The Protective Effect of Pumpkin and Fermented Whey Mixture against AFB1 and OTA Immune Toxicity In Vitro. A Transcriptomic Approach

Scope

The aim of the study is to investigate in Jurkat cells the possible beneficial effect of pumpkin (P) and fermented milk whey (FW) mixture against aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and ochratoxin A (OTA) induced alterations in gene expression profile.

Methods and results

Human T cells are exposed for 7 days to digested bread extracts containing P-FW mixture along with AFB1 and OTA, individually and in combination. The results of RNA sequencing show that AFB1 P-FW exposure resulted in 34 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) while 3450 DEGs are found in OTA P-FW exposure and 3264 DEGs in AFB1-OTA P-FW treatment. Gene ontology analysis reveals biological processes and molecular functions related to immune system and inflammatory response. Moreover, PathVisio analysis points to eicosanoid signaling via lipoxygenase as the main pathway altered by AFB1 P-FW exposure whereas interferon signaling is the most affected pathway after OTA P-FW and AFB1-OTA P-FW treatments.

Conclusions

The mitigation of genes and inherent pathways typically associated with the inflammatory response suggest not only the anti-inflammatory and protective role of P-FW mixture but also their possible application in food industry to counteract AFB1 and OTA toxic effects on human and animal health.     

Fano-Like Resonance from Disorder Correlation in Vacancy-Doped Photonic Crystals

By preparing colloidal crystals with random missing scatterers, crystals are created where disorder is embodied as vacancies in an otherwise perfect lattice. In this special system, there is a critical defect concentration where light propagation undergoes a transition from an all but perfect reflector (for the spectral range defined by the Bragg condition), to a metamaterial exhibiting an enhanced transmission phenomenon. It is shown that this behavior can be phenomenologically described in terms of Fano-like resonances. The results show that the Fano's parameter q experiences a sign change signaling the transition from a perfect crystal exhibiting a reflectance Bragg peak, through a state where background scattering is maximum and Bragg reflectance reaches a minimum to a point where the system reenters a low scattering state recovering ordinary Bragg diffraction. A simple dipolar model considering the correlation between scatterers and vacancies is proposed and the reported evolution of the Fano-like scattering is explained in terms of the emerging covariance between the optical paths and polarizabilities and the effect of field enhancement in photonic crystal (PhC) defects.     

Pen Plotter as a Low-Cost Platform for Rapid Device Prototyping with Solution-Processable Nanomaterials

The use of inexpensive benchtop plotters in combination with refillable writing pens and markers as a powerful route to print nanomaterial-based inks on paper substrates is studied. It is proved that this approach is very robust, it can be used to print inks of many different solution-processable nanomaterials, and is very precise, allowing pattern features with pitch separation as narrow as 80 μm. The general character of this printing platform by printing van der Waals materials, organic semiconductors, hybrid perovskites and colloidal nanoparticles with a broad range of properties (from insulators to superconductors) is illustrated. The system is used to easily create several example applications such as an all-printed, paper-supported photodetector. This printing platform can be very helpful for research groups with a wealth of expertise in synthesis of solution-processable nanomaterials but that lack the infrastructure, resources, and expertise to perform traditional inkjet printing for fast device prototyping.     

A comparative study of fourteen deep learning networks for multi skin lesion classification (MSLC) on unbalanced data

Neural Computing and Applications - Among various types of skin diseases, skin cancer is the deadliest form of the disease. This paper classifies seven types of skin diseases: Actinic keratosis and...     

Neural correlates of affective content: application to perceptual tagging of video

Neural Computing and Applications - Over the past years, a digital multimedia uprising has been experienced in every walk of life, due to which the un-annotated or unstructured multimedia content...