Publications by authors named "ZZ Xu"

The browning of Thompson seedless grapes during shade-drying significantly hampers the sustainable and healthy development of the industry. This study investigates the browning phenomenon and reactive oxygen species (ROS) dynamics when Thompson seedless grapes, treated with adenosine triphosphate (ATP), 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP), and water (QS), are dried in the shade. The effects of these treatments on ROS metabolism were analyzed through physiological, biochemical, and proteomic analyses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The gut microbiome affects the occurrence and development of metabolic diseases, with a significant amount of research focused on intestinal bacteria. As an important part of the gut microbiome, gut viruses were studied recently, particularly through fecal virome transplantation (FVT), revealing manipulating the gut virus could reverse overweight and glucose intolerance in mice. And human cohort studies found gut virome changed significantly in patients with metabolic disease.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The present study aimed to investigate the inhibitory effect of luteoloside on the proliferation, migration and invasion of gastric cancer (GC) cells based on network pharmacology and experiments. GC-associated targets were obtained from the GeneCards and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man databases. Gene Ontology functional enrichment analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analysis were performed using the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The rapidly expanding food industry necessitates the use of food additives to achieve specific purposes. However, this raises new concerns in food safety due to the reported negative impacts of food additives on gut microbiota and host health, particularly in the context of continuous worldwide urbanization. This review summarizes the existing studies on the effects of different types of commonly used food additives on gut microbiota alteration, intestinal barrier disruption, metabolism disorder, and neurobehavior changes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To investigate the effect of feeder layer cells expressing interleukin (IL)-21 on the amplification of NK cells .

Methods: The K562 cell line with IL-21 expression on its membrane was constructed by electroporation, and co-cultured with NK cells after inactivation. The proliferation of NK cells was observed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Microbial data analysis poses significant challenges due to its high dimensionality, sparsity, and compositionality. Recent advances have shown that integrating abundance and phylogenetic information is an effective strategy for uncovering robust patterns and enhancing the predictive performance in microbiome studies. However, existing methods primarily focus on the hierarchical structure of phylogenetic trees, overlooking the evolutionary distances embedded within them.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Scientists discovered five new cycloheptapeptides, named phakefusins A-E, from the marine sponge Phakellia fusca using a probe-based molecular networking approach.
  • Two of these compounds feature unique nonproteinogenic amino acids, while others have rare structural components such as methionine sulfoxide and glutamic acid ethyl ester.
  • The compounds were tested for their biological activities, with compound 1 showing moderate antitumor effects and compounds 2-5 demonstrating antioxidant potential by enhancing certain protective enzyme levels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

rhizoma (Huangjing in Chinese) is a common clinical tonic with the traditional effects of tonifying Qi, nourishing Yin. However, the lack of precise control of processing parameters has led to the uneven quality of processed Huangjing. A prediction model using the CRITIC method optimizes processing by correlating method, component contents, and biological activity, ensuring consistent quality and efficacy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study aimed to investigate the potential alleviating effect of Epimedium polysaccharide (EP) on intestinal inflammation aggravated by Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg). P. gingivalis, an oral pathogen, may play a role in intestinal inflammation, highlighting the necessity to explore substances capable of inhibiting its pathogenicity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a serious complication following cardiac surgery, and the study focuses on identifying modifiable risk factors like frailty and obesity that can influence AKI outcomes.
  • The research analyzed data from 8,785 patients across three international cohorts, with assessments of frailty and body fat percentage relating to AKI risk, revealing that greater frailty and specific body fat levels increase AKI risk.
  • Findings indicated that lower body fat percentage is associated with a decreased likelihood of developing AKI, and this relationship was consistent across different patient cohorts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Thermosensation is vital for the survival, propagation, and adaption of all organisms, but its mechanism is not fully understood yet. Here, we find that TMC6, a membrane protein of unknown function, is highly expressed in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons and functions as a Gαq-coupled G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR)-like receptor to sense noxious heat. TMC6-deficient mice display a substantial impairment in noxious heat sensation while maintaining normal perception of cold, warmth, touch, and mechanical pain.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Chronic methamphetamine (METH) exposure is linked to high blood pressure (hypertension) and vascular remodeling, but the exact mechanisms are not fully understood.
  • Researchers developed a mouse model to study METH's effects, discovering that the Sigma1 receptor (Sigmar1) plays a crucial role in hypertension and collagen buildup around blood vessels.
  • The study suggests that targeting Sigmar1 could be a new treatment strategy for METH-induced hypertension and related vascular issues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) can be treated with sorafenib, which is the primary choice for targeted therapy. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of sorafenib is greatly restricted due to resistance. Research has shown that exosomes and circular RNAs play a vital role in the cancer's malignant advancement.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Study Objective: We compared the analgesic effects of erector spinae plane block versus quadratus lumborum block following laparoscopic nephrectomy.

Design: A randomized controlled trial.

Setting: A tertiary hospital in Beijing, China.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Protein annotation has long been a challenging task in computational biology. Gene Ontology (GO) has become one of the most popular frameworks to describe protein functions and their relationships. Prediction of a protein annotation with proper GO terms demands high-quality GO term representation learning, which aims to learn a low-dimensional dense vector representation with accompanying semantic meaning for each functional label, also known as embedding.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: Nuclear protein 1 (Nupr1) is a multifunctional stress-induced protein involved in the regulation of tumorigenesis, apoptosis, and autophagy. However, its role in pulmonary hypertension (PH) after METH exposure remains unexplored. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether METH can induce PH and describe the role and mechanism of Nupr1 in the development of PH.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Scientists studied how tiny living things called microbes break down dead bodies in different places.
  • They found that these microbes work together in a special way to recycle the materials from the bodies, even though the climate and location can change.
  • This research could help figure out how long someone has been dead by looking at the types of microbes present.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: This study aimed to compare robotic pancreatoduodenectomy (RPD) with laparoscopic pancreatoduodenectomy (LPD) in operative and oncologic outcomes.

Background: Previous studies comparing RPD with LPD have only been carried out in small, single-center studies with variable quality.

Methods: Consecutive patients from nine centers in China who underwent RPD or LPD between 2015 and 2022 were included.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Calpain is a conserved cysteine protease readily expressed in several mammalian tissues, which is usually activated by Ca and with maximum activity at neutral pH. The activity of calpain is tightly regulated because its aberrant activation will nonspecifically cleave various proteins in cells. Abnormally elevation of Ca promotes the abnormal activation of calpain during myocardial ischemia-reperfusion, resulting in myocardial injury and cardiac dysfunction.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: The efficacy of sugammadex on postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) in susceptible patients, compared with neostigmine, remains indeterminate. The Assess Respiratory Risk in Surgical Patients in Catalonia (ARISCAT) Group Investigators proposed a risk index for the early identification of susceptible patients, with excellent externally validated discrimination ability. Meta-analytical techniques were applied to evaluate the efficacy of sugammadex on PPCs in patients with ARISCAT-defined risk factors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The microbiomes of cesarean-born infants differ from vaginally delivered infants and are associated with increased disease risks. Vaginal microbiota transfer (VMT) to newborns may reverse C-section-related microbiome disturbances. Here, we evaluated the effect of VMT by exposing newborns to maternal vaginal fluids and assessing neurodevelopment, as well as the fecal microbiota and metabolome.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Frailty predicts an increased risk of postoperative morbidity and mortality. Comparison of the predictive performance between two deficit accumulation models of frailty, the modified frailty index (mFI) and the revised-Risk Analysis Index (RAI-rev), is poorly understood. This study compared the predictive abilities of the above two frailty indices in predicting life-threatening morbidity and mortality among older patients following elective high-risk abdominal surgery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Seven species of the Sarsia tubulosa group in the Sarsia genus from the Bohai Sea of China are described in the present paper. These include two new species, namely Sarsia bohaiensis Xu, Wang, & Chen sp. nov.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF