Dopamine and Serotonin Modulate Free Amino Acids Production and Na+/K+ Pump Activity in Chinese Mitten Crab Eriocheir sinensis Under Acute Salinity Stress

The Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis lives in saline or fresh water during different life stages and exhibits a complex life history, making it an ideal model to study the salinity adaptation of euryhaline animals. In this study, RNA-seq techniques, and determinations of free amino acids (FAAs), monoamine neurotransmitters, and Na+/K+ pump activity, were employed to understand the osmoregulatory mechanism in Chinese mitten crab. A total of 15,138 differentially expressed genes were obtained from 12 transcriptome libraries. GO enrichment analysis revealed that the mRNA expression profiles were completely remodeled from 12 to 24 h after salinity stress. The neuroendocrine system was activated under stimulation, and the monoamine neurotransmitters including dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT) were released to modulate osmoregulation. Furthermore, the Na+/K+ pump in crab hemocytes was significantly inhibited post salinity stress, resulting in increased intracellular ion concentrations and osmotic pressure to sustain the osmotic balance. Moreover, six key FAAs, including alanine (Ala), proline (Pro), glycine (Gly), glutamate (Glu), arginine (Arg), and aspartate (Asp), were overexpressed to modulate the extracellular osmotic balance during salinity adaptation. Interestingly, the immune genes were not enriched in the GO analysis, implying that the immune system might not contribute fundamentally to the tolerance upon fluctuating ambient salinity in the Chinese mitten crab. These results collectively demonstrated that the Chinese mitten crab had evolved an efficient regulation mechanism by modulating the FAAs production and Na+/K+ pump activity to sustain the osmotic balance independent of the immune system, in which the neuroendocrine modulation, especially generated by the monoamine neurotransmitter, played an indispensable role

Spectrally narrowed edge emission from organic light-emitting diodes

A dramatic spectrally narrowed edge emission (SNEE) from small molecular organic light-emitting diodes at room temperature, with a full width at half maximum of 5–10nm, is described. The results show that this emission is due to irregular waveguide modes that leak from the indium tin oxide anode to the glass substrate at a grazing angle. Measurements of variable stripe length devices exhibit an apparent weak optical gain, but there is no observable threshold bias associated with this SNEE. Hence this apparent “optical gain” is suspected to result from misalignment of the propagating leaky waveguide mode and the collecting optics

Fossil mammals resolve regional patterns of Eurasian climate change over 20 million years.

ABSTRACT Fossil teeth of terrestrial plant-eating mammals offer a new, quasi-quantitative proxy for environmental aridity that resolves previously unseen regional features across the Eurasian continent from 24 to 2 million years ago. The pattern seen prior to 11 million years ago are quite different from today's. Thereafter, a progressively modern rainfall distribution developed at about 7 to 5 million years ago when East Asia remained unexpectedly humid while Europe experienced a transient phase of strong aridity. Mean hypsodonty is a geographically extensive and stratigraphically well-resolved palaeoprecipitation proxy that can be used to constrain the regional details of vegetation and climate models

Versican G3 Promotes Mouse Mammary Tumor Cell Growth, Migration, and Metastasis by Influencing EGF Receptor Signaling

Increased versican expression in breast tumors is predictive of relapse and has negative impact on survival rates. The C-terminal G3 domain of versican influences local and systemic tumor invasiveness in pre-clinical murine models. However, the mechanism(s) by which G3 influences breast tumor growth and metastasis is not well characterized. Here we evaluated the expression of versican in mouse mammary tumor cell lines observing that 4T1 cells expressed highest levels while 66c14 cells expressed low levels. We exogenously expressed a G3 construct in 66c14 cells and analyzed its effects on cell proliferation, migration, cell cycle progression, and EGFR signaling. Experiments in a syngeneic orthotopic animal model demonstrated that G3 promoted tumor growth and systemic metastasis in vivo. Activation of pERK correlated with high levels of G3 expression. In vitro, G3 enhanced breast cancer cell proliferation and migration by up-regulating EGFR signaling, and enhanced cell motility through chemotactic mechanisms to bone stromal cells, which was prevented by inhibitor AG 1478. G3 expressing cells demonstrated increased CDK2 and GSK-3β (S9P) expression, which were related to cell growth. The activity of G3 on mouse mammary tumor cell growth, migration and its effect on spontaneous metastasis to bone in an orthotopic model was modulated by up-regulating the EGFR-mediated signaling pathway. Taken together, EGFR-signaling appears to be an important pathway in versican G3-mediated breast cancer tumor invasiveness and metastasis

The Cholinergic and Adrenergic Autocrine Signaling Pathway Mediates Immunomodulation in Oyster Crassostrea gigas

It is becoming increasingly clear that neurotransmitters impose direct influence on regulation of the immune process. Recently, a simple but sophisticated neuroendocrine–immune (NEI) system was identified in oyster, which modulated neural immune response via a “nervous-hemocyte”-mediated neuroendocrine immunomodulatory axis (NIA)-like pathway. In the present study, the de novo synthesis of neurotransmitters and their immunomodulation in the hemocytes of oyster Crassostrea gigas were investigated to understand the autocrine/paracrine pathway independent of the nervous system. After hemocytes were exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation, acetylcholine (ACh), and norepinephrine (NE) in the cell supernatants, both increased to a significantly higher level (2.71- and 2.40-fold, p < 0.05) comparing with that in the control group. The mRNA expression levels and protein activities of choline O-acetyltransferase and dopamine β-hydroxylase in hemocytes which were involved in the synthesis of ACh and NE were significantly elevated at 1 h after LPS stimulation, while the activities of acetylcholinesterase and monoamine oxidase, two enzymes essential in the metabolic inactivation of ACh and NE, were inhibited. These results demonstrated the existence of the sophisticated intracellular machinery for the generation, release and inactivation of ACh and NE in oyster hemocytes. Moreover, the hemocyte-derived neurotransmitters could in turn regulate the mRNA expressions of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) genes, the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase and lysosome, and hemocyte phagocytosis. The phagocytic activities of hemocytes, the mRNA expressions of TNF and the activities of key immune-related enzymes were significantly changed after the block of ACh and NE receptors with different kinds of antagonists, suggesting that autocrine/paracrine self-regulation was mediated by transmembrane receptors on hemocyte. The present study proved that oyster hemocyte could de novo synthesize and release cholinergic and adrenergic neurotransmitters, and the hemocyte-derived ACh/NE could then execute a negative regulation on hemocyte phagocytosis and synthesis of immune effectors with similar autocrine/paracrine signaling pathway identified in vertebrate macrophages. Findings in the present study demonstrated that the immune and neuroendocrine system evolved from a common origin and enriched our knowledge on the evolution of NEI system

Ultra-Bright, Highly Efficient, Low Roll-Off Inverted Quantum-Dot Light Emitting Devices (Qleds)

We report an ultra-bright, highly efficient, low roll-off, inverted quantum dot-based red light emitting device (QLED) using solution-processed zinc oxide nanoparticles and cesium carbonate films as the electron injection and hole blocking layers, respectively. Record luminance of 165, 000 Cd/m2 has been obtained at a current density of 1000 mA/cm2 with a low driving voltage of 5.8 V for deep red device with C1E coordinates of (0.69, 0.31)

Resting-state brain activity predicts selective attention deficits during hyperthermia exposure

Purpose Environmental hyperthermia exerts detrimental effect on attention performance that might increase the probability of accidents for high risk occupation. Previously, we reported aberrant activations and selective attention deficits under task performing during hyperthermia. However, whether resting-state baseline during hyperthermia would contribute to the reported selective attention deficits remains unclear. Materials and methods Here, we investigated the resting-state activity within two attention subsystems named dorsal attention network (DAN) and ventral attention network (VAN) using the conjoint analysis of functional connectivity (FC) and regional cerebral blood flow (CBF). Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) and 3 D arterial spin labeling data were obtained from 25 healthy male participants under two simulated thermal conditions: normothermic (25 °C for 1 h) and hyperthermic condition (50 °C for 1 h). Results Paired comparisons on the FC and CBF showed decreased activity in the bilateral frontal eye field (FEF) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS) in the DAN but increased activity in the ventral frontal cortex (VFC) in the VAN. The CBF-FC correlation analysis further confirmed decreased CBF-FC coupling in the bilateral FEF in the DAN and increased coupling in the VFC in the VAN. Additionally, the left IPS and FEF in the DAN showed altered CBF per unit functional connectivity in the CBF/FC ratio analysis. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the selectively altered performances were predicted by alterations of the multiple metrics within the DAN and VAN. Conclusions These findings suggested that altered resting-state brain activity within the attention networks might provide potential neural basis of the selective deficits for different cognitive-demand attention tasks under hyperthermia