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Gastric diseases represent a significant global public health challenge, characterized by molecular dysregulation in redox homeostasis and heightened oxidative stress. Although prior preclinical studies have demonstrated the cytoprotective antioxidant effects of alginate oligosaccharides (AOSs) through the Nrf2 pathway, whether such mechanisms apply to gastric diseases remains unclear. In this study, we used the GES-1 gastric cell line exposed to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as a damage model to investigate the impact of AOS on cell viability and its associated mechanisms. Our results revealed that pre-incubation with AOS for either 4 h or 24 h significantly improved the viability of GES-1 cells exposed to H2O2. In addition, AOS reduced the intracellular ROS levels, activating the Nrf2 signaling pathway, with increased Nrf2 protein and mRNA expression and a significant upregulation of the target genes HO-1 and NQO1. The activation of Nrf2 was correlated with decreased Keap1 protein expression and an increased level of the autophagy protein p62/SQSTM1, suggesting the activation of Nrf2 through a noncanonical pathway. This study suggests that AOS is a potential treatment for protecting gastric epithelial cells from oxidative stress by activating the p62/SQSTM1-Keap1-Nrf2 axis and laying the foundation for future investigations about its specific therapeutic mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various stressors lead to an increase in ROS and damage to plant tissues. Plants have a powerful antioxidant system (AOS), which allows them to neutralize excess ROS. We detected an intense fluorescent glow of ROS in the cells of the cap, meristem, and elongation zones in the roots of wheat Triticum aestivum (Orenburgskaya 22 variety) and Triticum durum (Zolotaya variety). An increase in ROS was accompanied by DNA breaks in the nuclei of wheat root cells, the release of cytochrome c from mitochondria into the cytoplasm, and the translocation of phosphatidylserine into the outer layer of the plasma membrane under salt stress and hypoxia. The different resistances of the two wheat varieties to different abiotic stresses were revealed. The soft wheat variety Orenburgskaya 22 showed high resistance to salt stress but sensitivity to hypoxia, and the durum wheat variety Zolotaya showed tolerance to hypoxia but high sensitivity to salt stress. Different activations of AOS components (GSH, MnSOD, Cu/ZnSOD, CAT, PX, GPX, and GST) were revealed in different wheat genotypes. The basis for the tolerance of the Zolotaya variety to hypoxia is the high content of glutathione (GSH) and the activation of glutathione-dependent enzymes. One of the mechanisms of high resistance to salt stress in the Orenburgskaya 22 variety is a decrease in the level of ROS as a result of the increased activity of the MnSOD and Cu/ZnSOD genes. Identifying the mechanisms of plant tolerance to abiotic stress is the most important task for improving breeding varieties of agricultural plants and increasing their yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clostridioides difficile infection is expected to become the most common healthcare-associated infection worldwide. C. difficile-induced pathogenicity is significantly attributed to its enterotoxin, TcdA, which primarily targets Rho-GTPases involved in regulating cytoskeletal and tight junction (TJ) dynamics, thus leading to cytoskeleton breakdown and ultimately increased intestinal permeability. This study investigated whether two non-digestible oligosaccharides (NDOs), alginate (AOS) and chitosan (COS) oligosaccharides, possess antipathogenic and barrier-protective properties against C. difficile bacteria and TcdA toxin, respectively. Both NDOs significantly reduced C. difficile growth, while cell cytotoxicity assays demonstrated that neither COS nor AOS significantly attenuated the TcdA-induced cell death 24 h post-exposure. The challenge of Caco-2 monolayers with increasing TcdA concentrations increased paracellular permeability, as measured by TEER and LY flux assays. In this experimental setup, COS completely abolished, and AOS mitigated, the deleterious effects of TcdA on the monolayer's integrity. These events were not accompanied by alterations in ZO-1 and occludin protein levels; however, immunofluorescence microscopy revealed that both AOS and COS prevented the TcdA-induced occludin mislocalization. Finally, both NDOs accelerated TJ reassembly upon a calcium-switch assay. Overall, this study established the antipathogenic and barrier-protective capacity of AOS and COS against C. difficile and its toxin, TcdA, while revealing their ability to promote TJ reassembly in Caco-2 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liver diseases are associated with many factors, including medicines and alcoholics, which have become a global problem. It is crucial to overcome this problem. Liver diseases always come with inflammatory complications, which might be a potential target to deal with this issue. Alginate oligosaccharides (AOS) have been demonstrated to have many beneficial effects, especially anti-inflammation. In this study, 40 mg/kg body weight (BW) of busulfan was intraperitoneally injected once, and then the mice were dosed with ddH2O or AOS 10 mg/kg BW every day by oral gavage for five weeks. We investigated AOS as a potential no-side-effect and low-cost therapy for liver diseases. For the first time, we discovered that AOS 10 mg/kg recovered liver injury by decreasing the inflammation-related factors. Moreover, AOS 10 mg/kg could improve the blood metabolites related to immune and anti-tumor effects, and thus, ameliorated impaired liver function. The results indicate that AOS may be a potential therapy to deal with liver damage, especially in inflammatory conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An accurate and stable reservoir prediction model is essential for oil location and production. We propose an predictive hybrid model ILSTM-BRVFL based on an improved long short-term memory network (IAOS-LSTM) and a bidirectional random vector functional link (Bidirectional-RVFL) for this problem. Firstly, the Atomic Orbit Search algorithm (AOS) is used to perform collective optimization of the parameters to improve the stability and accuracy of the LSTM model for high-dimensional feature extraction. At the same time, there is still room to improve the optimization capability of the AOS. Therefore, an improvement scheme to further enhance the optimization capability is proposed. Then, the LSTM-extracted high-dimensional features are fed into the random vector functional link (RVFL) to improve the prediction of high-dimensional features by the RVFL, which is modified as the bidirectional RVFL. The proposed ILSTM-BRVFL (IAOS) model achieves an average prediction accuracy of 95.28%, compared to the experimental results. The model's accuracy, recall values, and F1 values also showed good performance, and the prediction ability achieved the expected results. The comparative analysis and the degree of improvement in the model results show that the high-dimensional extraction of the input data by LSTM is the most significant improvement in prediction accuracy. Secondly, it introduces a double-ended mechanism for IAOS to LSTM and RVFL for parameter search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a model experiment, some adaptive characteristics, the bioaccumulation of toxic elements from technogenically-contaminated soils with polyelement anomalies, and rhizosphere microflora of Japanese millet, Echinochloa frumentacea, were studied using biochemical, microbiological, physicochemical (AAS, ICP-MS, INAA), and metagenomic (16S rRNA) methods of analysis. Good adaptive characteristics (the content of photosynthetic pigments, low molecular weight antioxidants) of E. frumentacea grown on the soils of metallurgical enterprises were revealed. The toxic effect of soils with strong polyelement anomalies (multiple excesses of MPC for Cr, Ni, Zn, As, petroleum products) on biometric parameters and adaptive characteristics of Japanese millet were shown. The rhizosphere populations of E. frumentacea grown in the background soil were characterized by the lowest taxonomic diversity compared to the rhizobiomes of plants grown in contaminated urban soils. The minimal number of all groups of microorganisms studied was noted in the soils, which contain the highest concentrations of both inorganic (heavy metals) and organic (oil products) pollutants. The taxonomic structure of the rhizospheric microbiomes of E. frumentacea was characterized. It has been established that E. frumentacea accumulated Mn, Co, As, and Cd from soils with polyelement pollution within the average values. V was accumulated mainly in the root system (transfer factor from roots to shoots 0.01–0.05) and its absorption mechanism is rhizofiltration. The removal of Zn by shoots of E. frumentacea increased on soils where the content of the element exceeded the MPC and was 100–454 mg/kg of dry weight (168–508 g/ha). Analysis of the obtained data makes it possible to recommend E. frumentacea for phytoremediation of soil from Cu and Zn at a low level of soil polyelement contamination using grass mixtures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work reports the global sensitivity analysis of the Aquacrop Open Source (AOS) model, which is the open-source version of the original Aquacrop model developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Analysis for identifying the most influential parameters was based on different strategies of global SA, density-based and variance-based, for the wheat crop in two different geographical locations and climates. The main objectives were to distinguish the model's influential and non-influential parameters and to examine the yield output sensitivity. We compared two different methods of global sensitivity analysis: the most commonly used variance-based method, EFAST, and the moment independent density-based PAWN method developed in recent years. We have also identified non-influential parameters using Morris screening method, so to provide an idea of the use of non-influential parameters with a dummy parameter approach. For both the study areas (located in Italy and in China) and climates, a similar set of influential parameters was found, although with varying sensitivity. When compared with different probability distribution functions, the probability distribution function of yield was found to be best approximated by a Generalized Extreme Values distribution with Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic of 0.030 and lowest Anderson–Darling statistic of 0.164, as compared to normal distribution function with Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic of 0.122 and Anderson–Darling statistic of 4.099. This indicates that yield output is not normally distributed but has a rather skewed distribution function. In this case, a variance-based approach was not the best choice, and the density-based method performed better. The dummy parameter approach avoids to use a threshold as it is a subjective question; it advances the approach to setting up a threshold and gives an optimal way to set up a threshold and use it to distinguish between influential and non-influential parameters. The highly sensitive parameters to crop yield were specifically canopy and phenological development parameters, parameters that govern biomass/yield production and temperature stress parameters rather than root development and water stress parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]