Microbes are core to driving biogeochemical cycles and differ between sun-drenched surface and relatively dark deep oceans. However, their distinct contributions to the organization and association of communities are still remaining elusive. Here, their assembly and co-occurrence stability are systematically researched along the surface and vertical gradients in the eastern Indian Ocean.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConsiderable research efforts have been directed toward the symptom relief of Parkinson's disease (PD) by attenuating dopamine (DA) depletion. One common feature of these existing therapies is their unavailability of preventing the neurodegenerative process of dopaminergic neurons. (+)-Borneol, a natural highly lipid-soluble bicyclic monoterpene, has been reported to regulate the levels of monoamine neurotransmitters in the central nervous system and exhibit neuroprotective effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdaptive decision-making, which is often impaired in various psychiatric conditions, is essential for well-being. Recent evidence has indicated that decision-making capacity in multiple tasks could be accounted for by latent dimensions, enlightening the question of whether there is a common disruption of brain networks in economic decision-making across psychiatric conditions. Here, we addressed the issue by combining activation/lesion network mapping analyses with a transdiagnostic brain imaging meta-analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Phytoplankton are important drivers of aquatic ecosystem function and environmental health. Their community compositions and distributions are directly impacted by environmental processes and human activities, including in the largest estuary in North America, the Chesapeake Bay. It is crucial to uncover how planktonic eukaryotes play fundamental roles as primary producers and trophic links and sustain estuarine ecosystems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDNA cytosine methylation (5-methylcytosine, 5mC) is a predominant epigenetic modification that plays a critical role in a variety of biological and pathological processes in mammals. In active DNA demethylation, the 10-11 translocation (TET) dioxygenases can sequentially oxidize 5mC to generate three modified forms of cytosine, 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), 5-formylcytosine (5fC), and 5-carboxylcytosine (5caC). Beyond being a demethylation intermediate, recent studies have shown that 5fC has regulatory functions in gene expression and chromatin organization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs an essential intracellular immune activation pathway, the cGAS-STING pathway has attracted broad attention in cancer treatment. However, low bioavailability, nonspecificity, and adverse effects of small molecule STING agonists severely limit their therapeutic efficacy and in vivo application. In this study, a peptide-based STING agonist is first proposed, and KLA is screened out to activate the cGAS-STING pathway by promoting mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) leakage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Appl Mater Interfaces
January 2024
Droplet directional transport is one of the central topics in microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip applications. Selective transport of diverse droplets, particularly in another liquid phase environment with controlled directions, is still challenging. In this work, we propose an electric-field gradient-driven droplet directional transport platform facilitated by a robust lubricant surface.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrobiol Spectr
January 2024
Exploring microbial interactions and their stability/resilience from the surface to the hadal ocean is critical for further understanding of the microbiome structure and ecosystem function in the Mariana Trench. Vertical gradients did not destabilize microbial communities after long-term evolution and adaption. The uniform niche breadth, diversity, community complexity, and stability of microbiomes in both upper bathypelagic and hadal waters suggest the consistent roles of microbiomes in elemental cycling and adaptive strategies to overcome extreme environmental conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrobiomes play a key role in marine ecosystem functioning and sustainability. Their organization and stability in coastal areas, particularly in anthropogenic-influenced regions, however, remains unclear compared with an understanding of how microbial community shifts respond to marine environmental gradients. Here, the assembly and community associations across vertical and horizontal gradients in the East China Sea are systematically researched.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has been widely used in multi-phase fluid mechanics and is known to be more computationally efficient than the traditional method of numerically solving Navier-Stokes and Cahn-Hilliard equations. Electrowetting is an important component of interfacial sciences, in which the liquid-liquid and solid-liquid interfaces are tuned by electrostatics. Modeling electrowetting using the LBM can be categorized into surface and bulk methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNanomaterials (Basel)
June 2023
To develop novel luminescent materials for optical temperature measurement, a series of Yb- and Er-doped CaScSiO (CSS) upconversion (UC) phosphors were synthesized by the sol-gel combustion method. The crystal structure, phase purity, and element distribution of the samples were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction and a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The detailed study of the photoluminescence emission spectra of the samples shows that the addition of Yb can greatly enhance the emission of Er by effective energy transfer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOrigin of nonlinear transport phenomena in conducting polymers has long been a topic of intense controversies. Most previous knowledge has attributed the macroscopic nonlinear I-V characteristics to individual behaviors of elementary resistors in the network. In this Letter, we show via a systematic dimensionality-dependent transport investigation, that understanding the nonlinear transport in conducting polymers must include the collective transport effect in a percolation network.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci
May 2023
Amino acids are important biomolecules and contribute to essential biological processes. Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS) now is a powerful tool for the analysis of amino acid metabolites; however, the structural similarity and polarity of amino acids can lead to the poor chromatographic retention and low detection sensitivities. In this study, we used a pair of light and heavy isotopomers of diazo probes, d/d-2-(diazomethyl)-N-methyl-N-phenyl-benzamide (2-DMBA/d -2-DMBA) to label amino acids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe specific recognition of cancer cells by the body's immune system is an essential step in initiating antitumor immunity. However, the decreased expression of major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-1) and overexpression of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) causes insufficient tumor-associated antigens presentation and inactivation of T cells, which accounts for poor immunogenicity. To remodel tumor immunogenicity, herein, a dual-activatable binary CRISPR nanomedicine (DBCN) that can efficiently deliver a CRISPR system into tumor tissues and specifically control its activation is reported.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhosphomonoesters are important biosynthetic and energy metabolism intermediates in microorganisms. A comprehensive analysis of phosphomonoester metabolites is of great significance for the understanding of their metabolic phosphorylation process and inner mechanism. In this study, we established a pair of isotope reagent /-2-diazomethyl--methyl-phenyl benzamide-labeling-based LC-MS method for the comprehensive analysis of phosphomonoester metabolites.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSugar phosphates are important metabolic intermediates in organisms and play a vital role in energy and central carbon metabolism. Profiling of sugar phosphates is of great significance but full of challenges due to their high structural similarity and low sensitivities in liquid chromatography (LC)-mass spectrometry (MS). In this study, we developed a novel stable isotope chemical labeling combined with the reversed-phase (RP)LC-MS method for ultrasensitive determination of sugar phosphates at the single-cell level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhoton recycling has been shown to play an important role in the optoelectronic properties and device performance of perovskite solar cells recently. However, there lacks an analytical method to accurately predict the dynamics of charge carriers and photons and the device performance with photon recycling due to the complexity of multiple electron-photon conversion processes involved in photon recycling. We propose a model based on the Monte Carlo simulation method that combines charge carrier diffusion and photon radiation transport to analyze the effects of photon recycling on electron-photon dynamics and device performance of perovskite solar cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSingle-crystal 4H-SiC is a typical third-generation semiconductor power-device material because of its excellent electronic and thermal properties. A novel polishing technique that combines plasma electrolytic processing and mechanical polishing (PEP-MP) was proposed in order to polish single-crystal 4H-SiC surfaces effectively. In the PEP-MP process, the single-crystal 4H-SiC surface is modified into a soft oxide layer, which is mainly made of SiO and a small amount of silicon oxycarbide by plasma electrolytic processing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper, a millimeter-sized bubble in water pending on a substrate is manipulated by applying an alternating current (AC) electric field, known as electrowetting on dielectric. In this setup, standing waves on the bubble surface are observed. The amplitude of these waves varies with frequency, and three resonance peaks (21, 76, and 134 Hz) can be identified.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe discovery of dynamic and reversible modifications in RNA expands their functional repertoires. Now, RNA modifications have been viewed as new regulators involved in a variety of biological processes. Among these modifications, thiolation is one kind of special modification in RNA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolar phosphorylated metabolites are involved in a variety of biological processes and play vital roles in energetic metabolism, cofactor regeneration, and nucleic acid synthesis. However, it is often challenging to interrogate polar phosphorylated metabolites and compounds from biological samples. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS) now plays a central role in metabolomic studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study was conducted to compare the feasibility, safety and effectiveness of the combined-laparoscopic splenectomy and esophagogastric devascularization (C-LSED) with open splenectomy and esophagogastric devascularization surgery (OSED) in patients with portal hypertension due to liver cirrhosis. From February 2014 to June 2018, 68 patients with portal hypertension were diagnosed as having serious gastroesophageal varices and/or hypersplenism in our center. Thirty patients underwent C-LSED and 38 patients received OSED.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRisk Manag Healthc Policy
February 2020
Background: Splenomegaly/hypersplenism is one of the most common complications of portal hypertension. Splenic artery embolization (SAE) has been increasingly used for treatment of splenomegaly/hypersplenism. However, few studies focused on the severe complications after embolization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA novel unitary estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques (ESPRIT) algorithm, for the joint direction of arrival (DOA) and range estimation in a monostatic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar with a frequency diverse array (FDA), is proposed. Firstly, by utilizing the property of Centro-Hermitian of the received data, the extended real-valued data is constructed to improve estimation accuracy and reduce computational complexity via unitary transformation. Then, to avoid the coupling between the angle and range in the transmitting array steering vector, the DOA is estimated by using the rotation invariance of the receiving subarrays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe discovery of dynamic and reversible modifications in messenger RNA (mRNA) is opening new directions in RNA modification-mediated regulation of biological processes. Methylation is the most prevalent modification occurring in mRNA and the methyl group is mainly decorated in the adenine, cytosine, and guanine base or in the 2'-hydroxyl group of ribose. However, methylation of the uracil base (5-methyluridine, mU) has not been discovered in mRNA of eukaryotes.
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