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Supplementary Figure 1 from Overexpression of DPAGT1 Leads to Aberrant N-Glycosylation of E-Cadherin and Cellular Discohesion in Oral Cancer

Supplementary Figure 2 from Overexpression of DPAGT1 Leads to Aberrant N-Glycosylation of E-Cadherin and Cellular Discohesion in Oral Cancer

Supplementary Figure Legends 1-2 from Overexpression of DPAGT1 Leads to Aberrant N-Glycosylation of E-Cadherin and Cellular Discohesion in Oral Cancer

Mine water as a result of meteoric and/or underground water’s contact with tailings and underground workings could have an elevated content of metals associated with sulfate, often acidic, due to the bio-oxidation of sulfides. When entering aquatic ecosystems, the mine water can cause significant changes in the species’ trophic levels, therefore a treatment is required to adjust the alkalinity and to remove the heavy metals and metalloids. The conventional mine water treatment removes metals, but in many cases it does not reduce the sulfate content. This paper aimed to predict the impact of conventionally treated mine water on the receiving river by assessing the genotoxic activity on an engineered Escherichia coli and by evaluating the toxic effects generated on two Gram-negative bacterial strains, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli. Although the main chemical impact is the severe increases of calcium and sulfate concentrations, no significant genotoxic characteristics were detected on the Escherichia coli strain and on the cell-viability with a positive survival rate higher than 80%. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was more resistant than Escherichia coli in the presence of 1890 mg SO42−/L. This paper reveals different sensitivities and adaptabilities of pathogenic bacteria to high concentrations of sulfates in mine waters.

Fish are able to accumulate by ingestion various contaminants of aquatic environment, with negative consequences on their intestine, being continuously threatened worldwide by heavy metals, pesticides and antibiotics resulted from the human activities. Consequently, the health of other species can be affected by eating the contaminated fish meat. In this context, our study aimed to perform a comparison between the changes in intestine samples of

The paper aims to emphasize the specific detection of bacterial strains using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The assay is based on the specific binding of polyclonal antibody anti-E. coli tagged with FITC to E.coli and monoclonal antibody anti-Ps. aeruginosa tagged with Alexa Fluor 647 tagged to Ps. aeruginosa and on subsequent enzymatic immunological demonstration of the conjugated enzyme. In this experiment, the negative control was the Salmonella enterica strain. The two antibodies had no interaction with the negative control, instead, they were specific for E. coli and Ps. aeruginosa strains. When both strains were in the same well, the fluorescence intensity given by the presence of E. coli was 2.3 times higher than that given by Ps. aeruginosa, and the intensity of fluorescence decreased if there are both bacterial strains in the wells.

Environmental pollution is an important issue influencing human health and environmental equilibrium. The range of pollutants is very wide due to industrialization and population growth and the surfactants are one of the most common organic pollutants due to their extensive use and ubiquitous presence from industry to households. Their massive presence in the domestic and industrial wastewater could affect the Wastewater treatment plants by inhibiting the activated sludge used in pollutants biodegradation treatment step. This paper aimed to study the inhibition effect of three classes of surfactants (nonionic, anionic, and cationic) by measuring the respiratory activity of microorganisms with the application of the Oxygen Uptake Rate (OUR) test. This study established that the surfactants could activate or inhibit microorganisms’ activity, depending on surfactant concentration.

Techniques for disrupting gene expression are invaluable tools for the analysis of the biological role of a gene product. Because of its genetic tractability and multiple advantages over conventional mammalian models, the zebrafish (Danio rerio) is recognized as a powerful system for gaining new insight into diverse aspects of human health and disease. Among the multiple mammalian gene families for which the zebrafish has shown promise as an invaluable model for functional studies, the galectins have attracted great interest due to their participation in early development, regulation of immune homeostasis, and recognition of microbial pathogens. Galectins are β-galactosyl-binding lectins with a characteristic sequence motif in their carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs), that constitute an evolutionary conserved family ubiquitous in eukaryotic taxa. Galectins are emerging as key players in the modulation of many important pathological processes, which include acute and chronic inflammatory diseases, autoimmunity and cancer, thus making them potential molecular targets for innovative drug discovery. Here, we provide a review of the current methods available for the manipulation of gene expression in the zebrafish, with a focus on gene knockdown [morpholino (MO)-derived antisense oligonucleotides] and knockout (CRISPR-Cas) technologies.

Sludge reuse is one of the main challenges of waste management and an action with environmentally consequences that must be kept under control. The progress of civilization leaded to the globally increase of sludge production. WWTPs treatment technologies, sludge disposal/recovery and also quality control and toxicological involvements became parts of strategical actions at international level. The main disposal strategies for sludge management include agriculture or landscaping purposes, or final disposal. The accepted international policy is sludge application as organic fertilizer in agriculture. In this context, the research paper presents laboratory data used in decisional actions for the sludge land disposal. The study covers physical and chemical characterization of sludge resulted from Focsani WWTP, agriculture soil collected from around of Focsani WWTP and their leachates in compliance with national norms. In addition, the toxic effects on soil organisms (plants) were evaluated. Generally, soil and sludge quality meet the normed criteria for minimizing the potential impact on the environment. The leachate experiments showed the non-hazardous character on the soil properties of groundwater, the predicted impact being insignificant for the tested sludge / soil chemical composition. Ecotoxicological assessment of stabilized sludge showed inhibitory effects in the range of 25% to 100% on seed germination and root growth of plants Sorghum sacharatum, Sinapis alba and Lepidium sativum. In the range of 1% or 5% no significant inhibitory effect of sludge on plants growth was observed. Sorghum sacharatum showed the best growth, but there were no relevant differences between species. A saftey dose of 5% sludge mixed with agriculture soil (250 tonnes per hectare) was established. A monitoring program of sludge / soil quality and also ecotoxic evaluation was recomanded for the saftey of crops growth and health of living organisms including humans.

An endless list of companies has produced a large amount of pharmaceutical compounds in a year-on-year growth trend. Due to the excessive consumption of these substances and the inappropriate disposal, the environment was contaminated, especially aquatic ecosystems, with quantities of pharmaceuticals (PHACs) so that they have affected the living organisms, leading to decreased biodiversity and ecological degradation. Many studies on PHACs environmental presence and toxic effects were performed, but unfortunately, no limit was establishing for discharging into the environment, especially into the aquatic systems. The aim of this study was to use the bioluminescence of Aliivibrio fischeri bacteria as an indicator of toxical effect of different PHACs in simulated marine mediums. The Microtox® bioassay is based on the PHACs inhibitory effect on the metabolism of bacteria which induced changes in their bacterial bioluminescence. The test organisms were exposed to analgesics and anti-inflammatories such as Diclofenac, Ketoprofen, Naproxen and Ibuprofen. The results showed that based on EC50 values, Naproxen had a very low toxicity but Diclofenac, Ketoprofen and Ibuprofen had a harmful effect on the aquatic organisms.

The paper focused on the possible links among pollution, pollution management efficiency including waste management and the propensity of a variety of emerging diseases in our society by answering the question: “How pollution can affect human health?” Environmental pollution is a reality and our planet ecosystem possibilities to face the challenges due to the constant exceeding its resilience are becoming smaller and smaller. The evolution of the climate change indicators like global temperature, global CO2 emissions, oceans acidification and species extinction point out that in a not very long period of time, the planet will not be able to sustain any more the present society’s life style set by the current economic development. Therefore, many warning signals have been issued to change the present behavior in order to reduce significant damages done to the environment and on human health with serious implications on the dysregulation of our immunity and the onset of a plethora of diseases. In this respect, the present paper reviewed relevant aspects linked to the environmental pollution issues that become part of scientific and public debates presented in specialty literature in recent years emphasizing why the implementation of “One Health” concept is necessary.

In the last decade, the cosmetic industry has experienced a massive development, but there have also been issues related to their influence on the health of the population. The application methods of the cosmetic products could trigger the appearance of the skin infectious, which raise the need for efficient disinfection processes of the cosmetic products. At the present, the economic operators in the field of cosmetics are guided by medical regulations, but unfortunately, there are not standardized procedure for the application and control of disinfection. The aim of this study was to determine an efficient procedure of disinfection for instruments used in the application of cosmetics such as the beauty blender. There were performed two different disinfection procedures, a chemical disinfection using 70% ethanol and a physical disinfection with UV radiation. The influence of foundation on disinfection procedures was also tested. A standardized S. aureus and a S. haemolyticus bacterium from a human abscess were tested and an antibiotic resistance pattern was also analysed. The disinfection efficiency tests showed that the ethanol solution was effective after 5 minutes, decreasing the S. haemolyticus bacterial density by 50% in the absence of foundation. In the presence of the foundation, this process was no longer efficient, foundation having a possible protection and nutritional role for bacteria. The radiation with UV at 265 nm showed a complete eradication of both bacterial strains after 1 minute, regardless of foundation presence or not. The antibiotic susceptibility tested showed that both strains had the natural penicillin resistance.

The cationic surfactants have various applications being found in personal care products, detergents, cleaning products, disinfectants, hair conditioners, etc. Cationic surfactants are presented in domestic or industrial wastewater, being very resistant pollutants to biodegradation during conventional wastewater treatment (WT) methods, which generated the need to develop new efficient alternative methods. One of the alternative to conventional WT methods involves the utilization of the adsorbent nanomaterials, which are highly efficient, easy to operate, environmental friendly and cost effective. In this study, it was investigated the adsorption process of a cationic surfactant, benzyldodecyldimethylammonium bromide (benzalkonium bromide) from wastewater on magnetite nanomaterial. The adsorption investigation of benzalkonium bromide was analyzed by TOC analysis and the maximum adsorption efficiency obtained was 91.4 %. The experimental data fitted very well with Langmuir model, the correlation coefficient (R2) being 0.9792.

Wastewater treatment plants are major interface between rural and urban activities and the natural environment with problems relating to the survival and transmission of the fecal bacteria into streams and rivers. The main goal of this paper was to showed the impact of WWTPs on fecal populations bacteria and their dissemination into the aquatic ecosystems. The sampling campaigns were conducted in 2019 where the hospital and WWTPs wastewater from three cities from the south-eastern part of Romania and the surface water of their emissaries were trimestral collected. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of total and fecal coliforms indicated the efficiency of wastewater treatment processes but at the same time, the contribution of contamination with hospital effluents has been demonstrated. Also, the microbiological results showed the selectivity of the destruction of fecal coliform bacteria between wastewater and surface water.

Surfactants represent the major class of chemicals used in the composition of detergents where the predominant groups are anionic surfactants. Because of the large utilization of detergents in different activities (agricultural, industrial, domestic) an important amount of surfactants can accumulate in the domestic and industrial wastewaters, that are discarded to wastewater-treatment plants (WWTP). Furthermore, surfactants could affect the process of biological wastewater treatment due the inhibition of activated sludge and subsequently the water bodies quality through discharge of WWTPs` effluents. In addition, the soil quality decreased through various modes of sludge applied. The concentrations of organic matters discharged in the wastewater systems from Romania have raised the attention of environmental authorities regarding the toxic impact of their components such as anionic surfactants on the environment. The present paper proposed to highlight the background of organic pollution from Romania through the monitoring of the organics amount in water by Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and by the specific indicator � Anionic Surfactants (AS). Temporal (winter, spring and summer, 2019) and spatial (six areas: West, North-West, North-East, East, South and South-West) monitoring of organic matter was performed. It has been found that the spatial and temporal variation of AS concentrations were well correlated with COD load, leading to the conclusion that surfactants represented an important part of the global organic matter.

The food dyes have a potential toxic effect on aquatic organisms which trigger the necessity of their removal from industrial or urban wastewaters. Many different removal methods were investigated for this purpose, but the ozonation and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) were successfully applied in this field. However, the majority of studies emphasized that color removal by ozonation process did not report a complete mineralization of the dye and the resulted by-products may have a greater toxicity than the original compound. In this context, the paper presents a comparative ecotoxicity study of the dye Brilliant Blue FCF (BB FCF) before and after ozone treatment. The BB FCF toxic effect, before and after ozonation was investigated on crustacean (Daphnia magna), lethal or inhibitory concentrations for 50% of tested organisms (LC50 / EC50) were used to estimate the effect level. The dye showed no toxicity on crustacean (CL50/CE50]100mg/L) before ozonation. The ozonized solutions presented a high toxicity for crustaceans compared to initial dye due to the by-products occurrence.

Four coordination compounds of Pd(II), Pt(II) and Pt(IV) with usnic acid (H3AU) and 1-(o-tolyl)biguanide (TB) as ligands have been synthesized in view of their potential as antimicrobial, antifungal and antitumor agents. The metal complexes have been characterized by elemental and thermogravimetrical analyses, infrared and electronic spectra. Based on these studies, the following formulas have been proposed for the complexes: [Pd(TB)(H3AU)]PdCl4 (C1), [Pd(TB)(H2AU)] CH3COO (C2), [Pt(TB)(H2AU)Cl2]Cl (C3) and [Pt(TB)(H2AU)]Cl (C4), where H2AU is deprotonated usnic acid. The in vitro biological activities of the new complexes were tested against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853, Candida albicans ATCC 10231 and HeLa tumor cells. All complexes were found to have good biological properties and therefore they can be further explored in therapeutic applications.

The present paper aims to evaluate the toxic effects generated by conventional treated mine water as well as freshwater samples (Macris river) on primary producers (green algae, Selenastrum capricornutum) and primary consumers (planktonic crustaceans, Daphnia magna). Those organisms could be very realiable biological models to assess the toxic effect of mine waters on the environment. The green algae growth inhibition test (performed according to OECD201) and the acute immobilization test of freshwater crustaceans (Daphnia magna) (performed according to OECD 202) showed no growth inhibition or Daphnia magna immobilization / mortality during 72h and 48h incubation in presence of surface water samples from Macris river. The aqueous system with 1.89 g/L sulphate ion (SO42-) concentration, containing treated mine water mixed with freshwater sample (ratio 2.4:1), generated 100% toxic effect on crustaceans (Daphnia magna) after 48h incubation.

The objectives of the study were 1) to investigate the degree of pollution of phosphorus-loaded water using Lemna minor L. and 2) the absorption capacity of this organic compound by the Lemna minor L. aquatic plant, depending on the temperature parameter.

Various biocide technologies have been used successfully in water treatment applications for many years, but their constantly increased production and excessive usage has considerable environmental and economic impacts. In addition, the aggressive use of biocides in more and more fields such as agriculture, livestock growth, and fish farming increased the risk to public health. This measures can lead to the selection of pathogens insusceptible to the main available antimicrobials. Antimicrobials resistance is even more significant when cells are embedded in a biofilm especially in water systems. A variety of microorganisms can be found in swimming pool waters which may be introduced in a number of ways. The disinfection of bathing water is generally achieved by chlorine of chlorine-based products, but alternative more eco-friendly methods such as active oxygen are used more frequently. In this paper, compared the biocides efficiency of two compounds based on chlorine or active oxygen. Although it was assumed that the two biocides have the same mechanism of action and efficiency, we showed in this study that biocides efficiency depends on the bacterial membrane structure and the active oxygen had an increased efficacy against microorganisms compared to chlorine.

A preliminary stage in developing numerical simulations of a biological process for wastewater treatment consists in evaluating the kinetic parameters of the studied process. The study shows results obtained by experimental and numerical evaluation of mixed microalgae-bacteria granules kinetical parameters. The results showed that operational parameters modulated the main kinetic parameters of biological processes involved in removal of organic load and nutrients from wastewater such as biomass production coefficient, endogenous decomposition rate, specific peak rate of growth, semisaturation constant, specific rate of nitrification and the specific denitrification speed. These key parameters were determined over time to evaluate the performance of microbial populations in microalgae-bacteria granules in different operational conditions. Tests have been carried out for various wastewater compositions to determine the versatility and adaptability of the technology.

Absorbable organic halogens (AOX) are a global parameter which refers to a group of chemical compounds that contain one or more chlorine, bromine or iodine atoms in their molecule and can easily adsorb on activated carbon. The global concern related to the occurrence of the AOX compounds in the environment is due to their toxic and mutagenic effects on aquatic organisms and their potential role as inhibitors of microorganism growth, even at AOX low concentrations. The purpose of this study was to analyze the presence, occurrence and composition of absorbable organic halogens in wastewater and sewage sludge. In addition, their genotoxicity effect on the environment was tested on a bacterial biological model. Daily mass loading, mass emission and fate of AOX parameter were investigated in two wastewater treatment plants (wastewater and sewage sludge samples) from Romania, Galati and Iasi. Their AOX daily mass loadings (151 and 55.4 g/day/1000people) and mass emissions into the environment (47.8 and 23.5 g/day/1000 people) for both locations were correlated with the concentration level of volatile organic compounds, chlorophenols, organochlorine pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls from both wastewater and sewage sludge, respectively. Concentration levels of detected halogenated organic compounds (regulated by current standards) accounted only for a small percentage (3.70-14.5%) from the total AOX amount. An exception was observed in the case of dehydrated sludge samples where the identified compounds accounted for 80% of the AOX content from Iasi WWTP and 53% for Galati. Evaluating the genotoxic activity of AOX in sludge samples showed that genotoxicity was not induced up to 100 µg/mL dehydrated sludge.

Two spectrometric methods have been developed for quantitative simultaneous determination of procaine hydrochloride (PH·HCl), procainamide hydrochloride (PHA·HCl) and lidocaine (Lid) from synthetic mixture. The methods employed are first derivative spectrometry, using zero crossing method and multicomponent analysis which is based on the additivity law. Using first derivative spectrometry, the wavelength selected for the quantitative determination of PH·HCl was 237 nm for Lid was 242 nm and for PHA·HCl was 290 nm in mixture. The method is linear when the concentration ranged between 6.62-9.93 μg/mL for PH·HCl, 6.43-9.64 for PHA·HCl and 5.56-8.35 for Lid. The multicomponent analysis is a direct method and involves the absorbance measurements of at three different wavelengths. The molar absorption coefficients values were calculated at each wavelength and the concentration of PH·HCl, PHA·HCl and Lid from mixture was determined by solving matrix using Cramer's rule. The recovery of each compound in mixture was calculated and it is 101.4 % for PH·HCl, 100.4 % for PHA·HCl and 98.4 % for Lid.

The paper aims a review of the water quality monitoring and evaluation studies conducted at National R&D Institute for Industrial Ecology over the last ten years, at the level of aquatic ecosystem complexes in the Danube Delta. The paper will include a broad compendium of data including: a data bank of abiotic variables which control the structure and composition of biotic communities; studies of ecological status assessment; methodology development for assessing the bioaccumulation of chemical pollutants (metals) in the biota; ecotoxicological study of surface water and sediment on aquatic organisms (algae, crustaceans, rotifers); studies on the benthic invertebrate species as biological vectors for pathogens; technical / scientific support for 5 national / international project proposals; 19 papers published in international / national journals; 22 papers presented at international / national scientific conferences.