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Abstract Background In evolutionary biology, identifying and quantifying inter-lineage genome size variation and elucidating the underlying causes of that variation have long been goals. Repetitive elements (REs) have been proposed and confirmed as being among the most important contributors to genome size variation. However, the evolutionary implications of genome size variation and RE dynamics are not well understood. Results A total of 35 Ensifera insects were collected from different areas in China, including nine species of crickets and 26 species of katydids. The genome sizes of seven species were then determined using flow cytometry. The RepeatExplorer2 pipeline was employed to retrieve the repeated sequences for each species, based on low-coverage (0.1 X) high-throughput Illumina unassembled short reads. The genome sizes of the 35 Ensifera insects exhibited a considerable degree of variation, ranging from 1.00 to 18.34 pg. This variation was more than 18-fold. Similarly, the RE abundances exhibited considerable variation, ranging from 13.66 to 61.16%. In addition, the Tettigonioidea had larger genomes and contained significantly more REs than did the Grylloidea genomes. Analysis of the correlation between RE abundance and the genome size of 35 Ensifera insects revealed that the abundance of REs, transposable elements (TEs), long terminal repeats (LTRs), and long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) are significantly correlated with genome size. Notably, there is an inflection point in this correlation, where species with increasingly large genomes (e.g., > 5–10 pg) have repeats that contribute less to genome expansion than expected. Furthermore, this study revealed contrasting evolutionary directions between the Tettigonioidea and Grylloidea clades in terms of the expansion of REs. Tettigonioidea species exhibit a gradual increase in ancestral genome size and RE abundance as they diverge, while Grylloidea species experience sustained genome contraction. Conclusions This study reveals extensive variation in genome size and RE abundance in Ensifera insects, with distinct evolutionary patterns across two major groups, Tettigonioidea and Grylloidea. This provides valuable insights into the variation in genome size and RE abundance in Ensifera insects, offering a comprehensive understanding of their evolutionary history.

Background Tongue coating microbiota has aroused particular interest in profiling oral and digestive system cancers. However, little is known on the relationship between tongue coating microbiome and colorectal cancer (CRC).Methods Metagenomic shotgun sequencing was performed on tongue coating samples collected from 30 patients with CRC, 30 patients with colorectal polyps (CP), and 30 healthy controls (HC). We further validated the potential of the tongue coating microbiota to predict the CRC by a random forest model.Results We found a greater species diversity in CRC samples, and the nucleoside and nucleotide biosynthesis pathway was more apparent in the CRC group. Importantly, various species across participants jointly shaped three distinguishable fur types.The tongue coating microbiome profiling data gave an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.915 in discriminating CRC patients from control participants; species such as Atopobium rimae, Streptococcus sanguinis, and Prevotella oris aided differentiation of CRC patients from healthy participants.Conclusion These results elucidate the use of tongue coating microbiome in CRC patients firstly, and the fur-types observed contribute to a better understanding of the microbial community in human. Furthermore, the tongue coating microbiota-based biomarkers provide a valuable reference for CRC prediction and diagnosis.

Abstract Bacterial blight of rice is a devastating disease caused by the gram-negative bacteria Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo). Chinese Xoo strain pathotypes IV, V, and IX are the major virulent Xoo strain types in South China sequentially from the 1990s to the present. Here, we report the isolation of GD0201 and GD0202, which belong to pathotypes IV and IX, respectively, and the complete genome sequence and transcriptomic analysis of GD0201 (IV), GD1358 (V), and GD0202 (IX). We found that resistance genes xa5, Xa23, and Xa27 confer strong resistance to all three Xoo strains, indicating that they are currently good choices for resistance rice breeding. The genome analysis reveals fewer TAL and non-TAL effector coding genes in GD0202 than in the other two strains, potentially contributing to its strong virulence. Transcriptomic analysis of ZH11 inoculated with the three Xoo strains strongly suggests that three Xoo strains for better infection repress the ethylene response factor (ERF) gene family members. Furthermore, weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) and protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis revealed 14 hub genes potentially associated with rice response to the three Xoo strains. The expression of several hub genes was validated to be induced by all three Xoo strains, suggesting its role in bacterial blight disease response to Xoo strains. Genomic analysis of the Xoo strains belonging to pathotypes IV, V, and IX, identification of effectors and genes related to Xoo virulence in rice plants will provide insights into understanding the molecular mechanism underlying rice-Xoo interaction and the gene expression pattern in response to Xoo infection.

Sinocyclocheilus guiyang, a new troglobitic species from a subterranean tributary of the upper Yangtze Basin in Guiyang City, Guizhou Province, China is described in the present study. The new species is distinguishable from its congeneric species by a combination of the following characters: tip of maxillary barbel reaching to posterior edge of orbit; forehead horn absent; eye absent (or highly reduced) and tip of pectoral fins not significantly extending beyond the base of the pelvic fin. Molecular evidence, based on the mitochondrial cytochrome b (cytb) gene, further supports the validity of the species and also reveals its close relationship with S. cyphotergous, S. multipunctatus, S. punctatus and S. sanxiaensis. In addition, the new species faces a high risk of extinction, underscoring the urgency for habitat protection measures within its limited range.

This study proposes a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) aircraft detection and recognition method combined with scattering perception to address the problem of target discreteness and false alarms caused by strong background interference in SAR images. The global information is enhanced through a context-guided feature pyramid module, which suppresses strong disturbances in complex images and improves the accuracy of detection and recognition. Additionally, scatter key points are used to locate targets, and a scatter-aware detection module is designed to realize the fine correction of the regression boxes to improve target localization accuracy. This study generates and presents a high-resolution SAR-AIRcraft-1.0 dataset to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method and promote the research on SAR aircraft detection and recognition. The images in this dataset are obtained from the satellite Gaofen-3, which contains 4,368 images and 16,463 aircraft instances, covering seven aircraft categories, namely A220, A320/321, A330, ARJ21, Boeing737, Boeing787, and other. We apply the proposed method and common deep learning algorithms to the constructed dataset. The experimental results demonstrate the excellent effectiveness of our method combined with scattering perception. Furthermore, we establish benchmarks for the performance indicators of the dataset in different tasks such as SAR aircraft detection, recognition, and integrated detection and recognition.

Abstract Upon Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) infection of rice leaves, the invasion induces systematic expression changes for both the coding genes and the non-coding genes, allowing the plant to make corresponding responses. However, the roles of circular RNAs (circRNAs) in rice defending against Xoo remain largely unknown. To address this question, we conducted a whole-transcriptomic analysis to systematically screen the differentially expressed (DE) mRNAs and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in rice responding to Xoo infection. Our results revealed a total of 4076 DE mRNAs, 89 DE long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), 82 DE microRNAs (miRNAs), and 14 DE circRNAs identified from Xoo-infected rice plants at 48 h post inoculation. Three circRNAs (ciR52, ciR298, and ciR133) were found to be able to form circular RNAs, and their expression was induced by Xoo infection. ciR133 was found to repress the expression of its parental gene OsARAB (putative arabinofuranosidase gene) during Xoo infection. Overexpression of ciR133 and mutation of OsARAB enhanced rice resistance against Xoo, without compromising main agronomic traits. Our data suggest that circRNAs are associated with rice response to Xoo infection, providing a potential strategy for breeding Xoo-resistant rice plants by manipulating ciR133 and OsARAB.

Abstract Macrophages play an important role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), in which the functions of pro-inflammatory macrophages (M1) and anti-inflammatory macrophages (M2) are different. Our previous studies have demonstrated that interleukin-1β (IL-1β) stimulated human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUCMSCs) increase the expression of tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) and initiate breast cancer cell apoptosis via ligand to death receptor 4 (DR4) and DR5. In this study, we examined the effect of IL-1β stimulated hUCMSCs (IL-1β-hUCMSCs) on immunoregulation of M1 and M2 macrophages in vitro and in the RA mouse model. The results showed that IL-1β-hUCMSCs increased macrophage polarization into M2 macrophages and enhanced apoptosis of M1 macrophages in vitro. Moreover, the intravenous injected IL-1β-hUCMSCs in RA mice rehabilitated the imbalance of M1/M2 ratio and thus demonstrated the potential to reduce inflammation in RA. This study advances our knowledge of the underlying immunoregulatory mechanisms involved in IL-1β-hUCMSCs to induce M1 macrophage apoptosis and promote the anti-inflammatory polarization of M2 macrophages and demonstrates the potential of IL-1β-hUCMSCs to reduce inflammation in RA.

Atherosclerosis is the main pathological basis of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Fufang Danshen Tablet (FDT) is a traditional Chinese medicine that has been clinically used to treat CVDs for more than 40 years. Nevertheless, owing to the complexity of the ingredients, the pharmacological mechanism of FDT in the treatment of CVDs has not been fully elucidated. In this study, an integrated strategy of UFLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS, network pharmacology, molecular biology, and transcriptomics was used to elucidate the mechanisms of action of FDT in the treatment of atherosclerosis. In total, 22 absorbed constituents were identified in rat serum after oral administration of FDT. In silico, network pharmacology studies have shown that FDT regulates four key biological functional modules for the treatment of atherosclerosis: oxidative stress, cell apoptosis, energy metabolism, and immune/inflammation. In animal experiments, FDT exerted protective effects against atherosclerosis by reducing the plaque area and lipid levels in ApoE−/− mice. Furthermore, we found that FDT inhibited inflammatory macrophage accumulation by regulating the expression of Selp and Ccl2, which are both involved in monocyte adhesion and migration. The inhibition of monocyte recruitment by FDT is a new perspective to elucidate the anti-atherosclerotic mechanism of FDT, which has not been adopted in previous studies on FDT. Our results may help to elucidate the therapeutic mechanism of FDT against CVDs and provide potential therapeutic targets.

This review presents the advancements in nanomaterial (NM)-induced pyroptosis in specific types of cells. We elucidate the relevance of pyroptosis and delineate its mechanisms and classifications. We also retrospectively analyze pyroptosis induced by various NMs in a broad spectrum of non-tumorous cellular environments to highlight the multifunctionality of NMs in modulating cell death pathways. We identify key knowledge gaps in current research and propose potential areas for future exploration. This review emphasizes the need to focus on less-studied areas, including the pathways and mechanisms of NM-triggered pyroptosis in non-tumor-specific cell types, the interplay between biological and environmental factors, and the interactions between NMs and cells. This review aims to encourage further investigations into the complex interplay between NMs and pyroptosis, thereby providing a basis for developing safer and more effective nanomedical therapeutic applications.

Abstract The pursuit of ideal short-delayed thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters is hampered by the mutual exclusion of a small singlet-triplet energy gap (ΔE ST) and a large oscillator strength (f). Here, by attaching an multiresonance-acceptor onto a sterically-uncrowded donor, we report TADF emitters bearing hybrid electronic excitations with a main donor-to-acceptor long-range (LR) and an auxiliary bridge-phenyl short-range (SR) charge-transfer characters, balancing a small ΔE ST and a large f. Moreover, the incorporation of dual equivalent multiresonance-acceptors is found to double the f value without affecting the ΔE ST. A large radiative decay rate over an order of magnitude higher than the intersystem crossing (ISC) rate, and a decent reverse ISC rate of >106 s−1 are simultaneously obtained in one emitter, leading to a short delayed-lifetime of ~0.88 μs. The corresponding organic light-emitting diode exhibits a record-high maximum external quantum efficiency of 40.4% with alleviated efficiency roll-off and extended lifetime.

Many skin diseases, such as atopic dermatitis (AD), are featured with the dysbiosis of skin microbiota. The clinically recommended options for AD treatments suffer from poor outcomes and high side-effects, leading to severe quality-of-life impairment. To deal with this long-term challenge, we develop a living bacterial formulation (Hy@Rm) that integrates skin symbiotic bacteria of Roseomonas mucosa with poly(vinyl pyrrolidone), poly(vinyl alcohol) and sodium alginate into a skin dressing by virtue of the Ca2+-mediated cross-linking and the freezing-thawing (F-T) cycle method. Hy@Rm dressing creates a favorable condition to not only serve as extrinsic culture harbors but also as nutrient suppliers to support R. mucosa survival in the harsh microenvironment of AD sites to defeat S. aureus, which predominantly colonizes AD skins as an indigenous pathogen, mainly through the secretion of sphingolipids metabolites by R. mucosa like a therapeutics bio-factory. Meanwhile, this elaborately designed skin dressing could accelerate wound healing, normalize aberrant skin characters, recover skin barrier functions, alleviate AD-associated immune/inflammation responses, functioning like a combinational therapy. This study offers a promising means for the topical bacteria transplant to realize effective microbe biotherapy toward the skin diseases feature with microbe milieu disorders, including but not limited to AD disease.