城市绿地动物声景的时空特征及其驱动因素

动物群落是构成城市绿地生态系统的关键要素,声景作为野生动物重要的生态信息,掌握其时空变化及其影响因素,对于指导城市绿地景观设计与生物多样性保护具有重要意义。本文以Web of Science数据库的核心合集2005–2022年收录的67篇研究文献为对象,综合梳理与分析了城市绿地动物声景的时空模式及其驱动因素。城市绿地动物声景在空间上表现出环境空间梯度和植被空间结构的差异,动物声音多样性随海拔、纬度、城市化程度的降低以及植被类型和高度的增加呈现升高趋势。时间尺度呈现出昼夜、季节和年度变化差异,表现为鸟类在黎明和黄昏合唱、昆虫和两栖动物在夜间鸣叫以及季节性和年度性发声规律等。影响城市动物声景模式的因素主要包括植被、环境、人为干扰和动物自身驱动等。动物声景作为当前声景生态学研究的热点之一,面临大时空尺度演变规律研究不足、动物声景分析有限等挑战,建议未来着重开展多时空尺度变化规律研究、创新动物声景分析方法、定量解析影响因素及其响应机制、建立全球动物声景数据库等。     

Marine biological injuries and their medical management: A narrative review

The marine environment can be extremely dangerous, and the harm caused by marine organisms when they contact the human body can be especially harmful, even deadly. Contact includes stings, bites, wounds, and consumption as food. In this article, the characteristics of the common marine biological injuries are summarized, the major marine organisms causing damage in China’s marine waters are described, and injury prevention and treatment methods are discussed.     

Design,Synthesis, and Cytotoxic Activities of Indole and Indazole-Based Stilbenes

To develop new highly effective anticancer agents derived from naturally occurring stilbene scaffold, in total of 24 indole and indazole-based stilbenes including 17 new compounds were designed according to molecular hybridization strategy and synthesized via Witting reaction. The cytotoxic screening results against human tumor cell lines (K562 cells and MDA-MB-231 cells) showed that indole and indazole-based stilbenes are of great interest for developing anticancer agents as eight derivatives possessed strong antiproliferative activities with IC₅₀ values less than 10 μM, and those synthetic derivatives displayed more higher cytotoxicities against K562 cells than MDA-MB-231 cells. In particular, indole-based stilbene bearing piperidine exhibited the most potent cytotoxicities against both K562 and MDA-MB-231 cells with IC₅₀ values 2.4 μM and 2.18 μM, respectively, along with a remarkable selectivity towards human normal L-02 cells. Together, the results suggested that indole and indazole-based stilbenes are promising anticancer scaffolds worthy of further investigation.     

Dampening HOTAIR sensitizes the gastric cancer cells to oxaliplatin through miR-195-5p and ABCG2 pathway

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) have an extensive role in the progression and chemoresistance of gastric cancer (GC). Deeply study the regulatory role of lncRNAs could provide potential therapeutic targets. The aim of this study is to explore the regulatory role of HOTAIR in the progression and oxaliplatin resistance of GC. The expression of HOTAIR in GC and cell lines were detected by using qRT-PCR. Cell proliferation and apoptosis were analysed by CCK-8, EdU incorporation and flow cytometry. Luciferase reporter assay was used to identify the interaction between HOTAIR and ABCG2 (ATP-binding cassette (ABC) superfamily G member 2, ABCG2) via miR-195-5p. The regulatory functions were verified by using molecular biology experiments. HOTAIR was significantly overexpressed in GC and associated with poor prognosis. Knock-down of HOTAIR inhibited the GC cells proliferation and oxaliplatin resistance, while overexpression of HOTAIR showed opposite functions. Further studies found that HOTAIR acted as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) to absorb miR-195-5p and elevated the expression of ABCG2, which leads to resistance of GC cells to oxaliplatin. Taken together, our findings demonstrated that HOTAIR regulates ABCG2 induced resistance of GC to oxaliplatin through miR-195-5p signalling and illustrate the great potential of developing new therapeutic targets for GC patients.     

Differences between migrasome,a ‘new organelle’, and exosome

The migrasome is a new organelle discovered by Professor Yu Li in 2015. When cells migrate, the membranous organelles that appear at the end of the retraction fibres are migrasomes. With the migration of cells, the retraction fibres which connect migrasomes and cells finally break. The migrasomes detach from the cell and are released into the extracellular space or directly absorbed by the recipient cell. The cytoplasmic contents are first transported to the migrasome and then released from the cell through the migrasome. This release mechanism, which depends on cell migration, is named ‘migracytosis’. The main components of the migrasome are extracellular vesicles after they leave the cell, which are easy to remind people of the current hot topic of exosomes. Exosomes are extracellular vesicles wrapped by the lipid bimolecular layer. With extensive research, exosomes have solved many disease problems. This review summarizes the differences between migrasomes and exosomes in size, composition, property and function, extraction method and regulation mechanism for generation and release. At the same time, it also prospects for the current hotspot of migrasomes, hoping to provide literature support for further research on the generation and release mechanism of migrasomes and their clinical application in the future.     

Picroside III,an Active Ingredient of Picrorhiza scrophulariiflora,Ameliorates Experimental Colitis by Protecting Intestinal Barrier Integrity

This study aims to explore the protective effects of Picroside III, an active ingredient of Picrorhiza scrophulariiflora, on the intestinal epithelial barrier in tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) induced Caco-2 cells and dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) induced colitis in mice. Results show that Picroside III significantly alleviated clinical signs of colitis including body weight loss, disease activity index increase, colon shortening, and colon tissue damage. It also increased claudin-3, ZO-1 and occludin expressions and decreased claudin-2 expression in the colon tissues of mice with colitis. In vitro, Picroside III also significantly promoted wound healing, decreased the permeability of cell monolayer, upregulated the expressions of claudin-3, ZO-1 and occludin and downregulated the expression of claudin-2 in TNF-α treated Caco-2 cells. Mechanism studies show that Picroside III significantly promoted AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) phosphorylation in vitro and in vivo, and blockade with AMPK could significantly attenuate the upregulation of Picroside III in ZO-1 and occludin expressions and the downregulation of claudin-2 expression in TNF-α treated Caco-2 cells. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that Picroside III attenuated DSS-induced colitis by promoting colonic mucosal wound healing and epithelial barrier function recovery via the activation of AMPK.     

Four New C19-Diterpenoid Alkaloids from Aconitum nagarum Stapf

Four new aconitine-type C₁₉-diterpenoid alkaloids, were isolated from the roots of Aconitum nagarum Stapf which were named as nagarutines A–D ( 1–4 ), together with eleven known compounds ( 5–15 ). The structures of the compounds were identified by IR, HR-ESI-MS, 1D and 2D NMR spectra. All compounds were tested for the inhibitory effect on LPS induced NO production in RAW 264.7 macrophages, compound 7 showed moderate anti-inflammatory activity effect and Inhibition rate is about 44.50%.     

Structural insight into chitin perception by chitin elicitor receptor kinase 1 of Oryza sativa

Plants have developed innate immune systems to fight against pathogenic fungi by monitoring pathogenic signals known as pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMP) and have established endo symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi through recognition of mycorrhizal (Myc) factors. Chitin elicitor receptor kinase 1 of Oryza sativa subsp. Japonica (OsCERK1) plays a bifunctional role in mediating both chitin-triggered immunity and symbiotic relationships with AM fungi. However, it remains unclear whether OsCERK1 can directly recognize chitin molecules. In this study, we show that OsCERK1 binds to the chitin hexamer ((NAG)₆) and tetramer ((NAG)₄) directly and determine the crystal structure of the OsCERK1-(NAG)₆ complex at 2 Å. The structure shows that one OsCERK1 is associated with one (NAG)₆. Upon recognition, chitin hexamer binds OsCERK1 by interacting with the shallow groove on the surface of LysM2. These structural findings, complemented by mutational analyses, demonstrate that LysM2 is crucial for recognition of both (NAG)₆ and (NAG)₄. Altogether, these findings provide structural insights into the ability of OsCERK1 in chitin perception, which will lead to a better understanding of the role of OsCERK1 in mediating both immunity and symbiosis in rice.     

BmCaspase-8-like regulates autophagy by suppressing BmDREDD-mediated cleavage of BmATG6

Autophagy plays an important role in tissue remodeling during insect development. The interplay between autophagy-related (ATG) proteins and caspases regulates the autophagic activity of ATGs, thereby modulating the process of autophagy. Our previous study characterized BmCaspase-8-like (BmCasp8L) as a caspase suppressor that inhibits apoptosis and immune signaling by suppressing the activation of death-related ced-3/Nedd2-like caspase (DREDD), a caspase-8 homolog in silkworm. In this study, we explored the regulatory role of BmCasp8L in autophagy. We found that the expression of Bmcasp8l increased from the late spinning stage to the pupa stage in the posterior silk gland (PSG), correlating with the expression patterns of Bmatg8 and Bmatg6. RNA interference-mediated downregulation of BmCasp8L expression significantly decreased starvation-induced autophagic influx as determined by the levels of BmATG8–phosphatidylethanolamine and the percentage of cells displaying punctate enhanced green fluorescent protein-BmATG8. Conversely, the overexpression of BmCasp8L significantly increased autophagic influx. We also found that BmCasp8L underwent autophagic degradation induced by starvation and that it was colocalized with BmATG8. Lastly, we demonstrated that BmDREDD attenuated autophagy and BmCasp8L suppressed BmDREDD-mediated cleavage of BmATG6. Taken together, our results demonstrated that BmCasp8L is a novel proautophagic molecule which suppresses BmDREDD-mediated cleavage of BmATG6 and is a target for autophagy.     

Low genetic diversity and population connectivity fuel vulnerability to climate change for the Tertiary relict pine Pinus bungeana

Endemic species are important components of regional biodiversity and hold the key to understanding local adaptation and evolutionary processes that shape species distributions. This study investigated the biogeographic history of a relict conifer Pinus bungeana Zucc. ex Endl. confined to central China. We examined genetic diversity in P. bungeana using genotyping-by-sequencing and chloroplast and mitochondrial DNA markers. We performed spatial and temporal inference of recent genetic and demographic changes, and dissected the impacts of geography and environmental gradients on population differentiation. We then projected P. bungeana's risk of decline under future climates. We found extremely low nucleotide diversity (average π 0.0014), and strong population structure (global F_ST 0.234) even at regional scales, reflecting long-term isolation in small populations. The species experienced severe bottlenecks in the early Pliocene and continued to decline in the Pleistocene in the western distribution, whereas the east expanded recently. Local adaptation played a small (8%) but significant role in population diversity. Low genetic diversity in fragmented populations makes the species highly vulnerable to climate change, particularly in marginal and relict populations. We suggest that conservation efforts should focus on enhancing gene pool and population growth through assisted migration within each genetic cluster to reduce the risk of further genetic drift and extinction.