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Anther dehiscence is a crucial event in plant reproduction, tightly regulated and dependent on the lignification of the anther endothecium. In this study, we investigated the rapid lignification process that ensures timely anther dehiscence in Arabidopsis. Our findings reveal that endothecium lignification can be divided into two distinct phases. During Phase I, lignin precursors are synthesized without polymerization, while Phase II involves simultaneous synthesis of lignin precursors and polymerization. The transcription factors MYB26, NST1/2, and ARF17 specifically regulate the pathway responsible for the synthesis and polymerization of lignin monomers in Phase II. MYB26‐NST1/2 is the key regulatory pathway responsible for endothecium lignification, while ARF17 facilitates this process by interacting with MYB26. Interestingly, our results demonstrate that the lignification of the endothecium, which occurs within approximately 26 h, is much faster than that of the vascular tissue. These findings provide valuable insights into the regulation mechanism of rapid lignification in the endothecium, which enables timely anther dehiscence and successful pollen release during plant reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To provide reference for controlling or delaying the decline of pulmonary ventilation function in male pneumoconiosis patients by studying associations of serum albumin levels with the risk of severe or very severe pulmonary ventilation dysfunction in male pneumoconiosis patients. Methods A retrospective cohort design was adopted in this study. Male pneumoconiosis patients who were hospitalized in West China Fourth Hospital from January 2012 to December 2021 and did not have pulmonary ventilation dysfunction at baseline were selected as the study objects. Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to calculate HRs and 95% CIs to evaluate the association of baseline serum albumin levels and the risk of severe or very severe pulmonary ventilation dysfunction. Restricted cubic spline plot was used to explore whether there was a dose-response relationship between baseline serum albumin concentrations and the risk of severe or very severe pulmonary ventilation dysfunction. Results A total of 746 subjects were included in this study. Fully adjusted model results of Cox proportional hazard regression analysis showed that male pneumoconiosis patients with serum albumin higher than 40.8 g/L had a reduced risk of severe or very severe pulmonary ventilation dysfunction compared with male pneumoconiosis patients with serum albumin lower than 34.4g/L (HR = 0.660, 95% CI: 0.439-0.992). The restricted cubic spline figure showed that the risk of severe or very severe pulmonary ventilation dysfunction in male pneumoconiosis patients gradually decreased with the gradual increase of serum albumin concentrations and there was a linear negative relationship between baseline serum albumin concentrations and the incidence risk of severe or very severe pulmonary ventilation dysfunction in male pneumoconiosis patients (P < 0.05). Conclusion Higher serum albumin is a protective factor for severe or very severe pulmonary ventilation dysfunction in male pneumoconiosis patients and maintaining the serum albumin concentrations above 40.8 g/L can reduce the risk of severe or very severe pulmonary ventilation dysfunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To construct a deep learning model based on multi -task learning to assist clinicians in differential diagnosis and staging of pneumoconiosis. Methods The digital chest radiographs of 3 600 patients from an occupational disease hospital in Sichuan Province from 2011 to 2022 were collected, and the full convolution neural network (UNet) was used to segment the lung field. Based on multi-task learning, the multi-task model was constructed using the correlation between tasks. The multi -task model was pre -trained on the ChestX -ray14 dataset, whose backbone network was DenseNetl21, and two classifiers were added behind the backbone network. Paired t-test was used to compare the differences in accuracy, precision, sensitivity, and Fl scores between single-task model and multi-task model. Results The test set results showed that the differential diagnosis and diagnostic staging performance of the single-task model was about 90% and 77%, respectively. The differential diagnosis and diagnosis staging performance of the multi-task model was about 94% and 86%, which was higher than that of the single-task model about 4% and 9%, respectively. The difference between the evaluation indexes was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusion The multi-task model has more advantages than the single-task model and can effectively realize the differential diagnosis and accurate staging of pneumoconiosis and pulmonary tuberculosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Semen Aesculi, a traditional Chinese herbal medicine, has a long history of use for treating chest and abdominal pain with distension. In addition, the horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum L.) is another species of Aesculus in Europe and has notable clinical significance in alleviating chronic venous insufficiency, hemorrhoids, and postoperative edema. Thus, highlighting the comparative study of Semen Aesculi and horse chestnut may broaden clinical applications. Objectives: To conduct a comprehensive comparative analysis on the chemical profiling of these two varieties and determine whether they have equivalent clinical efficacy by integrating plant metabolomics and multivariate statistical methods. Methods: Initially, a comprehensive characterisation was performed using ultra‐performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time‐of‐flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC‐QTOF‐MS/MS) platform, and in total 44 active ingredients were identified. Then, untargeted metabolomics combined with principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares‐discriminant analysis (PLS‐DA) was applied for the discrimination of a German species and three official Chinese species. Next, 24 marker compounds responsible for the discrimination of different species were screened out and used to predict the species of unknown samples by genetic algorithm‐optimised support vector machine (GA‐SVM) with a high prediction accuracy. Finally, a heatmap visualisation was employed for clarifying the distribution of the identified active ingredients. Results: The three species of Chinese Semen Aesculi showed distinct separation from each other, while European horse chestnut and Aesculus chinensis Bunge were similar in chemical composition. Conclusions: This work provided experimental evidence for further expanding the clinical application of Chinese Semen Aesculi and promoted the species identification and quality control of Semen Aesculi. Semen Aesculi has long been used as a Chinese herbal medicine. However, another species named horse chestnut, is more popular in Europe. To determine whether these two varieties are equivalent in clinical efficacy, a comparative analysis based on metabolomics and chemometrics were built for profiling. The result showed that the Chinese species showed distinct separation, while horse chestnut and Aesculus chinensis Bunge were resemblant in composition. This work provided evidence for further expanding the clinical application of Chinese Semen Aesculi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To explore influence of artesunate on T-bet /GATA-3 equilibrium of peripheral blood in oral lichen planus.Methods 18 OLP patients were selected,and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated by density gradient centrifugation. The cells were cultured and treated with different concentrations (0, 1, 100 μmol/L) of artesunate. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Western blot were applied to detect theT-bet and GATA-3 mRNA and protein expression respectively.Results The T-bet/GATA-3 mRNA and protein expressions in groups treated with artesunate (1 μmol/L & 100 μmol/L) were higher than that of control group (treated without artesunate) (P