Microbial succession in the traditional Chinese Luzhou-flavor liquor fermentation process as evaluated by SSU rRNA profiles

The community succession of microbes inhabited in the fermenting lees of Luzhou-flavor liquor was investigated based on small-subunit rRNA culture independent method. All sequences recovered from fermenting lees respectively fell into the genera of Lactobacillus, Streptococcus, Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Clostridium, Pelobacter, Actobacter, Serratia, Burkholderia, Rhodoccous, Corynebacterium, Arthrobacter, Microbacterium, Curtobacterium, Leptotrichia, Methanocuuleus, Saccharomyces, Zygosaccharomyces, Saccharomycopsis, Pichia, Talaromyces, Aspergillus, Eurotium, Fomitopsis and Trichosporon. The fungal Pichia, Saccharomycopsis and Talaromyces were most abundant in the lees fermented for 1 day, the fungal Eurotium and the bacteria Burkholderia, Streptococcus and Lactobacillus were dominant in the lees fermented for 7 days, only the bacteria Lactobacillus, Burkholderia were prevalent in the lees fermented for 60 days. Most genera almost existed in the fermenting lees, while their distributions were significantly different in 1, 7 and 60 days fermented lees. The prokaryotic community similarity coefficient was from 0.5000 to 0.5455 and followed to 0.1523, and that of eukaryotic community was from 0.5466 to 0.5259 and to 0.3750 when compared at species level. These results suggested that many microbes in lees have community successions associated with fermenting and that such successions maybe contribute the fermentation process of Luzhou-flavor liquor and is main reasons that the characteristic flavor factors are produced.     

Proteomic and physiological analyses reveal detoxification and antioxidation induced by Cd stress in Kandelia candel roots

The heavy metal Cadmium (Cd), added to the water bodies through weathering of rocks and human activities, constitutes one of the major environmental pollutants toxic to plants. This study examines the proteome changes in roots of actively growing Kandelia candel (L.) Druce when challenged with Cd. This mangrove-like species proliferates in estuaries and bays and is a potential choice for phytoremediation of Cd. A total of 53 proteins were up- or down-regulated following a short-term Cd treatment. The identities of the differentially expressed proteins were determined by MALDI-TOF/TOF. Approximately half of the up-regulated proteins are involved in oxidative response, including antioxidant enzymes, enzymes required for glutathione biosynthesis, enzymes in TCA and PPP cycles for generating ATP, NADH and NADPH. These results support the prediction that a prompt antioxidative response is necessary for the reduction of the oxidative stress caused by Cd and set the stage for further investigating of Cd up-regulated proteins in Kandelia candel.     

Neural Response Phase Tracks How Listeners Learn New Acoustic Representations

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血液或无菌体液培养阳性标本中病原菌检测结果分析

目的：了解血培养（包括血液、无菌体液培养,下同）阳性标本中病原菌的分布及阳性报警时间,为临床及时明确病原菌和正确用药提供参考依据。方法：无菌条件下采集血培养标本注人相应的培养瓶,经仪器扫描后放入血培养仪进行检测,报警后及时进行菌种鉴定和药敏试验。结果：364例阳性报警标本中真阳性标本为176例,其中革兰阳性菌占61．7％,革兰阴性菌占35．0％,真菌占3．3％;188例为假阳性标本,其中革兰阳性菌占54％,革兰阴性菌占41．9％,真菌占4．0％;新生儿科的感染阳性率最高;不同种类病原菌的阳性报警时间多重叠;临床医生经验用药正确或根据药敏结果更换用药的百分比为78．2％。结论：本院引起血液、无菌体液感染的病原菌以革兰阳性细菌为主,病原菌种类较多,存在一定的污染;当新生儿有局部感染时要警惕脓毒血症;单独靠血培养仪报警时间来鉴定区分病原菌与污染菌不一定可靠,及时了解血培养结果及标准药敏结果可以辅助找出感染性疾病的病因,尽早正确合理的使用抗菌药物,从而优化抗菌治疗。     

Large-Scale Screens of miRNA-mRNA Interactions Unveiled That the 3′UTR of a Gene Is Targeted by Multiple miRNAs

Animal microRNA (miRNA) target prediction is still a challenge, although many prediction programs have been exploited. MiRNAs exert their function through partially binding the messenger RNAs (mRNAs; likely at 3′ untranslated regions [3′UTRs]), which makes it possible to detect the miRNA-mRNA interactions in vitro by co-transfection of miRNA and a luciferase reporter gene containing the target mRNA fragment into mammalian cells under a dual-luciferase assay system. Here, we constructed a human miRNA expression library and used a dual-luciferase assay system to perform large-scale screens of interactions between miRNAs and the 3′UTRs of seven genes, which included more than 3,000 interactions with triplicate experiments for each interaction. The screening results showed that the 3′UTR of one gene can be targeted by multiple miRNAs. Among the prediction algorithms, a Bayesian phylogenetic miRNA target identification algorithm and a support vector machine (SVM) presented a relatively better performance (27% for EIMMo and 24.7% for miRDB) against the average precision (17.3%) of the nine prediction programs used here. Additionally, we noticed that a relatively high conservation level was shown at the miRNA 3′ end targeted regions, as well as the 5′ end (seed region) binding sites.     

Development and Evaluation of a Pseudovirus-Luciferase Assay for Rapid and Quantitative Detection of Neutralizing Antibodies against Enterovirus 71

The level of neutralizing antibodies (NtAb) induced by vaccine inoculation is an important endpoint to evaluate the efficacy of EV71 vaccine. In order to evaluate the efficacy of EV71 vaccine, here, we reported the development of a novel pseudovirus system expression firefly luciferase (PVLA) for the quantitative measurement of NtAb. We first evaluated and validated the sensitivity and specificity of the PVLA method. A total of 326 serum samples from an epidemiological survey and 144 serum specimens from 3 clinical trials of EV71 vaccines were used, and the level of each specimen''s neutralizing antibodies (NtAb) was measured in parallel using both the conventional CPE-based and PVLA-based assay. Against the standard neutralization assay based on the inhibition of the cytopathic effect (CPE), the sensitivity and specificity of the PVLA method are 98% and 96%, respectively. Then, we tested the potential interference of NtAb against hepatitis A virus, Polio-I, Polio-II, and Polio-III standard antisera (WHO) and goat anti-G10/CA16 serum, the PVLA based assay showed no cross-reactivity with NtAb against other specific sera. Importantly, unlike CPE based method, no live replication-competent EV71 is used during the measurement. Taken together, PVLA is a rapid and specific assay with higher sensitivity and accuracy. It could serve as a valuable tool in assessing the efficacy of EV71 vaccines in clinical trials and disease surveillance in epidemiology studies.     

Enhanced Functional Connectivity between Putamen and Supplementary Motor Area in Parkinson’s Disease Patients

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a surprisingly heterogeneous disorder with symptoms including resting tremor, bradykinesia and rigidity. PD has been associated with abnormal task related brain activation in sensory and motor regions as well as reward related network. Although corticostriatal skeletomotor circuit dysfunction is implicated in the neurobiology of Parkinson’s disease, the functional connectivity within this circuit at the resting state is still unclear for PD. Here we utilized resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the functional connectivity of striatum and motor cortex in 19 patients with PD and 20 healthy controls. We found that the putamen, but not the caudate, exhibited enhanced connectivity with supplementary motor area (SMA), using either the putamen or the SMA as the “seed region”. Enhanced SMA-amygdala functional connectivity was also found in the PD group, compared with normal controls. Our findings highlight the key role of hyper-connected putamen-SMC circuit in the pathophysiology of PD.     

Aurora-A Identifies Early Recurrence and Poor Prognosis and Promises a Potential Therapeutic Target in Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) acquires an unfavorable prognosis, emerging as a major challenge for the treatment of breast cancer. In the present study, 122 TNBC patients were subjected to analysis of Aurora-A (Aur-A) expression and survival prognosis. We found that Aur-A high expression was positively associated with initial clinical stage (P = 0.025), the proliferation marker Ki-67 (P = 0.001), and the recurrence rate of TNBC patients (P<0.001). In TNBC patients with Aur-A high expression, the risk of distant recurrence peaked at the first 3 years and declined rapidly thereafter, whereas patients with Aur-A low expression showed a relatively constant risk of recurrence during the entire follow-up period. Univariate and multivariate analysis showed that overexpression of Aur-A predicted poor overall survival (P = 0.002) and progression-free survival (P = 0.012) in TNBC. Furthermore, overexpression of Aur-A, associated with high Ki-67, predicted an inferior prognosis compared with low expression of both Aur-A and Ki-67. Importantly, we further found that Aur-A was overexpressed in TNBC cells, and inhibition of this kinase inhibited cell proliferation and prevented cell migration in TNBC. Our findings demonstrated that Aur-A was a potential therapeutic target for TNBC and inhibition of Aur-A kinase was a promising regimen for TNBC cancer therapy.