Effects of dietary proteins on iron bioavailability—A review

In this review we have summarized the iron bioavailability literature dealing with protein (or major dietary protein source) effects and proposed a mechanism for these effects compatible with existing empirical data. Data from studies employing a variety of approaches are fairly consistent in showing that meats enhance non-heme iron absorption while plant, milk and egg proteins depress it. The variable, and sometimes opposite, effects of different proteins on iron bioavailability may be explained by the following proposed mechanism: (1) protein enhances iron bioavailability by releasing peptides during digestion which form soluble, low molecular weight complexes that readily release iron to mucosal receptors; (2) protein depresses iron bioavailability by releasing peptides which form insoluble complexes with iron or which form soluble complexes that do not release iron to mucosal receptors. Data from the literature, including our own evidence, which support the above hypothesis are discussed.     

IPv4与IPv6隧道技术的研究及实现

随着IPv6网络的快速发展,为使IPv4网络向11％6网络平滑演进,顺利解决IPv4网络孤岛或IPv6网络孤岛之间通过骨干网实现跨网通信问题,提出了隧道技术。文章对隧道技术的概念、基本原理和隧道报文格式封装进行了概述,分析了四种基本隧道技术特点,对比了各种隧道技术之间的差异。综合考虑IPv6网络部署初期和末期的网络结构特点,给出一种GIF隧道技术实现方案,并详细介绍了该方案的设计、实现及具体的验证过程。验证结果表明GIF隧道技术在解决网络孤岛之间的通信问题时有效、可行。     

Groundwater-surface water interactions and agricultural nutrient transport in a Great Lakes clay plain system

Nutrient export from agricultural land to surface waters is a significant environmental concern within the Great Lakes Basin (GLB). A field-based watershed-scale study was completed to investigate spatial and temporal variations of phosphorus and nitrate to assess nutrient transport pathways and groundwater-surface water interactions in an agriculturally dominated clay plain system. This was conducted in the 127 km² Upper Parkhill Watershed, near Lake Huron in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Data collection occurred from June 2018 to May 2019 via continuous sensor deployment and discrete sampling of stream water, groundwater, hyporheic zone, and tile drainage water. Samples were analyzed for various nutrient species (total, total dissolved, soluble reactive, and particulate phosphorus, and nitrate-N) to examine the hydrological dynamics of principal transport pathways of agriculturally-derived nutrients. Total phosphorus and nitrate concentrations in stream water ranged from 0.007 to 0.324 mg/L and 0.32 to 13.13 mg NO₃^?-N/L, respectively. Tile drainage water total phosphorous concentrations varied from 0.006 to 0.066 mg/L. Groundwater total dissolved phosphorus concentrations ranged from <0.003 to 0.085 mg/L. Transport of phosphorus through tile drainage was observed to be greater than through groundwater over the study period. No distinct relationship was observed between nutrient concentrations in the hyporheic zone and the vertical hydraulic gradient within this zone in the studied stream reach. Preliminary correlations were discerned between water quality observations and recognized land management practices. Given the elevated stream nutrient concentrations, these results are consequential for the continual improvement of strategies and programs devised to conserve water resources within the GLB.     

Towards improving an Area of Concern: Main-channel habitat rehabilitation priorities for the Maumee River

The Maumee River watershed in the Laurentian Great Lakes Basin has been impacted by decades of pollution and habitat modification due to human settlement and development. As such, the lower 35 km of the Maumee River and several smaller adjacent watersheds comprising over 2000 km² were designated the Maumee Area of Concern (AOC) under the revised Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1987. As part of pre-rehabilitation assessments in the Maumee AOC, we assessed fish and invertebrate communities in river km 24–11 of the Maumee River to identify: 1) areas that exhibit the highest biodiversity, 2) habitat characteristics associated with high biodiversity areas, 3) areas in need of protection from further degradation, and 4) areas that could feasibly be rehabilitated to increase biodiversity. Based on benthic trawl data, shallow water habitats surrounding large island complexes had the highest fish diversity and catch per unit effort (CPUE). Electrofishing displayed similar fish diversity and CPUE patterns across habitat types early in the study but yielded no discernable fish diversity or CPUE patterns towards the end of our study. Although highly variable among study sites, macroinvertebrate density was greatest in shallow water habitats <2.5 m and around large island complexes. Our results provide valuable baseline data that could act as a foundation for developing rehabilitation strategies in the lower Maumee River and for assessing the effectiveness of future aquatic habitat rehabilitation projects. In addition to increasing in-channel habitat, watershed-scale improvements of water quality might be necessary to ensure rehabilitation strategies are successful.     

A standards-based interoperable single sign-on framework in ARC Grid middleware

Security infrastructure is one of the most challenging tasks in the development, integration and deployment of Grid middlewares. Even though the Grid community addresses the security issue through public key infrastructures (PKI) to support mutual authentication using X.509 certificates, maintaining X.509 credentials is not that easy for non-IT-experts, and has proved to be an obstacle for a more wide deployment of Grid technologies. The identity federation is an increasingly popular technology that can facilitate cross-domain single sign-on without requiring the users to maintain any credentials additional to their own institutional accounts. We believe that utilizing identity federation for Grid middlewares is a promising path for the Grid technology to get more widely used. This paper describes a single sign-on infrastructure developed as a part of the NorduGrid ARC (Advanced Resource Connector) Grid middleware. It adopts the identity federation standard (SAML), as well as other Web Service standards. It focuses on a single sign-on solution at the middleware level for users to access Grids by only using their frequently used accounts, without being bothered to maintain X.509 credentials. Users can use their username/password only to access Grids developed in ARC middleware, as well as access Grids developed in other middlewares that requires users to provide X.509 certificates. Moreover, the single sign-on for workflow-like Grid applications (in which intermediate entities act on behalf of users) is also supported. As an important aspect of single sign-on, authorization is also considered by implementing an attribute-based authorization using SAML standard. In addition, the performance of single sign-on solution is measured. We identify performance limitations of security-related services inside this solution, and analyse the ways to avoid the limitations. To our knowledge, the work presented in this paper is the first evaluated implementation that utilizes identity federation for Grid usage on the middleware level.     

OsMre11 Is Required for Mitosis during Rice Growth and Development

Meiotic recombination 11 (Mre11) is a relatively conserved nuclease in various species. Mre11 plays important roles in meiosis and DNA damage repair in yeast, humans and Arabidopsis, but little research has been done on mitotic DNA replication and repair in rice. Here, it was found that Mre11 was an extensively expressed gene among the various tissues and organs of rice, and loss-of-function of Mre11 resulted in severe defects of vegetative and reproductive growth, including dwarf plants, abnormally developed male and female gametes, and completely abortive seeds. The decreased number of cells in the apical meristem and the appearance of chromosomal fragments and bridges during the mitotic cell cycle in rice mre11 mutant roots revealed an essential role of OsMre11. Further research showed that DNA replication was suppressed, and a large number of DNA strand breaks occurred during the mitotic cell cycle of rice mre11 mutants. The expression of OsMre11 was up-regulated with the treatment of hydroxyurea and methyl methanesulfonate. Moreover, OsMre11 could form a complex with OsRad50 and OsNbs1, and they might function together in non-homologous end joining and homologous recombination repair pathways. These results indicated that OsMre11 plays vital roles in DNA replication and damage repair of the mitotic cell cycle, which ensure the development and fertility of rice by maintaining genome stability.     

Effect of Polyhexamethylene Biguanide in Combination with Undecylenamidopropyl Betaine or PslG on Biofilm Clearance

Hospital-acquired infection is a great challenge for clinical treatment due to pathogens’ biofilm formation and their antibiotic resistance. Here, we investigate the effect of antiseptic agent polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) and undecylenamidopropyl betaine (UB) against biofilms of four pathogens that are often found in hospitals, including Gram-negative bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli, Gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, and pathogenic fungus, Candida albicans. We show that 0.02% PHMB, which is 10-fold lower than the concentration of commercial products, has a strong inhibitory effect on the growth, initial attachment, and biofilm formation of all tested pathogens. PHMB can also disrupt the preformed biofilms of these pathogens. In contrast, 0.1% UB exhibits a mild inhibitory effect on biofilm formation of the four pathogens. This concentration inhibits the growth of S. aureus and C. albicans yet has no growth effect on P. aeruginosa or E. coli. UB only slightly enhances the anti-biofilm efficacy of PHMB on P. aeruginosa biofilms. However, pretreatment with PslG, a glycosyl hydrolase that can efficiently inhibit and disrupt P. aeruginosa biofilm, highly enhances the clearance effect of PHMB on P. aeruginosa biofilms. Meanwhile, PslG can also disassemble the preformed biofilms of the other three pathogens within 30 min to a similar extent as UB treatment for 24 h.     

Plasma Membrane H+-ATPase SmPHA4 Negatively Regulates the Biosynthesis of Tanshinones in Salvia miltiorrhiza

Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge has been widely used in the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, due to the pharmacological action of its active components such as the tanshinones. Plasma membrane (PM) H⁺-ATPase plays key roles in numerous physiological processes in plants. However, little is known about the PM H⁺-ATPase gene family in S. miltiorrhiza (Sm). Here, nine PM H⁺-ATPase isoforms were identified and named SmPHA1–SmPHA9. Phylogenetic tree analysis showed that the genetic distance of SmPHAs was relatively far in the S. miltiorrhiza PM H⁺-ATPase family. Moreover, the transmembrane structures were rich in SmPHA protein. In addition, SmPHA4 was found to be highly expressed in roots and flowers. HPLC revealed that accumulation of dihydrotanshinone (DT), cryptotanshinone (CT), and tanshinone I (TI) was significantly reduced in the SmPHA4-OE lines but was increased in the SmPHA4-RNAi lines, ranging from 2.54 to 3.52, 3.77 to 6.33, and 0.35 to 0.74 mg/g, respectively, suggesting that SmPHA4 is a candidate regulator of tanshinone metabolites. Moreover, qRT-PCR confirmed that the expression of tanshinone biosynthetic-related key enzymes was also upregulated in the SmPHA4-RNAi lines. In summary, this study highlighted PM H⁺-ATPase function and provided new insights into regulatory candidate genes for modulating secondary metabolism biosynthesis in S. miltiorrhiza.     

Apoptosis Disorder,a Key Pathogenesis of HCMV-Related Diseases

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) belongs to the β-herpesvirus family, which is transmitted in almost every part of the world and is carried by more than 90% of the general population. Increasing evidence indicates that HCMV infection triggers numerous diseases by disrupting the normal physiological activity of host cells, particularly apoptosis. Apoptosis disorder plays a key role in the initiation and development of multiple diseases. However, the relationship and molecular mechanism of HCMV-related diseases and apoptosis have not yet been systematically summarized. This review aims to summarize the role of apoptosis in HCMV-related diseases and provide an insight into the molecular mechanism of apoptosis induced by HCMV infection. We summarize the literature on HCMV-related diseases and suggest novel strategies for HCMV treatment by regulating apoptosis.