Search

Carnosic acid protects against doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity by inhibiting NLRP3 inflammasome activity, which is related to the upregulation of the Nrf2/HO-1 transcription pathway.

It has been assumed that patients with strict immunosuppressive treatment after solid organ transplantation have only marginal risk in developing autoimmune encephalitis. We reported a woman in her late 40 s who presented with generalized convulsions and loss of consciousness. After detailed history review, neuropsychological tests, metagenomic next-generation sequencing of serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain, and electroencephalogram, she was diagnosed as anti-CASPR2 encephalitis based on the positive anti-CASPR2 auto-antibody in serum and CSF. The patient underwent liver transplantation and has taken lenvatinib for 2 months, in addition to tacrolimus, mycophenotale mofetil, and entecavir administered for half a year. This case was the first report of anti-CASPR2 encephalitis in post-organ transplantation patients. Together with the reports of other encephalitis cases in organ transplantation, it warns the possibility of developing immune-oriented encephalitis in patients undergoing immunosuppression, especially in combination with other treatments of immunomodulatory activity.

This study investigated the effects of different sucrose, ventilation, and paclobutrazol (PBZ) treatments on the growth of potato plantlets cultured in modified temporary immersion culture vessels. Temporary immersion culture vessels were modified to enable the plantlets to be cultured on semi-solid growth medium and provided with forced ventilation. The plantlet responses to two sucrose concentrations (15 g⋅L−1 and 30 g⋅L−1) in combination with two forced ventilation treatments (5 min/2 h and no ventilation) and three PBZ concentrations (0, 0.2, and 0.4 mg⋅L−1) were studied. Shoot growth was severely inhibited by PBZ in the growth media, whereas leaf formation was promoted by ventilation irrespective of the PBZ concentration. In nonventilated vessels, it is noteworthy that PBZ was able to increase the number of leaves formed in plantlets grown on medium supplemented with 30 g⋅L−1 sucrose, but not on medium with 15 g⋅L−1 sucrose. In growth media without PBZ, a high percentage of potato plantlets was able to produce secondary axillary shoots when provided with 30 g⋅L−1 sucrose. However, their ability to produce secondary shoots was reduced when PBZ was included in the growth medium, particularly those with 15 g⋅L−1 sucrose. Plantlets grown in ventilated culture vessels combined with 30 g⋅L−1 sucrose in the growth medium produced more than three times more shoots than the other treatments. Under ex vitro conditions, plantlets that had been grown in ventilated vessels had fewer leaf deaths, and the inclusion of PBZ in the growth media further reduced the number of dead leaves. Findings of this study showed that PBZ had a key role in the responses of potato plantlets to ventilation and sucrose treatments, as well as their tolerance to ex vitro conditions. The modified temporary immersion system can be used for the in vitro culture of potato plantlets on semi-solid medium and provide forced ventilation to improve their growth.

Feng Gu,1,2,* Shan Hu,3,* Yunjian Wu,4,* Changyu Wu,4 Ying Yang,5 Bing Gu,6 Hong Du1 1Department of Clinical Laboratory, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, 215004, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Laboratory Medicine, Xuzhou Central Hospital, Xuzhou, 221000, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Laboratory Medicine, Xuzhou Tumor Hospital, Xuzhou, 221005, People’s Republic of China; 4School of Medical Imaging, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, 221004, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Biotechnology, Beijing Institute of Radiation Medicine, Beijing Key Laboratory of New Molecular Diagnosis Technologies for Infectious Diseases, Beijing, 100850, People’s Republic of China; 6Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou, 510000, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Hong Du; Ying Yang, Email hong_du@126.com; y_ying_77@163.comPurpose: Candida infection has a high mortality rate, and the increasing prevalence of non-Candida albicans drug resistance in recent years poses a potential threat to human health. Non-Candida albicans has long culture cycles, and its firm cell walls making it difficult to isolate DNA for sequencing.Materials and Methods: Fe3O4@PEI (PEI, polyvinyl imine) was mixed with clinical samples to form Fe3O4@PEI@non-Candida albicans and enriched them with magnets. Triangular silver nanoplates enhanced the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signal. SERS was used to detect the fingerprint spectrum of non-Candida albicans. Then, orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) was used to analyze the drug resistance of non-Candida albicans.Results: SERS combined with OPLS-DA could well analyze the drug resistance of non-Candida albicans. Through 10-fold-cross validation, the accuracy of training and test data is greater than 99%, indicating that the model has good classification ability. We used SERS for the first time to detect the drug resistance of non-Candida albicans directly.Conclusion: This approach can be utilized without causing damage to the cell wall and can be accomplished in as little as 90 minutes. It can provide timely guidance for the treatment of patients with good clinical application potential.Keywords: non-Candida albicans, SERS, drug resistance, OPLS-DA

Synchrotron monochromatic beam X-ray topography has been widely applied to characterize structural defects in SiC crystals. Using ray tracing simulations, the dislocation contrast in X-ray topography under strong diffraction conditions (diffraction takes place at or near Bragg angle) has been intensively investigated. However, the contrast and the configurations of the dislocation images recorded under weak diffraction conditions have not been fully investigated. Recently, we demonstrated that the contrast of dislocations in synchrotron grazing incidence topography under weak diffraction conditions can also be analyzed and interpreted by applying ray tracing principles. In this study, we have extended the application of the ray tracing method to analyze the dislocation contrast in weak beam synchrotron back reflection and rocking curve topography. The ray tracing method is shown to successfully simulate and correlate the contrast of threading screw dislocations at various positions on the rocking curve and thus allow to determine the signs of Burgers vectors.

Synchrotron X-ray topography techniques are used to characterize the microstructures in gallium nitride materials being developed for selective area doping for power electronic applications. Bulk substrates grown by different methods, epitaxial layers that are subject to ion implantation, annealing, etching and regrowth are characterized by X-ray topography in grazing incidence geometry and X-ray rocking curve topography. Strain and tilt maps of ion implanted epitaxial layers and etched and regrown wafers are generated. From the X-ray topographs, it is concluded that ammonothermal grown substrates show the highest quality among other types and most suitable for high-end electronic applications. It is also revealed that epitaxial growth, ion implantation and the annealing process do not change the dislocation distribution, but ion implantation introduces damage, strain and lattice bending effect, which are removed after annealing. Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching gives rise to strain variations in the wafer, while using tertiary butyl chloride (TBCl) to etch the wafer does not affect the strain distribution and can remove some damage from a preceding ICP etching process.