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Marsdenia tenacissima is a medicinal plant widely distributed in the calcium-rich karst regions of southwest China. However, the lack of a reference genome has hampered the implementation of molecular techniques in its breeding, pharmacology, and domestication. We generated the chromosome-level genome assembly in Apocynaceae using combined SMRT sequencing and Hi-C. The genome length was 381.76 Mb, with 98.9% of it found on 11 chromosomes. The genome contained 222.63 Mb of repetitive sequences and 21,899 predicted gene models, with a contig N50 of 6.57 Mb. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that M. tenacissima diverged from Calotropis gigantea at least 13.43 million years ago. Comparative genomics showed that M. tenacissima underwent ancient shared whole-genome duplication. This event, together with tandem duplication, contributed to 70.71% of gene-family expansion. Both pseudogene analysis and selective pressure calculations suggested calcium-related adaptive evolution in the M. tenacissima genome. Calcium-induced differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were mainly enriched in cell-wall-related processes. Domains (e.g., Fasciclin and Amb_all), and cis-elements (e.g., MYB and MYC) frequently occurred in the coding and promoter regions of cell-wall DEGs, respectively, and the expression levels of these genes correlated significantly with those of calcium-signal-related transcription factors. Moreover, calcium addition increased tenacissoside I, G, and H contents. The availability of this high-quality genome provides valuable genomic information for genetic breeding and molecular design and lends insights into the calcium adaptation of M. tenacissima in karst areas.

To overcome the structural complexity and improve the bioconversion efficiency of Pennisetum purpureum into bioethanol or/and biomethane, the effects of ensiling pretreatment, NaOH pretreatment, and their combination on digestion performance and mass flow were comparatively investigated. The coproduction of bioethanol and biomethane showed that 65.2 g of ethanol and 102.6 g of methane could be obtained from 1 kg of untreated Pennisetum purpureum, and pretreatment had significant impacts on the production; however, there is no significant difference between the results of NaOH pretreatment and ensiling-NaOH pretreatment in terms of production improvement. Among them, 1 kg of ensiling-NaOH treated Pennisetum purpureum could yield 269.4 g of ethanol and 144.5 g of methane, with a respective increase of 313.2% and 40.8% compared to that from the untreated sample; this corresponded to the final energy production of 14.5 MJ, with the energy conversion efficiency of 46.8%. In addition, for the ensiling-NaOH treated Pennisetum purpureum, the energy recovery from coproduction (process III) was 98.9% higher than that from enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation only (process I) and 53.6% higher than that from anaerobic digestion only (process II). This indicated that coproduction of bioethanol and biomethane from Pennisetum purpureum after ensiling and NaOH pretreatment is an effective method to improve its conversion efficiency and energy output., We investigated the effects of pretreatment on the coproduction (ethanol and methane) performance and material flow from Pennisetum purpureum.

Transforming biomass waste into cost-effective non-precious-metal catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) provides a great opportunity for the development of microbial fuel cells (MFCs). ...

The long-term exploitation of ionic rare earth elements (REEs) in southern China has produced a large-scale of abandoned tailings area. While the application of anaerobic fermentation residues to cultivate economically valuable remediation plants (e.g. energy plant) has become a hotspot due to their merits in low-cost and sustainability in recent years, the succession and co-occurrence patterns of these microbial communities remain unclear. In this study, soil samples were collected from the sustainable restoration area, natural restoration area and tailings area. The composition and diversity of bacterial and fungal communities on five soil samples were evaluated using high-throughput sequencing technology. The results shown that the phytoremediation with anaerobic fermentation residues could significantly improve the physicochemical properties (especially for soil nutrients) and microbial diversity of soil within 3 years, while these parameters in natural restoration area were lower. The nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordinations revealed the shifts of microbial communities depending on soil physicochemical properties and plant species, and soil nutrients were the main factors affecting the microbial variation explained by the variation partition analysis (VPA). The soil nutrient accumulation obviously changed the proportion of oligotrophic and copiotrophic groups, among which the copiotrophic groups were significantly increased, such as Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Gemmatimonadetes and Glomeromycota. The microbial co-occurrence network analysis indicated that application of anaerobic fermentation residues could significantly improve the topological properties and the stability of microbial network. The copiotrophic groups (e.g. Proteobacteria, Ascomycota) became the key to assemble stable network structure. Moreover, herbaceous plants could increase the proportion of fungi (e.g. Ascomycota) in microbial network, which improved the topological properties with bacteria synergistically. Therefore, the soil environment of REEs tailings area was effectively optimized by anaerobic fermentation residues and herbaceous plants, which furthered understanding of co-occurrence pattern and mutualistic relationships of microbial communities during sustainable restoration.

Exploiting highly active and methanol-resistant lipase is of great significance for biodiesel production. A semi-rational directed evolution method combined with N-glycosylation is reported, and all mutants exhibiting higher catalytic activity and methanol tolerance than the wild type (WT). Mutant N267 retained 64% activity after incubation in 50% methanol for 8 h, which was 48% greater than that of WT. The catalytic activity of mutants N267 and N167 was 30- and 71- fold higher than that of WT. Molecular dynamics simulations of N267 showed that the formation of new strong hydrogen bonds between glycan and the protein stabilized the structure of lipase and improved its methanol tolerance. N267 achieved biodiesel yields of 99.33% (colza oil) and 81.70% (waste soybean oil) for 24 h, which was much higher than WT (51.6% for rapeseed oil and 44.73% for wasted soybean oil). The engineered ProRML mutant has high potential for commercial biodiesel production.

In this work, the impact of initial pH on the production of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) of hybrid Pennisetum was investigated. The batch experiments were conducted under six distinct beginning pH at a mesophilic temperature. Initial pH had an obvious effect on VFA yield and composition, and severe alkaline circumstances (pHin = 11.0) could boost VFA production and acetic acid selectivity. The highest VFAs yield and acetate proportion were obtained when the initial pH was 11.0, with 518 ± 29 mg g−1VS and 92%. Furthermore, microbial community analysis showed that alkaliphilic acetogenic anaerobe such as Amphibacillus, Tissierella, and Natronincola were the dominant species when the initial pH was 11.0. The Amphibacillus is the main hydrolysis bacterium under these conditions because of its high ability for xylan degradation at pH 9.0–10.0. Because of the increased VFA yield and superior acetic acid selectivity, the results suggest that adjusting the initial pH to 11.0 in batch mode would be possible for scaling-up purposes.

The effects of steam and sulfuric acid pretreatment on anaerobic digestion (AD) of whiskey byproducts (including draff, thin and thick stillage) were investigated in order to improve the digestion performance under both mesophilic and thermophilic temperatures. The results of biomethane potential assays suggested that thermophilic AD facilitated the release of free ammonia (ca. 1200 mg/L) from byproducts, resulting in strong ammonia inhibition and volatile fatty acid accumulation. In contrast, no free ammonia inhibition (ca. 700 mg/L) was observed under mesophilic AD; the methane yield from mesophilic AD was between 375.3 ± 13.6 mL/g volatile solid (VS; acid-treated sample) and 389.1 ± 8.5 mL/g VS (untreated sample). Although acid pretreatment (2% acid under 135 °C for 15 min) did not improve the methane yield from mesophilic AD, it reduced the digestion time by 14.3% compared to that of the untreated sample. Microbial community analysis showed that irrelevant of pretreatment, hydrogenotrophic methanogens of Methanobrevibacter (28.9%–49.8% in abundance) and Methanoculleus (26.0%–55.9% in abundance) were the dominant archaeal genus under mesophilic AD. In comparison, hydrogenotrophic Methanothermobacter (over 97% in abundance) were dominant in thermophilic AD. This study could be exploited to aid in decarbonizing the whiskey industry by optimizing the biogas process in a circular economy system.

This study investigated the effect of particle size on the performance of anaerobic digestion of Hybrid Pennisetum. Hybrid Pennisetum was ground and sieved to provide different particle sizes between 0.180 and 1.000 mm. Characterization of the different particle sizes suggested that the composition of ground Hybrid Pennisetum altered-carbohydrate content decreased and lignin content increased with a decrease in particle size. The highest specific methane yield was 291.9 ± 4.7 mL CH4·g−1 VS at a particle size of 0.250–0.380 mm and this value plateaued as the particle size was reduced to below 0.250 mm. Excessive size reduction did not improve the methane yield but did result in a reduction of digestion time by 28.6–35.7%. The net energy output from the process was calculated at 300 kWh/t VS. Therefore, grinding was proved to enhance the anaerobic fermentation efficiency and energy output of Hybrid Pennisetum.

In this study, the links between performance and microbial communities were investigated with municipal solid waste (MSW) at two feedstock ratios and eight organic loading rates (OLRs). The co-digestion systems were stably operated at OLRs of 2.0–6.0 g VS/(L·d). The performance of the co-digestion system varied with the feedstock ratio. Compared with the 50:50 (hybrid Pennisetum:MSW) system, the 75:50 system, GM31, obtained increases of 1.93–17.68% and 0.29–23.29% for the specific biogas and methane yields, respectively. Whereas a shift in bacterial and methanogen communities occurred as the operating conditions changed, particularly with OLR variations. The genera Saccharofermentans, Prevotella, Clostridium, Syntrophomonas, and Proteiniphilum became the dominant bacteria for the conversion of carbohydrates and nitrogen compounds as the OLR increased. Meanwhile, a shift from acetoclastic to hydrogenotrophic or multifunctional methanogens was observed.

In atomic gyroscopes, measuring the effective noble-gas magnetic field enables the determination of the noble-gas polarization. The enhancement factor is introduced to relate the effective magnetic field and the polarization in a certain magnetic-field environment. Earlier experiments concentrate on the strong magnetic-field environment for measuring the spin-exchange cross section precisely, so the results on the enhancement factor in the weak magnetic field are still insufficient. In our nuclear magnetic resonance gyroscope based on Cs-$^{129}\mathrm{Xe}$ and -$^{131}\mathrm{Xe}$, the magnetic field is usually set to 1--10 $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{T}$. In this paper, we measure the effective magnetic field and the polarization of Xe atoms to estimate the Cs-Xe enhancement factor in the weak magnetic field of 2.5 $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{T}$ and give the estimation of the Cs-$^{129}\mathrm{Xe}$ enhancement factor of $(1.60\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.06)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{4}$.

Evidence from multiple studies has revealed that it's meaningful to evaluate the clinical significance of CD146 because it's related to an early diagnosis of chronic renal failure as well as to the severity of illness and the patient's prognosis.The current study intended to evaluate the therapeutic effects of Shendibushen on the clinical parameters of blood and urine and on fibrosis in the kidney in a rat model, using simulated renal tissue fibrosis that was surgically induced with unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO). Also, our research team intended to analyze the metabolic pathway activated by Shendibushen both in rat and human kidneys through use of the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database and the GeneNetwork. The aim is to discover if a connection existed between CD146 and key genes in these pathways.The research team conducted an animal study in Wistar rats.The rats were divided into 5 groups of 14 animals each: (1) blank control group, (2) sham control group, (3) model group, (4) Niaoduqing group, and (5) Shendibushen group. Three groups had UUO surgically induced-the model, Niaoduqing, and Shendibushen groups. The sham control group received sham surgery, and the blank control group received no surgery. The Shendibushen and Niaoduqing groups received the relevant capsules once a day at a fixed time, for a total of 28 days.The levels of serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen, microalbuminuria, serum soluble CD146, and urinary soluble CD146 were measured on the 14th and 28th days after modeling the rats. The degree of renal interstitial fibrosis was examined by hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining and Masson trichrome staining. The changes at transcriptome level were obtained by target tissue sequencing. The KEGG database was used to analyze the potential pathway activated by the Shendibushen treatment. The GeneNetwork analysis was used to validate the correlation and identify the connections between CD146 and the key genes of the potential pathways.Shendibushen capsules decreased the degree of renal interstitial fibrosis in the UUO rat model and reduced the serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen, microalbumin, serum sCD146, and urinary sCD146 significantly compared to the model group (P.05). Upon analysis of the metabolic pathways activated by Shendibushen, the study further verified, through use of the KEGG database, that CD146 activated the nuclear factor kappa B1 (NF-κB1) and transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1)/ SMAD family member 2 (SMAD2) pathways.CD146 could become an early indicator in clinical monitoring. CD146 has a function related to the NF-κB1and TGF-β1/ SMAD2 pathways under Shendibushen treatment.

Background: Surgical treatment of humeral mid-distal shaft fractures is controversial. The purpose of this case-match controlled comparison study was to determine the safety and effectiveness of applying the MIPO technique compared with conventional ORIF for treating humeral mid-distal shaft fractures.Methods: This study was conducted from January 2012 to December 2016, and patients of mid-distal humeral shaft fractures were eligible for this study. The patients were followed up for a minimum period of 1 year. The clinical and radiographic outcomes were evaluated. The inclusion criteria were age between 18 to 60 years and acute displaced mid-distal humeral shaft fracture. The exclusion criteria were intra-articular fractures of the elbow, vascular insufficiency of the upper limb, pathological fracture and multiple or open fractures. The medical records and radiographs of all eligible patients during hospitalization and follow-up after discharge were reviewed. We use a 1:2 (MIPO/ORIF) case-match based on gender and age. All patients had at least 3 years of postoperative follow-up.Results: In total, 216 patients with mid-distal humeral shaft fracture underwent surgery at the departments of orthopedics of the Seventh Medical Center of PLA General Hospital and Beijing Chaoyang Hospital. Of them, 28 underwent MIPO and 56 case-matched controls underwent ORIF; all of them had complete 3-year follow-up data. No significant differences were observed in baseline characteristics between both groups. UCLA scores and MEPS were significantly higher in the MIPO group than in the ORIF group. Furthermore, UCLA score and MEPS grades in the MIPO group were significantly superior to those in the ORIF group. There was no statistically significant difference in major complication rates between both groups; however, the total major complication rate was significantly different between both groups.Conclusion: This study demonstrates that MIPO has a statistically significant clinical benefit over ORIF, including better shoulder and elbow joint function, with few overall major complications after at least 3 years of postoperative follow-up. MIPO is a safe and effective method for treating mid-distal humeral shaft fractures when surgery is indicated.

Infantile colic is defined as paroxysms of uncontrollable and unexplained crying in the first three months of life. Complementary and alternative therapy methods are one of the methods used to treat infantile colic, which has negative effects on parents and infants.The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the complementary and alternative therapy methods used to treat infantile colic.The PubMed, SCOPUS, Web of Science and Cochrane Library databases were searched for complementary therapies for infantile colic. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) were used to determine the search terms. Combination of infantile colic and acupuncture therapy, musculoskeletal manipulations, massage, phytotherapy, aromatherapy were used as the search terms.A total of 13 interventions were found from Sweden, Norway, Russia, Italy, Turkey, Iran and Finland. In two randomized and controlled trials, acupuncture therapy was found to be effective in the treatment of infantile colic. One study found it to be ineffective. No serious side effects were reported in these studies. A variety of aromatic oils have been used by orally, by inhalation and topically to treat infantile colic and have been found to be effective with no serious side effects. Massage has also been found to effectively reduce the symptoms of infantile colic.Further study of the complementary and alternative therapy methods will help to increase the evidence for their effective use in the treatment of infantile colic.