Smoking and Candidaalbicans (C. albicans) infection are risk factors for many oral diseases. Several studies have reported a close relationship between smoking and the occurrence of C. albicans infection. However, the exact underlying mechanism of this relationship remains unclear. We established a rat infection model and a C. albicans-Leuk1 epithelial cell co-culture model with and without smoke exposure to investigate the mechanism by which smoking contributes to C. albicans infection. Oral mucosa samples from healthy individuals and patients with oral leucoplakia were also analysed according to their smoking status. Our results indicated that smoking induced oxidative stress and redox dysfunction in the oral mucosa. Smoking-induced Nrf2 negatively regulated the NLRP3 inflammasome, impaired the oral mucosal defence response and increased the oral mucosa susceptibility to C. albicans. The results suggest that the Nrf2 pathway could be involved in the pathogenesis of oral diseases by mediating an antioxidative response to cigarette smoke exposure and suppressing host immunity against C. albicans. 相似文献
Since historical times, the inherent human fascination with pearls turned the freshwater pearl mussel Margaritifera margaritifera (Linnaeus, 1758) into a highly valuable cultural and economic resource. Although pearl harvesting in M. margaritifera is nowadays residual, other human threats have aggravated the species conservation status, especially in Europe. This mussel presents a myriad of rare biological features, e.g. high longevity coupled with low senescence and Doubly Uniparental Inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, for which the underlying molecular mechanisms are poorly known. Here, the first draft genome assembly of M. margaritifera was produced using a combination of Illumina Paired-end and Mate-pair approaches. The genome assembly was 2.4 Gb long, possessing 105,185 scaffolds and a scaffold N50 length of 288,726 bp. The ab initio gene prediction allowed the identification of 35,119 protein-coding genes. This genome represents an essential resource for studying this species’ unique biological and evolutionary features and ultimately will help to develop new tools to promote its conservation. 相似文献
Lake Taihu in China has suffered serious harmful cyanobacterial blooms for decades. The algal blooms threaten the ecological sustainability, drinking water safety, and human health. Although the roles of abiotic factors (such as water temperature and nutrient loading) in promoting Microcystis blooms have been well studied, the importance of biotic factors (e.g. bacterial community) in promoting and meditating Microcystis blooms remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the ecological dynamics of bacterial community, the ratio of toxic Microcystis, as well as microcystin in Lake Taihu. High-throughput 16S rRNA sequencing and principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that the bacteria community compositions (BCCs) clustered into three groups, the partitioning of which corresponded to that of groups according to the toxic profiles (the ratio of toxic Microcystis to total Microcystis, and the microcystin concentrations) of the samples. Further Spearman's correlation network showed that the α-proteobacteria Phenylobacterium strongly positively correlated with the toxic profiles. Subsequent laboratory chemostats experiments demonstrated that three Phenylobacterium strains promoted the dominance of the toxic Microcystis aeruginosa PCC7806 when co-culturing with the non-toxic PCC7806 mcyB− mutant. Taken together, our data suggested that the α-proteobacteria Phenylobacterium may play a vital role in the maintenance of toxic Microcystis dominance in Lake Taihu. 相似文献
Plasmonics - By introducing the sub-wavelength grating (SWG) waveguide in the long-range surface phonon resonance (LRSPhR) device, a mid-infrared Fano resonance is formed due to the coupling... 相似文献
We propose a dynamically tunable surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) waveguide system based on bulk Dirac semimetals (BDS) containing only a side-coupled T-shaped cavity. Plasmon-induced transparency (PIT) is achieved in the terahertz band by introducing a position offset. We have analytically investigated the spectral characteristics of PIT in this system, indicating that the larger the position offset, the higher the peak of the PIT window. The spectrum responses of PIT system can be flexibly regulated via transforming the geometric parameters of the structure. At the same time, it is particularly sensitive to the refractive index of the surrounding medium, which is promising for sensing devices. In addition, the resonance frequency and peak transmission can be actively adjusted by controlling the Fermi energy of the BDS without reconstructing the geometric structure. Moreover, the optical delay time near the PIT peak reaches 11.001 ps, which has good slow-light characteristics and is a candidate in the field of slow-light equipment. The structure we designed may have potential application value in the design of SPPs light-guide devices.