At present, clinical interventions for chronic kidney disease are very limited, and most patients rely on dialysis to sustain their lives for a long time. However, studies on the gut-kidney axis have shown that the gut microbiota is a potentially effective target for correcting or controlling chronic kidney disease. This study showed that berberine, a natural drug with low oral availability, significantly ameliorated chronic kidney disease by altering the composition of the gut microbiota and inhibiting the production of gut-derived uremic toxins, including p-cresol. Furthermore, berberine reduced the content of p-cresol sulfate in plasma mainly by lowering the abundance of g_Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1 and inhibiting the tyrosine-p-cresol pathway of the intestinal flora. Meanwhile, berberine increased the butyric acid producing bacteria and the butyric acid content in feces, while decreased the renal toxic trimethylamine N-oxide. These findings suggest that berberine may be a therapeutic drug with significant potential to ameliorate chronic kidney disease through the gut-kidney axis.

Specnuezhenide(SNZ)is among the main components of Fructus Ligustri Lucidi,which has anti-inflammation,anti-oxidation,and anti-tumor effect.The low bioavailability makes it difficult to explain the mechanism of pharmacological effect of SNZ.In this study,the role of the gut microbiota in the metabolism and pharmacokinetics characteristics of SNZ as well as the pharmacological meaning were explored.SNZ can be rapidly metabolized by the gut microbiome,and two intestinal bacterial metabolites of SNZ,salidroside and tyrosol,were discovered.In addition,carboxylesterase may be the main intestinal bacterial enzyme that mediates its metabolism.At the same time,no metabolism was found in the incubation system of SNZ with liver microsomes or liver homogenate,indicating that the gut microbiota is the main part involved in the metabolism of SNZ.In addition,pharmacokinetic studies showed that salidroside and tyrosol can be detected in plasma in the presence of gut microbiota.Interestingly,tumor development was inhibited in a colorectal tumor mice model administered orally with SNZ,which indicated that SNZ exhibited potential to inhibit tumor growth,and tissue distribution studies showed that salidroside and tyrosol could be distributed in tumor tissues.At the same time,SNZ modulated the structure of gut microbiota and fungal group,which may be the mechanism governing the antitumoral activity of SNZ.Furthermore,SNZ stimulates the secretion of short-chain fatty acids by intestinal flora in vitro and in vivo.In the future,targeting gut microbes and the interaction between natural products and gut microbes could lead to the discovery and development of new drugs.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD)has developed into the most common chronic liver disease and can lead to liver cancer.Our laboratory previously developed a novel prescription for NAFLD,"Eight Zhes Decoction"(EZD),which has shown good curative effects in clinical practice.However,the pharmaco-dynamic material basis and mechanism have not yet been revealed.A strategy integrating lipidomics,network pharmacology and pharmacokinetics was used to reveal the active components and mecha-nisms of EZD against NAFLD.The histopathological results showed that EZD attenuated the degrees of collagen deposition and steatosis in the livers of nonalcoholic steatofibrosis model mice.Furthermore,glycerophospholipid metabolism,arachidonic acid metabolism,glycerolipid metabolism and linoleic acid metabolism with phospholipase A2 group IVA(PLA2G4A)and cytochrome P450 as the core targets and 12,13-cis-epoxyoctadecenoic acid,12(S)-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid,leukotriene B4,prostaglandin E2,phosphatidylcholines(PCs)and triacylglycerols(TGs)as the main lipids were found to be involved in the treatment of NAFLD by EZD.Importantly,naringenin,artemetin,canadine,and bicuculline were iden-tified as the active ingredients of EZD against NAFLD;in particular,naringenin reduces PC consumption by inhibiting the expression of PLA2G4A and thus promotes sufficient synthesis of very-low-density lipoprotein to transport excess TGs in the liver.This research provides valuable data and theoretical support for the application of EZD against NAFLD.

Objective:To investigate the main factors that influence ALT abnormalities in workers exposed to benzene.Methods:In June 2022, data of 613 enterprises with benzene hazards and 585 enterprises with non-benzene hazards in Tianjin in 2021 were collected, and occupational health examination data of 13018 workers with benzene exposure and 13018 workers with non-benzene exposure were collected, and the region, enterprise type, industry classification and enterprise scale of the employer were analyzed. And occupational health examination data of workers with benzene exposure and non-benzene exposure. The effects of personal general situation, occupational history, enterprise information and benzene exposure on alanine aminotransferase were evaluated by additive interaction.Results:Compared with the group of non-benzene-exposed workers, the personal general conditions, occupational history, company information were higher in the benzene-exposed workers, and the differences were statistically significant ( P<0.05). The quantitative analysis of additive interaction found that gender ( RERI=2.632, 95% CI: 1.966-3.297; AP=0.383, 95% CI: 0.311-0.456; S=1.813, 95% CI: 1.530-2.149), age ( RERI=1.142, 95% CI: 0.928-1.356; AP=0.462, 95% CI: 0.371-0.552; S=4.461, 95% CI: 1.800-11.053), length of service ( RERI=-1.199, 95% CI: -1.653--0.745; AP=-0.456, 95% CI: -0.640--0.271; S=0.576, 95% CI: 0.479-0.693), region ( RERI=0.421, 95% CI: 0.148-0.694; AP=0.161, 95% CI: 0.053-0.268; S=1.350, 95% CI: 1.057-1.726), industry classification ( RERI=0.627, 95% CI: 0.345-0.910; AP=0.232, 95% CI: 0.132-0.332; S=1.584, 95% CI: 1.233-2.035) and benzene exposure had a statistically significant additive interaction with abnormal serum ALT. Conclusion:Emphasis should be placed on male workers under the age of 40 in the petrochemical industry, oil storage and transportation, and power production, so as to protect the health of workers more specifically and reduce the risk of disability due to disease.

Objective:To investigate the main factors that influence ALT abnormalities in workers exposed to benzene.Methods:In June 2022, data of 613 enterprises with benzene hazards and 585 enterprises with non-benzene hazards in Tianjin in 2021 were collected, and occupational health examination data of 13018 workers with benzene exposure and 13018 workers with non-benzene exposure were collected, and the region, enterprise type, industry classification and enterprise scale of the employer were analyzed. And occupational health examination data of workers with benzene exposure and non-benzene exposure. The effects of personal general situation, occupational history, enterprise information and benzene exposure on alanine aminotransferase were evaluated by additive interaction.Results:Compared with the group of non-benzene-exposed workers, the personal general conditions, occupational history, company information were higher in the benzene-exposed workers, and the differences were statistically significant ( P<0.05). The quantitative analysis of additive interaction found that gender ( RERI=2.632, 95% CI: 1.966-3.297; AP=0.383, 95% CI: 0.311-0.456; S=1.813, 95% CI: 1.530-2.149), age ( RERI=1.142, 95% CI: 0.928-1.356; AP=0.462, 95% CI: 0.371-0.552; S=4.461, 95% CI: 1.800-11.053), length of service ( RERI=-1.199, 95% CI: -1.653--0.745; AP=-0.456, 95% CI: -0.640--0.271; S=0.576, 95% CI: 0.479-0.693), region ( RERI=0.421, 95% CI: 0.148-0.694; AP=0.161, 95% CI: 0.053-0.268; S=1.350, 95% CI: 1.057-1.726), industry classification ( RERI=0.627, 95% CI: 0.345-0.910; AP=0.232, 95% CI: 0.132-0.332; S=1.584, 95% CI: 1.233-2.035) and benzene exposure had a statistically significant additive interaction with abnormal serum ALT. Conclusion:Emphasis should be placed on male workers under the age of 40 in the petrochemical industry, oil storage and transportation, and power production, so as to protect the health of workers more specifically and reduce the risk of disability due to disease.

Objective:To analyze and summarize the epidemiological and molecular characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant, a variant of concern (VOC), in Henan Province in 2021 in order to provide a basis for epidemic prevention and control.Methods:According to the feedback of sequencing results from Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 111 patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 Delta VOC were selected from the Henan imported and local cases in 2021. Basic patient information was obtained from the pandemic website. The differences in age, gender, vaccination history, the number of vaccine doses and different clinical types were analyzed. Moreover, the differences in RT-qPCR results of ORF1 ab gene and N gene Ct values between cases of different genders and symptoms were analyzed statistically. Sequencing results of the nucleotide and S protein mutation sites were analyzed. Results:There was no significant difference in the gender distribution of 111 cases between different age groups (χ 2=2.217, P=0.529). There was also no significant difference in clinical types between patients with different vaccination history (χ 2=12.074, P=0.209). The Ct values of most SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid-positive specimens were distributed in the lower range and the viral loads were higher. The difference in the Ct value of ORF1 ab gene between different gender groups was not statistically significant (χ 2=1.646, P=0.439), but were significantly different among asymptomatic, mild, normal, and severe cases (χ 2=13.257, P=0.039). There was no significant difference in N gene Ct value among cases of different genders or different symptoms (all P>0.05). The 111 patients in this study were mainly found through close-contact screening and full-staff nucleic acid screening and accounted for 62.2% (69 cases) of the total. The sequencing length coverage was basically greater than 99% (accounting for 90.1%, 100/111); the total number of nucleotide mutation sites was mostly in the range of 46-50 (86.4%, 89/103); the total number of S protein mutation sites was mostly 12 (82.5%, 85/103). The 103 Delta mutants all contained nine mutation sites, which were T19R, R158G, L452R, T478K, D614G, P681R, D950N, E156del and F157del, with a mutation rate of 100%. Conclusions:People were highly susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 Delta in Henan Province in 2021. High viral load and increase in the ORF1 ab gene load would aggravate the clinical symptoms.

Marine fungi are important members of the marine microbiome, which have been paid growing attention by scientists in recent years. The secondary metabolites of marine fungi have been reported to contain rich and diverse compounds with novel structures (Chen et al., 2019). Aspergillus terreus, the higher level marine fungus of the Aspergillus genus (family of Trichocomaceae, order of Eurotiales, class of Eurotiomycetes, phylum of Ascomycota), is widely distributed in both sea and land. In our previous study, the coral-derived A. terreus strain C23-3 exhibited potential in producing other biologically active (with antioxidant, acetylcholinesterase inhibition, and anti-inflammatory activity) compounds like arylbutyrolactones, territrems, and isoflavones, and high sensitivity to the chemical regulation of secondary metabolism (Yang et al., 2019, 2020; Nie et al., 2020; Ma et al., 2021). Moreover, we have isolated two different benzaldehydes, including a benzaldehyde with a novel structure, from A. terreus C23-3 which was derived from Pectinia paeonia of Xuwen, Zhanjiang City, Guangdong Province, China.
Acetylcholinesterase/metabolism* ; Animals ; Anthozoa/microbiology* ; Anti-Inflammatory Agents/pharmacology* ; Aspergillus/chemistry* ; Benzaldehydes/pharmacology* ; Mice ; RAW 264.7 Cells ; Signal Transduction

O ⁶-carboxymethyl guanine(O ⁶-CMG) is a highly mutagenic alkylation product of DNA that causes gastrointestinal cancer in organisms. Existing studies used mutant Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) nanopore assisted by Phi29 DNA polymerase to localize it. Recently, machine learning technology has been widely used in the analysis of nanopore sequencing data. But the machine learning always need a large number of data labels that have brought extra work burden to researchers, which greatly affects its practicability. Accordingly, this paper proposes a nano-Unsupervised-Deep-Learning method (nano-UDL) based on an unsupervised clustering algorithm to identify methylation events in nanopore data automatically. Specially, nano-UDL first uses the deep AutoEncoder to extract features from the nanopore dataset and then applies the MeanShift clustering algorithm to classify data. Besides, nano-UDL can extract the optimal features for clustering by joint optimizing the clustering loss and reconstruction loss. Experimental results demonstrate that nano-UDL has relatively accurate recognition accuracy on the O ⁶-CMG dataset and can accurately identify all sequence segments containing O ⁶-CMG. In order to further verify the robustness of nano-UDL, hyperparameter sensitivity verification and ablation experiments were carried out in this paper. Using machine learning to analyze nanopore data can effectively reduce the additional cost of manual data analysis, which is significant for many biological studies, including genome sequencing.
Deep Learning ; Guanine ; Nanopore Sequencing ; Nanopores ; Porins/genetics*

Objective:To analyze the dynamic changes and possible influencing factors of anti-2019 novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) neutralizing antibody in confirmed Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases.Methods:Microneutralization was used to test the anti-2019-nCoV neutralizing antibody. Excel 2007 and SPSS 22.0 were used for data processing and analysis.Results:There were 420 serum samples collected from 155 confirmed COVID-19 cases. These serum samples contained acute phase serum, convalescent phase serum and serum from cases recovered for about six months. The sampling time was 0-221 days after the onset of COVID-19. The geometric mean titer (GMT) of anti-2019-nCoV neutralizing antibody was 1∶13 at 1 week, and 1∶31 at 2 week. The titers of anti-2019-nCoV neutralizing antibody of individual cases were still<1∶4 on the 15 th day. The GMT was all over 1: 52 (13×4) at 6-32 week. Taking 1: 64 as the cut-off point, the serum anti-2019-nCoV neutralizing antibody positive rates was 30.56% in acute phase serum samples (0-14 d, 0-2 w), 82.31% in convalescent phase serum samples (36-63 d, 6-9 w) and 86.52% in serum samples from cases recovered for about six months (183-210 d, 27-30 w). Statistical analysis showed that there was no significant difference in anti-2019-nCoV neutralizing antibody levels at the other weeks except 1-2 week ( χ2=9.270, P=0.931), there was no statistically differences in gender, age and occupation of the cases, and also between the normal and mild cases ( P>0.05). Conclusions:The serum anti-2019-nCoV neutralizing antibody level is only statistically correlated with the disease progression of COVID-19, and maintain the protective level from 3 to 30 week.

Objective:To analyze the pathogenic bacteria and epidemiological characteristics in children with respiratory tract infection in Tianjin area.Methods:Retrospective case analysis was performed on 2 392 hospitalized children in the wards of respiratory diseases, intensive care unit and special care ward of Tianjin Children′s Hospital from June 2018 to May 2019. Thirteen pathogenic bacteria in deep sputum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples were detected by loop-mediated isothermal amplification. The laboratory data and clinical characteristics of the infected children were analyzed, and the comparison between groups was performed by t test or χ 2 test. Results:Among 2 392 cases, 1 407 were males and 985 females. There was no significant difference in the detection rate between males and females (72.5% (1 020/1 407) vs.74.2% (731/985), χ 2=0.87, P=0.35). A total of 1 751 strains and 12 kinds of positive respiratory pathogens were detected, with a detection rate of 73.2%. Among them, 913 (38.2%) strains were Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MP), 514 (21.5%) were Streptococcus pneumoniae (Sp), 381 (15.9%) were Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and 279 (11.7%) were Hemophilus influenzae (Hi). There was significant difference in the detection rate of pathogens among different age groups (χ2=83.67, P<0.01). The positive rate of alveolar lavage fluid group was higher than that of deep sputum fluid group [81.6% (614/752) vs. 69.3% (1 137/1 640), χ 2=39.89, P<0.01]. The length of hospital stay of children infected with different pathogens was significantly different (all P<0.01). There was significant difference in duration of fever among children infected with different pathogens (χ2=228.69,103.56, 3.96, 27.38,24.50,41.66, all P<0.05). There were 63 (7.7%) cases of atelectasis, 260 (31.9%) cases of pleurisy and 120 (14.7%) cases of pleural effusion in MP children. Children with Sma were most likely to involve the heart system (2/9), and children with Eco infection had a higher incidence of complications such as those of blood (3/19), urinary (2/19), digestive systems(4/19), systemic inflammatory response syndrome and sepsis (1/19). Conclusions:The main bacterial pathogens of respiratory tract infection in children in Tianjin were MP, Sp, MRSA and Hi. It is suggested that clinicians should not only pay attention to the respiratory symptoms of children, but also pay attention to the complications caused by bacterial pathogen infection, so as to prevent the deterioration of the disease and improve the prognosis.