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We studied the degradation of vanillic acid in soil was studied by high performance liquid chromatography and gas chromatography. Illumina MISEQ high-throughput sequencing was used to identify the abundance of bacteria and fungi in soil. The results showed that when the concentration of vanillic acid decreased to a certain level in the soil, its degradation rate became slow. The application of vanillic acid gradually decreased the total number of bacterial OTUs in soil, while the total number of fungal OTUs increased. At the same time, the richness and diversity of bacteria were always higher than fungi. Key microbial taxa at different degradation stages of vanillic acid were identified at the phylum and genus level, including bacteria (Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, Methylibium, Methylobacillus, Aeromicrobium, Pseudonocardia) and Fungi (Ascomycota, Zygomycota, Basidiomycota, Rhodotorula, Mortierella

Background:Gout is a chronic autoinflammatory disease caused by monosodium urate (MSU) crystal deposition [1].Acute gout is characterized by an acute inflammatory reaction that resolves spontaneously within a few days[2], which is one of the distinguishing features of gout compared to other arthropathies or self-inflammatory diseases. Autophagy is a lysosomal degradation pathway that is essential for cellular growth, survival, differentiation, development and homeostasis [3]. Studies have demonstrated that autophagy might play a key role in the pathogenesis of primary gouty arthritis (GA) [4-7]. However, the roles of autophagy in the development of gout have not yet been elucidated.Objectives:The aim of our study was to investigate the changes in autophagy-related gene (ATG) mRNA and protein in patients and the clinical importance of these genes in primary gouty arthritis (GA) and to explore the roles of autophagy in the pathogenesis of GA.Methods:The mRNA and protein expression levels of ATGs (ATG3, ATG7, ATG10, ATG5, ATG12, ATG16L1, ATG4B and LC3-2) were measured in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 196 subjects, including 57 acute gout patients (AG group), 57 intercritical gout patients (IG group) and 82 healthy control subjects (HC group). The relationship between ATG expression levels and laboratory features was analyzed in GA patients.Results:The expression levels of ATG4B, ATG5, ATG12, ATG16L1, ATG10 and LC3-2 mRNA were much lower in the AG group than in the IG and HC groups (pConclusion:Altered ATG expression suggests that autophagy is involved in the pathogenesis of GA and participates in regulating inflammation and metabolism.References:[1]Dalbeth N, Choi HK, Joosten LAB, Khanna PP, Matsuo H, Perez-Ruiz F, et al. Gout. Nat Rev Dis Primers. 2019;5: 69.doi:10.1038/s41572-019-0115-y.[2]Schauer C, Janko C, Munoz LE, Zhao Y, Kienhöfer D, Frey B, et al. Aggregated neutrophil extracellular traps limit inflammation by degrading cytokines and chemokines. Nat Med. 2014;20: 511-517.doi:10.1038/nm.3547.[3]Han Y, Zhang L, Xing Y, Zhang L, Chen X, Tang P, et al. Autophagy relieves the function inhibition and apoptosis-promoting effects on osteoblast induced by glucocorticoid. Int J Mol Med. 2018;41: 800-808. doi:10.3892/ijmm.2017.3270.[4]Yang QB, He YL, Zhong XW, Xie WG, Zhou JG. Resveratrol ameliorates gouty inflammation via upregulation of sirtuin 1 to promote autophagy in gout patients. Inflammopharmacology. 2019;27: 47-56.doi:10.1007/s10787-018-00555-4.[5]Mitroulis I, Kambas K, Chrysanthopoulou A, Skendros P, Apostolidou E, Kourtzelis I, et al. Neutrophil extracellular trap formation is associated with IL-1β and autophagy-related signaling in gout. PLoS One. 2011;6: e29318.doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029318.[6]Crişan TO, Cleophas MCP, Novakovic B, Erler K, van de Veerdonk FL, Stunnenberg HG, et al. Uric acid priming in human monocytes is driven by the AKT-PRAS40 autophagy pathway. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017;114: 5485-5490.doi:10.1073/pnas.1620910114.[7]Lee SS, Lee SW, Oh DH, Kim HS, Chae SC, Kim SK. Genetic analysis for rs2241880(T > C) in ATG16L1 polymorphism for the susceptibility of Gout. J Clin Rheumatol. 2019;25: e113-e115.doi:10.1097/rhu.0000000000000685.Disclosure of Interests:Yu-Qin Huang: None declared, Quan-Bo Zhang Grant/research support from: National Natural Science Foundation of China(General Program) (no.81974250) and Science and Technology Plan Project of Sichuan Province (no.2018JY0257), Jian-Xiong Zheng: None declared, gui-lin jian: None declared, tao-hong liu: None declared, Xin He: None declared, fan-ni xiao: None declared, qin xiong: None declared, Yu-Feng Qing Grant/research support from: Science and Technology Project of Nanchong City (no.18SXHZ0522)

SummaryWhat is known and objective Wilson's disease (WD) is an inherited disorder in which defective biliary excretion of copper leads to its accumulation. Sodium dimercaptosulphonate (DMPS) is used as the primary therapy in China. Case description We report two cases, with WD and G6PD deficiency, who developed haemolysis on treatment with DMPS, without any other known risk. After withdrawal of DMPS and administration of dexamethasone and packed red blood cells, the patients recovered. What is new and conclusion Clinicians should keep in mind haemolysis as a potentially life-threatening side effect of DMPS in patients with G6PD.

A 60 day feeding trial was carried out to evaluate the effect on growth, survival, amino acid composition, and coloration of hatchery-cultured mud crab (Scylla paramamosain) instar (0.41 ± 0.05 g) fed: fish Harpadon nehereus, Chinese mystery snail Cipangopaludina chinensis, and artificial feed. Each food type was assigned to eight tanks (10 crabs per tank). Results showed that the growth of mud crab is significantly affected by food type. Crabs fed the artificial feed showed specific growth rate comparable to crabs fed the snail C. chinensis, and higher growth rate compared to crabs consuming fish H. nehereus. Amino acid profiles of whole crabs were found to be highly correlated with dietary amino acid profiles. Crabs fed dry feed showed higher L* value (lighter colour) and b* value (higher intensity in blue colour) compared to crabs fed the other two diets. In conclusion, it is clear that artificial feed is potentially an alternative diet for hatchery-cultured mud crab (S. paramamosain) instar in terms of growth rate. However, it is suggested that paler carapace color might be related to insufficient dietary intake of carotenoids from the artificial feed

Since 1990's, the inductively coupled plasmas (ICP) etching system had been introduced into the research and mass production field for applications of optical waveguide process1 and optoelectronic devices fabrication2. In this paper we rep ort our recent works on ICP etching of GaAs in Cl2/Ar/ O2 chemistry. It was found that, in the ICP chemistry, when the Cl2 content set to about 75%, only 7.4% of additional O2 decreases the GaAs etching rate from 949A/s to 321 A/s. At this stage, even though the etching rate reduced a lot, the etching mechanism is still ion dominated. Moreover, w hen the O2 content increases to above 13%, the GaAs etching rate decreases to lower than 2 A/s even though the ICP power was increased from 400W to 800W, and the GaAs etc hing rate is in direct proportion to the content of Cl2 in the chemistry. It means that under such conditions, the etching mechanism is totally dominated by reactive neutral radicals. With increasing the O2 content, the etched surface roughness reduces from higher than 900 A to only a few angstroms, the etching rate ratio of photoresist to GaAs also changes from lower than 1 to about 85. The above results can be explained by the plasma process in Cl2/Ar/O2 chemistry. The introduced electronegative gas O2 will go through the following plasma process3: e+O2 → O2+ 2e; e+O2 → O− + O; Thus, we can conclude that, when add O2 to Cl2/Ar plasma chemistry, the O2 will absorb electrons and generate oxygen based species without the capability of etching GaAs. At the s ame time the ion density and the reactive species density for GaAs etching will decrease simultaneously. Thus the etching possibility of the plasma for GaAs will be decreased to a great extent, and the etched surface roughness and the etching rate ratio of photoresist to GaAs were also affected.

The catalyst SiO2/γ-Al2 O3 treated by micro-wetness air to produce lubricating base oil was studied in this article. The satisfactory reaction temperature, the treatment temperature, and the proper content of active composition was researched. Under the best reaction conditions with a reaction temperature of 170°C, a reaction pressure at 6.0 Mpa, the volume velocity at 0.5 h−1. The polymerization of α-olefin was performed at a microreactor and produced lubricating base oil with the kinetic viscosity at 38.19 mm2 · s−1, the bromine number at 5.78 g(Br) · (100 g)−1, and the pour point at −43.0°C. Then the structure of the catalyst was determined by Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) technology. The result shows that when the optimal micro-wetness air was 45°C, the reaction temperature was 800°C, and the amount of active composition was 12%, and the catalyst has high catalytic activity and wide market prospect.

The effects of mesocarbon microbeads support for platinum–ruthenium (Pt–Ru) catalysts on anode performance of the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) were investigated. Polarization characteristics of the anode electrode were low due to the fast rate of mass transport in the electrode. The effects of the Nafion® content in the catalyst, the MEA hot press condition, the cell operation temperature and methanol concentration on the polarization curves of the anode were also investigated.

Kaposi's sarcoma is a multifocal lesion that is reported to be greatly influenced by cytokines such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and oncostatin M. DNA sequences of a novel human gammaherpesvirus, termed human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) or Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, have been identified in all epidemiological forms of Kaposi's sarcoma with high frequency. The presence of HHV-8 DNA is also clearly associated with certain B-cell lymphomas (body cavity-based lymphomas) and multicentric Castleman's disease. Sequence analysis of a 17-kb fragment revealed that adjacent to a block of conserved herpesvirus genes (major DNA-binding protein, glycoprotein B, and DNA polymerase), the genome of HHV-8 encodes structural homolog of IL-6. This cytokine is involved not only in the pathogenesis of Kaposi's sarcoma but also in certain B-cell lymphomas and multicentric Castleman's disease. The viral counterpart of IL-6 (vIL-6) has conserved important features such as cysteine residues involved in disulfide bridging or an amino-terminal signal peptide. Most notably, the region known to be involved in receptor binding is highly conserved in vIL-6. This conservation of essential features and the remarkable overlap between diseases associated with HHV-8 and diseases associated with IL-6 disregulation clearly suggest that vIL-6 is involved in HHV-8 pathogenesis.

catena-Poly[bis(3-methyl-4-nitropyridine N-oxide-O)cadmium-di-μ-bromo], [Cd(C 6 H 6 N 2 O 3 ) 2 Br 2 ], which belongs to a group of potential nonlinear optical materials, crystallizes in the non-centrosymmetric space group Fdd2. The Cd atom is octahedrally coordinated to two O atoms from the trans 3-methyl-4-nitropyridine N-oxide ligands in the axial positions and four Br atoms lying in the equatorial plane. The coordination octahedra form one-dimensional chains along the short c axis by edge-sharing through the Br atoms, with each Cd atom located on a crystallographic diad axis

We have undertaken a large-scale study of various tissues from normal controls and patients with Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) or other malignancies, both with and without human immunodeficiency virus infection, to determine the prevalence of human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) DNA. A total of 566 specimens were analyzed by PCR for the presence of HHV-8 DNA. Of the samples tested, 251 were obtained from patients with KS and 315 were obtained from patients without KS. HHV-8 DNA was detected in 103 (41%) of the 251 samples from patients with KS. In particular, 92% of KS tumor specimens were positive. None of the tissues from patients without KS showed evidence of HHV-8 DNA. Sequencing and phylogenetic analyses indicate a high degree of conservation (97.5 to 100%) among the HHV-8 strains tested.

The valuable contributions of Maragoudakis and coworkers on thrombin and angiogenesis have always been recognized by our group and frequently quoted in our publications. Their work was quoted three times in the present paper [1], three times in our paper on thrombin and the induction of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) [2] and three times in our paper on the induction of angiopoietin-2 [3]. Maragoudakis and coworkers object to our statement quoting their work in which we stated that an attempt to measure thrombin-induced angiogenesis was made by Maragoudakis et al . We believe that this was a fair statement. In their most recently reported publication on this subject, their measurement was indirect, employing C-proline incorporation into collagen in the presence of hydrocortisone (to inhibit inflammation) to measure neoangiogenesis [4]. They found a 34% increase in collagen synthesis using 1 U mL thrombin and interpreted this to represent an increase in neoangiogenesis. Our paper describes a direct observation on newly formed blood vessels on the CAM by microscopic examination following the addition of 0.1 U mL thrombin resulting in a 2–3-fold increase in new blood vessel development. We further showed that VEGF and angiopoietin-2 were upregulated in the CAM during this stimulation—and inhibited by soluble angiogenesis receptors Tie2-Fc and KDR-Fc as well as pertussis toxin (G coupled receptor) and inhibitors of protein kinase C, MAPkinase and PI3kinase. We believe that this is a more rigorous demonstration of the induction of neoangiogenesis by thrombin on a physiological membrane.