Publications by authors named "Wenyu Gu"

Microgravity conditions cause myocardial atrophy and dysfunction with limited therapeutics. Accumulating evidence demonstrates that the deficiency of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) contributes to myocardial dysfunction under microgravity, making NAD boosting an appealing therapeutic approach. In this study, we sought to investigate whether β-nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), a precursor of NAD, preserved cardiomyocytes size and myocardial function during microgravity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogenotrophic methanogens play a key role in anaerobic ecosystems by catalyzing the bioconversion of hydrogen (H) and carbon dioxide (CO) into methane (CH) and water. This metabolic process is the basis of biological power-to-methane (PtM) technology, a promising solution for the long-term storage of surplus renewable energy as CH. Its successful application can be improved through a deeper understanding of methanogen physiology, particularly the metabolic response to intermittent substrate supply of H or CO.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), characterized by chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH), is a prevalent disorder that significantly elevates the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic complications. Lipid metabolism disturbances, a common comorbidity in OSA, are closely associated with CIH-induced adipose tissue inflammation, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly defined. In this study, we established a CIH mouse model to investigate the roles of Sphingosine Kinase 2 (SPHK2) and endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) in CIH-induced lipid metabolic disturbances.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hierarchy is the basic character of the human brain. Neuronal oscillation is one of the fundamental features of brain function, revealing abnormal hierarchical structures in psychiatric disorders from a system-level perspective. However, to date, no research has yet quantified the normal and abnormal brain functional hierarchy based on oscillation patterns.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) are powerful tools for investigating microbial interactions and community assembly by focusing on minimal yet functionally representative members. Here, we will highlight key principles for designing SynComs, specifically emphasizing the anaerobic digestion (AD) microbiome for waste treatment and upcycling. The AD process has traditionally been used to reduce organic waste volume while producing biogas as a renewable energy source.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: Accumulating studies have demonstrated obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is strongly associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS) and inflammatory response in adipose tissue. Chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) has been proved leading to M1 macrophage polarization that contributes to adipose tissue inflammation, but the molecular mechanism remains unclear. Epigenetic regulation of RNA has been found playing crucial roles in incremental diseases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by the aggregation of amyloid beta (Aβ), leading to neurotoxicity and various pathological changes that ultimately result in neuronal death.
  • This study examined gene expression in AD patients vs. healthy individuals, identifying annexin A2 (AnxA2) as a key gene influenced by Aβ, linked to processes like neuroinflammation and apoptosis.
  • Experiments showed that knocking down AnxA2 worsened cytotoxic effects from Aβ42, impacting mitochondrial function, cell cycle, and inflammatory responses, highlighting AnxA2's critical role in AD pathology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Humans possess a remarkable ability to rapidly access diverse information from others' faces with just a brief glance, which is crucial for intricate social interactions. While previous studies using event-related potentials/fields have explored various face dimensions during this process, the interplay between these dimensions remains unclear. Here, by applying multivariate decoding analysis to neural signals recorded with optically pumped magnetometer magnetoencephalography, we systematically investigated the temporal interactions between invariant and variable aspects of face stimuli, including race, gender, age, and expression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a multifaceted neurodegenerative disease predominantly defined by the extracellular accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide. In light of this, in the past decade, several clinical approaches have been used aiming at developing peptides for therapeutic use in AD. The use of cationic arginine-rich peptides (CARPs) in targeting protein aggregations has been on the rise.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dicentrinone (Di), liriodenine (Li) and lysicamine (Ly) are three natural oxoaporphine alkaloids (OAs), which revealed significant biological activity such as anticancer, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activities and were considered as potential lead compounds for the development of new clinical chemicals. In the present study, confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy observation demonstrated these three natural OAs could traverse inside of the nucleus and get an opportunity to interact with DNA. Their interaction properties with DNA were then investigated simultaneously by two spectral fluorescent probes of ethidium bromide (EB) and methyl green (MG), as well as UV-vis absorption and cyclic voltammetry measurements, and further verified by the molecular docking analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease. Mitochondrial energy metabolism and p70 ribosomal protein S6 kinase (p70S6K) play significant roles in AD pathology. However, the potential relationship between them is unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The nitrogenase reductase NifH catalyses ATP-dependent electron delivery to the Mo-nitrogenase, a reaction central to biological dinitrogen (N) fixation. While NifHs have been extensively studied in bacteria, structural information about their archaeal counterparts is limited. Archaeal NifHs are considered more ancient, particularly those from Methanococcales, a group of marine hydrogenotrophic methanogens, which includes diazotrophs growing at temperatures near 92 °C.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aerobic methanotrophs are a specialized microbial group, catalyzing the oxidation of methane. Disturbance-induced loss of methanotroph diversity/abundance, thus results in the loss of this biological methane sink. Here, we synthesized and conceptualized the resilience of the methanotrophs to sporadic, recurring, and compounded disturbances in soils.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen of COVID-19, is a worldwide threat to human health and causes a long-term burden on the cardiovascular system. Individuals with pre-existing cardiovascular diseases are at higher risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection and tend to have a worse prognosis. However, the relevance and pathogenic mechanisms between COVID-19 and cardiovascular diseases are not yet completely comprehended.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The biological N-fixation process is catalyzed exclusively by metallocofactor-containing nitrogenases. Structural and spectroscopic studies highlighted the presence of an additional mononuclear metal-binding (MMB) site, which can coordinate Fe in addition to the two metallocofactors required for the reaction. This MMB site is located 15-Å from the active site, at the interface of two NifK subunits.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Recent advances in highly sensitive miniaturized optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs) have enabled the development of wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) offering great flexibility in experimental setting. The OPM array for wearable MEG is typically attached to a flexible cap and exhibits a variable spatial layout across different subjects, which imposes challenges concerning the efficient positioning and labelling of OPMs.

New Method: A pair of reflective markers are affixed to each triaxial OPM sensor above its cable to determine its location and sensitive axes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The substrate-reducing proteins of all nitrogenases (MoFe, VFe, and FeFe) are organized as αß(γ) multimers with two functional halves. While their dimeric organization could afford improved structural stability of nitrogenases , previous research has proposed both negative and positive cooperativity contributions with respect to enzymatic activity. Here, a 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Microbial electrosynthesis (MES) of acetate is a process using electrical energy to reduce CO to acetic acid in an integrated bioelectrochemical system. MES powered by excess renewable electricity produces carbon-neutral acetate while benefitting from inexpensive but intermittent energy sources. Interruptions in electricity supply also cause energy limitation and starvation of the microbial cells performing MES.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Methanotrophs require copper for their activity as it plays a critical role in the oxidation of methane to methanol. To sequester copper, some methanotrophs secrete a copper-binding compound termed methanobactin (MB). MB, after binding copper, is reinternalized via a specific outer membrane TonB-dependent transporter (TBDT).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) represents the majority of bladder neoplasms. It is unusual for NMIBC metastasizing distantly without regional progression, namely metastatic NMIBC (mNMIBC), which is still poorly understood and easily omitted based on current management policies. So far, description of mNMIBC is limited to a few case reports.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Catabolic and anabolic processes are finely coordinated in microorganisms to provide optimized fitness under varying environmental conditions. Understanding this coordination and the resulting physiological traits reveals fundamental strategies of microbial acclimation. Here, we characterized the system-level physiology of Methanococcus maripaludis, a niche-specialized methanogenic archaeon, at different dilution rates ranging from 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Multimodal neuroimaging plays an important role in neuroscience research. Integrated noninvasive neuroimaging modalities, such as magnetoencephalography (MEG), electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), allow neural activity and related physiological processes in the brain to be precisely and comprehensively depicted, providing an effective and advanced platform to study brain function. Noncryogenic optically pumped magnetometer (OPM) MEG has high signal power due to its on-scalp sensor layout and enables more flexible configurations than traditional commercial superconducting MEG.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The transient receptor potential vanilloid (TRPV) channels family, TRPV1-6, has been identified to profoundly affect a wide spectrum of pathological processes in various cancers. However, the biological function and prognostic value of TRPVs in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) are still largely unknown.

Methods: We obtained the gene expression data and clinical information of 539 ccRCC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Growing evidence shows that circulating tumor cells (CTCs) become more aggressive after the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), though the clinical significance of CTCs undergoing EMT in oligometastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (omHSPC) patients has not yet been reported. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to detect the CTC level and investigate the clinical significance of mesenchymal CTCs in omHSPC patients who underwent cytoreductive radical prostatectomy (CRP).

Materials And Methods: Blood samples were drawn from 54 omHSPC patients who underwent CRP.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Optical density (OD) measurement is the gold standard to estimate microbial cell density in aqueous systems. Recording microbial growth curves is essential to assess substrate utilization, gauge sensitivity to inhibitors or toxins, or determine the perfect sampling point. Manual sampling for cuvette-photometer-based measurements can cause disturbances and impact growth, especially for strictly anaerobic or thermophilic microbes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF