Expression level of histone deacetylase 2 correlates with occurring of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with chronic severe airway inflammation and causes increasing global health problems. New biological markers for COPD prediction and prognosis are urgently necessary. Previous studies indicate that histone deacetylases (HDACs) play essential roles in COPD. This study is to investigate if HDAC2 levels can be used as a promising, easily detected biomarker of COPD. In this paper, 49 COPD patients were enrolled and 42 healthy individuals (smokers or non-smokers) were used as healthy controls. Human bronchial epithelial cells derived from non-smokers, smokers, or COPD patients were grown in primary cultures. Total proteins were harvested from lung tissues or bronchial epithelial cells and then subjected to immunoblot analyses of HDAC2, HDAC3, and HDAC5. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis of HDAC2, HDAC3, and HDAC5 mRNA levels in tissues or cells were also preformed. We found that among the three HDAC proteins, the mRNA and protein levels of HDAC2, but not HDAC3 and HDAC5, in the tissues or cultured cells from patients have a significant correlation with development and prognosis of COPD. These results suggested that HDAC2 levels may serve as a promising, easily detected biomarker of COPD.     

Occurrence of Regulated and Emerging Iodinated DBPs in the Shanghai Drinking Water

Drinking water chlorination plays a pivotal role in preventing pathogen contamination against water-borne disease. However, chemical disinfection leads to the formation of halogenated disinfection by products (DBPs). Many DBPs are highly toxic and are of health concern. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive measurements of DBPs, including iodoacetic acid (IAA), iodoform (IF), nine haloacetic acids and four trihalomethanes in drinking waters from 13 water plants in Shanghai, China. The results suggested that IAA and IF were found in all the water treatment plants, with maximum levels of 1.66 µg/L and 1.25 µg/L for IAA and IF, respectively. Owing to deterioration of water quality, the Huangpu River has higher IAA and IF than the Yangtze River. Our results also demonstrated that low pH, high natural organic matter, ammonia nitrogen, and iodide in source waters increased IAA and IF formation. Compared to chlorine, chloramines resulted in higher concentration of iodinated DBP, but reduced the levels of trihalomethanes. This is the first study to reveal the widespread occurrence of IAA and IF in drinking water in China. The data provide a better understanding on the formation of iodinated disinfection byproducts and the findings should be useful for treatment process improvement and disinfection byproducts controls.     

Genome-Wide Detection of Selective Signatures in Chicken through High Density SNPs

Chicken is recognized as an excellent model for studies of genetic mechanism of phenotypic and genomic evolution, with large effective population size and strong human-driven selection. In the present study, we performed Extended Haplotype Homozygosity (EHH) tests to identify significant core regions employing 600K SNP Chicken chip in an F2 population of 1,534 hens, which was derived from reciprocal crosses between White Leghorn and Dongxiang chicken. Results indicated that a total of 49,151 core regions with an average length of 9.79 Kb were identified, which occupied approximately 52.15% of genome across all autosomes, and 806 significant core regions attracted us mostly. Genes in candidate regions may experience positive selection and were considered to have possible influence on beneficial economic traits. A panel of genes including AASDHPPT, GDPD5, PAR3, SOX6, GPC1 and a signal pathway of AKT1 were detected with the most extreme P-values. Further enrichment analyses indicated that these genes were associated with immune function, sensory organ development and neurogenesis, and may have experienced positive selection in chicken. Moreover, some of core regions exactly overlapped with genes excavated in our previous GWAS, suggesting that these genes have undergone positive selection may affect egg production. Findings in our study could draw a comparatively integrate genome-wide map of selection signature in the chicken genome, and would be worthy for explicating the genetic mechanisms of phenotypic diversity in poultry breeding.     

Environmental filtering increases with elevation for the assembly of gut microbiota in wild pikas

Despite their important roles in host nutrition, metabolism and adaptability, the knowledge on how the mammalian gut microbial community assemble is relatively scanty, especially regarding the ecological mechanisms that govern microbiota along environmental gradients. To address this, we surveyed the diversity, function and ecological processes of gut microbiota in the wild plateau pika, Ochotona curzoniae, along the elevational gradient from 3106 to 4331 m on ‘the Roof of the World’—Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The results indicated that the alpha, beta and functional diversity of gut microbiota significantly increased with elevation, and elevation significantly explained the variations in the gut microbial communities, even after controlling for geographical distance, host sex and body weight. Some gene functions (e.g. nitrogen metabolism and protein kinases) associated with metabolism were enriched in the high-altitude pikas. Null model and phylogenetic analysis suggest that the relative contributions of environmental filtering responsible for local gut communities increased with elevation. In addition, deterministic processes dominated gut microbial communities in the high-altitude (more than 3694 m) pikas, while the percentages of stochastic and deterministic processes were very close in the low-altitude (3106 and 3580 m) pikas. The observed mechanisms that influence pika gut microbiota assembly and function seemed to be mainly mediated by the internal gut environment and by the external environmental pressure (i.e. lower temperature) in the harsh high-altitude environment. These findings enhance our understanding of gut microbiota assembly patterns and function in wild mammals from extreme harsh environments.