The Absence of Soil-dwelling Microflora will Decrease the Fitness of Arabidopsis thaliana in Presence of Opportunistic Fungus such as Penicillium spp.

To support this claim, A. thaliana strain Col-0, was grown in either autoclaved or non-autoclaved soil and in the presence or absence of Penicillium spp. The Penicillium spp. was utilized into a cultural suspension and sprayed at the base of stems of treatments 1 and 3. The culture suspension proved relatively ineffective for the infection of healthy mature plants. However, the suspension did have a minimal effect on young still-developing plants. Autoclaved treatment had a higher mortality rate on juvenile plants than non-autoclaved treatment when suspension was applied. Illustrating that young vascular plants are more susceptible to fungal infection than mature plants

Fabrication of Concussion Resistant Nanocomposites

Studying concussions is of paramount importance. Concussions occurring in sports and sudden other accidental cases are causing major injuries to people often times it leads to CTE and eventual death. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is one type of degenerative brain disease that can be found in athletes, military veterans, and other people who have repetitive brain trauma. CTE is usually caused by repetitive hits to the head sustained over a period of years, most people diagnosed with CTE suffered hundreds or thousands of head impacts over the course of many years, such as playing contact sports or serving in the military. PDMS-based nanomaterials are gaining widespread attention in this regard. We report the use PDMS polymer and graphene oxide/graphene as nanoparticle reinforcement to produce the vibration-absorbing PDMS-graphene nanocomposite. The stiffness of PDMS and graphene-PDMS nanocomposites were measured using dynamic mechanical analyzer. We prepared a well-controlled pore containing PDMS-graphene nanocomposites that exhibited significant improvement in impact absorption properties as a function of porosity. Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) was used to compute the physical interactions between graphene and PDMS

Glycemic Variability Promotes Both Local Invasion and Metastatic Colonization by Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

Background & Aims: Although nearly half of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patients have diabetes mellitus with episodes of hyperglycemia, its tumor microenvironment is hypoglycemic. Thus, it is crucial for PDAC cells to develop adaptive mechanisms dealing with oscillating glucose levels. So far, the biological impact of such glycemic variability on PDAC biology remains unknown. Methods: Murine PDAC cells were cultured in low- and high-glucose medium to investigate the molecular, biochemical, and metabolic influence of glycemic variability on tumor behavior. A set of in vivo functional assays including orthotopic implantation and portal and tail vein injection were used. Results were further confirmed on tissues from PDAC patients. Results: Glycemic variability has no significant effect on PDAC cell proliferation. Hypoglycemia is associated with local invasion and angiogenesis, whereas hyperglycemia promotes metastatic colonization. Increased metastatic colonization under hyperglycemia is due to increased expression of runt related transcription factor 3 (Runx3), which further activates expression of collagen, type VI, alpha 1 (Col6a1), forming a glycemic pro-metastatic pathway. Through epigenetic machinery, retinoic acid receptor beta (Rarb) expression fluctuates according to glycemic variability, acting as a critical sensor relaying the glycemic signal to Runx3/Col6a1. Moreover, the signal axis of Rarb/Runx3/Col6a1 is pharmaceutically accessible to a widely used antidiabetic substance, metformin, and Rar modulator. Finally, PDAC tissues from patients with diabetes show an increased expression of COL6A1. Conclusions: Glycemic variability promotes both local invasion and metastatic colonization of PDAC. A pro-metastatic signal axis Rarb/Runx3/Col6a1 whose activity is controlled by glycemic variability is identified. The therapeutic relevance of this pathway needs to be explored in PDAC patients, especially in those with diabetes

Use of Overlapping Group LASSO Sparse Deep Belief Network to Discriminate Parkinson's Disease and Normal Control

As a medical imaging technology which can show the metabolism of the brain, 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET) is of great value for the diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease (PD). With the development of pattern recognition technology, analysis of brain images using deep learning are becoming more and more popular. However, existing computer-aided-diagnosis technologies often over fit and have poor generalizability. Therefore, we aimed to improve a framework based on Group Lasso Sparse Deep Belief Network (GLS-DBN) for discriminating PD and normal control (NC) subjects based on FDG-PET imaging. In this study, 225 NC and 125 PD cohorts from Huashan and Wuxi 904 hospitals were selected. They were divided into the training & validation dataset and 2 test datasets. First, in the training & validation set, subjects were randomly partitioned 80:20, with multiple training iterations for the deep learning model. Next, Locally Linear Embedding was used as a dimension reduction algorithm. Then, GLS-DBN was used for feature learning and classification. Different sparse DBN models were used to compare datasets to evaluate the effectiveness of our framework. Accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were examined to validate the results. Output variables of the network were also correlated with longitudinal changes of rating scales about movement disorders (UPDRS, H&Y). As a result, accuracy of prediction (90% in Test 1, 86% in Test 2) for classification of PD and NC patients outperformed conventional approaches. Output scores of the network were strongly correlated with UPDRS and H&Y (R = 0.705, p < 0.001; R = 0.697, p < 0.001 in Test 1; R = 0.592, p = 0.0018, R = 0.528, p = 0.0067 in Test 2). These results show the GLS-DBN is feasible method for early diagnosis of PD

Protecting-Group-Free Total Synthesis of (−)-Jiadifenolide: Development of a [4 + 1] Annulation toward Multisubstituted Tetrahydrofurans

A concise, protecting-group-free total synthesis of (−)-jiadifenolide, a synthetically challenging <i>seco</i>-prezizaane sesquiterpene with potent neurotrophic activity, is reported. The convergent route features a SmI₂/H₂O-mediated stereoselective reductive cyclization, an unprecedented formal [4 + 1] annulative tetrahydrofuran-forming reaction and programmed redox manipulations. The newly developed annulation of β-hydroxy aldehydes or ketones with lithium trimethylsilyldiazomethane provides access to a diverse array of multisubstituted tetrahydrofurans. The synthetic jiadifenolide exhibited weak cytotoxicity against five human cancer cell lines