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Staphylococcus aureus, a major opportunistic pathogen in aerobic vaginitis (AV), can potentially invade the host and occasionally cause infections. Estrogen is associated with an altered immune response of vaginal epithelial cells and prevention of certain vaginal infectious diseases. However, the molecular mechanisms involving estrogen and S. aureus adhesion to vaginal epithelial cells remain unclear. Thus, here, VK2/E6E7 vaginal epithelial cells were infected with S. aureus, and the role of the estrogen receptor α-associated signaling pathway (ERα/FAK/Src/iNOS axis) in S. aureus adhesion was evaluated. The estrogen-associated phosphorylation status of ERα, FAK, and Src and the protein level of iNOS were assessed by western blotting. We used a specific ERα inhibitor to validate the involvement of the ERα-associated signaling pathway. The results showed that with exposure to 1 nM estrogen for 24 h, transient ERα-associated pathway activation was observed, and the protein expression upregulation was accompanied by a dose-dependent increase in 17-β-estradiol (E2) content and increased S. aureus adherence to vaginal epithelial cells. Estrogen-induced activation of the ERα/FAK/Src/iNOS axis was notably inhibited by the specific ERα inhibitor (ICI 182780). Simultaneously, a significant decrease in the number of adherent S. aureus was observed. However, this inhibitory effect diminished after inhibitor treatment for 24 h. Our findings suggested that the ERα-associated signaling pathway might be involved in S. aureus adherence to vaginal epithelial cells, which appeared to be linked to enhanced cell adhesion leading to AV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A binary phase-only modulation technique was proposed to focus and scan light through a multimode fiber (MMF) based on spatial light modulator (SLM). For the same number of modulation modes, the number of iterations using this method is only 1/256 of that using phase-only iterative optimization or 1/3 of that using phase-only computation optimization, and the modulation time is at least one to two orders of magnitude shorter than previous wavefront shaping systems. Focusing and scanning light through an MMF with a 105 μm core diameter and 5 m length was achieved experimentally. This method can be extended to focus and scan light at multiple planes along the axial direction by modifying the input wavefront accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a binary amplitude-only modulation parallel coordinate algorithm for focusing and scanning light through a multimode fiber (MMF) based on the digital micro-mirror device (DMD) in a reference-free multimode fiber imaging system. In principle, our algorithm is capable of efficiently calculating the masks to be added to DMD for yielding a series of tightly focused spots; and for the same number of modulation sub-regions, our method is more than M (the number of focused spots) times faster than the amplitude iterative optimization algorithm. In the experiment, efficient light focusing and scanning at the distal end of the MMF are demonstrated. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the proposed method can also be extended to focus and scan light at multiple planes along the axial direction by just modifying the input wavefront accordingly; and our algorithm can be applied not only in multimode optical fiber focusing but also to other disordered media. Particularly, it will be valuable in fast multimode fiber calibration for endoscopic imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]