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Objective. To explore the effect of a moxibustion instrument combined with intermediate frequency electrostatic therapy on pain and joint function in elderly patients with cold-dampness arthritis (KOA). Method. 200 patients with cold-dampness KOA treated in our hospital from May 2019 to September 2021 were selected. According to the random number table method, they were divided into the observation group ( n = 100 ) and control group ( n = 100 ). The observation group was treated with moxibustion combined with medium-frequency treatment, and the control group was treated with medium-frequency treatment. The clinical effects of the two groups were compared. The joint functions of the two groups were evaluated by the visualization scale of the osteoarthritis index (WOMAC index) of McMaster University in Western Ontario. The TCM symptom scores of the two groups were evaluated according to the guiding principles for clinical research of new traditional Chinese medicine. The visual analogue scale (VAS) was used to evaluate the pain degree of the two groups, and the microcirculatory blood perfusion (MBPU) and interleukin-1 were compared between the two groups, β (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). The levels of matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1), serum bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2), cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP), and serum type II collagen C-terminal peptide (CTX-II) were assessed by the comprehensive quality of life questionnaire-74. Result. The total effective rate of the observation group (92.00%) was higher than that of the control group (76.00%), and the difference was statistically significant ( P < 0.05 ) in β and TNF-α. The levels of MMP-3, BMP-2, comp, and CTX-II and the improvement of quality of life score in the control group were better than those in the control group ( P < 0.05 ). Conclusion. Moxibustion instrument combined with intermediate frequency electrostatic therapy can effectively improve the knee joint function, pain, blood perfusion, inflammatory reaction, and cartilage damage of the elderly patients with cold-dampness-type knee arthritis, and the therapeutic effect is good.

Electrochemical degradation of hexazinone in aqueous solution using Bi-doped PbO2 electrodes as anodes was investigated. The main influencing parameters on the electrocatalytic degradation of hexazinone were analyzed as function of initial hexazinone concentration, current density, initial pH value and Na2SO4 concentration. The experiment results showed that the electrochemical oxidization reaction of hexazinone fitted pseudo-first-order kinetics model. 99.9% of hexazinone can be decontaminated using Bi-doped PbO2 electrode as anode for 120 min. Comparing with pure PbO2 electrode, the Bi-doped PbO2 electrodes possess higher hexazinone and COD removal ratio, higher ICE and lower energy consumption in the electrocatalytic degradation process. The results revealed that electrochemical oxidation using Bi-doped PbO2 anodes was an efficient method for the elimination of hexazinone in aqueous solution. The electrocatalytic oxidization mechanism of hexazinone with Bi-doped PbO2 anode was discussed, then the possible degradation pathway of hexazinone with two parallel sub-routes was elucidated according to 15 intermediates identified using HPLC-MS.

In this study, a novel PbO2-CeO2 composite electrode was applied it to the electrocatalytic degradation of vanillin. The operating parameters such as applied current density, initial vanillin concentration, supporting electrolyte concentration and pH value were investigated and optimised. After 120 min, in a 0.10 mol L���1 Na2SO4 solution with a current density of 50 mA cm���2 and a pH value of 5.0 containing 30 mg L���1 vanillin, the vanillin removal efficiency can reach 98.03%, the COD removal efficiency is up to 73.28%. The results indicate that electrochemical degradation has a high ability to remove vanillin in aqueous solution. The reaction follows a pseudo-first-order reaction kinetics model with rate constants of 0.03036 min���1. In the process of electrochemical degradation, up to eight hydroxylated or polyhydroxylated oxidation by-products were identified through hydroxylation, dealkylation and substitution reactions. Furthermore, the degradation pathways were proposed, which eventually mineralised into inorganic water and carbon dioxide.

In the present study, the electrocatalytic degradation of triazine herbicide metamitron using Ti/PbO2-CeO2 composite anode was studied in detail. The effects of the current density, initial metamitron concentration, supporting electrolyte concentration, and initial pH value were investigated and optimized. The results revealed that an electrocatalytic approach possessed a high capability of metamitron removal in aqueous solution. After 120 min, the removal ratio of metamitron could reach 99.0% in 0.2 mol L−1 Na2SO4 solution containing 45 mg L−1 metamitron with the current density at 90 mA cm−2 and pH value at 5.0. The reaction followed the pseudo-first-order kinetics model. HPLC and HPLC-MS were employed to analyze the degradation by-products in the metamitron oxidization process, and the degradation pathway was also proposed, which was divided into two sub-routes according to the different initial attacking positions on metamitron by hydroxyl radicals. Therefore, the electrocatalytic approach was considered as a very promising technology in practical application for herbicide wastewater treatment.

Construction of a random ssDNA sublibrary is an important step of the aptamer screening process. The available construction methods include asymmetric PCR, biotin-streptavidin separation, and lambda exonuclease digestions, in which PCR amplification is a key step. The main drawback of PCR amplification is overamplification increasing nonspecific hybridization among different products and by-products, which may cause the loss of potential high-quality aptamers, inefficient screening, and even screening failure. Cycle number optimization in PCR amplification is the main way to avoid overamplification but does not fundamentally eliminate the nonspecific hybridization, and the decreased cycle number may lead to insufficient product amounts. Here, we developed a new method, "asymmetric emulsion PCR," which could overcome the shortcomings of conventional PCR. In asymmetric emulsion PCR, different templates were separated by emulsion particles, allowing single-molecule PCR, in which each template was separately amplified, and the nonspecific hybridization was avoided. Overamplification or formation of by-products was not observed. The method is so simple that direct amplification of 40 or more cycles can provide a high-quality ssDNA library. Therefore, the asymmetric emulsion PCR would improve the screening efficiency of systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment.

[Background]: Pigs were domesticated independently in Eastern and Western Eurasia early during the agricultural revolution, and have since been transported and traded across the globe. Here, we present a worldwide survey on 60K genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data for 2093 pigs, including 1839 domestic pigs representing 122 local and commercial breeds, 215 wild boars, and 39 out-group suids, from Asia, Europe, America, Oceania and Africa. The aim of this study was to infer global patterns in pig domestication and diversity related to demography, migration, and selection., [Results]: A deep phylogeographic division reflects the dichotomy between early domestication centers. In the core Eastern and Western domestication regions, Chinese pigs show differentiation between breeds due to geographic isolation, whereas this is less pronounced in European pigs. The inferred European origin of pigs in the Americas, Africa, and Australia reflects European expansion during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Human-mediated introgression, which is due, in particular, to importing Chinese pigs into the UK during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, played an important role in the formation of modern pig breeds. Inbreeding levels vary markedly between populations, from almost no runs of homozygosity (ROH) in a number of Asian wild boar populations, to up to 20% of the genome covered by ROH in a number of Southern European breeds. Commercial populations show moderate ROH statistics. For domesticated pigs and wild boars in Asia and Europe, we identified highly differentiated loci that include candidate genes related to muscle and body development, central nervous system, reproduction, and energy balance, which are putatively under artificial selection., [Conclusions]: Key events related to domestication, dispersal, and mixing of pigs from different regions are reflected in the 60K SNP data, including the globalization that has recently become full circle since Chinese pig breeders in the past decades started selecting Western breeds to improve local Chinese pigs. Furthermore, signatures of ongoing and past selection, acting at different times and on different genetic backgrounds, enhance our insight in the mechanism of domestication and selection. The global diversity statistics presented here highlight concerns for maintaining agrodiversity, but also provide a necessary framework for directing genetic conservation., This study is supported by National Production Technology System for the Pig Industry in China (nycytx-008) and Outstanding Talents and Innovation Team of Agricultural Science (2011-81) to LH, AGL2010-14822 and AGL2013-41834-R (Ministry of Economy and Science, Spain) to MPE. LI received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 656697. HJM received funding from the IMAGE project (Horizon 2020, No. 677353).

Fatty acid composition is associated with meat quality in pigs as well as with obesity- and diabetes-related traits in humans. Liver and muscle are important tissues for fatty acid metabolism. In this study, we evaluated correlations between liver and muscle transcriptomes and fatty acid composition traits in muscle and abdominal fat tissues in 335 F2 pigs from a White Duroc × Erhualian F2 pig resource population. Transcripts significantly correlated with fatty acid composition traits were enriched for genes involved in the categories of triglyceride catabolic process, mitochondrial function, hematological and immune system, and disease such as Type II diabetes. Gene co-expression network analysis further identified liver network modules relevant to fatty acid unsaturation index that were enriched in platelet activation and the type I interferon signaling pathway and highlighted the connections between variations in fatty acid composition and genes involved in hematological and immune system. Integrative analysis of the expression QTL identified ELOVL6 and SCD as plausible candidate genes underlying the loci for muscle C18:1n-9/C16:1n-7 values on chromosome 8 and the loci for muscle C18:1n-9/C18:0 contents on chromosome 14 respectively.

Summary Chinese indigenous pigs display marked genetic and phenotypic differences compared with western commercial pigs. In this study, we tested the association between 660K SNPs and longissimus muscle fatty acid composition traits in Chinese Erhualian (n = 331) and Bamaxiang (n = 315) pigs based on a customized 1.4 million SNP array. We identified a total of 64 significant associations for 20 fatty acid composition traits at the p-value threshold of 1 × 10−6 among which 42 associations in low linkage disequilibrium (r2

Background Fatty acid composition in muscle is an important factor that affects the nutritive value and taste of pork. To investigate the genetic architecture of fatty acid composition of pork, we measured fatty acid contents in longissimus dorsi muscle of 1244 pigs from three divergent populations and conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for fatty acid contents. Results We detected 26 genome-wide significant quantitative trait loci (QTL) on eight chromosomes (SSC for Sus scrofa) for eight fatty acids. These loci not only replicated previously reported QTL for C18:0 on SSC14 and C20:0 on SSC16, but also included several novel QTL such as those for C20:1 on SSC7, C14:0 on SSC9, and C14:0, C16:0 and C16:1 on SSC12. Furthermore, we performed a meta-analysis of GWAS on five populations, including the three populations that were investigated in this study and two additional populations that we had previously examined. This enhanced the strength of the associations detected between fatty acid composition and several marker loci, especially for those for C18:0 on SSC14 and C20:0 on SSC16. The genes ELOVL5, ELOVL6, ELOVL7, FASN, SCD and THRSP, which have functions that are directly relevant to fatty acid metabolism, are proximal to the top associated markers at six significant QTL. Conclusions The findings improve our understanding of the genetic architecture of fatty acid composition in pork and contribute to further fine-map and characterize genes that influence fatty acid composition. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12711-016-0184-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

OBJECTIVE: To review the research progress on Type IV secretion system (T4SS) in Helicobacter pylori. DATA SOURCES: The data used in this review were identified by searching of PUBMED (1995 - 2007) online resources using the key terms 'Type IV secretion system' and 'Helicobacter pylori'. STUDY SELECTION: Mainly original articles and critical reviews written by major pioneer investigators of this field were selected. RESULTS: The research progress on T4SS in Helicobacter pylori was summarized. The structure and function was discussed. CONCLUSIONS: T4SS is not only involved in toxin secretion and injection of virulence factors into eukaryotic host target cells, but also involved in horizontal DNA transfer to other bacteria and eukaryotic cells, through DNA uptake from or release into the extracellular milieu. It provides a new insight into the pathogenicity of Helicobacter pylori and a novel target for antimicrobials development. However, many challenges remain for us in understanding the biological role of T4SS in Helicobacter pylori.

Background Recently, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been reported on various pig traits. We performed a GWAS to analyze 22 traits related to growth and fatness on two pig populations: a White Duroc × Erhualian F2 intercross population and a Chinese Sutai half-sib population. Results We identified 14 and 39 loci that displayed significant associations with growth and fatness traits at the genome-wide level and chromosome-wide level, respectively. The strongest association was between a 750 kb region on SSC7 (SSC for Sus scrofa) and backfat thickness at the first rib. This region had pleiotropic effects on both fatness and growth traits in F2 animals and contained a promising candidate gene HMGA1 (high mobility group AT-hook 1). Unexpectedly, population genetic analysis revealed that the allele at this locus that reduces fatness and increases growth is derived from Chinese indigenous pigs and segregates in multiple Chinese breeds. The second strongest association was between the region around 82.85 Mb on SSC4 and average backfat thickness. PLAG1 (pleiomorphic adenoma gene 1), a gene under strong selection in European domestic pigs, is proximal to the top SNP and stands out as a strong candidate gene. On SSC2, a locus that significantly affects fatness traits mapped to the region around the IGF2 (insulin-like growth factor 2) gene but its non-imprinting inheritance excluded IGF2 as a candidate gene. A significant locus was also detected within a recombination cold spot that spans more than 30 Mb on SSCX, which hampered the identification of plausible candidate genes. Notably, no genome-wide significant locus was shared by the two experimental populations; different loci were observed that had both constant and time-specific effects on growth traits at different stages, which illustrates the complex genetic architecture of these traits. Conclusions We confirm several previously reported QTL and provide a list of novel loci for porcine growth and fatness traits in two experimental populations with Chinese Taihu and Western pigs as common founders. We showed that distinct loci exist for these traits in the two populations and identified HMGA1 and PLAG1 as strong candidate genes on SSC7 and SSC4, respectively. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12711-015-0089-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background It is common for humans and model organisms to exhibit sexual dimorphism in a variety of complex traits. However, this phenomenon has rarely been explored in pigs. Results To investigate the genetic contribution to sexual dimorphism in complex traits in pigs, we conducted a sex-stratified analysis on 213 traits measured in 921 individuals produced by a White Duroc × Erhualian F2 cross. Of the 213 traits examined, 102 differed significantly between the two sexes (q value