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BACKGROUND: Ticks are disease vectors that are a matter of worldwide concern. Antibiotic treatments have been used to explore the interactions between ticks and their symbiotic microorganisms. In addition to altering the host microbial community, antibiotics can have toxic effects on the host. RESULTS: In the tick Haemaphysalis longicornis, engorged females showed reproductive disruption after microinjection of tetracycline. Multi‐omics approaches were implemented to unravel the mechanisms of tick reproductive inhibition in this study. There were no significant changes in bacterial density in the whole ticks on Day (D)2 or D4 after tetracycline treatment, whereas the bacterial microbial community was significantly altered, especially on D4. The relative abundances of the bacteria Staphylococcus, Bacillus and Pseudomonas decreased after tetracycline treatment, whereas the relative abundances of Coxiella and Rhodococcus increased. Ovarian transcriptional analysis revealed a cumulative effect of tetracycline treatment, as there was a significant increase in the number of differentially expressed genes with treatment time and a higher number of downregulated genes. The tick physiological pathways including lysosome, extracellular matrix (ECM)–receptor interaction, biosynthesis of ubiquinone and other terpenoids‐quinones, insect hormone biosynthesis, and focal adhesion were significantly inhibited after 4 days of tetracycline treatment. Metabolite levels were altered after tetracycline treatment and the differences increased with treatment time. The differential metabolites were involved in a variety of physiological pathways; the downregulated metabolites were significantly enriched in the nicotinate and nicotinamide metabolism, galactose metabolism, and ether lipid metabolism pathways. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that tetracycline inhibits tick reproduction through the regulation of tick bacterial communities, gene expression and metabolic levels. The results may provide new strategies for tick control. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hand gesture plays an important role in many circumstances, which is one of the most common interactive methods in daily life, especially for disabled people. Human–machine interaction is another popular research topic to realize direct and efficient control, making machines intelligent and maneuverable. Here, a special human–machine interaction system is proposed and namedas computer‐vision (CV) based gesture‐metasurface interaction (GMI) system, which can be used for both direct beam manipulations and real‐time wireless communications. The GMI system first needs to select its working mode according to the gesture command to determine whether to perform beam manipulations or wireless communications, and then validate the permission for further operation by recognizing unlocking gesture to ensure security. Both beam manipulation and wireless communication functions are validated experimentally, which show that the GMI system can not only realize real‐time switching and remote control of different beams through gesture command, but also communicate with a remote computer in real time by translating the gesture language to text message. The proposed non‐contact GMI system has the advantages of good interactivity, high flexibility, and multiple functions, which can find potential applications in community security, gesture‐command smart home, barrier‐free communications, and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we showed an example of acid-directed hydrothermal synthesis of three Cd-based metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) under similar conditions, namely, [Cd(TIDB)(AA)0.5(NO3)]n (1), [Cd3(TIDB)2(AA)2(H2O)2(HCOO)2]n (2), and {[Cd4(TIDB)(AA)4(H2O)5](C2H5OH)2(H2O)2}n (3) (TIDB = 1,3,5-tri(1H-imidazol-1-yl)benzene, H2AA = anthracene-9,10-dicarboxylic acid). Compound 1 was synthesized by the introduction of HNO3 as a structure-directing agent. It has 2D coordination networks with the 3,4-c bey topology. The porous 3D supramolecular framework in compound 1 is stabilized by H-bonds. Compound 2 was formed with the use of a HCOOH agent. It has a 3D coordination network with a new 3,4,5-c underlying net topology, and it is also porous. Compound 3 was obtained using a CH3COOH agent. It has a disordered non-porous 3D coordination network. Because 3 was hard to purify, 1 and 2 were chosen for further property investigation. On the one hand, fluorescence studies showed that 1 and 2 are both blue-emitting MOFs with quantum yields of 2.3% and 0.8%, respectively. On the other hand, CO2 cycloaddition performance was also tested, which revealed that 2 has a superior catalytic conversion of epoxybutane at 60 °C and 1 atm with a high yield of up to 95.6%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treating neuropathic pain is a major clinical challenge, and the underlying mechanisms of neuropathic pain remain elusive. We hypothesized that neuropathic pain--inducing nerve injury may elicit neuronal alterations that recapitulate [...]

Ticks are obligate blood-sucking arthropods, which can feed on mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. Ticks are reservoirs for various pathogens which they transmit to both humans and animals. The tick-borne diseases induced by these pathogens are not only harmful to human and animal health, but also cause significant economic losses to livestock farmers. Research on ticks is, therefore, both medically and economically important. This paper reviews previous research on the diversity of tick-borne pathogens, tick-pathogen-host interaction mechanisms, tick-borne disease prevention and control, tick symbiont diversity, function and the mechanisms underlying tick-symbiont interactions. An increase in the amount of research on ticks and technological advances has resulted in an obvious improvement in the quality of research and information available on these pests. These results can not only reveal more of the biology of ticks, but also help the prevention and control of tick-borne diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]