubule associated genes (MAGs).Methods: A total of 33 normal controls and 1360 DLBCL samples containing gene-expression from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database were included. Subsequently, the univariate Cox, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), and multivariate Cox regression analysis were used to select the best prognosis related genes into the MAGs model. To validate the model, Kaplan-Meier curve, and nomogram were analyzed.Results: A risk score model based on fourteen candidate MAGs (CCDC78, CD300LG, CTAG2, DYNLL2, MAPKAPK2, MREG, NME8, PGK2, RALBP1, SIGLEC1, SLC1A1, SLC39A12, TMEM63A, and WRAP73) was established. The K-M curve presented that the high-risk patients had a significantly inferior overall survival (OS) time compared to low-risk patients in training and validation datasets. Furthermore, knocking-out TMEM63A, a key gene belonging to the MAGs model, inhibited cell proliferation noticeably.Conclusion: The novel MAGs prognostic model has a well predictive capability, which may as a supplement for the current assessments. Furthermore, candidate TMEM63A gene has therapeutic target potentially in DLBCL

Do the Powerful Discount the Future Less? The Effects of Power on Temporal Discounting

Individuals have the tendency to discount rewards in the future, known as temporal discounting, and we find that sense of power (the felt capacity to influence the thinking and behavior of others) reduces such tendency. In Studies 1 and 2, we used both an experiment and a survey with organizational employees to demonstrate that power reduced temporal discounting. In Study 3, we replicated study 1 while exploring a unique cultural trait of Danbo, or indifference to fame and wealth, across two ethnic groups (Han and Tibetan groups) in China. While power reduces temporal discounting, the relationship between the two may be leveraged by individual differences of optimism, frustration, and Danbo. The results imply a more nuanced interpretation of how individual and situational factors can affect intertemporal choice

The role of IL‐6/JAK/STAT signal in female infertility caused by hydrosalpinx

Abstract Introduction To explore the role of IL‐6/JAK/STAT signaling in tubal infertility. Methods The fimbriae tissues of 14 patients with a history of infertility and hydrosalpinx and 14 patients with no history of infertility and no fallopian tube disease were collected. The tissues were then divided into hydrosalpinx group and control group followed by analysis of the protein expression of key factors in the IL‐6/JAK/STAT signaling by immunohistochemistry and Western blot. Results Immunohistochemical staining showed significantly higher level of IL‐6, JAK1, p‐JAK1, JAK2, p‐JAK2, STAT1, p‐STAT1, STAT3, and p‐STAT3 in hydrosalpinx group than those in control group with IL‐6 being mainly located in the cytoplasm and p‐JAK2, STAT1, p‐STAT1, STAT3, and p‐STAT3 in the cytoplasm and nucleus. JAK1 and p‐JAK1 was mainly located in the cytoplasm and JAK2 is in the cytoplasm and nucleus without difference of their expression between two groups. Consistently, hydrosalpinx group presented significantly higher protein levels of IL‐6, JAK1, p‐JAK1, JAK2, p‐JAK2, STAT1, p‐STAT1, STAT3, and p‐STAT3 than control group without difference of JAK1, p‐JAK1, JAK2 level. Conclusion The activation of IL‐6/JAK2/STAT1 and STAT3 signaling pathways are found in the hydrosalpinx in infertile patients, indicating that they might be involved in the pathogenesis of hydrosalpinx

Structural and Functional Sensing of Bio-Tissues Based on Compressive Sensing Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography

In this paper, a full depth 2D CS-SDOCT approach is proposed, which combines two-dimensional (2D) compressive sensing spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (CS-SDOCT) and dispersion encoding (ED) technologies, and its applications in structural imaging and functional sensing of bio-tissues are studied. Specifically, by introducing a large dispersion mismatch between the reference arm and sample arm in SD-OCT system, the reconstruction of the under-sampled A-scan data and the removal of the conjugated images can be achieved simultaneously by only two iterations. The under-sampled B-scan data is then reconstructed using the classic CS reconstruction algorithm. For a 5 mm × 3.2 mm fish-eye image, the conjugated image was reduced by 31.4 dB using 50% × 50% sampled data (250 depth scans and 480 spectral sampling points per depth scan), and all A-scan data was reconstructed in only 1.2 s. In addition, we analyze the application performance of the CS-SDOCT in functional sensing of locally homogeneous tissue. Simulation and experimental results show that this method can correctly reconstruct the extinction coefficient spectrum under reasonable iteration times. When 8 iterations were used to reconstruct the A-scan data in the imaging experiment of fisheye, the extinction coefficient spectrum calculated using 50% × 50% data was approximately consistent with that obtained with 100% data