Modulation of gut microbiota by berberine and decocted Coptis chinensis Franch.in a high-fat diet-induced metabolic syndrome rat model

Objective:To investigate the effect of decocted Coptis chinensis Franch.(Huanglian Jianji,黄连煎剂,HLJJ) and berbenne on the gut microbiota of the rats with metabolic syndrome (MS) induced by high-fat diet (HFD).Methods:Sixty Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into normal diet (ND) group (n =15)and HFD group (n =45).After 8 weeks of feeding,the HFD group was further divided into three groups:a group provided with a combination of HLJJ and HFD for 4 weeks,a group provided with a combination of berberine and HFD for 4 weeks,and a group supplied only with HFD for 4 consecutive weeks.Epididymal fat weight,serum high-density lipoproteincholesterohC (HDL-C),lowdensity lipoproteincholesterol-C (LDL-C) and irisin levels were measured.In addition,the V3-V4 region of the cecum microbiota 16S rRNA gene amplicon was sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform.Results:MS was successfully induced in the rats with HFD for 8 weeks.After 12 weeks,serum irisin levels in the HFD + berberine group were significantly increased compared with those in the HFD group (P <.05).The high-quality tags were delineated into 1149 operational taxonomic units at a 97% similarity level.Furthermore,at the genus level,Akkermansia muciniphila (A.muciniphila),Bacteroides,and Ruminococcus were markedly increased,whereas Candidatus arthromitus,Prevotella,Phascolarctobacterium were in great decrease in the HLJJ group and the berberine group,compared with the HFD group.The abundance of A.muciniphila,Ruminococcus gnavus and Bacteroides was significantly higher in the berberine group,whereas,the abundance of Oscillospira was lower in the berberine group,compared with the HLJJ group.Conclusion:HLJJ and berberine changed the gut microbiota in rats with MS.The mechanism underlying the treatments of berberine and HLJJ on HFD-induced MS is partly different.

Copper-Free Click Chemistry-Mediated Assembly of Single Quantum Dot Nanosensor for Accurately Monitoring Locus-Specific m^(6)A in Cancer Cells

N6-methyladenosine(m^(6)A)plays an important role in embryogenesis,nuclear export,transcription splicing,and protein translation control.Herein,we demonstrate a copper-free click chemistry-mediated assembly of single quantum dot(QD)nanosensor for accurately monitoring locus-specific m^(6)A in cancer cells.The m^(6)A-sensitive endoribonuclease MazF can digest the unmethylated A-RNA,and the intact m^(6)A-RNA then hybridizes with DNA probes a and b to produce a sandwich hybrid,initiating the click chemistry to generate probe a–b ligation product via first tandem ligation detection reaction(LDR)cycle.Subsequently,DNA probes c and d can hybridize with the probe a–b ligation product to generate the probe c–d ligation product via second LDR cycle.Both LDR cycles can be repeated through denaturation and annealing reaction to generate abundant biotin-/fluorophore-modified probe c–d ligation products that can easily assemble on the QD surface to induce distinct fluorescence resonance energy transfer(FRET)between QD and Cy5.This assay can be homogenously performed without the involvement of copper catalyst,m^(6)A-specific antibody,radioactive labeling,ligase enzyme,enzymatic reverse transcription,and next-generation sequencing.Moreover,it can discriminate even 0.01% m^(6)A level in complex samples and accurately measure cellular m^(6)A-RNA expression,providing a promising avenue for clinical diagnostics and biomedical research.

Downregulated miR-451a as a feature of the plasma cfRNA landscape reveals regulatory networks of IL-6/IL-6R-associated cytokine storms in COVID-19 patients

Rapidly spreading coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)is currently affecting the world.Specifically,cytokine storms are a key feature in a substantial num ber of COVID-19 patients,1 and studies from our group and others suggest that the IL-6/IL-6R cascade plays a dom inant role in symptom-correlated cytokine storms.

Palmprint Phenotype Feature Extraction and Classification Based on Deep Learning

Palmprints are of long practical and cultural interest.Palmprint principal lines,also called primary palmar lines,are one of the most dominant palmprint features and do not change over the lifespan.The existing methods utilize filters and edge detection operators to get the principal lines from the palm region of interest(ROI),but can not distinguish the principal lines from fine wrinkles.This paper proposes a novel deep-learning architecture to extract palmprint principal lines,which could greatly reduce the influence of fine wrinkles,and classify palmprint phenotypes further from 2D palmprint images.This architecture includes three modules,ROI extraction module(REM)using pre-trained hand key point location model,principal line extraction module(PLEM)using deep edge detection model,and phenotype classifier(PC)based on ResNet34 network.Compared with the current ROI extraction method,our extraction is competitive with a success rate of 95.2%.For principal line extraction,the similarity score between our extracted lines and ground truth palmprint lines achieves 0.813.And the proposed architecture achieves a phenotype classification accuracy of 95.7%based on our self-built palmprint dataset CAS_Palm.

A novel splicing variant in the TMC1 gene causes non-syndromic hearing loss in a Chinese family

To the Editor:Hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder in humans.There is one case of congenital deafness among every 1000 newborns,and in 50%of cases,the deafness is hereditary.Deafness exhibits high genetic heterogeneity.To date,over 110 non-syndromic deafness genes have been identified(https://hereditaryhearingloss.org/).Lots of those genes can cause both autosomaldominant hearing loss(ADNSHL)and autosomal-recessive non-syndromic hearing loss(ARNSHL)andTMC1(encoding the transmembrane channel-like 1)is one of them.TMC1(OMIM:606706)is a member of the TMC family located at 9q21.13.The protein contains 760 amino acids and has six transmembrane regions.TMC1 is expressed in the inner and outer hair cells of the cochlea.A TMC1 mutation was first shown to cause deafness in 2002.[1]The prevalence of TMC1 variants ranged from 3.4%(19/557)among Pakistani ARNSHL families to 8.1%(7/86)in Turkish families.To date,around 20 hearing loss families associated withTMC1 variants have been reported in China.

VitisGDB: The Multifunctional Database for Grapevine Breeding and Genetics

Grapevine cultivation has been gaining commercial popularity in many parts of the world due to the high yield and versatility of this horticultural crop.A recent survey from the International Organization of Vine and Wine(OIV)estimated that the global area under vine cultivation in 2018 was about 7.4 million hectares and that the world production of grapes was about 77.8 million tons in total(OIV,2019).The majority of the global grape yield is used for producing wines,fresh fruit,and raisins,bringing in annual revenue of billions of US dollars(Alston and Sambucci,2019).In addition to its economic value,the grapevine is also a useful model for the study of the genetic basis of clonality,fruit development,sex determination,grafting,evolution,and domestication(This et al.,2006).Furthermore,for many countries in the world traditional viniculture and viticulture are important emblems of cultural identity.All these factors have made grapevine one of the most heavily invested plants in horticultural research.