Genome replication engineering assisted continuous evolution (GREACE) to improve microbial tolerance for biofuels production

BACKGROUND: Microbial production of biofuels requires robust cell growth and metabolism under tough conditions. Conventionally, such tolerance phenotypes were engineered through evolutionary engineering using the principle of “Mutagenesis followed-by Selection”. The iterative rounds of mutagenesis-selection and frequent manual interventions resulted in discontinuous and inefficient strain improvement processes. This work aimed to develop a more continuous and efficient evolutionary engineering method termed as “Genome Replication Engineering Assisted Continuous Evolution” (GREACE) using “Mutagenesis coupled-with Selection” as its core principle. RESULTS: The core design of GREACE is to introduce an in vivo continuous mutagenesis mechanism into microbial cells by introducing a group of genetically modified proofreading elements of the DNA polymerase complex to accelerate the evolution process under stressful conditions. The genotype stability and phenotype heritability can be stably maintained once the genetically modified proofreading element is removed, thus scarless mutants with desired phenotypes can be obtained. Kanamycin resistance of E. coli was rapidly improved to confirm the concept and feasibility of GREACE. Intrinsic mechanism analysis revealed that during the continuous evolution process, the accumulation of genetically modified proofreading elements with mutator activities endowed the host cells with enhanced adaptation advantages. We further showed that GREACE can also be applied to engineer n-butanol and acetate tolerances. In less than a month, an E. coli strain capable of growing under an n-butanol concentration of 1.25% was isolated. As for acetate tolerance, cell growth of the evolved E. coli strain increased by 8-fold under 0.1% of acetate. In addition, we discovered that adaptation to specific stresses prefers accumulation of genetically modified elements with specific mutator strengths. CONCLUSIONS: We developed a novel GREACE method using “Mutagenesis coupled-with Selection” as core principle. Successful isolation of E. coli strains with improved n-butanol and acetate tolerances demonstrated the potential of GREACE as a promising method for strain improvement in biofuels production

Transformative skeletal motion analysis: optimization of exercise training and injury prevention through graph neural networks

IntroductionExercise is pivotal for maintaining physical health in contemporary society. However, improper postures and movements during exercise can result in sports injuries, underscoring the significance of skeletal motion analysis. This research aims to leverage advanced technologies such as Transformer, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to optimize sports training and mitigate the risk of injuries.MethodsThe study begins by employing a Transformer network to model skeletal motion sequences, facilitating the capture of global correlation information. Subsequently, a Graph Neural Network is utilized to delve into local motion features, enabling a deeper understanding of joint relationships. To enhance the model's robustness and adaptability, a Generative Adversarial Network is introduced, utilizing adversarial training to generate more realistic and diverse motion sequences.ResultsIn the experimental phase, skeletal motion datasets from various cohorts, including professional athletes and fitness enthusiasts, are utilized for validation. Comparative analysis against traditional methods demonstrates significant enhancements in specificity, accuracy, recall, and F1-score. Notably, specificity increases by ~5%, accuracy reaches around 90%, recall improves to around 91%, and the F1-score exceeds 89%.DiscussionThe proposed skeletal motion analysis method, leveraging Transformer and Graph Neural Networks, proves successful in optimizing exercise training and preventing injuries. By effectively amalgamating global and local information and integrating Generative Adversarial Networks, the method excels in capturing motion features and enhancing precision and adaptability. Future research endeavors will focus on further advancing this methodology to provide more robust technological support for healthy exercise practices

Comparative Analysis on Main Material index of China and International Composite Girder Bridge with Corrugated Steel Web

Prestressed Concrete girder bridge with corrugated steel web is type of girder bridge that evolve rapidly in recent year, its excellent mechanical properties is getting more and more recognition by majority of the bridge engineers. This article investigate the case study of constructed girder bridge with corrugated steel webs in China, analyze and give comment based on their construction design, technology and etc. With the data of constructed girder bridge with corrugated steel webs in Japan, comparative analysis of the main material index of China and Japan girder bridge with corrugated steel webs was compared, the material index function was developed to ease the estimation of related construction

The effect of ulinastatin on hyperglycemia in patients undergoing hepatectomy

AbstractBackgroundTo identify the effect of ulinastatin (UTI) administration on stress-induced hyperglycemia and acute insulin (INS) resistance experienced by patients undergoing partial hepatectomy.MethodsForty-six patients undergoing partial hepatectomy were assigned randomly to the control group (group C) or UTI treatment group (group U). Six cases underwent partial hepatectomy but were not eligible for inclusion. The patients in group U had an intravenous infusion of a total amount of 5000 IU/kg UTI before the induction of anesthesia and at the start of surgery. The patients in group C were given an identical volume of physiological saline in the same manner. Blood samples for the measurement of interleukin-6, cortisol, INS, and glucagon were obtained. Fasting plasma glucose concentration was measured immediately before skin incision (T1), 20 min after the liver lesion was removed (T2), at the end of surgery (T3), as well as on the first (T4) and second mornings after partial hepatectomy (T5). The insulin sensitivity index (ISI) was calculated at these time points.ResultsThe fasting plasma glucose concentration in group U was significantly lower than that in group C at all time points except for T1. In group U, the insulin sensitivity index was higher, and the levels of interleukin-6, cortisol, and INS were lower than that in group C (P < 0.05).ConclusionsThe data suggest that UTI administration improves perioperative hyperglycemia by inhibiting the inflammatory reaction, as well as excessive release of inflammatory factors, and improves INS resistance

Language-Routing Mixture of Experts for Multilingual and Code-Switching Speech Recognition

Multilingual speech recognition for both monolingual and code-switching speech is a challenging task. Recently, based on the Mixture of Experts (MoE), many works have made good progress in multilingual and code-switching ASR, but present huge computational complexity with the increase of supported languages. In this work, we propose a computation-efficient network named Language-Routing Mixture of Experts (LR-MoE) for multilingual and code-switching ASR. LR-MoE extracts language-specific representations through the Mixture of Language Experts (MLE), which is guided to learn by a frame-wise language routing mechanism. The weight-shared frame-level language identification (LID) network is jointly trained as the shared pre-router of each MoE layer. Experiments show that the proposed method significantly improves multilingual and code-switching speech recognition performances over baseline with comparable computational efficiency.Comment: To appear in Proc. INTERSPEECH 2023, August 20-24, 2023, Dublin, Irelan

The shackles of gender still exist: Chinese women authors’ consciousness in boys’ love fiction

Boys’ love (BL) fiction has flourished in China since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It primarily focuses on the romance between men, while most authors and readers of BL fiction are heterosexual women; thus it is paradoxically patriarchal and feminist. This study aims to explore two main questions: (1) What topics do Chinese BL fiction authors prefer? (2) How do the gender concepts of Chinese culture affect the topics and contents of BL fiction? Adopting machine learning methods––the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model and word vector technology—this study presents the typical topics and specific contents of 72,548 original BL fiction pieces from synchronic and diachronic dimensions. The findings reveal that Chinese BL fiction extensively uses Chinese myths and history to create heterosexually structured fantasies. Furthermore, under the Chinese patriarchal culture, primarily the clan concept, BL authors attach great importance to marriage and reproduction issues. Such discourses eventually limit Chinese BL women authors’ awakening of a feminist consciousness

Identification of the difference in the pathogenesis in heart failure arising from different etiologies using a microarray dataset

OBJECTIVES: Clinically, patients with chronic heart failure arising from different etiologies receive the same treatment. However, the prognoses of these patients differ. The purpose of this study was to elucidate whether the pathogenesis of heart failure arising from different etiologies differs. METHODS: Heart failure-related dataset GSE1145 was obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. Differentially expressed genes were identified using R. A protein-protein interaction network of the differentially expressed genes was constructed using Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes. The modules in each network were analyzed by Molecular Complex Detection of Cytoscape. The Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery was used to obtain the functions of the modules. RESULTS: Samples contained in GSE1145 were myocardial tissues from patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, familial cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, ischemic cardiomyopathy, and post-partum cardiomyopathy. The differentially expressed genes, modules, and functions of the modules associated with different etiologies varied. Abnormal formation of extracellular matrix was overlapping among five etiologies. The change in cytoskeleton organization was specifically detected in dilated cardiomyopathy. The activation of the Wnt receptor signaling pathway was limited to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The change in nucleosome and chromatin assembly was associated with only familial cardiomyopathy. Germ cell migration and disrupted cellular calcium ion homeostasis were solely detected in ischemic cardiomyopathy. The change in the metabolic process of glucose and triglyceride was detected in only post-partum cardiomyopathy. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that the pathogenesis of heart failure arising from different etiologies varies, which may provide molecular evidence supporting etiology-based treatment for heart failure patients