Fecal microbial and metabolic characteristics of swine from birth to market

IntroductionRecently, the research on pig intestinal microbiota has become a hot topic in the field of animal husbandry. There are few articles describing the dynamic changes of porcine fecal microbiota and metabolites at different time points from birth to market.MethodsIn the present study, 381 fecal samples were collected from 633 commercial pigs at 7 time points, including the 1st day, the 10th day, the 25th day, the 45th day, the 70th day, the 120th day, and the 180th day after the birth of swine, were used for microbiome analysis by Illumina MiSeq sequencing methods while 131 fecal samples from 3 time points, the 10th day, the 25th day, and 70th day after birth, were used for metabolome analysis by LC–MS methods.ResultsFor the microbiome analysis, the fecal microbial richness increased over time from day 1 to 180 and the β-diversity of fecal microbiota was separated significantly at different time points. Firmicutes were the main phyla from day 10 to 180, followed by Bacteroides. The abundance of Lactobacillus increased significantly on day 120 compared with the previous 4 time points. From day 120 to day 180, the main porcine fecal microbes were Lactobacillus, Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1, Terrisporobacter and Streptococcus. Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1 and Terrisporobacter increased over time, while Lactobacillus, Escherichia-Shigella, Lachnoclostridium decreased with the time according to the heatmap, which showed the increase or decrease in microbial abundance over time. For the metabolome analysis, the PLS-DA plot could clearly distinguish porcine fecal metabolites on day 10, 25, and 70. The most different metabolic pathways of the 3 time points were Tryptophan metabolism, Sphingolipid signaling pathway, Protein digestion and absorption. Some metabolites increased significantly over time, such as Sucrose, L-Arginine, Indole, 2,3-Pyridinedicarboxylic acid and so on, while D-Maltose, L-2-Aminoadipic acid, 2,6-diaminohexanoic acid, L-Proline were opposite. The correlation between fecal metabolites and microbiota revealed that the microbes with an increasing trend were positively correlated with the metabolites affecting the tryptophan metabolic pathway from the overall trend, while the microbes with a decreasing trend were opposite. In addition, the microbes with an increasing trend were negatively correlated with the metabolites affecting the lysine pathway.DiscussionIn conclusion, this study elucidated the dynamic changes of porcine fecal microbiota and metabolites at different stages from birth to market, which may provide a reference for a comprehensive understanding of the intestinal health status of pigs at different growth stages

Design and smartphone implementation of chaotic duplex H.264-codec video communications

In this paper, a chaotic duplex H.264-codec-based secure video communication scheme is designed and its smartphone implementation is also carried out. First, an improved self- synchronous chaotic stream cipher algorithm equipped with a sinusoidal modulation, a multipli- cation, a modulo operation and a round down operation (SCSCA-SMMR) is developed. Using the sinusoidal modulation and multiplication, the improved algorithm can resist the divide-and- conquer attack by traversing multiple nonzero component initial conditions (DCA-TMNCIC). Meanwhile, also by means of the round down operation and modulo operation, on the premise that the DCA-TMNCIC does not work, the original keys cannot be further deciphered only by the known-plaintext attack, the chosen-plaintext attack and the chosen-ciphertext attack, respectively. Then, the Android low-level multimedia support infrastructure MediaCodec class is used to access low-level media encoder/decoder components and the H.264 hardware encod- ing/decoding is performed on real-time videos, so the chaotic video encryption and decryption can be realized in real-time by smartphones. Security analysis and smartphone experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method

A novel 25-ferroptosis-related gene signature for the prognosis of gliomas

BackgroundFerroptosis is closely associated with cancer and is of great importance in the immune evasion of cancer. However, the relationship between ferroptosis and glioma is unclear.MethodsWe downloaded the expression profiles and clinical data of glioma from the GlioVis database and obtained the expression profiles of ferroptosis genes. A ferroptosis-related gene signature was developed for the prognosis of gliomas.ResultsWe screened out prognostic ferroptosis genes, named ferroptosis-related genes, by the Cox regression method. Based on these genes, we used unsupervised clustering to obtain two different clusters; the principal component analysis algorithm was applied to determine the gene score of each patient, and then all the patients were classified into two subgroups. Results showed that there exist obvious differences in survival between different clusters and different gene score subgroups. The prognostic model constructed by the 25 ferroptosis-related genes was then evaluated to predict the clinicopathological features of immune activity in gliomas.ConclusionThe ferroptosis-related genes play an important role in the malignant process of gliomas, potentially contributing to the development of prognostic stratification and treatment strategies

Divergent nitrogen and phosphorus allocation strategies in terrestrial plant leaves and fine roots: a global meta-analysis

1. The quantification of the allocation of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) among plant organs is essential to improve our understanding of plant growth, life-history strategies, and ecosystem nutrient and energy cycles. However, allocation strategies of N and P between terrestrial plant leaves and fine roots are unclear. 2. Here, we compiled a global dataset comprising 807 terrestrial plant species to analyze the stoichiometric scaling of N and P between leaves and fine roots across species, families, plant groups, biomes, and locations. 3. We found that N and P, and N:P ratios manifest different scaling exponents (α-values) between leaves and fine roots. Specifically, overall αN and αP were >1 and <1, respectively, and αN:P = 1, indicating a higher proportional increase of N to fine roots and P to leaves. However, there were differences in αN, αP, and αN:P among major species, families, plant groups, biomes, and locations. In addition, αN and αN:P increased with latitude; there was no clear trend for αP. Mean annual temperature accounted for the greatest proportion of variation in αN, whereas soil total P accounted for the greatest proportion of variation in αP and αN:P. 4. Synthesis. Our results demonstrate a divergent N and P allocation strategy between leaves and fine roots in terrestrial plants. This study improves our understanding of the effects of the environment (including changes in global climate, and life history strategies) on nutrient allocation patterns between these two important plant organs.This work was funded by the European Research Council Synergy project SyG-2013-610028 IMBALANCE-P, the Catalan Government grants AGAUR-2020PANDE00117 and SGR 2017-1005, the Spanish Government grant PID2019-110521GB-I00, the Fundac ió n Ra mó n A reces gr a nt ELEMEN TA L-CLIM ATE, t he N at io na l Sc ie nc e Fund for Excellent Young Scholars (31822010), the B iod iver s it y Sur ve y a nd A ssess me nt Pro ject o f t he M inis tr y o f Ecology and Environment, C hina (2019HJ2096001006), National Scientific and Technological Program on Basic Resources Investigation (2019FY102002) and the Innovation Base Project of Gansu Province (20190323).Peer reviewe

Causative agent distribution and antibiotic therapy assessment among adult patients with community acquired pneumonia in Chinese urban population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Knowledge of predominant microbial patterns in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) constitutes the basis for initial decisions about empirical antimicrobial treatment, so a prospective study was performed during 2003–2004 among CAP of adult Chinese urban populations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Qualified patients were enrolled and screened for bacterial, atypical, and viral pathogens by sputum and/or blood culturing, and by antibody seroconversion test. Antibiotic treatment and patient outcome were also assessed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Non-viral pathogens were found in 324/610 (53.1%) patients among whom <it>M. pneumoniae </it>was the most prevalent (126/610, 20.7%). Atypical pathogens were identified in 62/195 (31.8%) patients carrying bacterial pathogens. Respiratory viruses were identified in 35 (19%) of 184 randomly selected patients with adenovirus being the most common (16/184, 8.7%). The nonsusceptibility of <it>S. pneumoniae </it>to penicillin and azithromycin was 22.2% (Resistance (R): 3.2%, Intermediate (I): 19.0%) and 79.4% (R: 79.4%, I: 0%), respectively. Of patients (312) from whom causative pathogens were identified and antibiotic treatments were recorded, clinical cure rate with β-lactam antibiotics alone and with combination of a β-lactam plus a macrolide or with fluoroquinolones was 63.7% (79/124) and 67%(126/188), respectively. For patients having mixed <it>M. pneumoniae </it>and/or <it>C. pneumoniae </it>infections, a better cure rate was observed with regimens that are active against atypical pathogens (e.g. a β-lactam plus a macrolide, or a fluoroquinolone) than with β-lactam alone (75.8% vs. 42.9%, <it>p </it>= 0.045).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In Chinese adult CAP patients, <it>M. pneumoniae </it>was the most prevalent with mixed infections containing atypical pathogens being frequently observed. With <it>S. pneumoniae</it>, the prevalence of macrolide resistance was high and penicillin resistance low compared with data reported in other regions.</p