To determine the optimal indicators for larval instars and developmental stages and morphologi-cal characteristics of Sepsis thoracica, laboratory rearing methods were adopted, and four morphological pa-rameters, including larval body length, body width, mouth hook length and mouth hook width, were measured. Larval instars were deduced base on Dyar’s rule and frequency histograms. The obtained results were veri-fied using Crosby growth rule and linear regression analysis. Additionally, the morphological changes and recognition characteristics of the insect were systematically observed and recorded. The results showed that the larvae of S. thoracica can be divided into three instars, with the mouth hook length and width serving as the optimal indicators for larval instar identification. The eggs of S. thoracica are oval in shape and are de-posited inside the surface layer of cow dung. The larvae are maggot-shaped, with distinct morphological di-fferences among the 1st to 3rd instars. They possess a pair of heavily ossified mouth hooks and a cephalo-pharyngeal skeleton. The pupae are oval-shaped, and their color gradually darkens over time. The adults are black with metallic luster. Males have specialized forefoot femora and tail organs, while females are slightly larger in size without specialized structures. The study established definitive criteria for classifying larval in-stars of S. thoracica and provided comprehensive morphological descriptions of its developmental stages, of-fering a theoretical foundation for research on growth and development, population control and potential re-source utilization of the insect.
To investigate the effects of CD3/CD28 antibody activation duration on CD8+ T cell phenotype and lentiviral transduction efficiency, naïve CD8+ T cells were activated with CD3/CD28 antibodies for 24 h, 48 h, or 72 h. Phenotypic changes including cell proliferation status and the expression levels of surface molecules CD44, CD62L, and CD69 were detected by flow cytometry. The activated cells were then infected with lentivirus, and transduction efficiency at different activation time points was evaluated using both live-cell imaging and flow cytometry. The results showed that the proliferation rate of CD8+ T cells in the 24-hour group was significantly higher than that in the 48-hour and 72-hour groups. For surface molecule ex-pression, the expression level of CD44 in the 24-hour group was significantly higher than that in the non-activated group. When the activation duration extended to 48 h, CD44 expression was further significantly upregulated, but showed no significant difference to that in the 72-hour group. CD62L expression remained at a relatively high level before activation, and was slightly downregulated after 48 h of activation, but re-mained stable among the 0-hour, 24-hour, and 72-hour groups. The expression of CD69 in the 24-hour group was significantly higher than that in the non-activated group, but there was no significant difference a-mong the 24-hour, 48-hour, and 72-hour groups. For lentiviral transduction efficiency, both the 48-hour and 72-hour groups showed a significant decrease compared with the 24-hour group. This study demon-strates that 24 h is an ideal activation duration, substantially improving CD8+ T cell proliferation, activation level, and lentiviral transduction efficiency upon CD3/CD28 antibody stimulation.
This study aimed to investigate the relationship between dietary legume intake and blood lipid levels in adults with dyslipidemia or borderline elevated lipid levels, and to assess the mediating effect of gut microbes in this association. From May 2023 to May 2024, a total of 436 community-dwelling residents in Guangzhou, China, with dyslipidemia or borderline elevated lipid levels, were recruited. Differences in gut microbiota were determined using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing. The relationship between dietary legume intake and blood lipid levels was analyzed using multiple linear regression. The dietary legume in-take related genera in gut microbes were detected using microbiome multivariable linear models, and the mediating effects of gut microbes were assessed by mediation analysis. The results showed that, after adjusting for the confounders, dietary legume intake was significantly negatively associated with total cholesterol (β= -0.010, P<0.050) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (β=-0.012, P<0.050). A total of 21 genera were found to be significantly associated with dietary legume intake (q<0.250). Among them, Lachnoclostridium exhibited a significant mediating effect on the negative association between dietary legume intake and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels (P=0.048). This study provides a theoretical foundation for the effective manage-ment of lipid levels in individuals with dyslipidemia or borderline elevated lipid levels.
Cardiac hypertrophy is a process of cardiac adaptive and pathological remodeling, which is usually closely related to increased cardiac workload, chronic stress, and occurrence and development of heart di-sease. In recent years, the role of DNA methylation in cardiac hypertrophy and dysfunction has received ex-tensive attention as an important epigenetic modification mechanism. This article reviews the mechanism of DNA methylation in cardiac hypertrophy and explores its potential effects on cardiac development, gene ex-pression regulation and disease treatment, aiming to provide a new theoretical basis and potential interven-tion targets for the prevention and treatment of cardiac hypertrophy.
The diversity, composition and functional capacity of the gut microbiota vary considerably among individuals, and these differences have been shown to be related to the occurrence and development of various diseases. Schizophrenia is the most serious, disabling, and devastating of all mental diseases, yet its etiology and pathogenesis remain poorly understood. This paper mainly discusses the correlation between intestinal microbes and schizophrenia, as well as the possible mechanisms of action, such as kynurenine metabolic pathway, synaptic plasticity, and infection and inflammation, so as to provide insights for the prevention and treatment of mental illnesses.
To verify the performance of RTyper Y27 paternity detection reagent on both the traditional poly-merase chain reaction-capillary electrophoresis (PCR-CE) platform and the domestic Quick TargSeqTM 1.0 in-tegrated system for rapid forensic DNA analysis, the RTyper Y27 paternity detection kit was used on both detection platforms, and 649 samples were examined for genetic polymorphism, loci detection rate, concor-dance rate, and simulated case detection. The detection results from 546 samples on PCR-CE platform demonstrated that the gene diversity (GD) values of this RTyper Y27 paternity detection reagent were not less than 0.43, with the highest value (0.88) at DYS449 among the 25 gene loci. Both the detection rate and con-cordance rate of 546 samples were 100.00%. The loci detection rate and the concordance rate of 100 samples on the Quick TargSeqTM 1.0 integrated system platform were 96.37% and 99.64%, respectively. Furthermore, both the loci detection rate and concordance rate of three repeated detections on the simulated case were 100.00%. The results demonstrated that the RTyper Y27 paternity detection kit exhibited high gene polymor-phism with accurate and reliable genotyping, supporting rapid integrated testing on domestic Quick TargSeqTM 1.0 system platform.
Lactarius vividus is a delicious and precious wild edible mushroom with great economic value. However, as an ectomycorrhizal fungus, it depends on plant symbiosis for its life cycle, resulting in high diffi-culty in artificial cultivation. In the mycorrhizal symbiotic system, mycorrhizal fungi must obtain carbon sources from host plants to fulfill their life cycle. Ectomycorrhiza and arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) are the main types of mycorrhizae. In arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis, fatty acids are the major carbon sources transferred from host plant to the fungal partner. Herein, the modified Melin-Norkrans (MMN) culture medium was supplemented with myristic acid (MYR) or/and peptone (PEP) as growth-promoting components for L. vividus mycelium growth. Measurement of colony on different modified culture media showed that adding both MYR and PEP to the MMN medium could significantly improve the efficiency of L. vividus growth. Nile red staining of mycelial fatty acids showed that L. vividus mycelia absorbed fatty acids from the culture medium as carbon sources for growth, which suggested that ectomycorrhizal fungi have a nutrient exchange mode similar to that of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. The results provide a theoretical basis for further research on mycorrhizal symbiosis and cultivation of L. vividus.
Helicobacter pylori infection is a major global cause of gastritis, peptic ulcers and gastric cancer, presenting a huge public health challenge that urgently requires the development of effective vaccines. This study utilized an immunoinformatics approach to construct a novel multi-epitope vaccine through systematic epitope screening of key H. pylori virulence factors (OipA, VacA, IceA1, and HpaA). Based on stringent cri-teria (including antigenicity score > 0.4, non-allergenicity, non-toxicity, and no homology with human pro-teins), five highly immunogenic cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL; Tc cell) epitopes were selected from 173 candi-dates, six helper T cell (Th cell) epitopes were identified from 191 candidates, and eight linear B-cell epitopes were determined from 865 candidates. The selected epitopes were integrated with the LT-ⅡB adjuvant via linkers, resulting in a multi-epitope vaccine comprising 421 amino acid residues (molecular weight: 44.613 kDa, theoretical pI: 8.17). The vaccine exhibited high antigenicity (score: 1.096 4), stability and hydrophilicity. Structural analysis revealed a well-proportioned distribution of secondary structures in the vaccine: 37.055% α-helices, 7.363% β-turns, 38.242% random coils, and 17.340% extended strands. Molecular docking con-firmed stable binding interactions between the vaccine and Toll-like receptors (TLR2, TLR4, TLR5, TLR9 and TLR10), suggesting its potential to effectively activate innate immunity. Immunosimulation analysis de-monstrated that this vaccine can elicit robust humoral and cellular immune responses, with theoretical popu-lation coverage of 76.18%. Furthermore, the codon-optimized vaccine sequence was successfully cloned into the pET-28a(+) vector, laying the foundation for subsequent experiments. In summary, the constructed multi-epitope vaccine exhibited both broad-spectrum protective potential and high safety. This study provides an innovative design strategy for H. pylori vaccine development, and also offers a reference model for vaccines against other pathogens.
Microexons, a special category of exons, are widely present in the genes of animals and humans. They are highly conserved and usually encode motifs that mediate protein interactions. Their alternative splicing plays a role in regulating protein interaction networks. However, it is still unclear whether there are human-specific microexons and whether they participate in brain disorders. By using exon skipping, the most common alternative splicing event, as an entry point, this study conducted a systematic comparison of eight vertebrate genomes and successfully identified 48 human-specific microexons distributed across 40 genes. Searches of the DECIPHER database revealed that 97.5% (39/40) of the genes containing human-spe-cific microexons had copy number variations linked to intellectual disability phenotypes. An analysis of can-didate genes for brain disorders showed that the 40 genes with human-specific microexons were significantly enriched in schizophrenia candidate genes (18/40). Moreover, the motifs encoded by the 48 microexons me-diated 996 protein interactions through binding to protein domains. The genes encoding these interacting proteins were significantly enriched in candidate genes for schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, and in-tellectual disability. Further analysis of transcriptome sequencing data showed that over half of the genes containing human-specific microexons were abnormally expressed in the brain tissues of schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder patients. These findings collectively suggest that human-specific microexons play critical roles in the human brain and that their mutations may be involved in brain disorders.
“Holistic ideological and political education” proposed by General Secretary Xi Jinping has pro-vided a clear direction for the integration of ideological and political content into university curricula, requiring faculty members to extensively expand the teaching resources and carry out multidimensional educational ac-tivities in this regard. The plant germplasm resources on university campuses are not only the main compo-nent of the campus natural landscape but also the embodiment of campus culture and witnesses of campus history, serving as critical teaching resources for “holistic ideological and political education”. A thorough sur-vey of these botanical resources forms the basis for identifying and leveraging their ideological and political attributes. By utilizing diversified, multilayered, and open networks of learning resources and designing teaching strategies adapted to different learning scenarios, educators can effectively build a practical path-way for “holistic ideological and political education” through campus plant resources. Utilizing the campus plant germplasm resources for “holistic ideological and political education” will integrate theory and practice, effectively improving the outcomes of ideological and political education.
Cytochromes mainly participate in electron transfer, playing an important role in the life activi-ties of plants. Both the cytochrome b6f complex in plant chloroplasts and the cytochrome bc1 complex in mi-tochondria contain cytochromes. However, the descriptions on the structure components and cytochromes of these two complexes vary across different college textbooks of plant physiology and biochemistry. This article analyzes and evaluates some inappropriate expressions, and proposes correction suggestions for peer commu-nication and reference.
With the growing trend of interdisciplinary studies and rapid advancements in life sciences, there is a growing call for a re-evaluation of the biotechnology curriculum system, which is crucial for enhancing the program’s effectiveness in talent cultivation. By analyzing the impacts of the increasingly prominent in-terdisciplinary trends, rapid advances in life science research, and the lagging update of training objectives on the development of the biotechnology major, this paper proposes a novel approach for its restructuring. It includes formulating a talent-oriented training program aligned with bioindustry’s needs, recognizing the necessity of interdisciplinary curriculum integration, streamlining content, and building curriculum clusters that embody both the “ecological” perspective and systems biology concepts. The article also discusses the de-velopment trends and key influencing factors for the biotechnology major.
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