Publications by authors named "MengQian Lu"

Article Synopsis
  • Plant glycosyltransferases (UGTs) help plants grow and live better by affecting their metabolism.
  • In a study of 28 plant species, researchers found that UGTs in tea plants expanded a lot, while some other gene groups shrank.
  • The study showed that some UGT genes help tea plants deal with weather conditions like cold and drought, and that tea growers may have changed the plants to make them taste better and stronger in cold weather.
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Deciphering riverine dissolved carbon dynamics is pivotal for a comprehensive picture of the global carbon cycle. Through rigorous in-situ sampling across the Pearl River Basin (PRB), our investigation reveals the Pearl River networks function as a significant carbon source, with the annual carbon dioxide (CO) emission of 2.57 ± 1.

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Article Synopsis
  • The plant hormone salicylic acid (SA) is really important for plants to fight off diseases.
  • Scientists found a new compound called 2,4-DHBA that is related to SA, and its levels go up when plants are infected or treated with SA.
  • When certain genes are changed, it affects how much 2,4-DHBA plants can make and how well they can resist infections, showing that 2,4-DHBA helps tea plants stay healthy.
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Tea () flowers emit a large amount of volatiles that attract pollinators. However, few studies have characterized temporal and spatial variation in tea floral volatiles. To investigate the distribution of volatiles within tea flowers and their variation among opening stages, volatile components from different parts of tea flowers and different opening stages were collected by headspace solid-phase microextraction and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

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Plants respond to environmental stimuli via the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and neighboring plants constantly monitor and respond to these VOCs with great sensitivity and discrimination. This sensing can trigger increased plant fitness and reduce future plant damage through the priming of their own defenses. The defense mechanism in neighboring plants can either be induced by activation of the regulatory or transcriptional machinery, or it can be delayed by the absorption and storage of VOCs for the generation of an appropriate response later.

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Cold and drought stresses severely limit crop production and can occur simultaneously. Although some transcription factors and hormones have been characterized in plants subjected each stress, the role of metabolites, especially volatiles, in response to cold and drought stress exposure is rarely studied due to lack of suitable models. Here, we established a model for studying the role of volatiles in tea (Camellia sinensis) plants experiencing cold and drought stresses simultaneously.

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Tuina can effectively alleviate ulcerative colitis-related symptoms, but the mechanism of action is unknown. The purpose of this research is to explore potential pathways for the treatment of tuina through gut microbiota and proteomics techniques. Thirty-two male BALB/c mice were divided into four groups, the control, model, mesalazine, and tuina groups.

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Background: Interleukin-17 (IL-17) family cytokines play critical roles in inflammation and pathogen resistance. Inflammation in the central nervous system, denoted as neuroinflammation, promotes the onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Previous studies showed that IL-17A neutralizing antibody treatment alleviated Amyloid β (Aβ) burden in rodent models of AD, while overexpression of IL-17A in mouse lateral ventricles rescued part of the AD pathology.

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Terrestrial export of nitrogen is a critical Earth system process, but its global dynamics remain difficult to predict at a high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, we use deep learning (DL) to model daily riverine nitrogen export in response to hydrometeorological and anthropogenic drivers. Long short-term memory (LSTM) models for the daily concentration and flux of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) were built in a coastal watershed in southeastern China with a typical subtropical monsoon climate.

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Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic inflammatory disease with a high prevalence and canceration rate. The immune disorder is one of the recognized mechanisms. Acupuncture is widely used to treat patients with IBD.

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Cold and drought stress are the most critical stresses encountered by crops and occur simultaneously under field conditions. However, it is unclear whether volatiles contribute to both cold and drought tolerance, and if so, by what mechanisms they act. Here, we show that airborne eugenol can be taken up by the tea (Camellia sinensis) plant and metabolized into glycosides, thus enhancing cold and drought tolerance of tea plants.

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Objective: To study the effects of five manipulations in rats with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and to explore how to safely perform in the treatment of thrombotic diseases.

Methods: Seventy-two male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into the model, pointing manipulation, plucking manipulation, kneading manipulation, pushing manipulation, and pulling manipulation groups ( = 12). DVT model was established by incomplete ligation.

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Plant immune response following pathogenic infection is regulated by plant hormones, and salicylic acid (SA) and its sugar conjugates play important roles in establishing basal resistance. Here, the important pathogen Pseudopestalotiopsis camelliae-sinensis (Pcs) was isolated from tea gray blight, one of the most destructive diseases in tea plantations. Transcriptomic analysis led to the discovery of the putative Camellia sinensis UDP-glucosyltransferase CsUGT87E7 whose expression was significantly induced by SA application and Pcs infection.

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Tuina, as one of the characteristic external therapies of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), has been used to treat the disease caused by peripheral nerve injury (PNI) for thousands of years. An increasing number of clinical trials and animal experiments have demonstrated that tuina can improve the symptoms and promote the recovery of damaged nerves. This review focuses on the mechanistic studies of tuina in promoting the recovery of PNI, which might provide a neurobiological foundation for the effects of tuina.

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Objective: To explore the effect of tuina on the gene expression at the point of nerve injury in rats with sciatic nerve injury (SNI) and to elucidate the repair mechanism of tuina promoting the functional recovery of peripheral nerve injury.

Methods: In the Sham group, the right sciatic nerve was exposed without clamping. The SNI model was established using the sciatic nerve clamp method on the right leg and then randomly divided into the SNI group and the Tuina group.

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Objective: To study the effects of the three methods and three-acupoint technique on DRG gene expression in SNI model rats and to elucidate the molecular mechanism of the three methods and three-acupoint technique on promoting recovery in peripheral nerve injury.

Methods: 27 male SD rats were randomly divided into three groups: a Sham group, the SNI group, and the Tuina group. The Tuina group was treated with a tuina manipulation simulator to simulate massage on points, controlling for both quality and quantity.

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Objective: The objective of this study is to observe the effects of mild mechanical stimulation on acupuncture points of spinal motor neurons and active substances of sciatic nerve injury in rats, and to explore the morphological basis for the recovery of motor function in rats with sciatic nerve injury, using mild acupuncture. Acupuncture in the local area of injury may cause further damage to the peripheral nerve injury. We believe that mild mechanical stimulation on the surface, using some specific acupuncture points can also have a positive effect on nerve repair.

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Background: The IL-17 family cytokines are potent drivers of colorectal cancer (CRC) development. We and others have shown that IL-17 mainly signals to tumor cells to promote CRC, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. IL-17 also dampens Th1-armed anti-tumor immunity, in part by attracting myeloid cells to tumor.

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Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have long held the promise of being a cost-effective technology for the energy-neutral treatment of wastewater. However, successful pilot-scale demonstrations for this technology are still limited to very few. Here, we present a large-scale MFC system, composed of 12 MFCs with a total volume of 110 L, successfully treating swine wastewater at a small educational farm.

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Popular perception claims that rain following a hot day brings relief, indicating a bio-meteorological perspective of 'rainy' forecasts. However, the hypothesis has rarely been examined on India which experiences distinct pre- and post-monsoon seasons with continuous dry days, occasionally interrupted by thunderstorms or cyclones. The current study analyzes 54 years of observed daily meteorological records across India to assess the impact of shower effect, defined as the amount of change in the temperature on the first day of a wet spell that succeeds a dry spell.

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Caffeine is a crucial secondary metabolic product in tea plants. Although the presence of caffeine in tea plants has been identified, the molecular mechanisms regulating relevant caffeine metabolism remain unclear. For the elucidation of the caffeine biosynthesis and catabolism in Camellia plants, fresh, germinated leaves from four Camellia plants with low (2), normal (1), and high (1) caffeine concentrations, namely, low-caffeine tea 1 (LCT1, Camellia crassicolumna), low-caffeine tea 2 (LCT2, C.

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A normal tea plant with one albino branch was discovered. RNA sequencing, albinism phenotype and ultrastructural observations provided a valuable understanding of the albino mechanism in tea plants. Tea plants with a specific color (white or yellow) have been studied extensively.

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The tea tree is a perennial woody plant, and pruning is one of the most crucial cultivation measurements for tea plantation management. To date, the relationship between long-term pruning and metabolic flux enhancement in tea trees has not been studied. In this research, 11-year-old pruned tea trees from four different cultivars were randomly selected for transcriptome analysis and characteristic secondary metabolite analysis together with controls.

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