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Natural products have provided abundant sources of lead compounds for new drug discovery and development over the past centuries. Curcumin is a lipophilic polyphenol isolated from turmeric, a plant used in traditional Asian medicine for centuries. Despite the low oral bioavailability, curcumin exhibits profound medicinal value in various diseases, especially liver and gut diseases, bringing an interest in the paradox of its low bioavailability but high bioactivity. Several latest studies suggest that curcumin's health benefits may rely on its positive gastrointestinal effects rather than its poor bioavailability solely. Microbial antigens, metabolites, and bile acids regulate metabolism and immune responses in the intestine and liver, suggesting the possibility that the liver-gut axis bidirectional crosstalk controls gastrointestinal health and diseases. Accordingly, these pieces of evidence have evoked great interest in the curcumin-mediated crosstalk among liver-gut system diseases. The present study discussed the beneficial effects of curcumin against common liver and gut diseases and explored the underlying molecular targets, as well as collected evidence from human clinical studies. Moreover, this study summarized the roles of curcumin in complex metabolic interactions in liver and intestine diseases supporting the application of curcumin in the liver-gut system as a potential therapeutic option, which opens an avenue for clinical use in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to ensure the reliability, stability and high transmission rate of fifth-generation mobile communication technology(5G), this paper proposes a hybrid check matrix construction algorithm based on iterative coding algorithm with linear coding complexity. Firstly, this paper improves the traditional iterative coding algorithm and makes it suitable for non-binary low density parity check(NB-LDPC) codes. Then it adopts backward iterative method to change the coding scheme and the structure of the check matrix so that the progressive edge growth(PEG) algorithm has a lower triangular structure and uses it as the base matrix. Finally, a QC-LDPC algorithm with a lower triangular structure is used to generate a cyclic shift matrix and a finite field coefficient matrix. At the same time, the effect of the short loop is eliminated, and an optimal check matrix is selected from the algorithm. Simulation results show that the non-binary LDPC code constructed by the hybrid construction algorithm not only has linear coding and storage complexity, but also has strong error correction capability.

In the wireless communication system, it is necessary to change the transmitted code word or code rate in real time according to the channel environment, designing and implementing rate compatible codes is of great practical significance. In allusion to the defects of algebraically constructed QC-LDPC codes algorithm and the time-varying characteristics of wireless channel, we propose an algorithm based on check matrix optimization puncturing technique to construct QC-LDPC codes in this paper. The algorithm selects a high rate matrix with excellent performance as the parent matrix, and then uses the backward node puncturing method to puncture the information bits in the code word from the last column of the check matrix by a multiple of the number of rows to obtain a low rate matrix. The simulation results show that the rate-compatible non-binary LDPC codes constructed by this algorithm not only reduces the complexity of hardware implementation, but also improves the error correction performance of the non-binary LDPC codes, realizes the rate-compatible coding at the same time, and improves the average effectiveness and reliability of the communication system.

Multinucleated cells are present in lung tissues of patients infected by SARS-CoV-2. Although the spike protein can cause the fusion of infected cells and ACE2-expressing cells to form syncytia and induce damage, how host cell responses to this damage and the role of DNA damage response (DDR) signals in cell fusion are still unclear. Therefore, we investigated the effect of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on the fusion of homologous and heterologous cells expressing ACE2 in vitro models, focusing on the protein levels of ATR and ATM, the major kinases responding to DNA damage, and their substrates CHK1 and CHK2. We found that both homologous and heterologous cell fusion activated the ATR-CHK1 and ATM-CHK2 signaling axis and induced the aggregation of γH2AX, 53BP1 and RAD51 in syncytia. In addition, siRNA or inhibitors of ATM and ATR suppressed syncytia formation by decreasing the level of S protein. These results showed the important role of DDR in stabilizing the S protein and in favoring its induction of cell fusion and syncytium formation, suggesting that the virus exploits the host DDR to facilitate its spread among infected cells., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)