Cisplatin exposure dysregulates insulin secretion in male and female mice.

Cancer survivors have an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared to the general population. Patients treated with cisplatin, a common chemotherapeutic agent, are more likely to develop metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes than age- and sex-matched controls. Surprisingly, the impact of cisplatin on pancreatic islets has not been reported.

Activating transcription factor 4 plays a major role in shaping the transcriptional response to isoginkgetin in HCT116 cells.

Activating transcription factor 4 (ATF4) plays a central role in the integrated stress response (ISR) and one overlapping branch of the unfolded protein response (UPR). We recently reported that the splicing inhibitor isoginkgetin (IGG) induced ATF4 protein along with several known ATF4-regulated transcripts in a response that resembled the ISR and UPR. However, the contribution of ATF4-dependent and -independent transcriptional responses to IGG exposure was not known.

Gradient columns to measure the density of microplastics.

Density gradient columns are an established industrial method for measuring the density of plastics, but have rarely been applied to environmental plastics. In this study 14 density gradient columns were used to measure the density of 150 environmental plastics particles from an urban beach, plus 100 microplastics of known identity, representing what is believed to be the most extensive density dataset for environmental plastic debris available in scientific literature. In total, 92 % of investigated particles had their density measured, with the remainder falling outside of the range of the density columns: 800-1418 kg·m.

Empirical Characterization of False Discovery Rates of Differentially Expressed Genes and Transcriptomic Benchmark Concentrations in Zebrafish Embryos.

High-throughput transcriptomics (HTTr) is increasingly applied to zebrafish embryos to survey the toxicological effects of environmental chemicals. Before the adoption of this approach in regulatory testing, it is essential to characterize background noise in order to guide experimental designs. We thus empirically quantified the HTTr false discovery rate (FDR) across different embryo pool sizes, sample sizes, and concentration groups for toxicology studies.

Ranking the accelerated weathering of plastic polymers.

The timespans over which different plastics degrade in the environment are poorly understood. This study aimed to rank the degradation speed of five widespread plastic polymers-low density polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polylactic acid (PLA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET)-in terms of their physicochemical properties. Five of the six samples were plastic films with identical dimensions, which allowed the influence of morphology to be excluded, with a polyethylene carrier bag (PEB) tested for comparison.