Activity

Pregnancy is a physiological stress that requires dynamic, regulated changes affecting maternal and fetal adiposity. Excessive accumulation of dysfunctional adipose tissue defined by metabolic and molecular alterations cause severe health consequences for mother and fetus. When subjected to sustained overnutrition, the cellular and lipid composition of the adipose tissue changes predisposing to insulin resistance, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders compromising the outcome of the pregnancy. Moreover, excessive maternal weight gain, usually in the context of obesity, predisposes to an increased flux of nutrients from mother to fetus throughout the placenta. The fetus of an obese mother will accumulate more adiposity and may increase the risk of future metabolic disorder later in life. Thus, further understanding of the interaction between maternal metabolism, epigenetic regulation of the adipose tissue, and their transgenerational transfer are required to mitigate the adverse health outcomes for the mother and the fetus associated with maternal obesity.The prevalence of overweight and obesity is increasing among reproductive-age women in sub-Saharan Africa. Whether maternal body mass index (BMI) influences the risk of infant infections in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) is uncertain. We used data from a birth cohort of 5344 HIV-unexposed Zimbabwean infants with available data on maternal BMI, to calculate rates of sick clinic visits for infections during the first 12 months postpartum, and adjusted hazard ratios (aHR) for each maternal BMI group. Compared to infants of mothers with normal BMI, the rate of sick clinic visits for any infection progressively rose among infants of overweight (aHR 1.05; 95%CI 0.99, 1.11) and obese women (aHR 1.15; 95%CI 1.05, 1.25). Excess clinic attendances were particularly due to skin, respiratory and ear infections. Maternal obesity may therefore influence infant infectious morbidity in LMIC over the first year after birth.

Handgrip strength (HGS) is a potential predictor of outcomes in cancer setting. However, reference values for this population are lacking. The study aimed to describe reference values and cutoff point for HGS in adults with incurable cancer in Brazil and to verify the association of reference values with prognostic.

Secondary analysis of a prospective cohort, conducted with 1,868 patients at the National Cancer Institute in Brazil were analyzed. HGS (kg) data were obtained with a Jamar

hydraulic dynamometer. Description of percentile values of HGS was stratified by sex and age groups. Receiver operating characteristic curve was performed to determine the optimal HGS cutoff point by sex and age according to performance status. Kaplan-Meier curves was used to analyze the probability of survival and Cox’s proportional model used to identify whether HGS predict 180-d mortality.

HGS value was significantly higher in male than in female and decreased with increasing age. Sex-specific HGS cutoff values ranged from 32.5 to 24.5 kg in males and 20.5 to 18.5 kg in females (with younger adults stronger than the older ones). When compared to HGS ≥50th, patients with HGS ≤10th percentile had significantly lower survival, as well as patients classified below the HGS cutoff point. In addition, patients with lower HGS percentiles showed increased risk of mortality regardless of sex and age.

Reference values can inform the clinical assessment of HGS, which is recognized as an important part of the identification of patients with incurable cancer with reduced physical function and short survival.

Reference values can inform the clinical assessment of HGS, which is recognized as an important part of the identification of patients with incurable cancer with reduced physical function and short survival.Lung cancer is one of the most intractable diseases with high incidence and mortality worldwide. Adenylate cyclase-associated protein 1 (CAP1), a well-known actin depolymerization factor, is recently reported to be an oncogene accelerating cancer cell proliferation. However, the physiological significance of CAP1 in lung cancer is incompletely understood and the novel functions of CAP1 in transcriptional regulation remain unknown. Here we found that CAP1 was highly expressed in lung cancer tissues and cells, which was also negatively associated with prognosis in lung cancer patients. Moreover, CAP1 promoted A549 cells proliferation by promoting protein synthesis to accelerate cell cycle progression. Mechanistically, we revealed that CAP1 facilitated cyclin-dependent kinase 9 (CDK9)-mediated RNA polymerases (Pol) II-Ser2 phosphorylation and subsequent transcription elongation, and CAP1 performed its function in this progress depending on its actin-depolymerization activity in nucleoplasm. Furthermore, our in vivo findings confirmed that CAP1-promoted A549 xenograft tumor growth was associated with CDK9-mediated Pol II-Ser2 phosphorylation. Our study elucidates a novel role of CAP1 in modulating transcription by promoting polymerase II phosphorylation and suggests that CAP1 is a newly identified biomarker for lung cancer treatment and prognosis prediction.CO is a promising substrate for producing biochemicals and biofuels through mixed microbial cultures, where carboxydotrophs play a crucial role. The previous investigations of mixed microbial cultures focused primarily on overall community structures, but under-characterized taxa and intricate microbial interactions have not yet been precisely explicated. Here, we undertook DNA-SIP based metagenomics to profile the anaerobic CO-driven microbiomes under 95 and 35% CO atmospheres. The time-series analysis of the isotope-labeled amplicon sequencing revealed the essential roles of Firmicutes and Proteobacteria under high and low CO pressure, respectively, and Methanobacterium was the predominant archaeal genus. GC376 cost The functional enrichment analysis based on the isotope-labeled metagenomes suggested that the microbial cultures under high CO pressure had greater potential in expressing carboxylate metabolism and citrate cycle pathway. The genome-centric metagenomics reconstructed 24 discovered and 24 under-characterized metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs), covering more than 94% of the metagenomic reads.