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Since TLR9 recognises unmethylated CpG motifs in viral DNA, its polymorphisms may contribute to the susceptibility to Herpes simplex virus I&II infection. In the present study, to evaluate the role of rs187084 SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) of TLR9 in Herpes simplex virus I&II infection and male infertility, 103 infertile and 27 fertile blood and semen samples were analysed. We assessed the micro and macro properties of semen specimens and the presence of HSV immunoglobulins. Tetra-primer ARMS PCR was used to detect SNP and to investigate the genotype distribution of TLR9-rs187084 SNPs, and the correlation between polymorphisms of TLR9 gene and male infertility. Moreover, the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals were used to estimate the strength of the association. Based on our finding, a significant correlation was observed between HSV infection, agglutination and polymorphism (TT) under dominant (OR = 1.28, 95% CI = 0.94-1.75) and recessive (OR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.21-0.94) models for the data, which was complied with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) (OR = 2.91, 95% CI = 1.02-8.30). The result showed a significant association between HSV IgM and agglutination in HSV infection (p < .001), and in addition, there were associations between alleles so that rs187084 SNP might be considered as a risk factor for the incidence of HSV infection., (© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

SARS-COV-2, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS) viruses are from the coronaviridae family; the former became a global pandemic (with low mortality rate) while the latter were confined to a limited region (with high mortality rates). To investigate the possible structural differences at basic levels for the three viruses, genomic and proteomic sequences were downloaded and converted to polynomial datasets. Seven attribute weighting (feature selection) models were employed to find the key differences in their genome's nucleotide sequence. Most attribute weighting models selected the final nucleotide sequences (from 29,000 th nucleotide positions to the end of the genome) as significantly different among the three virus classes. The genome and proteome sequences of this hot zone area (which corresponds to the 3'UTR region and encodes for nucleoprotein (N)) and Spike (S) protein sequences (as the most important viral protein) were converted into binary images and were analyzed by image processing techniques and Convolutional deep Neural Network (CNN). Although the predictive accuracy of CNN for Spike (S) proteins was low (0.48%), the machine-based learning algorithms were able to classify the three members of coronaviridae viruses with 100% accuracy based on 3'UTR region. For the first time ever, the relationship between the possible structural differences of coronaviruses at the sequential levels and their pathogenesis are being reported, which paves the road to deciphering the high pathogenicity of the SARS-COV-2 virus., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Water pollution is one of the main challenges and water crises, which has caused the existing water resources to be unusable due to contamination. To understand the determinants of the distribution and abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), we examined the distribution of 22 ARGs in relation to habitat type, heavy metal pollution and antibiotics concentration across six lakes and wetlands of Iran. The concentration of 13 heavy metals was determined by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) by Thermo Electron Corporation, and five antibiotics by online enrichment and triple-quadrupole LC-MS/MS were investigated. We further performed a global meta-analysis to evaluate the distribution of ARGs across global lakes compared with our studied lakes. While habitat type effect was negligible, we found a strong correlation between waste discharge into the lakes and the abundance of ARGs. The ARGs abundance showed stronger correlation with the concentration of heavy metals, such as Vanadium, than with that of antibiotics. Our meta-analysis also confirmed that overuse of antibiotics and discharge of heavy metals in the studied lakes. These data point to an increase in the distribution of ARGs among bacteria and their increasing resistance to various antibiotics, implying the susceptibility of aquatic environment to industrial pollution., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Relapses and flares with delayed wound healing are among the main symptoms of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a rheumatic autoimmune disease. The orientation of immune responses in SLE disease depends on the function of the population of macrophages. This study investigated the effect of indole-3-carbinol (I3C) on transcriptional profiling of macrophage-derived monocytes (MDMs) in four stages of the wound-healing process., Methods: In the first phase of study, MDMs were generated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of three new SLE cases (unmedicated) and two healthy controls. The cases and controls were then divided into I3C treated and untreated groups after 24 hours of exposure to I3C. Single-end RNA sequencing was performed using an Illumina NextSeq 500 platform. After comprehensive analysis among differentially expressed genes, CDKN1A , FN1 and MMP15 were validated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction as upregulated ranked genes involved in wound-healing stages., Results: The RNA sequencing analysis of treated cases and treated controls versus untreated cases and untreated controls (group 3 vs. group 4) revealed upregulation of various genes, for example: C1S , C1R , IGKV1-5 , IGKV4-1 , SERPING1 , IGLC1 and IGLC2 in coagulation; ADAM19 , CEACAM1 and CEACAM8 in M2 reprogramming; IRS1 , FN1 , THBS1 and LIMS2 in extracellular matrix organization; and STAT1 , THBS1 and ATP2A3 in the proliferation stage of wound healing., Conclusions: The results showed that treatment with I3C could modulate the gene expression involved in wound healing in SLE cases and healthy controls.

An expedient solvent-free methodology has been developed to produce 1-substituted 1 H -1,2,3,4-tetrazoles using sodium borosilicate glass-supported silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) as a novel heterogeneous catalyst. A cost-efficient, facile, and greener method was deployed for the creation of Ag/sodium borosilicate nanocomposite (ASBN) catalyst by using Aleurites moluccana leaf extract as a stabilizing and reducing agent. The ASBN catalyst was identified using the latest microscopic and spectroscopic techniques such as FT-IR, TEM, FESEM, XRD, EDS, and elemental mapping. The deployment of this new catalyst enables the preparation of assorted 1-substituted tetrazoles in good to high yields via an easy work-up procedure in a relatively short reaction time under environmentally friendly conditions without using harmful and toxic reducing agents. The ASBN catalyst can be recycled and reused multiple times without meaningful loss of activity. To extend the application of the ASBN, the performance of the quantitative structure-activity relationships model was investigated for protein binding and toxicity hazard considerations., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest.