The viral pathogen Ranavirus (Rv) and the fungal pathogens Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), B. salamandrivorans (Bsal), and Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola (Oo) infect amphibians and reptiles. In recent years, there has been increased interest in reporting the occurrences of these pathogens. North Carolina, USA has a rich diversity of amphibians and reptiles, and is notably the most species-rich U.S. state in salamanders. We assessed prevalence of Rv, Bd, Bsal, and Oo in a broad taxonomic and geographic representation...

Drug-resistant pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) has severely threatened human health and arouses widespread concern. Sortase A (SrtA) is an essential virulence factor of S. aureus, which is responsible for the covalent anchoring of a variety of virulence-related proteins to the cell wall. SrtA has always been regarded as an ideal pharmacological target against S. aureus infections. In this research, we have determined that orientin, a natural compound isolated from various medicinal plants, can effectively...

Oil body (OB), a subcellular organelle that stores oil in plant seeds, is considered a new transdermal drug delivery system. With the increasing understanding of the OB and its main protein (oleosin), numerous studies have been conducted on OB as “carrier” for the expression of exogenous proteins. In our previous study, oil body fused with aFGF (OLAF) was obtained using a plant oil body expression system that had been preliminarily proven to be effective in...

Oil body (OB), a subcellular organelle that stores oil in plant seeds, is considered a new transdermal drug delivery system. With the increasing understanding of the OB and its main protein (oleosin), numerous studies have been conducted on OB as “carrier” for the expression of exogenous proteins. In our previous study, oil body fused with aFGF (OLAF) was obtained using a plant oil body expression system that had been preliminarily proven to be effective in...

Application of genetic data to species delimitation often builds confidence in delimitations previously hypothesized using morphological, ecological, and geographic data and frequently yields recognition of previously-undescribed cryptic diversity. However, a recent critique of genomic data-based species delimitation approaches is that they have the potential to conflate population structure with species diversity, resulting in taxonomic oversplitting. The need for an integrative approach to species delimitation, in which molecular, morphological, ecological, and geographic lines of evidence are...

Microscale processes are critically important to soil ecology and biogeochemistry yet are difficult to study due to soil’s opacity and complexity. To advance the study of soil processes, we constructed transparent soil microcosms that enable the visualization of microbes via fluorescence microscopy and the non-destructive measurement of microbial activity and carbon uptake in situ via Raman microspectroscopy. We assessed the polymer Nafion and the crystal cryolite as optically transparent soil substrates. We demonstrated that both...

Here, we listed the bulk stable isotope values (δ13C and δ15N) and body size measurements of organisms that were analyzed in the manuscript "Body size, trophic position, and the coupling of different energy pathways across a saltmarsh landscape", published in Limnology and Oceanography Letters. Our dataset is a compilation of samplings obtained by the Southern Louisiana marsh food webs project within the Coastal Waters Consortium (CWC) II (Lopez-Duarte et al. 2017a [https://doi.org/10.7266/N7XS5SGD], Lopez-Duarte et al....

This dataset describes two experiments done in seagrass beds in Back Sound, North Carolina. Experiment 1 was located in a large contiguous shallow seagrass bed near Cape Lookout, NC (34.668121, -76.509455) and Experiment 2 was located in the Rachel Carson Estuarine Reserve, Beaufort, NC (34.698799, -76.595439). Experiment 1 was a clam-addition/control experiment, and 2018/2019 summer growth rates, 2018/2019 summer biomass cores, and 2018/2019 epiphytic load on Zostera marina and Halodule wrightii were sampled. Experiment 2...

Additional file 7: Figure S3. miRNAs with different expression patterns in crown and leaf tissues at the winter dormancy stage, spring green-up stage and jointing stage.

Additional file 2: Figure S1. Common and specific known miRNAs expressed in wheat crown tissues at four different growth and development stages.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Expression of known miRNAs identified in wheat crown tissues.

Additional file 4: Table S3. Information of wheat_miRNA2693 and wheat_miR5099.

Drug-resistant pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) has severely threatened human health and arouses widespread concern. Sortase A (SrtA) is an essential virulence factor of S. aureus, which is responsible for the covalent anchoring of a variety of virulence-related proteins to the cell wall. SrtA has always been regarded as an ideal pharmacological target against S. aureus infections. In this research, we have determined that orientin, a natural compound isolated from various medicinal plants, can effectively...

New species can arise when female preferences and male sexual signals diverge across populations and thereby reduce mating between populations. Under this hypothesized mechanism for speciation, mate preferences and male signals should be correlated, but divergent, across populations. We evaluated this prediction using spadefoot toads (Spea multiplicata). We measured a sexually-selected male signal (call rate) for which female preferences are known to vary across populations in response to hybridization risk. Contrary to expectation, we found...

In eukaryotes, calcium not only is an essential mineral nutrient but also serves as an intracellular second messenger that is necessary for many physiological processes. Previous studies showed that the protein phosphatase-calcineurin protects fungi from toxicity caused by the extracellular calcium; however, little is known about how calcineurin mediates the cellular physiology process for this function. In this study, by monitoring intracellular calcium, particularly by tracking vacuolar calcium dynamics in living cells through a novel...

Coal-fired power plays a critical role in China’s compliance with the Paris Agreement. This research quantifies China’s stranded coal assets under different coal capacity expansion scenarios with an integrated approach and high-precision coal-fired power database. From a top-down perspective, firstly, the pathway of China’s coal-fired power capacity consistent with the global 2°C scenario is outlined and then those stranded coal-fired power plants are identified with a bottom-up perspective. Stranded value is estimated based upon a...

Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) participate in the regulation of chronic kidney disease (CKD), and acute kidney injury (AKI) is identified as an important risk factor for CKD. This study investigated the involvement of a novel LncRNA MALAT1 in regulating lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced cell pyroptosis and inflammation in the human renal tubular epithelial HK-2 cells. Here, the HK-2 cells were subjected to LPS (2 μg/mL) treatment to establish cellular AKI models in vitro, and we validated that...

Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) participate in the regulation of chronic kidney disease (CKD), and acute kidney injury (AKI) is identified as an important risk factor for CKD. This study investigated the involvement of a novel LncRNA MALAT1 in regulating lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced cell pyroptosis and inflammation in the human renal tubular epithelial HK-2 cells. Here, the HK-2 cells were subjected to LPS (2 μg/mL) treatment to establish cellular AKI models in vitro, and we validated that...

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a complex metabolic disease with significant neurological complications and is reported to be closely related to the blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption. Azilsartan is an antagonist of the Angiotensin II receptor developed for the treatment of hypertension, and it has been recently reported to have neuroprotective effects. The present study aims to investigate the protective effect of Azilsartan against hyperglycemia-induced BBB disruption and its underlying mechanism. Male db/db mice were treated with...

Background: As rural hospitals across the United States increasingly downsize or close, the availability of inpatient obstetric services continues to decline in rural areas. In rural Appalachia, the termination of obstetric services threatens to exacerbate the existing risk of adverse birth outcomes for women and infants, yet less is known about how the cessation of these services affects the broader community. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explain how the loss of local...

Traits differentially adapt plant species to particular conditions generating compositional shifts along environmental gradients. As a result, community-scale trait values show concomitant shifts, termed trait‒environment relationships. Trait‒environment relationships are often assessed by evaluating community-weighted mean (CWM) traits observed along environmental gradients. Regression-based approaches (CWMr) assume that local communities exhibit traits centered at a single optimum value and that traits do not covary meaningfully. Evidence suggests that the shape of trait‒abundance relationships can vary widely along...

Additional file 6: Figure S2. miRNAs with similar expression patterns in crown and leaf tissues at the winter dormancy stage, spring green-up stage and jointing stage.

Additional file 7: Figure S3. miRNAs with different expression patterns in crown and leaf tissues at the winter dormancy stage, spring green-up stage and jointing stage.

Drug-resistant pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) has severely threatened human health and arouses widespread concern. Sortase A (SrtA) is an essential virulence factor of S. aureus, which is responsible for the covalent anchoring of a variety of virulence-related proteins to the cell wall. SrtA has always been regarded as an ideal pharmacological target against S. aureus infections. In this research, we have determined that orientin, a natural compound isolated from various medicinal plants, can effectively...