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In China, social workers face great at-work stress, job burnout and turnover. Determining how to prevent and alleviate their job burnout and improve their work enthusiasm and engagement has become urgent. Using the affective events theory and challenge stressor-hindrance stressor framework, this study explored the impacts of different types of stressors on job engagement and its associated mechanisms and then examined the protective roles of positive emotion and career resilience. A total of 430 social workers in Beijing were investigated. The unique and combined contribution of the stress components to job engagement has been examined. The results showed that both challenge stressors and hindrance stressors had significantly negative impacts on social workers' work engagement and positive emotion, and positive emotion had a significant positive influence on work engagement. Positive emotion fully mediated the negative relationship between challenge stressors and work engagement, and partially mediated the negative relationship between hindrance stressors and work engagement. Furthermore, career resilience can buffer the negative influence of challenge stressors on positive emotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major barrier to HIV eradication is the persistence of viral reservoirs. Resting CD4+ T cells are thought to be one of the major viral reservoirs, However, the underlying mechanism regulating HIV infection and the establishment of viral reservoir in T cells remain poorly understood. We have investigated the role of IP-10 in the establishment of HIV reservoirs in CD4+ T cells, and found that in HIV-infected individuals, plasma IP-10 was elevated, and positively correlated with HIV viral load and viral reservoir size. In addition, we found that binding of IP-10 to CXCR3 enhanced HIV latent infection of resting CD4+ T cells in vitro. Mechanistically, IP-10 stimulation promoted cofilin activity and actin dynamics, facilitating HIV entry and DNA integration. Moreover, treatment of resting CD4+ T cells with a LIM kinase inhibitor R10015 blocked cofilin phosphorylation and abrogated IP-10-mediated enhancement of HIV latent infection. These results suggest that IP-10 is a critical factor involved in HIV latent infection, and that therapeutic targeting of IP-10 may be a potential strategy for inhibiting HIV latent infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work studied the high-temperature oxidation resistance properties of Mg alloys with Gd and Ca. The oxidation property of Mg-3.5Gd-xCa (x = 0, 0.5, 1.0 and 3.0 wt%) alloys followed parabolic oxidation kinetics at 500 °C. A stable oxide film was formed on the alloy surface and limited further oxidation. The oxide film was composed of Gd2O3, MgO and MgCO3 for Mg-3.5Gd and was mainly CaO and CaCO3 with increasing Ca content for Mg-3.5Gd-xCa alloys. The high oxidation affinity of Ca caused it to be oxidized preferentially and the fast diffusion of Ca in Mg alloys provided a source for the continuous oxidation of Ca at the surface. The parabolic rate constant, grains size and surface roughness of the oxide film increased with the increasing Ca content in Mg-3.5Gd-xCa alloy. The understanding of multi-element alloying on the oxidation behavior of Mg alloy is helpful for the design of multi-element oxidation-resistant Mg alloys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-containing-3 (Tim-3) is a negative regulator expressed on T cells, and is also expressed on natural killer (NK) cells. The function of Tim-3 chiefly restricts IFNγ-production in T cells, however, the impact of Tim-3 on NK cell function has not been clearly elucidated. Results: In this study, we demonstrated down-regulation of Tim-3 expression on NK cells while Tim-3 is upregulated on CD4+ T cells during HIV infection. Functional assays indicated that Tim-3 mediates suppression of CD107a degranulation in NK cells and CD4+ T cells, while it fails to inhibit the production of IFN-γ by NK cells. Analyses of downstream pathways using an antibody to block Tim-3 function demonstrated that Tim-3 can inhibit ERK and NFκB p65 signaling; however, it failed to suppress the NFAT pathway. Further, we found that the NFAT activity in NK cells was much higher than that in CD4+ T cells, indicating that NFAT pathway is important for promotion of IFN-γ production by NK cells. Conclusions: Thus, our data show that the expression of Tim-3 on NK cells is insufficient to inhibit IFN-γ production. Collectively, our findings demonstrate a potential mechanism of Tim-3 regulation of NK cells and a target for HIV infection immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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China's western Ordos is a distribution area for the extremely precious remnants of ancient Asian environments, which in endangered plant species and complex ecosystems. Accordingly, in this study, we collect three endangered plants belonging to the Zygophyllaceae family, namely Tetraena mongolica, Sarcozygium xanthoxylon, and Nitraria tangutorum Bobr. High-throughput sequencing technology was applied to study microbial diversity in these plant rhizosphere soils. Analysis of species composition abundance, Alpha diversity, Beta diversity and microbial structure are analyzed. 2428 bacterial OTUs and 1256 fungal OTUs are obtained from the rhizosphere soils, and the bacterial and fungal sequencing coverage is above 99%. Bacilli are the most abundant (86.91%) in the bacterial community. The fungal community has significant differences in three plants. The abundances of the genus Dothideomycetes in the rhizosphere soils of Tetraena mongolica and Sarcozygium xanthoxylon plants are the highest, which are 44.57% and 37.69%, respectively. Thus, Dothideomycetes is the dominant bacteria in the community. The genus Sordariomycetes in the rhizosphere soil is the dominant fungi with a relative abundance of 41.04%. Redundancy analysis revealed that microbial communities were closely related to environmental factors. Overall, this study bring new insights into the relationship between rhizosphere soils microbial diversity and environment to improving the adaptability of the endangered plants in survival environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meiosis plays an essential role in the production of gametes and genetic diversity of posterities. The normal double-strand break (DSB) repair is vital to homologous recombination (HR) and occurrence of DNA fragment exchange, but the underlying molecular mechanism remain elusive. Here, we characterized a completely sterile Osmfs1 (m ale and f emale s terility 1) mutant which has its pollen and embryo sacs both aborted at the reproductive stage due to severe chromosome defection. Map-based cloning revealed that the OsMFS1 encodes a meiotic coiled-coil protein, and it is responsible for DSB repairing that acts as an important cofactor to stimulate the single strand invasion. Expression pattern analyses showed the OsMFS1 was preferentially expressed in meiosis stage. Subcellular localization analysis of OsMFS1 revealed its association with the nucleus exclusively. In addition, a yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) and pull-down assay showed that OsMFS1 could physically interact with OsHOP2 protein to form a stable complex to ensure faithful homologous recombination. Taken together, our results indicated that OsMFS1 is indispensable to the normal development of anther and embryo sacs in rice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prometryn has been extensively detected in marine environment because of its widespread usage in agriculture and aquaculture and has been concerns since its serious effects on aquatic organisms. However, its impact on the microbial community in the marine ecosystem including seawater and biofilm is still unclear. Therefore, a short-term indoor microcosm experiment of prometryn exposure was conducted. This study found that prometryn had a more significant impact on the structure and stability of the microbial community in seawater compared to microplastic biofilms. Additionally, we observed that the assembly of the microbial community in biofilms was more affected by stochastic processes than in seawater under the exposure of prometryn. Our study provided evidence for the increasing impact of the microbial communities under the stress of prometryn and microplastics. [Display omitted] • Prometryn can dramatically alter the microbial diversity in marine environment. • The stability of microbial co-occurrence network can be disrupted by prometryn. • Microbes in seawater are more affected by prometryn than that in microplastic biofilms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]