Determination and Occurrence of Retinoids in a Eutrophic Lake (Taihu Lake, China): Cyanobacteria Blooms Produce Teratogenic Retinal

Besides retinoic acids (RAs), some retinoids such as retinal (RAL) and retinol (ROH), which are considered as RA precursors in vertebrates, are also reported to be teratogenic agents. In this study we investigated four RA precursors including RAL, ROH, retinyl palmitate, and β-carotene in the eutrophic Taihu Lake, China, by developing a sensitive analytical method. RAL and β-carotene were widely detected in natural cyanobacteria blooms and lake water. Intracellular concentrations of RAL and β-carotene in blooms were 9.4 to 6.9 × 10³ and 3.4 to 1.8 × 10⁵ ng L^–1, respectively, and their concentrations in lake water were up to 1.4 × 10 ng L^–1 (RAL) and 9.8 × 10² ng L^–1 (β-carotene). The good correlation between intracellular concentrations of RAL and RAs implied that RAL was involved in the production of RAs by cyanobacteria blooms. Further examination of 39 cyanobacteria and algae species revealed that most species could produce RAL and β-carotene. The greatest amount of RAL was found in <i>Chlamydomonas</i> sp. (FACHB-715; 1.9 × 10³ ng g^–1 dry weight). As the main cyanobacteria in Taihu Lake, many <i>Microcystis</i> species could produce high amounts of RAL and were thought to greatly contribute to the production of RAL measured in the blooms. Productions of RAL and β-carotene by cyanobacteria were associated with species, origin location, and growth stage. The results in this study present the existence of a potential risk to aquatic animals living in a eutrophic environment from a high concentration of RAL in cyanobacteria blooms and also provide a clue for further investigating the mechanism underlying the biosynthetic pathway of RAs in cyanobacteria and algae

Uptake and Metabolism of Phthalate Esters by Edible Plants

Phthalate esters (PAEs) are large-volume chemicals and are found ubiquitously in soil as a result of widespread plasticulture and waste disposal. Food plants such as vegetables may take up and accumulate PAEs from soil, potentially imposing human health risks through dietary intake. In this study, we carried out a cultivation study using lettuce, strawberry, and carrot plants to determine the potential of plant uptake, translocation, and metabolism of di-<i>n</i>-butyl phthalate (DnBP) and di­(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and their primary metabolites mono-<i>n</i>-butyl phthalate (MnBP) and mono­(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP). All four compounds were detected in the plant tissues, with the bioconcentration factors (BCFs) ranging from 0.16 ± 0.01 to 4.78 ± 0.59. However, the test compounds were poorly translocated from roots to leaves, with a translocation factor below 1. Further, PAEs were readily transformed to their monoesters following uptake. Incubation of PAEs and monoalkyl phthalate esters (MPEs) in carrot cell culture showed that DnBP was hydrolyzed more rapidly than DEHP, while the monoesters were transformed more quickly than their parent precursors. Given the extensive metabolism of PAEs to monoesters in both whole plants and plant cells, metabolism intermediates such as MPEs should be considered when assessing human exposure via dietary intake of food produced from PAE-contaminated soils

Treated Wastewater Irrigation: Uptake of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products by Common Vegetables under Field Conditions

Global water shortage is placing an unprecedented pressure on water supplies. Treated wastewater is a valuable water resource, but its reuse for agricultural irrigation faces a roadblock: the public concern over the potential accumulation of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) into human diet. In the present study, we measured the levels of 19 commonly occurring pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in 8 vegetables irrigated with treated wastewater under field conditions. Tertiary treated wastewater without or with a fortification of each PPCP at 250 ng/L, was used to irrigate crops until harvest. Plant samples at premature and mature stages were collected. Analysis of edible tissues showed a detection frequency of 64% and 91% in all vegetables from the treated wastewater and fortified water treatments, respectively. The edible samples from the two treatments contained the same PPCPs, including caffeine, meprobamate, primidone, DEET, carbamazepine, dilantin, naproxen, and triclosan. The total concentrations of PPCPs detected in edible tissues from the treated wastewater and fortified irrigation treatments were in the range of 0.01–3.87 and 0.15–7.3 ng/g (dry weight), respectively. Annual exposure of PPCPs from the consumption of mature vegetables irrigated with the fortified water was estimated to be only 3.69 μg per capita. Results from the present study showed that the accumulation of PPCPs in vegetables irrigated with treated wastewater was likely limited under field conditions

Comparison of Dice and PPV for segmentation effects of different loss functions.

Comparison of Dice and PPV for segmentation effects of different loss functions.</p

Fig 2 -

BraTS brain tumor datasets (a) T1, (b) T2, (c) T1ce, (d) Flair, and (e) GT.</p

Comparison of Dice evaluation indexes between different literature methods.

Comparison of Dice evaluation indexes between different literature methods.</p

Fig 10 -

Curve changes of loss and iou of the training set and verification set (a) loss change curve (b) iou change curve.</p

Additional file 1 of Promoting the application of Pinus thunbergii Parl. to enhance the growth and survival rates of post-germination somatic plantlets

Supplementary Material

Fig 8 -

Segmentation results of the third group(a) T1 (b) T2 (c) T1ce (d) Flair (e) GT (f) The resulting diagram of the algorithm in this paper.</p

Comparison of sensitivity and Hausdorff of segmentation effects of different models.

Comparison of sensitivity and Hausdorff of segmentation effects of different models.</p