Baf

Brazil's Atlantic Forest (BAF) is a highly fragmented, strategic environmental and socio-economic region that represents the fourth biodiversity hotspot while also producing many commodities that are exported globally. Human disturbance plays a pivotal role as a driver of BAF's soil dynamics and behaviors. The soils under Late Primary and Secondary Semideciduous Seasonal Forests (LPSF and LSSF) were characterized by high to moderate resilience, with improved chemical properties as human disturbance decreased...

Ankyrin repeat and LEM domain-containing 2 (ANKLE2) is a scaffolding protein with established roles in cell division and development, the dysfunction of which is increasingly implicated in human disease. ANKLE2 regulates nuclear envelope disassembly at the onset of mitosis and its reassembly after chromosome segregation. ANKLE2 dysfunction is associated with abnormal nuclear morphology and cell division. It regulates the nuclear envelope by mediating protein-protein interactions with barrier to autointegration factor (BANF1; also known as BAF) and with the kinase and phosphatase that modulate the phosphorylation state of BAF...

BACKGROUND: Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) are intimately involved in cancer radiochemotherapy resistance. However, the mechanism by which macrophages affect radiosensitivity through autophagy remains unclear. The purpose of our study was to investigate how activating autophagy in type-II macrophages (M2) by using rapamycin (RAP) would affect the radiosensitivity of colorectal cancer (CRC) xenografts. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A nude mouse CRC model was established by injecting LoVo CRC cells...

BACKGROUND: Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a catastrophic disease with little effective therapy, likely due to the limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying AAA development and progression. Activating transcription factor (ATF) 3 has been increasingly recognized as a key regulator of cardiovascular diseases. However, the role of ATF3 (activating transcription factor 3) in AAA development and progression remains elusive. METHODS: Genome-wide RNA sequencing analysis was performed on the aorta isolated from saline or Ang II (angiotensin II)-induced AAA mice, and ATF3 was identified as the potential key gene for AAA development...

BACKGROUND: Retinal imaging, including fundus autofluorescence (FAF), strongly depends on the clearness of the optical media. Lens status is crucial since the ageing lens has both light-blocking and autofluorescence (AF) properties that distort image analysis. Here, we report both lens opacification and AF metrics and the effect on automated image quality assessment. METHODS: 227 subjects (range: 19-89 years old) received quantitative AF of the lens (LQAF), Scheimpflug, anterior chamber optical coherence tomography as well as blue/green FAF (BAF/GAF), and infrared (IR) imaging...

Although oilseed rape is frequently used as an alternative planting crop in the phytoremediation of cadmium (Cd)-contaminated agricultural land, methods for screening excellent oilseed rape varieties in this regard are inadequate. Herein, we developed a screening method that incorporates Cd accumulation, distribution, and removal, economic output, adaptability to Cd-contaminated agricultural land, and trace element variation. A Cd-adaptability index (Cd-AI) based on 10 agronomic traits was used to measure the adaptability of varieties to Cd-contaminated agricultural land...

DPF3, along with other subunits, is a well-known component of the BAF chromatin remodeling complex that plays a key role in regulating chromatin remodeling activity and gene expression. Here, we elucidated a non-canonical localization and role for DPF3. We showed that DPF3 dynamically localizes to the centriolar satellites in interphase and in centrosome, spindle midzone/bridging fiber area and midbodies during mitosis. Loss of DPF3 causes K-fiber instability, unstable kinetochore-microtubules attachment and defects in chromosome alignment, thus resulting in altered mitotic progression, cell death and genomic instability...

The structure and dynamics of the cell nucleus regulate nearly every facet of the cell. Changes in nuclear shape limit cell motility and gene expression. Although the nucleus is generally seen as the stiffest organelle in the cell, cells can nevertheless deform the nucleus to large strains by small mechanical stresses. Here, we show that the mechanical response of the cell nucleus exhibits active fluidization that is driven by the BRG 1 motor of the SWI/SNF/BAF chromatin-remodeling complex. Atomic force microscopy measurements show that the nucleus alters stiffness in response to the cell substrate stiffness, which is retained after the nucleus is isolated and that the work of nuclear compression is mostly dissipated rather than elastically stored...

The ARID1A and ARID1B subunits are mutually exclusive components of the BAF variant of SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes. Loss of function mutations in ARID1A are frequently observed in various cancers, resulting in a dependency on the paralog ARID1B for cancer cell proliferation. However, ARID1B has never been targeted directly, and the high degree of sequence similarity to ARID1A poses a challenge for the development of selective binders. In this study, we used mRNA display to identify peptidic ligands that bind with nanomolar affinities to ARID1B and showed high selectivity over ARID1A...

Prevalence of F, Cl, S, P, Br, and I in pharmaceuticals and environmental contaminants has promoted standard-free quantitation using analyte-independent heteroatom responses in inductively coupled plasma (ICP)-MS. However, in-plasma ionization challenges and element-dependent isobaric interference removal methods have hampered the multielement nonmetal detection in ICP-MS. Here, we examine an alternative approach to enhance multielement detection capabilities. Analytes are introduced into an ICP leading to post-plasma formation of HF, HCl, H3 PO3 , H2 SO4 , HBr, and HI, which are then chemically ionized to BaF+ , BaCl+ , BaH2 PO3 + , BaHSO4 + , BaBr+ , and BaI+ via reactions with barium-containing ions supplied by a nanospray...

Pollution-induced declines in fishery resources restrict the sustainable development of fishery. As a kind of typical environmental pollutant, the mechanism of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) facilitating fishery resources declines needs to be fully illustrated. To determine how PAHs have led to declines in fishery resources, a systematic toxicologic analysis of the effects of PAHs on aquatic organisms via food-web bioaccumulation was performed in the Pearl River and its estuary. Overall, PAH bioaccumulation in aquatic organisms was correlated with the trophic levels along food-web, exhibiting as significant positive correlations were observed between PAHs concentration and the trophic levels of fishes in the Pearl River Estuary...

Hundreds of sites across the United States have high concentrations of perfluoroalkyl sulfonamides (FASA), but little is known about their propensity to accumulate in fish. FASA are precursors to terminal per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that are abundant in diverse consumer products and aqueous film-forming foams manufactured using electrochemical fluorination (ECF AFFF). In this study, FASA with C3-C8 carbon chain lengths were detected in all fish samples from surface waters up to 8 km downstream of source zones with ECF AFFF contamination...

Here we use population genomic data (ddRAD-Seq) and ecological niche modeling to test biogeographic hypotheses for the divergence of the island-endemic cactus species Cereus insularis Hemsl. (Cereeae; Cactaceae) from its sister species C. fernambucensis Lem. The Cereus insularis grows in the Fernando de Noronha Islands (FNI), a Neotropical archipelago located 350 km off the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (BAF) coast. Phylogeographic reconstructions support a northward expansion by the common ancestor of C...

Fluoride glasses in the binary system ZrF4 -BaF2 were prepared via mechanochemical treatment. The glass-forming region of the ZrF4 -BaF2 system obtained using the mechanochemical method was wider than that obtained using the conventional melt-quenching method. The glass-ceramic 60ZrF4 ·40BaF2 (mol%) sample was obtained by heat treatment and shows a higher conductivity of 1.2 × 10-6  S cm-1 at 200 °C than the pristine glass. This study revealed that mechanochemical treatment was effective for the synthesis of fluoride glasses...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for 80-85% of all lung cancers. Euphorbia kansui yielded 13-oxyingenol-dodecanoate (13OD), an ingenane-type diterpenoid, which had a strong cytotoxic effect on NSCLC cells. The underlying mechanism and potential target, however, remained unknown. The study found that 13OD effectively inhibited the cell proliferation and colony formation of NSCLC cells (A549 and H460 cells), with less toxicity in normal human lung epithelial BEAS-2B cells...

The presence of toxic metals in residential areas near abandoned gold mine tailings is a major environmental issue. This study mainly aimed to investigate the elemental distribution of both toxic and essential elements in soils and leafy vegetables ( Brassica oleracea ) collected from eight different sites around the Davidsonville residential area, located closer to the abandoned Princess gold mine dump, Johannesburg, South Africa. The nutritional value of vegetables in the human diet was determined to assess their value to their health...

Elevated concentrations of As, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, V and Zn in topsoils in Belfast, Northern Ireland have been found to exceed assessment criteria in the city and therefore may pose a risk to human health. Most generic assessment criteria (GAC) for potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in soils assume PTEs are 100% bioavailable to humans. Here we use in-vitro oral bioaccessibility testing using the Unified BARGE method (UBM) to measure what proportion of soil contamination dissolves in the digestive tract and therefore is available for absorption by the body...

To go beyond the deficiencies of the three conventional multimodal fusion strategies (i.e., input-, feature- and output-level fusion), we propose a bidirectional attention-aware fluid pyramid feature integrated fusion network (BAF-Net) with cross-modal interactions for multimodal medical image diagnosis and prognosis.
Approach: BAF-Net is composed of two identical branches to preserve the unimodal features and one bidirectional attention-aware distillation stream to progressively assimilate cross-modal complements and to learn supplementary features in both bottom-up and top-down processes...

Organophosphate esters (OPEs) have garnered significant attention in recent years. In view of the enormous ecosystem services value and severe degradation of coral reefs in the South China Sea, this study investigated the occurrence, distribution, and bioaccumulation of 11 OPEs in five coral regions: Daya Bay (DY), Weizhou Island (WZ), Sanya Luhuitou (LHT), Xisha (XS) Islands, and Nansha (NS) Islands. Although OPEs were detected at a high rate, their concentration in South China Sea seawater (1.56 ± 0...

The emergence and increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance pose a global public risk for human health, and nonantimicrobial pharmaceuticals play an important role in this process. Herein, five nonantimicrobial pharmaceuticals, including acetaminophen (ACT), clofibric acid (CA), carbamazepine (CBZ), caffeine (CF) and nicotine (NCT), tetracycline-resistant strains, five ARGs (sul1, sul2, tetG, tetM and tetW) and one integrase gene (intI1), were detected in 101 wastewater samples during two typical sewage treatment processes including anaerobic-oxic (A/O) and biological aerated filter (BAF) in Harbin, China...