Excess DHA Induces Liver Injury via Lipid Peroxidation and Gut Microbiota-Derived Lipopolysaccharide in Zebrafish

Being highly unsaturated, n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) are prone to lipid peroxidation. In this study, zebrafish were fed with low-fat diet (LFD), high-fat diet (HFD), or 2% DHA-supplemented HFD (HFDHA2.0). To study the possible negative effects of the high level of dietary DHA, growth rates, blood chemistry, liver histology, hepatic oxidative stress, apoptosis, and inflammatory processes were assessed. The cell studies were used to quantify the effects of DHA and antioxidant on cellular lipid peroxidation and viability. The possible interaction between gut microbiota and zebrafish host was evaluated in vitro. HFDHA2.0 had no effect on hepatic lipid level but induced liver injury, oxidative stress, and hepatocellular apoptosis, including intrinsic and death receptor-induced apoptosis. Besides, the inclusion of 2% DHA in HFD increased the abundance of Proteobacteria in gut microbiota and serum endotoxin level. In the zebrafish liver cell model, DHA activated intrinsic apoptosis while the antioxidant 4-hydroxy-Tempo (tempo) inhibited the pro-apoptotic negative effects of DHA. The apoptosis induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was unaffected by the addition of tempo. In conclusion, the excess DHA supplementation generates hepatocellular apoptosis-related injury to the liver. The processes might propagate along at least two routes, involving lipid peroxidation and gut microbiota-generated LPS

Gestational Folic Acid Administration Alleviated Maternal Postpartum Emotional and Cognitive Dysfunction in Mice

Gestational folic acid (FA) supplementation has been widely recognized for its benefits in preventing offspring defects, but its effect on postpartum females has not yet been adequately assessed. The occurrence of emotional and cognitive dysfunction is common in postpartum women, and its treatment remains limited. Considering the promising results of FA in various psychiatric disorders both in human and redents, we tested the effect of gestational FA administration on postpartum psychiatric behavioral phenotypes and the implicated brain-related mechanisms in a murine model. FA was administered orally in both the hormone-stimulated-pregnancy (HSP) model and pregnant mice at doses of 1 and 5 mg/kg. Postpartum behavioral results showed that the disorders of cognitive performance, depressive, and anxiety-related behaviors were all alleviated in the 5 mg/kg FA group. However, the general development of their offspring remained unaffected. Immunofluorescence and immunoblot results revealed that FA pretreatment significantly activated the maternal hippocampal BDNF-related pathway. Morphological studies have confirmed that FA promotes hippocampal neurogenesis. Moreover, synaptic plasticity and synaptic transmission are enhanced. All of these hippocampal changes play critical roles in rescuing neuronal function and behaviors. Thus, our data suggest that gestational FA administration has a therapeutic effect that improves cognition and reduces depression and anxiety in a murine postpartum model. This may be developed as a preventive and adjuvant therapeutic option for pregnant women

Moore's conjecture for polyhedral products

Moore's conjecture is shown to hold for generalized moment-angle complexes and a criterion is proved that determines when a polyhedral product is elliptic or hyperbolic

Ku-band 500W Amplitude-phase Coherence Pulsed MPM for Ocean Exploration

The spatial high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for ocean exploration puts forward higher requirement for output power and amplitude-phase consistency of the pulsed TWT amplifier. The kW class pulsed TWT amplifier based on broadband power combining is the key technology for space SAR applications. In this paper, the factors affecting the amplitude and phase consistency of MPM are studied, and a phase consistency compensation circuit was designed to improve the phase consistency of multiple sets of products. A microwave power model (MPM) with dual TWTs output integrated architecture was proposed which consists of two short travelling wave tubes (TWT), two solid-state power amplifiers (SSPA), and an electronic power conditioner (EPC). More than 45% efficiency is achieved in 15% duty cycle within 600 MHz bandwidth, and the phase consistency was less than ± 5 degrees.With the improvement of synthesis efficiency, higher synthesis power and higher sensitivity of ocean wide scanning and detection can be obtaine