Activity

Metabolically active bacteria within built environments are poorly understood. This study aims to investigate the active airborne bacterial microbiota and compare the total and active microbiota in eight mechanically ventilated buildings over four consecutive seasons using the 16S rRNA gene (rDNA) and the 16S rRNA (rRNA), respectively. The relative abundances of the taxa of presumptive occupants and environmental origins were significantly different between the active and total microbiota. The Sloan neutral model suggested that ecological drift and random dispersal played a smaller role in the assembly of the active microbiota than the total microbiota. The seasonal nature of the active microbiota was consistent with that of the total microbiota in both indoor and outdoor environments, while only the indoor environment was significantly affected by geography. The relative abundances of the active and total taxa were positively correlated, suggesting that the high-abundance members were also the greatest contributors to the community-level metabolic activity. Based on the rRNA/rDNA ratio, the low-abundance members consistently had a higher taxon-level metabolic activity than the high-abundance members over seasons, suggesting that the low-abundance members may have the ability to survive and thrive in the indoor environment and their impact on the health of occupants cannot be overlooked.Physical exercise (PE) has been drawing increasing attention to prevent and alleviate neural damage of brain diseases; however, in vivo sensing of the neuroprotection ability of PE remains a challenge. Here, we find that ascorbate can be used as a small molecular index for neuroprotective function of PE and the neuroprotection ability of PE can thus be in vivo monitored with an online electrochemical system (OECS) in freely moving animals. With the OECS as the sensing system, we find that the concentration of ascorbate in the microdialysate from the striatum increases greatly in kainic acid (KA)-induced seizure rats and reaches twice the basal level (i.e., 214.4 ± 32.7%, p less then 0.001, n = 4) at a time point 90 min after KA microinjection. Such an increase of ascorbate is obviously attenuated (i.e., 153.6 ± 23.9% of the basal level, p less then 0.05, n = 3) after PE, showing the neuroprotective activity of PE. This finding is believed to be significant in providing chemical insight into the neuroprotection ability of PE.The alarming rate at which pathogens are developing resistance to conventional antibiotics represents one of the major global challenges to public health care. The prevalence of multidrug-resistant microorganisms is a major impetus for the discovery and development of new antimicrobials. Nature has, to date, been the source of most of the antibiotics discovered and used, including cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAMPs). CAMPs are key components of the innate immune system that are widely found in humans, animals, plants, and microorganisms and that serve as a first line of defense for the host. The attractive features of CAMPs have led to their recognition as potential new antimicrobials. However, they possess several inherent flaws that limit their clinical application including low stability, poor oral bioavailability, poor in vivo efficacy, and a high production cost. To address these issues, small molecule-based peptidomimetic antimicrobials have been designed to biomimic the structural features and bioll for further development as new therapeutic antimicrobial agents for the treatment of drug-resistant bacteria- or fungi-induced infections.Beef is considered to be a good quality meat product because it contains linoleic acid and specific proteins, which can bring significant benefits to health. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been reported to regulate skeletal myogenesis. RNA-seq was used to investigate the circRNA molecular regulatory mechanisms with respect to differences in muscle quality between buffalo and cattle. A total of 10,449 circRNA candidates were detected, and 1128 of these were found to be differentially expressed between cattle and buffalo muscle tissue libraries. Differentially expressed 23 circRNAs were verified by qPCR. CircEch1, one of the most up-regulated circRNAs during muscle development, was subsequently characterized. CCK-8 (65.05 ± 2.33%, P less then 0.0001), EdU (72.99 ± 0.04%, P less then 0.001), and Western blotting assays showed that overexpression of circEch1 inhibited the proliferation of bovine myoblasts but promoted differentiation. In vivo studies suggested that circEch1 stimulates skeletal muscle regeneration. These results demonstrate that the novel regulator circEch1 induces myoblast differentiation and skeletal muscle regeneration. They also provide new insights into the mechanisms of circRNA regulation of beef quality.Charge-transfer (CT) states are of special interest in photochemical research because they can facilitate chemical reactions through the rearrangement of electrons and subsequently chemical bonds in a molecular system. Of particular importance to this research is the transfer of electrons between π-stacked nucleobases in DNA because they play an important role in its photophysics and photochemistry. Computational methods are paramount for the study of CT states because of the current inability of experimental methods to easily detect such states. MDL-800 However, many ab-initio wavefunction-based and density functional theory (DFT) methods fail to accurately describe these CT states. Here, we benchmark how 40 different quantum mechanical methods describe the excited states of a guanine-thymine π-stacked nucleobase dimer system, both in 5′-TG-3′ and 5′-GT-3′ conformations. We find that the distance between the nucleobases plays a major role in the energy of the CT state and in the difference of the dipole moments between the CT and ground state. There is a larger range of values (and errors) for the energies of CT states compared to those of states localized on one nucleobase. Wavefunction-based methods have similar errors for the CT and localized valence states, while DFT methods are very sensitive to the amount of Hartree-Fock exchange. Long-range-corrected functionals with a careful balance of the Hartree-Fock exchange included can predict very accurate CT states and a balanced description with the localized states.