Effects of pulse precipitation on soil organic matter mineralization in forests: spatial variation and controlling factors

脉冲降水对森林中土壤有机物矿化的影响：空间变化和控制因素 降水脉冲效应使土壤有机物在短时间内迅速分解并释放大量CO₂到大气中。降水脉冲效应对生态系统的碳循环和土壤碳平衡的研究具有十分重要的意义,但它在森林土壤中的空间变化和基本机制仍不清楚。我们采集中国东部22个典型森林生态系统的土壤样品(0–10cm),研究模拟脉冲降水对土壤微生物呼吸速率的影响。模拟降水脉冲使土壤样品达到65%饱和含水量,以分钟为单位测量R_s,持续48 小时。研究结果显示,降水脉冲可以使微生物呼吸速率迅速增加1.70–38.12倍。微生物最大呼吸速率 (R_s-soil-max)、碳释放总量R_s (A_Rs-soil)和达到呼吸峰值的时间(T_Rs-soil-max)在不同的土壤中存在显著差异。此外,不同 气候区的脉冲效应也有明显不同。中温带的R_s-soil-max (11.701 µg C g⁻¹ soil h⁻¹)和A_Rs-soil (300.712 µg C g⁻¹ soil)最高。土壤化学特性(总碳和总氮、pH值和氧化还原电位)和土壤粒径与森林土壤的脉冲效应密切相关,但土壤微生物的贡献较小。我们的研究结果表明,在大尺度范围内,脉冲变化短期内增加森林土壤中CO₂的排放,并揭示了对这种变化影响最大的因素。这些发现为未来对森林生态系统的碳循环和调节全球生态系统碳循环的研究提供科学数据支持。     

Secondary Structural Transformation of Bovine Lactoferricin Affects Its Antibacterial Activity

Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins - Lactoferricin (Lfcin) is a potent antibacterial peptide derived from lactoferrin by pepsin hydrolysis. It was hypothesized that structural transformation of...     

Multifaceted roles of duckweed in aquatic phytoremediation and bioproducts synthesis

Duckweed (Lemnaceae) is a fast‐growing aquatic vascular plant. It has drawn an increasing attention worldwide due to its application in value‐added nutritional products and in sewage disposal. In particular, duckweed is a promising feedstock for bioenergy production. In this review, we summarized applications of duckweed from the following four aspects. Firstly, duckweed could utilize nitrogen, phosphorus, and inorganic nutrition in wastewater and reduces water eutrophication efficiently. During these processes, microorganisms play an important role in promoting duckweed growth and improving its tolerance to stresses. We also introduced our pilot‐scale test using duckweed for wastewater treatment and biomass production simultaneously. Secondly, its capability of fast accumulation of large amounts of starch makes duckweed a promising bioenergy feedstock, catering the currently increasing demand for bioethanol production. Pretreatment conditions prior to fermentation can be optimized to improve the conversion efficiency from starch to bioethanol. Furthermore, duckweed serves as an ideal source for food supply or animal feed because the composition of amino acids in duckweed is similar to that of whey protein, which is easily digested and assimilated by human and other animals. Finally, severing as a natural plant factory, duckweed has shown great potential in the production of pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements. With the surge of omics data and the development of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats technology, remodeling of the metabolic pathway in duckweed for synthetic biology study will be attainable in the future.     

Benchmarking and optimization of a high-throughput sequencing based method for transgene sequence variant analysis in biotherapeutic cell line development

In recent years, High-Throughput Sequencing (HTS) based methods to detect mutations in biotherapeutic transgene products have become a key quality step deployed during the development of manufacturing cell line clones. Previously we reported on a higher throughput, rapid mutation detection method based on amplicon sequencing (targeting transgene RNA) and detailed its implementation to facilitate cell line clone selection. By gaining experience with our assay in a diverse set of cell line development programs, we improved the computational analysis as well as experimental protocols. Here we report on these improvements as well as on a comprehensive benchmarking of our assay. We evaluated assay performance by mixing amplicon samples of a verified mutated antibody clone with a non-mutated antibody clone to generate spike-in mutations from ∼60% down to ∼0.3% frequencies. We subsequently tested the effect of 16 different sample and HTS library preparation protocols on the assay's ability to quantify mutations and on the occurrence of false-positive background error mutations (artifacts). Our evaluation confirmed assay robustness, established a high confidence limit of detection of ∼0.6%, and identified protocols that reduce error levels thereby significantly reducing a source of false positives that bottlenecked the identification of low-level true mutations.     

Middle Jurassic radiolarians from Jinlang,Zedong, southern Xizang (Tibet), China

Moderately to well-preserved radiolarians have been extracted from nine greyish green and purplish-red bedded cherts in the mud-matrix mélange of the eastern Yarlung-Zangbo Suture Zone (YZSZ) at Jinlang Section, Zedong, southern Xizang (Tibet). Forty-two species belonging to 27 genera, including Middle Jurassic characteristic species such as Laxtorum (?) jurassicum Isozaki and Matsuda, Laxtorum (?) hichisoense Isozaki and Matsuda, Stichocapsa japonica Yao, Stichocapsa robusta Matsuoka, Parahsuum (?) magnum Takemura, Sella chrafatensis (El Kadiri), and Unuma typicus Ichikawa and Yao are recognized and three assemblages, Laxtorum (?) jurassicum Assemblage (Aalenian), Quarticella ovalis Assemblage (late Bajocian), and Stichocapsa robusta Assemblage (middle Bathonian) are established in ascending order. These assemblages can be well correlated to the Middle Jurassic Unitary Association (UA) Zones (Baumgartner et al., 1995) in west Tethys and coeval biozones in Japan and provide reliable age information for the Middle Jurassic stratigraphic correlation of the pelagic sediments along the YZSZ.     

Anti-inflammatory mechanisms and research progress of colchicine in atherosclerotic therapy

Inflammatory responses play a vital role in the onset and development of atherosclerosis, and throughout the entire process of the chronic disease. The inflammatory responses in atherosclerosis are mainly mediated by the NLRP3 inflammasome and its downstream inflammatory factors. As a powerful anti-inflammatory medicine, colchicine has a history of more than 200 years in clinical application and is the first-choice treatment for immune diseases such as gout and familial Mediterranean fever. In atherosclerosis, colchicine can inhibit the assembly and activation of NLRP3 inflammasome via various mechanisms to effectively reduce the expression of inflammatory factors, thereby reducing the inflammation. Recent clinical trials show that a low dose of colchicine (0.5 mg per day) has a certain protective effect in stable angina patients or those with acute myocardial infarction after PCI. This article summarizes and discusses the mechanisms of colchicine in the treatment of atherosclerosis and the latest research progress.     

Comprehensive landscape and interference of clonal haematopoiesis mutations for liquid biopsy: A Chinese pan-cancer cohort

Tumour-derived DNA found in the plasma of cancer patients provides the probability to detect somatic mutations from circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in plasma samples. However, clonal hematopoiesis (CH) mutations affect the accuracy of liquid biopsy for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Here, we integrated landscape of CH mutations in 11,725 pan-cancer patients of Chinese and explored effects of CH on liquid biopsies in real-world. We first identified 5933 CHs based on panel sequencing of matched DNA of white blood cell and cfDNA on 301 genes for 5100 patients, in which CH number of patients had positive correlation with their diagnosis age. We observed that canonical genes related to CH, including DNMT3A, TET2, ASXL1, TP53, ATM, CHEK2 and SF3B1, were dominant in the Chinese cohort and 13.29% of CH mutations only appeared in the Chinese cohort compared with the Western cohort. Analysis of CH gene distribution bias indicated that CH tended to appear in genes with functions of tyrosine kinase regulation, PI3K-Akt signalling and TP53 activity, suggesting unfavourable effects of CH mutations in cancer patients. We further confirmed effect of driver genes carried by CH on somatic mutations in liquid biopsy of cancer patients. Forty-eight actionable somatic mutations in 17 driver genes were considered CH genes in 92 patients (1.80%) of the Chinese cohort, implying potential impacts of CH on clinical decision-making. Taken together, this study exhibits strong evidence that gene mutations from CH interfere accuracy of liquid biopsies using cfDNA in cancer diagnosis and treatment in real-world.     

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor regulates joint capsule fibrosis by promoting TGF-β1 production in fibroblasts

Joint capsule fibrosis caused by excessive inflammation results in post-traumatic joint contracture (PTJC). Transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 plays a key role in PTJC by regulating fibroblast functions, however, cytokine-induced TGF-β1 expression in specific cell types remains poorly characterized. Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a proinflammatory cytokine involved in inflammation- and fibrosis-associated pathophysiology. In this study, we investigated whether MIF can facilitate TGF-β1 production from fibroblasts and regulate joint capsule fibrosis following PTJC. Our data demonstrated that MIF and TGF-β1 significantly increased in fibroblasts of injured rat posterior joint capsules. Treatment the lesion sites with MIF inhibitor 4-Iodo-6-phenylpyrimidine (4-IPP) reduced TGF-β1 production and relieved joint capsule inflammation and fibrosis. In vitro, MIF facilitated TGF-β1 expression in primary joint capsule fibroblasts by activating mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) (P38, ERK) signaling through coupling with membrane surface receptor CD74, which in turn affected fibroblast functions and promoted MIF production. Our results reveal a novel function of trauma-induced MIF in the occurrence and development of joint capsule fibrosis. Further investigation of the underlying mechanism may provide potential therapeutic targets for PTJC.