Grahamconrad7994

Deltamethrin and its major metabolite 3-phenoxybenzoic acid (3-PBA) have caused serious threat to the environment as well as human health, yet little is known about their degradation pathways by bacterial co-cultures. In this study, the growth and degradation kinetics of Acinetobacter junii LH-1-1 and Klebsiella pneumoniae BPBA052 during deltamethrin and 3-PBA degradation were established, respectively. When the inoculum proportion of the strains LH-1-1 and BPBA052 was 7.52.5, and LH-1-1 was inoculated 24 h before inoculation of strain BPBA052, 94.25% deltamethrin was degraded and 9.16 mg/L of 3-PBA remained within 72 h, which was 20.36% higher and 10.25 mg/L lesser than that in monoculture of LH-1-1, respectively. And the half-life of deltamethrin was shortened from 38.40 h to 24.58 h. Based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, 3-phenoxybenzaldehyde, 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic butyl dacyl ester, and phenol were identified as metabolites during deltamethrin degradation in co-culture. This is the first time that a co-culture degradation pathway of deltamethrin has been proposed based on these identified metabolites. Bioremediation of deltamethrin-contaminated soils with co-culture of strains LH-1-1 and BPBA052 significantly enhanced deltamethrin degradation and 3-PBA removal. This study provides a platform for further studies on deltamethrin and 3-PBA biodegradation mechanism in co-culture, and it also proposes a promising approach for efficient bioremediation of environment contaminated by pyrethroid pesticides and their associated metabolites.Basal forebrain (BF) cholinergic system is important for attention and modulates sensory processing. We focused on the hindpaw representation in rat primary somatosensory cortex (S1), which receives inputs related to mechanoreceptors identical to those in human glabrous skin. Spike data were recorded from S1 tactile neurons (n = 87) with (ON condition 0.5-ms bipolar current pulses at 100 Hz; amplitude 50 μA, duration 0.5 s at each trial) and without (OFF condition) electrical stimulation of BF in anesthetized rats. We expected that prior activation of BF would induce changes in the vibrotactile responses of neurons during sinusoidal (5, 40, and 250 Hz) mechanical stimulation of the glabrous skin. The experiment consisted of sequential OFF-ON conditions in two-time blocks separated by 30 min to test possible remaining effects. Average firing rates (AFRs) and vector strengths of spike phases (VS) were analyzed for different neuron types [regular spiking (RS) and fast spiking (FS)] in different cortical layers (III-VI). Immediate effect of BF activation was only significant by increasing synchronization to 5-Hz vibrotactile stimulus within the second block. Regardless of frequency, ON-OFF paired VS differences were significantly higher in the second block compared to the first, more prominent for RS neurons, and in general for neurons in layers III and VI. No such effects could be found on AFRs. The results suggest that cholinergic activation induces some changes in the hindpaw area, enabling relatively higher increases in synchronization to vibrotactile inputs with subsequent BF modulation. In addition, this modulation depends on neuron type and layer, which may be related to detailed projection pattern from BF.Excitatory corticofugal projections in the subcortical white matter (WM) convey signals arising from local neuronal activity in the gray matter (GM). We hypothesized that metabotropic glutamate receptor-5 (mGluR5) availability in GM, as a surrogate marker for local glutamatergic neuronal activity, correlates with WM properties in healthy brain. We examined the relationship in healthy individuals between GM mGluR5 availability measured in vivo using [11C]ABP688 positron emission tomography (PET) and WM properties measured as fractional anisotropy (FA) using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Twenty-three healthy volunteers underwent this multimodal imaging. We calculated mGluR5 availability, [11C]ABP688 binding potential (BPND), using the simplified reference tissue model, and generated DTI FA maps using FMRIB's Diffusion Toolbox (FDT) along with Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS). To investigate the relationship between mGluR5 availability and FA, we performed voxel-wise and region of interest (ROI)-based analyses. The voxel-wise analysis showed significant positive correlations between the whole cerebral GM [11C]ABP688 BPND and the FA in widespread WM regions including the corpus callosum body, internal capsule, and corona radiata (FWE corrected p less then 0.05). The ROI-based analysis also revealed significant positive correlations (Bonferroni-corrected threshold p less then 0.00021) between [11C]ABP688 BPND in the frontal and parietal cortical GM and FA in the internal capsule (anterior limb and retrolenticular part). Using a novel multimodal imaging interrogation, we provide the first evidence that GM mGluR5 availability is significantly positively associated with WM properties in healthy subjects. Future comparison studies could determine whether this relationship is perturbed in neuropsychiatric disorders with dysregulated mGluR5 signaling.The article Decoding identity from motion how motor similarities colour our perception of self and others, written by Alexandre Coste, Benoît G, Bardy, Stefan Janaqi, Piotr Słowiński, Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova, Juliette Lozano Goupil, Ludovic Marin, was originally published electronically on the publisher's internet portal on 6th February 2020, without open access. With the author(s)' decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 2nd June 2020 to © The Author(s) 2020 a d the article is forthwith distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https//creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.Dexamethasone can alleviate the severity of bronchial and alveolar edema and therefore is widely applied in the treatment of various exudative diseases including pulmonary edema. However, the effectiveness of dexamethasone is still being questioned and its mechanism is not fully understood. Aquaporins (AQPs) are mainly responsible for the transmembrane transport of water, which is tightly associated with pulmonary edema. Small ubiquitin-like modifiers (SUMOs) are considered to play a protective role in some pathological conditions. In this study, we demonstrated that dexamethasone can upregulate the expression of AQPs in A549 cells by inducing SUMOylation. We found that a low dose of dexamethasone significantly upregulated the levels of SUMOylation and AQP expression in A549 cells, accompanied by a translocation of SUMOs from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. We also explored the possible relation between SUMOylation and AQPs. Knockdown of SUMO2/3 by RNA interference decreased the level of AQP4 in A549 cells after dexamethasone stimulation. Together, our findings demonstrated that AQP4 expression was upregulated in A549 cells exposed to dexamethasone, and SUMOylation may participate in the regulation of AQP4.Although obesity is associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the underlying molecular mechanism still remains unclear. In this study, we evaluated the effects of high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity on the development of experimental colitis in mice. The C57BL/6 mice were fed with a HFD for 12 weeks to develop obesity. The concentrations of free fatty acids (FFA), triglycerides, and cholesterol in plasma were significantly increased in HFD-fed mice compared to low-fat diet (LFD)-fed mice. We found that HFD-induced obesity could exacerbate 2,4,6-trinitro-benzene-sulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced experimental colitis in mice resembling Crohn's disease (CD). HFD-fed mice showed shorter colon length, higher clinical scores and histological scores, more production of mucosal tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and greater destruction of colonic epithelial barrier than LFD-fed mice after TNBS induction. HFD feeding also promoted reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in colonic epithelial cells, thus activating the pro-apoptotic pathway to damage colonic epithelial barrier induced by TNBS. After HCT116 cells were treated with palmitate acid (PA) and/or TNF-α for 24 h, the combination of PA and TNF-α increased ROS production, promoted mitochondrial dysfunction, and activated the pro-apoptotic pathway, but these effects were markedly attenuated by a ROS inhibitor. Taken together, these observations suggest that HFD-induced obesity promotes experimental colitis by increasing oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction, which triggers the activation of pro-apoptotic pathway in the colon.In this paper, we walk you through our challenges, successes, and experience while participating in a Global Health Outreach Project at the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan, Nigeria. The scope of the project was to install a Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) to establish a centralized viewing network at UCH's Radiology Department, for each of their digital modalities. Installing a PACS requires robust servers, the ability to retrieve and archive studies, ensuring workstations can view studies, and the configuration of imaging modalities to send studies. We anticipated that we might experience hurdles for each of these requirements, due to limited resources and without the availability to make a site visit prior to the start of the project. While we ultimately experienced delays and troubleshooting was required at each turn of the install, with the help of dedicated volunteers both on and off-site and the UCH staff, our shared goal was accomplished.Microvascular invasion (mVI) is the most significant independent predictor of recurrence for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but its pre-operative assessment is challenging. In this study, we investigate the use of multi-parametric MRI radiomics to predict mVI status before surgery. We retrospectively collected pre-operative multi-parametric liver MRI scans for 99 patients who were diagnosed with HCC. These patients received surgery and pathology-confirmed diagnosis of mVI. We extracted radiomics features from manually segmented HCC regions and built machine learning classifiers to predict mVI status. We compared the performance of such classifiers when built on five MRI sequences used both individually and combined. We investigated the effects of using features extracted from the tumor region only, the peritumoral marginal region only, and the combination of the two. We used the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and accuracy as performance metrics. By combining features extracted from multiple MRI sequences, AUCs are 86.69%, 84.62%, and 84.19% when features are extracted from the tumor only, the peritumoral region only, and the combination of the two, respectively. For tumor-extracted features, the T2 sequence (AUC = 80.84%) and portal venous sequence (AUC = 79.22%) outperform other MRI sequences in single-sequence-based models and their combination yields the highest AUC of 86.69% for mVI status prediction. Our results show promise in predicting mVI from pre-operative liver MRI scans and indicate that information from multi-parametric MRI sequences is complementary in identifying mVI.