Effect of the presence of virus-like particles on bacterial growth in sunlit xurface and dark deep ocean environments in the southern East China Sea

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Tsai, A.-Y., Lin, Y.-T., & Gong, G.-C. Effect of the presence of virus-like particles on bacterial growth in sunlit xurface and dark deep ocean environments in the southern East China Sea. Water, 13(20), (2021): 2934, https://doi.org/10.3390/w13202934.Virus-like particles (VLPs) are thought to increase the dissolved organic carbon by releasing the contents of the host cell, which, in turn, can affect bacterial growth in natural aquatic environments. Yet, experimental tests have shown that the effect of VLPs on the bacterial growth rate at different depths has seldom been studied. Bacteria–VLP interaction and the effect of VLPs on bacterial growth rate in the sunlit surface (3 m) and dark, deep ocean (130 m) environments were first explored at a test site in the southern East China Sea of the northwest Pacific. Our experimental results indicated that bacterial and virus-like particle (VLP) abundance decreased with depth from 0.8 ± 0.3 × 105 cells mL−1 and 1.8 ± 0.4 × 106 VLPs mL−1 at 3 m to 0.4 ± 0.1 × 105 cells mL−1 and 1.4 ± 0.3 × 106 VLPs mL−1 at 130 m. We found that the abundance of VLPs to Bacteria Ratio (VBR) in the dark deep ocean (VBR = 35.0 ± 5.6) was higher than in the sunlit surface environment (VBR = 22.5 ± 2.1). The most interesting finding is that in the dark, deep ocean region the bacterial growth rate in the presence of VLPs was higher (0.05 h−1) than that in virus-diluted treatments (0.01 h−1). However, there was no significant difference in the bacterial growth rates between the treatments in the sunlit surface ocean region. Deep-sea ecosystems are dark and extreme environments that lack primary photosynthetic production, and our estimates imply that the contribution of recycled carbon by viral lysis is highly significant for bacterial growth in the dark, deep ocean environment. Further work for more study sites is needed to identify the relationship of VLPs and their hosts to enable us to understand the role of VLPs at different depths in the East China Sea.The research was supported by RFBR projects 18-44-920026, and the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, grant number NSC 109-2611-M-019-013 and NSC 110-2611-M-019-005

Efficient search approaches for K-medoids-based algorithms

In this paper, the concept of previous medoid index is introduced. The utilization of memory for efficient medoid search is also presented. We propose a hybrid search approach for the problem of nearest neighbor search. The hybrid search approach combines the previous medoid index, the utilization of memory, the criterion of triangular inequality elimination and the partial distance search. The proposed hybrid search approach is applied to the k-medoids-based algorithms. Experimental results based on Gauss-Markov source, curve data set and elliptic clusters demonstrate that the proposed algorithm applied to the CLARANS algorithm may reduce the number of distance calculations from 88.4% to 95.2% with the same average distance per object compared with CLARANS. The proposed hybrid search approach can also be applied to nearest neighbor searching and the other clustering algorithms

Effects of natto extract on endothelial injury in a rat model

Vascular endothelial damage has been found to be associated with thrombus formation, which is considered to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. A diet of natto leads to a low prevalence of cardiovascular disease. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of natto extract on vascular endothelia damage with exposure to laser irradiation. Endothelial damage both in vitro and in vivo was induced by irradiation of rose bengal using a DPSS green laser. Cell viability was determined by MTS assay, and the intimal thickening was verified by a histological approach. The antioxidant content of natto extract was determined for the free radical scavenging activity. Endothelial cells were injured in the presence of rose bengal irradiated in a dose-dependent manner. Natto extract exhibits high levels of antioxidant activity compared with purified natto kinase. Apoptosis of laser-injured endothelial cells was significantly reduced in the presence of natto extract. Both the natto extract and natto kinase suppressed intimal thickening in rats with endothelial injury. The present findings suggest that natto extract suppresses vessel thickening as a synergic effect attributed to its antioxidant and anti-apoptosis properties