Dynamic cellular changes in acute kidney injury caused by different ischemia time

iScience

2023 May 01

Shan, D;Wang, Y;Chang, Y;Cui, H;Tao, M;Sheng, Y;Kang, H;Jia, P;Song, J;
| DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106646

Ischemia reperfusion injury (IRI), often related to surgical procedures, is one of the important causes of acute kidney injury (AKI). To decipher the dynamic process of AKI caused by IRI (with prolonged ischemia phase), we performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) of clinically relevant IRI murine model with different ischemic intervals. We discovered that Slc5a2hi proximal tubular cells were susceptible to AKI and highly expressed neutral amino acid transporter gene Slc6a19, which was dramatically decreased over the time course. With the usage of mass spectrometry-based metabolomic analysis, we detected that the level of neutral amino acid isoleucine dropped off in AKI mouse plasma metabolites. And the reduction of plasma isoleucine was also verified in patients with cardiac surgery-associated acute kidney injury (CSA-AKI). The findings advanced the understanding of dynamic process of AKI and introduced reduction of isoleucine as a potential biomarker for CSA-AKI.

Immune priming prior to pathogen exposure sheds light on the relationship between host, microbiome and pathogen in disease

Royal Society open science

2023 Feb 01

Kaganer, AW;Ossiboff, RJ;Keith, NI;Schuler, KL;Comizzoli, P;Hare, MP;Fleischer, RC;Gratwicke, B;Bunting, EM;
PMID: 36756057 | DOI: 10.1098/rsos.220810

Dynamic interactions between host, pathogen and host-associated microbiome dictate infection outcomes. Pathogens including Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) threaten global biodiversity, but conservation efforts are hindered by limited understanding of amphibian host, Bd and microbiome interactions. We conducted a vaccination and infection experiment using Eastern hellbender salamanders (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis alleganiensis) challenged with Bd to observe infection, skin microbial communities and gene expression of host skin, pathogen and microbiome throughout the experiment. Most animals survived high Bd loads regardless of their vaccination status and vaccination did not affect pathogen load, but host gene expression differed based on vaccination. Oral vaccination (exposure to killed Bd) stimulated immune gene upregulation while topically and sham-vaccinated animals did not significantly upregulate immune genes. In early infection, topically vaccinated animals upregulated immune genes but orally and sham-vaccinated animals downregulated immune genes. Bd increased pathogenicity-associated gene expression in late infection when Bd loads were highest. The microbiome was altered by Bd, but there was no correlation between anti-Bd microbe abundance or richness and pathogen burden. Our observations suggest that hellbenders initially generate a vigorous immune response to Bd, which is ineffective at controlling disease and is subsequently modulated. Interactions with antifungal skin microbiota did not influence disease progression.

Quantitative Analysis of Inflammatory Uterine Lesions of Pregnant Gilts with Digital Image Analysis Following Experimental PRRSV-1 Infection

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI

2023 Feb 24

Horváth, DG;Abonyi-Tóth, Z;Papp, M;Szász, AM;Rümenapf, T;Knecht, C;Kreutzmann, H;Ladinig, A;Balka, G;
PMID: 36899686 | DOI: 10.3390/ani13050830

Reproductive disorders caused by porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus-1 are not yet fully characterized. We report QuPath-based digital image analysis to count inflammatory cells in 141 routinely, and 35 CD163 immunohistochemically stained endometrial slides of vaccinated or unvaccinated pregnant gilts inoculated with a high or low virulent PRRSV-1 strain. To illustrate the superior statistical feasibility of the numerical data determined by digital cell counting, we defined the association between the number of these cells and endometrial, placental, and fetal features. There was strong concordance between the two manual scorers. Distributions of total cell counts and endometrial and placental qPCR results differed significantly between examiner1's endometritis grades. Total counts' distribution differed significantly between groups, except for the two unvaccinated. Higher vasculitis scores were associated with higher endometritis scores, and higher total cell counts were expected with high vasculitis/endometritis scores. Cell number thresholds of endometritis grades were determined. A significant correlation between fetal weights and total counts was shown in unvaccinated groups, and a significant positive correlation was found between these counts and endometrial qPCR results. We revealed significant negative correlations between CD163+ counts and qPCR results of the unvaccinated group infected with the highly virulent strain. Digital image analysis was efficiently applied to assess endometrial inflammation objectively.

Evaluation of the Antiseizure Activity of Endemic Plant Halfordia kendack Guillaumin and Its Main Constituent, Halfordin, on a Zebrafish Pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-Induced Seizure Model

International journal of molecular sciences

2023 Jan 30

Skiba, A;Kozioł, E;Luca, SV;Budzyńska, B;Podlasz, P;Van Der Ent, W;Shojaeinia, E;Esguerra, CV;Nour, M;Marcourt, L;Wolfender, JL;Skalicka-Woźniak, K;
PMID: 36768918 | DOI: 10.3390/ijms24032598

Epilepsy is a neurological disease that burdens over 50 million people worldwide. Despite the considerable number of available antiseizure medications, it is estimated that around 30% of patients still do not respond to available treatment. Herbal medicines represent a promising source of new antiseizure drugs. This study aimed to identify new drug lead candidates with antiseizure activity from endemic plants of New Caledonia. The crude methanolic leaf extract of Halfordia kendack Guillaumin (Rutaceae) significantly decreased (75 μg/mL and 100 μg/mL) seizure-like behaviour compared to sodium valproate in a zebrafish pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-induced acute seizure model. The main coumarin compound, halfordin, was subsequently isolated by liquid-liquid chromatography and subjected to locomotor, local field potential (LFP), and gene expression assays. Halfordin (20 μM) significantly decreased convulsive-like behaviour in the locomotor and LFP analysis (by 41.4% and 60%, respectively) and significantly modulated galn, and penka gene expression.

Incorporating Molecular Classification When Stratifying the Survival Risk of Patients with High-Grade Endometrial Carcinomas

Journal of clinical medicine

2023 Jan 09

Zong, L;Mo, S;Sun, Z;Lu, Z;Chen, J;Yu, S;Xiang, Y;
PMID: 36675462 | DOI: 10.3390/jcm12020530

Assessing survival risk in patients with high-grade endometrial carcinomas has remained challenging. We aimed to investigate the distribution of molecular subtypes and assess their prognostic role in a large cohort of 355 patients with high-grade endometrial carcinoma. Molecular classification was determined using DNA polymerase epsilon (POLE) sequencing as well as immunohistochemical staining for p53 and mismatch repair (MMR) proteins. Endometrial carcinomas were stratified into four subtypes: POLE ultramutated, MMR-deficient, non-specific molecular profile (NSMP), and p53-mutant. This study included 177 and 178 patients with endometrioid and non-endometrioid carcinomas, respectively. Forty-two patients (11.8%) were categorized as POLE ultramutated, 106 (29.9%) as MMR-deficient, 128 (36.1%) as p53-mutant, and 79 (22.2%) as NSMP. Patients of different molecular subtypes had distinct survival times; molecular classification, but not histotype, was significantly associated with survival outcomes. When incorporating molecular classification into the stratification model, 52 patients (15.5%) switched risk groups, with 40 (11.9%) shifting to a lower risk for having a POLE mutation and 12 (3.6%) shifting to a higher risk owing to p53-mutant status. Molecular classification may provide more accurate prognostic information among patients with high-grade endometrial carcinomas and improve their stratification for purposes of clinical management.

Effective Dynamic Taint Analysis of Java Web Applications

Atlantis Highlights in Intelligent Systems

2022 Dec 20

Huang, Y;He, C;He, C;Wang, C;
| DOI: 10.2991/978-94-6463-030-5_97

With the rapid development of the Internet, network security is the most important issue for businesses and people. Vulnerabilities caused by user input and not treated harmlessly are the easiest to be exploited by hackers. In this paper, a tool named FastTaint is implemented, by using the principle of dynamic taint analysis, the vulnerability detection rate is high and the false positive rate is extremely low. First, the FastTaint tool is based on the proxy mode of behavior injection mode; then there are different instrumentation strategies for Source, Propagator, Sanitizer and Sink to make the detection range more accurate; finally, the taint is marked at the object level and the vulnerability is determined at the leaking point. The FastTaint tool abandons the traditional firewall that relies on the characteristics of requests to detect attacks and creatively uses Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) technology. It is injected directly into the protected application’s service to provide real-time, function-level protection, and can update the strategy without updating and detect or prevent unknown vulnerabilities without updating the protected application’s code. Experiments show that this tool can quickly and efficiently detect multiple vulnerabilities without requiring the source code, FastTaint can detect multiple vulnerabilities, such as SQL Injection, Cross-Site Request Scripting, Path Traversal, Insecure Forwarding, XPath Injection, OS Injection, SSRF and other vulnerabilities.

Recalibrating vision-for-action requires years after sight restoration from congenital cataracts

eLife

2022 Oct 24

Senna, I;Piller, S;Ben-Zion, I;Ernst, MO;
PMID: 36278872 | DOI: 10.7554/eLife.78734

Being able to perform adept goal-directed actions requires predictive, feed-forward control, including a mapping between the visually estimated target locations and the motor commands reaching for them. When the mapping is perturbed, e.g., due to muscle fatigue or optical distortions, we are quickly able to recalibrate the sensorimotor system to update this mapping. Here, we investigated whether early visual and visuomotor experience is essential for developing sensorimotor recalibration. To this end, we assessed young individuals deprived of pattern vision due to dense congenital bilateral cataracts who were surgically treated for sight restoration only years after birth. We compared their recalibration performance to such distortion to that of age-matched sighted controls. Their sensorimotor recalibration performance was impaired right after surgery. This finding cannot be explained by their still lower visual acuity alone, since blurring vision in controls to a matching degree did not lead to comparable behavior. Nevertheless, the recalibration ability of cataract-treated participants gradually improved with time after surgery. Thus, the lack of early pattern vision affects visuomotor recalibration. However, this ability is not lost but slowly develops after sight restoration, highlighting the importance of sensorimotor experience gained late in life.

Expression profiles of potentially angio-modulative microRNAs in the mouse model of oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR)

Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science

2023 Jan 01

Busch, M;Wenzel, A;Pfeil, JM;Stahl, A;

METHODS : To induce OIR, C57BL/6J mice were exposed to 75% oxygen from postnatal day (p) 7 to p12 and then maintained under normal room air conditions. Control mice were kept under room air conditions throughout. At p12, p17, and p25, one eye of each mouse was harvested to prepare retinal flatmounts to analyze retinal vascular changes. From the contralateral eye, total RNA was isolated and reverse transcribed into cDNA for relative quantification of miRNA expression using qRT-PCR. An in situ hybridization technique (miRNAscopeTM) was used to visualize miR-21-5p expression on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded mouse eye tissue sections.

Dual-specificity RNA aptamers enable manipulation of target-specific O-GlcNAcylation and unveil functions of O-GlcNAc on β-catenin

Cell

2023 Jan 19

Zhu, Y;Hart, GW;
PMID: 36626902 | DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.12.016

O-GlcNAc is a dynamic post-translational modification (PTM) that regulates protein functions. In studying the regulatory roles of O-GlcNAc, a major roadblock is the inability to change O-GlcNAcylation on a single protein at a time. Herein, we developed a dual RNA-aptamer-based approach that simultaneously targeted O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) and β-catenin, the key transcription factor of the Wnt signaling pathway, to selectively increase O-GlcNAcylation of the latter without affecting other OGT substrates. Using the OGT/β-catenin dual-specificity aptamers, we found that O-GlcNAcylation of β-catenin stabilizes the protein by inhibiting its interaction with β-TrCP. O-GlcNAc also increases β-catenin's interaction with EZH2, recruits EZH2 to promoters, and dramatically alters the transcriptome. Further, by coupling riboswitches or an inducible expression system to aptamers, we enabled inducible regulation of protein-specific O-GlcNAcylation. Together, our findings demonstrate the efficacy and versatility of dual-specificity aptamers for regulating O-GlcNAcylation on individual proteins.

Cell-specific RNA purification to study translatomes of mouse central nervous system

STAR protocols

2022 Jun 17

Bravo-Ferrer, I;Khakh, BS;Díaz-Castro, B;
PMID: 35620074 | DOI: 10.1016/j.xpro.2022.101397

Cell-specific RNA sequencing has revolutionized the study of cell biology. Here, we present a protocol to assess cell-specific translatomes of genetically targeted cell types. We focus on astrocytes and describe RNA purification using RiboTag tools. Unlike single-cell RNA sequencing, this approach allows high sequencing depth to detect low expression genes, and the exploration of RNAs translated in subcellular compartments. Furthermore, it avoids underestimation of transcripts from cells susceptible to cell isolation procedures. The protocol can be applied to a variety of cell types. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Chai et al. (2017), Díaz-Castro et al. (2021), Díaz-Castro et al. (2019), Srinivasan et al. (2016), and Yu et al. (2018).

OME-Zarr: a cloud-optimized bioimaging file format with international community support

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology

2023 Feb 25

Moore, J;Basurto-Lozada, D;Besson, S;Bogovic, J;Brown, EM;Burel, JM;de Medeiros, G;Diel, EE;Gault, D;Ghosh, SS;Gold, I;Halchenko, YO;Hartley, M;Horsfall, D;Keller, MS;Kittisopikul, M;Kovacs, G;Küpcü Yoldaş, A;de la Villegeorges, ALT;Li, T;Liberali, P;Linkert, M;Lindner, D;Lüthi, J;Maitin-Shepard, J;Manz, T;McCormick, M;Mohamed, K;Moore, W;Özdemir, B;Pape, C;Pelkmans, L;Prete, M;Pietzsch, T;Preibisch, S;Rzepka, N;Stirling, DR;Striebel, J;Tischer, C;Toloudis, D;Walczysko, P;Watson, AM;Wong, F;Yamauchi, KA;Bayraktar, O;Haniffa, M;Saalfeld, S;Swedlow, JR;
PMID: 36865282 | DOI: 10.1101/2023.02.17.528834

A growing community is constructing a next-generation file format (NGFF) for bioimaging to overcome problems of scalability and heterogeneity. Organized by the Open Microscopy Environment (OME), individuals and institutes across diverse modalities facing these problems have designed a format specification process (OME-NGFF) to address these needs. This paper brings together a wide range of those community members to describe the format itself - OME-Zarr - along with tools and data resources available today to increase FAIR access and remove barriers in the scientific process. The current momentum offers an opportunity to unify a key component of the bioimaging domain - the file format that underlies so many personal, institutional, and global data management and analysis tasks.

Anatomical contacts between sensory neurons and epidermal cells: an unrecognized anatomical network for neuro-immuno-cutaneous crosstalk

British Journal of Dermatology

2022 Jan 01

Talagas, M;
| DOI: 10.1093/bjd/ljac066/6788796

Sensory neurons innervating the skin are conventionally thought to be the sole transducers of 3 touch, temperature, pain, and itch. However, recent studies have shown that keratinocytes - like 4 Merkel cells - act as sensory transducers, whether for innocuous or noxious mechanical, thermal, 5 or chemical stimuli and communicate with intra-epidermal free nerve endings via chemical 6 synaptic contacts. This paradigm shift leads to the consideration of the whole epidermis as a 7 sensory epithelium. Sensory neurons additionally function as an efferent system. Through the 8 release of neuropeptides in intimate neuro-epidermal contact areas, they contribute to epidermal 9 homeostasis and to the pathogenesis of inflammatory skin diseases. To counteract the dogma 10 regarding neuro-cutaneous interactions, seen exclusively from the perspective of soluble and 11 spreading mediators, this review highlights the essential contribution of the unrecognized 12 anatomical contacts between the sensory neurons and the epidermal cells (keratinocytes, 13 melanocytes, Langerhans cells, and Merkel cells) which serve the reciprocal dialogue between 14 the skin, nervous system, and immune system.

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	Description
sense Example: Hs-LAG3-sense	Standard probes for RNA detection are in antisense. Sense probe is reverse complent to the corresponding antisense probe.
Intron# Example: Mm-Htt-intron2	Probe targets the indicated intron in the target gene, commonly used for pre-mRNA detection
Pool/Pan Example: Hs-CD3-pool (Hs-CD3D, Hs-CD3E, Hs-CD3G)	A mixture of multiple probe sets targeting multiple genes or transcripts
No-XSp Example: Hs-PDGFB-No-XMm	Does not cross detect with the species (Sp)
XSp Example: Rn-Pde9a-XMm	designed to cross detect with the species (Sp)
O# Example: Mm-Islr-O1	Alternative design targeting different regions of the same transcript or isoforms
CDS Example: Hs-SLC31A-CDS	Probe targets the protein-coding sequence only
EnEm	Probe targets exons n and m
En-Em	Probe targets region from exon n to exon m
Retired Nomenclature
tvn Example: Hs-LEPR-tv1	Designed to target transcript variant n
ORF Example: Hs-ACVRL1-ORF	Probe targets open reading frame
UTR Example: Hs-HTT-UTR-C3	Probe targets the untranslated region (non-protein-coding region) only
5UTR Example: Hs-GNRHR-5UTR	Probe targets the 5' untranslated region only
3UTR Example: Rn-Npy1r-3UTR	Probe targets the 3' untranslated region only
Pan Example: Pool	A mixture of multiple probe sets targeting multiple genes or transcripts

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