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Previous studies have shown that Dendrobium nobile Lindl. alkaloids (DNLAs) have neuroprotective effects in several Alzheimer's disease (AD) models. Dendrobine (DDB) is one of the monomer components with the highest content in DNLAs. However, the effects of DDB on cognitive impairments in AD remain unknown. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of DDB in 3 × Tg-AD mice to determine whether DDB was a key component of the anti-AD effect of DNLAs. Five-month mice were intragastrically administrated with DDB (10 and 20 mg/kg/d) or DNLAs (20 mg/kg/d) for seven consecutive months, and the effects of DDB and DNLAs were evaluated at twelve months...

BACKGROUND: Gingivitis, i.e. inflammation of the gums, is often induced by dentalplaque. However, its exact link to the oral microbiota remains unclear. METHODS: In a case-control study involving 120 participants, comprising 60 cases and 60 controls (mean age (SD) 36.6 (7.6) years; 50% males), nested within a prospective multicentre cohort study, we examined theoral microbiome composition of gingivitis patients and their controlsusing shotgun metagenomic sequencing of saliva samples...

Accurately identifying life-threatening prostate cancer (PCa) at time of diagnosis remains an unsolved problem. We evaluated whether DNA methylation status of selected candidate genes can predict the risk of metastasis beyond clinical risk factors in men with untreated PCa. A nested case-control study was conducted among men diagnosed with localized PCa at Kaiser Permanente California between 01/01/1997-12/31/2006 who did not receive curative treatments. Cases were those who developed metastasis within 10 years from diagnosis...

BACKGROUND: Mosquitoes (Culicidae) are vectors for most malaria parasites of the Plasmodium species and are required for Plasmodium spp. to complete their life cycle. Despite having 16 species of mosquitoes and the detection of many Plasmodium species in birds, little is known about the role of different mosquito species in the avian malaria life cycle in New Zealand. METHODS: In this study, we used nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and real-time PCR to determine Plasmodium spp...

PURPOSE: The Swedish National Patient Register (NPR) is widely used as a data source in epidemiological studies, but the consistency of all cancer diagnoses compared to the Swedish Cancer Register (SCR) remains unclear. Using NPR supplementary for detecting safety signals is beneficial due to shorter data extraction delays compared to using SCR alone. This study aims to evaluate the consistency of NPR for cancer diagnoses compared to SCR and its potential use in pharmacoepidemiology. METHODS: Patients with a cancer diagnosis recorded in SCR during 2018-2020 were included...

Hatching plasticity allows animals to initiate hatching in response to environmental cues including predation, flooding, and hypoxia. In species with terrestrial eggs but aquatic larvae, hatching plasticity often manifests as extended development of embryos when water is not available. Although these effects are taxonomically widespread, little attention has focused on differences in plasticity across closely related species with terrestrial and aquatic embryos. We propose that the terrestrial embryonic environment favors slower and prolonged development and, consequently, that we should see differences in development between closely related species that differ in where they lay their eggs...

We show that nocturnal aversive stimuli presented to mice while they are eating and drinking outside of their safe nest can entrain circadian behaviors, leading to a shift toward daytime activity. We also show that the canonical molecular circadian clock is necessary for fear entrainment and that an intact molecular clockwork in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the site of the central circadian pacemaker, is necessary but not sufficient to sustain fear entrainment of circadian rhythms. Our results demonstrate that entrainment of a circadian clock by cyclic fearful stimuli can lead to severely mistimed circadian behavior that persists even after the aversive stimulus is removed...

Reproductive success is an important demographic parameter that can be driven by environmental and behavioural factors operating on various spatio-temporal scales. As seabirds breed on land and forage in the ocean, processes occurring in both environments can influence their reproductive success. At various locations around East Antarctica, Adélie penguins' ( Pygoscelis adeliae ) reproductive success has been negatively linked to extensive sea-ice. In contrast, our study site in the Windmill Islands has limited fast ice present during the breeding season, allowing us to examine drivers of reproductive success under vastly different marine environmental conditions...

The interplay between predator and prey has catalyzed the evolution of venom systems, with predators honing their venoms in response to the evolving resistance of prey. A previous study showed that the African varanid species Varanus exanthematicus has heightened resistance to snake venoms compared to the Australian species V. giganteus , V. komodoensis , and V. mertensi , likely due to increased predation by sympatric venomous snakes on V. exanthematicus . To understand venom resistance among varanid lizards, we analyzed the receptor site targeted by venoms in 27 varanid lizards, including 25 Australian varanids...

The mugger ( Crocodylus palustris ) is a medium-sized crocodilian inhabiting South Asia. As a result of intensive hunting, its range declined drastically up till the 1970s. Currently, the world mugger population is fragmented and threatened mainly by habitat loss and the consequences of human-crocodile conflict, being classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN. The goal of this paper is to comprehensively determine the mugger's current range, and assess risks in notable habitats of the species across its range. To determine the range and notable habitats, extensive literature covering surveys, monitoring, population studies and reports of human-crocodile conflict was examined...

Wetland habitats are changing under multiple anthropogenic pressures. Nutrient leakage and pollution modify physico-chemical state of wetlands and affect the ecosystem through bottom-up processes, while alien predators affect the ecosystems in a top-down manner. Boreal wetlands are important breeding areas for several waterbird species, the abundances of which potentially reflect both bottom-up and top-down ecosystem processes. Here, we use long-term national monitoring data gathered from c. 130 waterbird breeding sites in Finland from the 1980s to the 2020s...

INTRODUCTION: Surgical site infections (SSI), mainly caused by Staphylococcus aureus, pose a significant economic burden in Europe, leading to increased hospitalization duration, mortality, and treatment costs, particularly with drug-resistant strains like meticillin-resistant S. aureus. We conducted a case-control study on the economic impact of S. aureus SSI in adult surgical patients across high-volume centres in France, Germany, Spain, and the UK, aiming to assess the overall and procedure-specific burden across Europe...

Single-site copper-based catalysts have shown remarkable activity and selectivity for a variety of reactions. However, deactivation by sintering in high-temperature reducing environments remains a challenge and often limits their use due to irreversible structural changes to the catalyst. Here, we report zeolite-based copper catalysts in which copper oxide agglomerates formed after reaction can be repeatedly redispersed back to single sites using an oxidative treatment in air at 550 °C. Under different environments, single-site copper in Cu-Zn-Y/deAlBeta undergoes dynamic changes in structure and oxidation state that can be tuned to promote the formation of key active sites while minimizing deactivation through Cu sintering...

With ~14,000 extant species, ants are ubiquitous and of tremendous ecological importance. They have undergone remarkable diversification throughout their evolutionary history. However, the drivers of their diversity dynamics are not well quantified or understood. Previous phylogenetic analyses have suggested patterns of diversity dynamics associated with the Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution (ATR), but these studies have overlooked valuable information from the fossil record. To address this gap, we conducted a comprehensive analysis using a large dataset that includes both the ant fossil record (~24,000 individual occurrences) and neontological data (~14,000 occurrences), and tested four hypotheses proposed for ant diversification: co-diversification, competitive extinction, hyper-specialization, and buffered extinction...

The cinnamoyl lipid compound youssoufene A1 (1), featuring a unique dearomatic carbon-bridged dimeric skeleton, exhibits increased inhibition against multidrug resistant Enterococcus faecalis compared to monomeric youssoufenes. However, the formation process of this intriguing dearomatic dimerization remains unknown. In this work, an unusual"gene-within-gene"thioesterase (TE) gene ysfF was functionally characterized. The gene was found to naturally encodes two proteins, an entire YsfF with α/β-hydrolase and 4-hydroxybenzoyl-CoA thioesterase (4-HBT)-like enzyme domains, and a nested YsfFHBT (4-HBT-like enzyme)...

Anthropogenic activities generate increasing disturbance in wildlife especially in extreme environments where species have to cope with rapid environmental changes. In Antarctica, while studies on human disturbance have mostly focused on stress response through physiological and behavioral changes, local variability in population dynamics has been addressed more scarcely. In addition, the mechanisms by which breeding communities are affected around research stations remain unclear. Our study aims at pointing out the fine-scale impact of human infrastructures on the spatial variability in Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) colonies dynamics...

Temperature is essential for the survival and development of eggs. Some anurans have evolved and developed foam nesting traits, with thermal insulation considered to be among their functions. Foam-nesting frogs tend to exhibit reproductive plasticity. For example, they oviposit on both trees and the ground. How such plasticity affects foam nest function is of major relevance and is likely related to the adaptation of foam nesting frogs. However, this has not been well studied. In this study, we examined the interaction between foam nest site, foam nest function, and egg fate using the Japanese green tree frog, Zhangixalus arboreus , and analysed how nest site differences (arboreal or terrestrial) affect the thermal function of foam nests...

In eukaryotes, DNA compacts into chromatin through nucleosomes1,2 . Replication of the eukaryotic genome must be coupled to the transmission of the epigenome encoded in the chromatin3,4 . Here we report cryo-electron microscopy structures of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) replisomes associated with the FACT (facilitates chromatin transactions) complex (comprising Spt16 and Pob3) and an evicted histone hexamer. In these structures, FACT is positioned at the front end of the replisome by engaging with the parental DNA duplex to capture the histones through the middle domain and the acidic carboxyl-terminal domain of Spt16...

Floaters are sexually mature individuals that are not able to reproduce by defending breeding resources. Floaters often visit active nests, probably to gather public information or to compete for a nesting site. We tested the hypothesis that floaters preferentially prospect nests in which they have a better chance of taking over, and that they do so by assessing the owners' resource holding potential (RHP). We manipulated the flight capacity of male and female breeders in a population of spotless starlings ( Sturnus unicolor ) by clipping two flight feathers per wing before egg laying, thus increasing their wing-load and likely impairing their condition...

Bird song is a classic example of a sexually selected trait, but much of the work relating individual song components to fitness has not accounted for song typically being composed of multiple, often-correlated components, necessitating a multivariate approach. We explored the role of sexual selection in shaping complex male song of house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) by simultaneously relating its multiple components to fitness using multivariate selection analysis, which is widely used in insect and anuran studies but not in birds...