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The aim of this study was to investigate the therapeutic effect of JQ-R on metabolic hypertension and its correlation with Fibroblast growth factor 21/Fibroblast growth factor receptors 1(FGF21/FGFR1) pathway. In this study, fructose-induced metabolic hypertension rats were used as hypertension models to detect the regulation effect of JQ-R on hypertension. The effects of JQ-R on blood glucose, blood lipids, serum insulin levels and other metabolic indicators of rats were also measured. The effects of JQ-R on FGF21/FGFR1 signaling pathway in model animals were detected by Real-time quantitative PCR and Western blotting. The results showed that JQ-R significantly reduce the blood pressure of model rats in a dose-dependent manner. Meanwhile, fasting insulin, fasting blood glucose, insulin resistance index, total cholesterol and triglyceride levels were significantly decreased, and glucose and lipid metabolism abnormalities were also significantly improved. JQ-R induces these changes along with FGFR1 phosphorylation, which was also detected in JQ-R treated FGF21 knockout mice. These results suggest that JQ-R can reduce blood pressure and improve glucose and lipid metabolism in fructose-induced hypertension rats. Activation of FGF21/FGFR1 signaling pathway to regulate downstream blood pressure and glucolipid metabolism-related pathways may be one of the important mechanisms of JQ-R in regulating blood pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stomatal pores allow gas exchange between plant and atmosphere. Stomatal development is regulated by multiple intrinsic developmental and environmental signals. Here, we show that spatially patterned hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) plays an essential role in stomatal development. H2O2 is remarkably enriched in meristemoids, which is established by spatial expression patterns of H2O2-scavenging enzyme CAT2 and APX1. SPEECHLESS (SPCH), a master regulator of stomatal development, directly binds to the promoters of CAT2 and APX1 to repress their expression in meristemoid cells. Mutations in CAT2 or APX1 result in an increased stomatal index. Ectopic expression of CAT2 driven by SPCH promoter significantly inhibits the stomatal development. Furthermore, H2O2 activates the energy sensor SnRK1 by inducing the nuclear localization of the catalytic α-subunit KIN10, which stabilizes SPCH to promote stomatal development. Overall, these results demonstrate that the spatial pattern of H2O2 in epidermal leaves is critical for the optimal stomatal development in Arabidopsis. Stomatal development is regulated by multiple intrinsic developmental and environmental signals. Here, the authors show that spatially patterned hydrogen peroxide activates the energy sensor SnRK1 to stabilize the SPCH transcription factor and optimize stomatal development in Arabidopsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of mixed microbial agents can reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture. However, most previous studies focused only on the overall effects of mixed microbial agents and ignored the interactions between bacteria in mixed systems. In this study, Bacillus subtilis SL-44 and Enterobacter cloacae Rs-2 were used to explore the interactions between two different functional plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). The plant growth-promotion properties and inhibition rate of Rhizoctonia solani were determined, and the mechanism of the interactions under single and co-culture conditions was elucidated via transcriptomics analysis under single and co-culture conditions. Results showed that the co-culture was not conducive to B. subtilis SL-44 growth. Furthermore, the differentially expressed genes related to B. subtilis SL-44 developmental process and cell differentiation were downregulated by 82.7% and 84.8% respectively. Moreover, among the properties, only siderophore production by the mixed culture was higher than that of single cultures because of the upregulation of the siderophore-related genes of B. subtilis SL-44. In addition, results revealed the altruistic relationship between the two strains, and the chemical and non-chemical signals of their interaction. This study provides unique insights into PGPR interactions and offers guidance for the development and application of mixed microbial agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, fractional partial differential equations have been widely applied in option pricing problems, which better explains many important empirical facts of financial markets, but rare paper considers the multi-state options pricing problem based on fractional diffusion models. Thus, multi-state European option pricing problem under regime-switching tempered fractional partial differential equation is considered in this paper. Due to the expensive computational cost caused by the implicit finite difference scheme, a novel implicit-explicit finite difference scheme has been developed with consistency, stability, and convergence guarantee. Since the resulting coefficient matrix equals to the direct sum of several Toeplitz matrices, a preconditioned direct method has been proposed with O (S ̄ N log N + S ̄ 2 N) operation cost on each time level with adaptability analysis, where S ̄ is the number of states and N is the number of grid points. Related numerical experiments including an empirical example have been presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed numerical method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Main conclusion: This study demonstrates that brassinosteroid is essential for seedling and shoot growth in moso bamboo. The shoot of moso bamboo is known to grow extremely fast. The roles of phytohormones in such fast growth of bamboo shoot remain unclear. Here we reported that endogenous brassinosteroid (BR) is a major factor promoting bamboo shoot internode elongation. Reducing endogenous brassinosteroid level by its biosynthesis inhibitor propiconazole stunted shoot growth in seedling stage, whereas exogenous BR application promoted scale leaf elongation and the inclination of lamina joint of leaves and scale leaves. Genome-wide transcriptome analysis identified hundreds of genes whose expression levels are altered by BR and propiconazole in shoots and roots of bamboo seedling. The data show that BR regulates cell wall-related genes, hydrogen peroxide catabolic genes, and auxin-related genes. Our study demonstrates an essential role of BR in fast growth bamboo shoots and identifies a large number of BR-responsive genes in bamboo seedlings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: PSBR1 is a moso bamboo gene negatively regulated by brassinosteroid, which encodes a mitochondrial localized protein. Overexpression of PSBR1 leads to growth inhibition in various growth progresses in Arabidopsis. The young shoot of moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) is known as one of the fastest growing plant organs. The roles of phytohormones in the fast-growth of bamboo shoot are not fully understood. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a group of growth-promoting steroid hormones that play important roles in cell elongation and division. While BR related genes are highly enriched in fast-growing internodes in moso bamboo, the functions of BR in the fast-growth process is not understood at the molecular level. Here, we identified a poaceae specific gene, PSBR1 (Poaceae specific and BR responsive gene 1) from the moso bamboo genome. PSBR1 was highly expressed in the stem and leaves of bamboo seedling, and the elongating nodes of fast-growing bamboo shoot. PSBR1′s expression is increased by BR biosynthesis inhibitor propiconazole but decreased by BR treatment. PSBR1 encodes a novel protein that is localized to the mitochondria in tobacco and bamboo protoplast. The Arabidopsis transgenic plants overexpressing PSBR1 show growth inhibition in both vegetative and reproductive stages. This study suggests that PSBR1 is a BR regulated mitochondrial protein in bamboo, which inhibits plant growth when overexpressed in Arabidopsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work was to compare the different responses of the root and the shoot to salt stress with or without growth-promoting bacteria Pseudomonas putida Rs-198 application. The results revealed that lower salt stress did not show bad effects on plant growth although osmotic tolerance indictors were observed. The results showed that proline content increased by 7.75% and 20.20% in shoot and 323.73% and 449.38% in root under 150 mM and 300 mM salt treatment, respectively. Increasing salt stress also led to a reduction of peroxides enzyme (POD) activity by 16.50% and 15.49% in the shoot and 46.03% and 39.36% in the root under above salt treatments. More importantly, the changes observed in pepper roots were more pronounced than those in pepper shoots except for total soluble sugar and protein. In addition, inoculation of Pseudomonas putida Rs-198 could relieve the changes of these indicators. Further, these changes were more pronounced in non-inoculated control plants than in inoculated plants. Especially, Pseudomonas putida Rs-198-inoculated plants exhibited the greatest increase in polyphenol oxidase activity by 78.06% in shoot and POD activity by 25.22% in root compared with the non-inoculated plants at 150 mM NaCl stress. To the best of our knowledge, these results are the first reported that will more effectively explain the phenomena relationship between plant, salt stress, and plant growth-promoting bacteria. Physiological changes induced by Pseudomonas putida Rs-198 interaction in Capsicum annuum L. under salt stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fast preconditioned penalty method is developed for a system of parabolic linear complementarity problems (LCPs) involving tempered fractional order partial derivatives governing the price of American options whose underlying asset follows a geometry Lévy process with multi-state regime switching. By means of the penalty method, the system of LCPs is approximated with a penalty term by a system of nonlinear tempered fractional partial differential equations (TFPDEs) coupled by a finite-state Markov chain. The system of nonlinear TFPDEs is discretized with the shifted Grünwald approximation by an upwind finite difference scheme which is shown to be unconditionally stable. Semi-smooth Newton’s method is utilized to solve the finite difference scheme as an outer iterative method in which the Jacobi matrix is found to possess Toeplitz-plus-diagonal structure. Consequently, the resulting linear system can be fast solved by the Krylov subspace method as an inner iterative method via fast Fourier transform (FFT). Furthermore, a novel preconditioner is proposed to speed up the convergence rate of the inner Krylov subspace iteration with theoretical analysis. With the above-mentioned preconditioning technique via FFT, under some mild conditions, the operation cost in each Newton’s step can be expected to be O(NlogN), where N is the size of the coefficient matrix. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of our proposed fast preconditioned penalty method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this study, we explored whether treatment with FGF-21 could prevent diethylnitrosamine (DEN) induced hepatocarcinogenesis in mice.Methods& Results: Hepatoma was induced by injection of DEN every three days for 18 weeks. For the prophylactic experiment, mice were firstly injected with FGF-21 for 2 weeks, then FGF-21 was administered to the mice once daily in association with DEN injection till the end of the experiment. The hepatoma incidence of mice treated with FGF-21 was 13.3%, while the incidence of mice treated with saline was 61.5%. To understand the mechanisms, we compared the expression of βklotho (KLB) and oxidative stress level in the livers between the mice treated with FGF-21 and saline. We found that FGF-21 could suppress DEN-induced oxidative stress and up-regulate the expression of KLB in the livers. To confirm these results, we compared the expression of KLB in L02 cells stimulated with or without FGF-21. Besides, we established DEN-induced oxidative stress cell model to affirm the relationship between FGF-21 and DEN-induced oxidative stress in vitro. Results showed that FGF-21 increased the expression of KLB and diminished the DEN-induced oxidative stress in vitro in a dose dependent manner.Conclusion: Systemic administration of FGF-21 can prevent DEN-induced hepatocarcinogenesis via suppressing oxidative stress and increasing the expression of KLB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical issue in image interpolation is preserving edge detail and texture information in images when zooming. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive image zooming algorithm using weighted least-square estimation that can achieve arbitrary integer-ratio zoom (WLS-AIZ) For a given zooming ratio n, every pixel in a low-resolution (LR) image is associated with an n × n block of high-resolution (HR) pixels in the HR image. In WLS-AIZ, the LR image is interpolated using the bilinear method in advance. Model parameters of every n× n block are worked out through weighted least-square estimation. Subsequently, each pixel in the n × n block is substituted by a combination of its eight neighboring HR pixels using estimated parameters. Finally, a refinement strategy is adopted to obtain the ultimate HR pixel values. The proposed algorithm has significant adaptability to local image structure. Extensive experiments comparing WLS-AIZ with other state of the art image zooming methods demonstrate the superiority of WLS-AIZ. In terms of peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index (SSIM) and feature similarity index (FSIM), WLS-AIZ produces better results than all other image integer-ratio zoom algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FGF21 is recently discovered with pleiotropic effects on glucose and lipid metabolism. However, the potential protective effect of FGF21 against d-gal-induced injury in the liver has not been demonstrated. The aim of this study is to investigate the pathophysiological role of FGF21 on hepatic oxidative injury and apoptosis in mice induced by d-gal. The 3-month-old Kunming mice were subcutaneously injected with d-gal (180 mg kg d) for 8 weeks and administered simultaneously with FGF21 (5 or 1 mg kg d). Our results showed that the administration of FGF21 significantly alleviated histological lesion including structure damage, degeneration, and necrosis of hepatocytes induced by d-gal, and attenuated the elevation of liver injury markers, serum AST, and ALP in a dose-dependent manner. FGF21 treatment also suppressed d-gal-induced profound elevation of ROS production and oxidative stress, as evidenced by an increase of the MDA level and depletion of the intracellular GSH level in the liver, and restored the activities of antioxidant enzymes SOD, CAT, GSH-Px, and T-AOC. Moreover, FGF21 treatment increased the nuclear abundance of Nrf2 and subsequent up regulation of several antioxidant genes. Furthermore, a TUNEL assay showed that d-gal-induced apoptosis in the mouse liver was significantly inhibited by FGF21. The expression of caspase-3 was markedly inhibited by the treatment of FGF21 in the liver of d-gal-treated mice. The levels of PI3K and PBK/Akt were also largely enhanced, which in turn inactivated pro-apoptotic signaling events, restoring the balance between pro- and anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 and Bax proteins in the liver of d-gal-treated mice. In conclusion, these results suggest that FGF21 protects the mouse liver against d-gal-induced hepatocyte oxidative stress via enhancing Nrf2-mediated antioxidant capacity and apoptosis via activating PI3K/Akt pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gene-directed enzyme-prodrug therapy is a method whereby cancerous tumors are selectively eradicated with minimal impact to healthy tissue. Due to its thermostability, E. coli cytosine deaminase (bCD) is one of the most widely used enzyme-prodrug combinations. However, wild-type bCD (wtbCD) displays a relatively poor turnover of 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC), and also has low permeability as a hexamer macromolecule (∼300 kDa), like many other therapeutic proteins. To improve these shortcomings, site-specific mutagenesis was performed by infusing the bCD with R9, a typical and highly effective cell-penetrating peptide. The results obtained by flow cytometry and confocal microscopy showed that the R9 efficiently delivered the enhanced green fluorescent proteins (EGFP) into the human liver hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) cells, and gathered at the nucleus, while EGFP alone did not have this ability. The penetrating efficiency of R9-EGPF was time and dose dependent. The results obtained by Western blot showed that R9-bCD, but not bCD proteins alone, could be uptaken into HepG2 cells. In vitro experiments showed that polyarginine enhanced the cytotoxicity of bCD, and R9-bCDmut had a stronger cytotoxicity than R9-bCD proteins. In vivo experiments also showed that R9-bCD and R9-bCDmut could prolong the survival time of tumor mice for 8-10 days. Future therapeutic applications of cell-permeable R9-bCDmut fusion proteins together with a systemic administration of 5-FC prodrug could result in profound anti-tumor activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fibroblast growth factor (FGF)-21 is a member of the FGF superfamily based on sequence homology. However, unlike most members of this family it does not show any mitogenic activity in all cell types tested. The objective of this study is to identify and characterize receptors for this molecule. Sequencing of the cDNA clones from 3T3-L1 adipocytes indicates that the only isoforms for FGFR-1 and 2 expressed in 3T3-L1 cells are 1IIIc and 2IIIc, respectively, suggesting that FGF-21 regulates glucose metabolism in 3T3-L1 adipocytes through FGFR-1IIIc and FGFR-2IIIc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]