Search

Levetiracetam (LEV) has been demonstrated to improve cognitive function. Hippocampal theta rhythm (4–12 Hz) is associated with a variety of cognitively related behaviors, such as exploration in both humans and animal models. We investigated the effects of LEV on the theta rhythm in the rat hippocampal CA3 in hippocampal slices in vitro. We found that LEV increased the theta power in a dose-dependent manner. The increase in theta power can be blocked by GABAA receptor (GABAAR) or NMDA receptor (NMDAR) antagonists but not by AMPA receptor antagonist, indicating the involvement of GABAAR and NMDAR in the induction of theta activity. Interestingly, LEV enhancement of theta power can be also blocked by taurine or GABA-A agonist THIP, indicating that LEV induction of theta may be related to the indirect boosting of GABA action via reduction of extrasynaptic GABAAR activation. Furthermore, the increased theta power can be partially reduced by the mACh receptor (mAChR) antagonist atropine but not by nACh receptor antagonists, suggesting that mAChR activation provides excitatory input into local network responsible for LEV-induced theta. Our study demonstrated that LEV induced a novel theta oscillation in vitro, which may have implications in the treatment of the neuronal disorders with impaired theta oscillation and cognitive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pharmacologically-induced persistent hippocampal γ oscillation in area CA3 requires activation of α-Amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionate receptors (AMPARs). However, we demonstrated that exogenous AMPA dose-dependently inhibited carbachol (CCH)-induced γ oscillation in the CA3 area of rat hippocampal slices, but the underlying mechanism is not clear. Application of AMPARs antagonist NBQX (1 μM) did not affect γ oscillation power (γ power), nor AMPA-mediated γ power reduction. At 3 μM, NBQX had no effect on γ power but largely blocked AMPA-mediated γ power reduction. Ca2+-permeable AMPA receptor (CP-AMPAR) antagonist IEM1460 or CaMKK inhibitor STO-609 but not CaMKIIα inhibitor KN93 enhanced γ power, indicating that activation of CP-AMPAR or CaMKK negatively modulated CCH-induced γ oscillation. Either CP-AMPAR antagonist or CaMKK inhibitor alone did not affected AMPA-mediated γ power reduction, but co-administration of IEM1460 and NBQX (1 μM) largely prevented AMPA-mediated downregulation of γ suggesting that CP-AMPARs and CI-AMPARs are involved in AMPA downregulation of γ oscillation. The recurrent excitation recorded at CA3 stratum pyramidale was significantly reduced by AMPA application. Our results indicate that AMPA downregulation of γ oscillation may be related to the reduced recurrent excitation within CA3 local neuronal network due to rapid CI-AMPAR and CP-AMPAR activation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug–target interaction (DTI) prediction is an essential step in drug repositioning. A few graph neural network (GNN)-based methods have been proposed for DTI prediction using heterogeneous biological data. However, existing GNN-based methods only aggregate information from directly connected nodes restricted in a drug-related or a target-related network and are incapable of capturing high-order dependencies in the biological heterogeneous graph. In this paper, we propose a metapath-aggregated heterogeneous graph neural network (MHGNN) to capture complex structures and rich semantics in the biological heterogeneous graph for DTI prediction. Specifically, MHGNN enhances heterogeneous graph structure learning and high-order semantics learning by modeling high-order relations via metapaths. Additionally, MHGNN enriches high-order correlations between drug-target pairs (DTPs) by constructing a DTP correlation graph with DTPs as nodes. We conduct extensive experiments on three biological heterogeneous datasets. MHGNN favorably surpasses 17 state-of-the-art methods over 6 evaluation metrics, which verifies its efficacy for DTI prediction. The code is available at https://github.com/Zora-LM/MHGNN-DTI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Exogenous AHLs improve nitrogen removal performance and genes expression levels at 15 ℃. • Amended C6-HSL and C8-HSL change the correlations between anammox bacteria and others. • C8-HSL and C6-HSL upregulate genes abundances involving amino sugar and amino acid biosynthesis pathway. In this study, C6-HSL and C8-HSL were separately introduced into anammox biofilm reactors to facilitate the anammox performance at 15 ℃. After operation 138 d, total nitrogen removal efficiencies in reactors with amendment C6-HSL or C8-HSL at 15 ℃ reached 76.2% and 74.6%, respectively. Content of extracellular polymeric substances increased by 19.8%, 67.7% and 121.2% in control group, C6-HSL and C8-HSL addition group, respectively. Genes associated with nitrogen removal (i.e., hzo , hzsB , nirS , and ccsB) showed higher expression level at amendment C6-HSL or C8-HSL group. Metagenomics analysis found that amendment of C6-HSL or C8-HL resulted in an increased abundance of genes related to the tricarboxylic acid cycle, amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism, and also genes associated with amino acid biosynthesis pathways. Overall, amendment C6-HSL or C8-HSL had been confirmed as the effective method to improve the performance of anammox bioreactor at 15 ℃. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Application of multi-scale images to solvesieving. • Unsupervised clustering of points replaces image segmentation. • Demonstrates the relationship between texture and grain size. In order to achieve the screening of multi-objective coarse aggregate particles and the detection of needle-like particles, this paper targets the limestone coarse aggregate feature points obtained by Harris corner detection as the research object, using unsupervised clustering technology to intelligently cluster the corner coordinates. To achieve intelligent separation of coarse aggregates and screening of needle-like particles. At the same time, the Harris corners are sensitive to scale, the multi-scale corner information is fitted and the sieving critical value is regressed, and the needle flake determination threshold is integrated. Finally, the intelligent screening system of multi-objective coarse aggregate was integrated, and the correct recognition rate was counted. Studies have shown that the number of feature points of coarse aggregates with different particle sizes has a stable change at different resolutions. Intelligent clustering of feature points of coarse aggregates can replace image segmentation. There is a strong correlation between coarse aggregate texture information and particle size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Minkowski distance is a distance measure that generalizes a wide range of other distances such as the Euclidean and the Hamming distance. In this paper, we develop a new decision making model using induced ordered weighted averaging operators and the Minkowski distance of the fuzzy linguistic variables. Then, the authors introduce a new aggregation operator called the fuzzy linguistic induced ordered weighted averaging Minkowski distance (FLIOWAMD) operator by defining a fuzzy linguistic variable distance. It is an induced generalized aggregation operator that utilizes induced OWA operator, Minkowski distance measures and uncertain information represented as fuzzy linguistic variables. Some of its main properties and particular cases are studied. And a further generalization that uses quasi-arithmetic means also is presented. A method based on the FLIOWAMD operator for decision making is presented. At last, we end the paper with a numerical example of the new method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Exogenous FA stimulate anammox performance and genes expression at 15 ℃. • Candidatus Kuenenia become more competitive with FA addition. • FA stimulate the complexity and interactive relationship of microbial communities. • FA upregulate some biosynthesis pathways, e.g., amino sugar metabolic and redox reactions. The role of fulvic acid (FA) on the anammox system at 15 ℃ was investigated. After operation for 113 days, total inorganic nitrogen removal efficiency in FA amendment reactor achieved to 58.6% on average, higher than that of control group (42.1%). Anammox-related functional genes, i.e., hzo and hzs , also demonstrated higher expression level after introduction of FA. It was observed that Candidatus Kuenenia became more competitive than Candidatus Brocadia with the existence of FA at 15 ℃. Also, co-occurrence analysis showed that FA stimulated the complexity and interactive relationship of microbial communities in the anammox system. Metagenomics analysis revealed that FA introduction stimulated relative abundances of genes in central pathway of tricarboxylic acid cycle such as ACO, IDH, OGDH, SCS, FUM, and MDH. Meanwhile, metabolomics analysis revealed that metabolites related to amino sugar metabolic pathways (glucose 1-phosphate, UDP-D-glucuronate, UDP) and redox reactions (NAD+ and NADH) improved in the FA amendment reactor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study chose Oak woodchips and gravel as media filter to enhance the denitrification in the bioretention system (saturated zone 7.7 L) treating synthetic stormwater runoff. It revealed that the denitrification process mainly occurred during the drying phase and enlarging volume of saturated zones to retain more stormwater during storm event was the direct method to promote nitrogen removal of the bioretention system. Nevertheless, it was noted that the nitrogen and dissolved organic carbon would be released into the effluent during the wetting period. The denitrification rate with different nitrate nitrogen (NO 3 –N) concentrations did not show the obvious change with zero order kinetics constant of 2.91 mg/L∙d on average. Furthermore, it confirmed that woodchips were degraded and converted to volatile fatty acids (VFAs), especially acetic acid as carbon source, further utilized by the denitrifying bacteria, such as Dechloromonas , Acidoborax , Pseudomonas , Denitratisoma and Acinetobacter. In addition, genera of Lachnospiraceae and Lactobacillus , which had the ability to degrade the macromolecular organic components into low molecular VFAs, were observed in the woodchips bioretention system. [Display omitted] • The denitrification mainly occurs at drying phase. • Larger saturated zone trends to better denitrification performance. • VFAs are the main carbon source for denitrifiers. • Lachnospiraceae and Lactobacillus , which degrade macromolecular organic components into low molecular VFAs, are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomineralization is the key process governing the biogeochemical cycling of multivalent metals in the environment. Although some sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) are recently recognized to respire metal ions, the role of their extracellular proteins in the immobilization and redox transformation of antimony (Sb) remains elusive. Here, a model strain Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough (DvH) was used to study microbial extracellular proteins of functions and possible mechanisms in Sb(V) biomineralization. We found that the functional groups (N-H, C O, O-C O, NH 2 -R and RCOH/RCNH 2) of extracellular proteins could adsorb and fix Sb(V) through electrostatic attraction and chelation. DvH could rapidly reduce Sb(V) adsorbed on the cell surface and form amorphous nanometer-sized stibnite and/or antimony trioxide, respectively with sulfur and oxygen. Proteomic analysis indicated that some extracellular proteins involved in electron transfer increased significantly (p < 0.05) at 1.8 mM Sb(V). The upregulated flavoproteins could serve as a redox shuttle to transfer electrons from c -type cyto c hrome networks to reduce Sb(V). Also, the upregulated extracellular proteins involved in sulfur reduction, amino acid transport and protein synthesis processes, and the downregulated flagellar proteins would contribute to a better adaption under 1.8 mM Sb(V). This study advances our understanding of how microbial extracellular proteins promote Sb biomineralization in DvH. [Display omitted] • Extracellular proteins play a key role in Sb(V) immobilization and transformation. • Some functional groups of extracellular proteins adsorb and fix Sb(V). • Desulfovibrio vulgaris rapidly reduce Sb(V) in the presence or absence of SO 4 2-. • The flavoproteins serve as a redox shuttle to transfer electrons to reduce Sb(V). • The upregulated extracellular proteins contribute to better adaption to Sb stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]