Hubei Zhongshan Hospital

CRISPR technology has profoundly transformed both genome editing and the next generation of nucleic acid detection. In this study, we characterized a Cas12a ortholog, Gs12-9 (EsoCas12a), which recognizes a broad PAM motif (NYYN, where Y denotes C or T) and maintains robust cis- and trans-cleavage activity across a wide temperature range (16–60 ℃), outperforming established Cas12a variants such as LbCas12a. Leveraging Gs12-9, we established a rapid, highly sensitive, and temperature-tolerant nucleic acid detection platform that enables precise genotyping without stringent thermal control. By integrating recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) with CRISPR/Gs12-9-mediated detection, we accurately discriminated myostatin (MSTN) knockout pigs from wild-type individuals, achieving a detection limit of 40 copies per reaction with 100% accuracy. While the MSTN knockout (KO) pig served as a proof-of-concept model in this work, the versatility of Gs12-9 supports its broader application in CRISPR-based diagnostics, including pathogen screening and genetic variant detection.

Citrus canker, a devastating disease caused by Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri (Xcc), poses a significant threat to global citrus production due to the high susceptibility of nearly all commercial citrus cultivars to it. Although transcription factor Citrus PH4 (CitPH4) is well known for regulating fruit acidity, its potential role in plant immunity remains elusive. Here, we demonstrate that CitPH4 positively regulates citrus defence against Xcc. Transcriptomic and biochemical analyses indicate that CitPH4 binds to the promoter of the responsive to dehydration 21a (CsRD21a), a gene encoding a papain-like cysteine protease (PLCP), thus modulating its expression. Functional characterisation further reveals that CsRD21a is essential for CitPH4-mediated resistance to Xcc. Mechanistically, CsRD21a interacts with pathogenesis-related protein 5 (CsPR5) to promote salicylic acid (SA) accumulation. In addition, reciprocal activation of PLCP activity and SA signalling enhances immune defences against Xcc. Collectively, our findings reveal a CitPH4-mediated citrus immunity mechanism in which the CitPH4-CsRD21a-CsPR5 module constitutes a defence loop by integrating reciprocal activation effects of PLCP activity and SA signalling. This study provides a novel insight into the regulatory network of citrus resistance against Xcc, offering potential targets for breeding citrus cultivars with enhanced disease resistance and superior fruit quality.

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) remains a significant global public health concern, particularly as a foodborne pathogen. Despite advances in vaccination and sanitation, HAV continues to cause outbreaks, especially in regions with uneven immunization coverage or inadequate hygiene infrastructure. This review comprehensively examines HAV from virological, clinical, and epidemiological perspectives, highlighting its pathogenesis, transmission routes, genomic diversity, and foodborne risks. We discuss the evolving global epidemiology of HAV, emphasizing the shift from high to low endemicity in vaccinated populations and the emergence of susceptible cohorts in moderately developed regions. The review underscores the challenges in foodborne HAV detection, including the limitations of current methods and the promise of emerging technologies like reverse transcription digital polymerase chain reaction (RT-dPCR) for enhanced sensitivity. Additionally, we summarize emerging antiviral approaches infood safety control, including plant-derived bioactive compounds and edible coatings, for controlling HAV transmission through the food chain. Finally, we present an overview of WHO-recommended vaccination strategies based on endemicity levels-targeted immunization for high-risk groups in low-endemic areas, universal childhood vaccination in moderate-endemic regions, and reliance on naturally acquired immunity in high-endemic zones. Our synthesis aims to bridge gaps between virology, clinical medicine, and food safety, offering insights for interdisciplinary collaboration in HAV prevention and control.

Acting as a pivotal cytokine of innate immunity, the signal transduction of interleukin 6 (IL-6) is always elevated in relation to the occurrence of injury, bacteria and chemical invasion. IL-6 as a critical care biomarker can be used for the clinical diagnosis of diseases ranging from bacterial infections to most inflammatory reactions. Then, a simple, cost-effective and sensitive colorimetric aptasensor was designed for the specific detection of IL-6. The IL-6 aptamer anchored on gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) by polyadenine accurately recognized IL-6, and then, the folded IL-6 aptamer enhanced the stability of AuNPs against salt-induced aggregation. The degree of AuNP aggregation increased inversely with the concentration of IL-6. A higher IL-6 content resulted in lower aggregation of AuNPs, which can be measured by spectrophotometry. The results showed that the proposed aptasensor exhibited a linear detectable range of 7-500 pg mL-1 with a limit of detection of 4.652 pg m-1. Furthermore, this proposed colorimetric aptasensor achieved the discrimination of IL-6 from other analogues and could detect IL-6 in human serum samples, which demonstrated its potential application for the detection of IL-6 in complex matrices.

Background: The study aims to observe the impact of psychological intervention on the psychological resilience, coping strategies, and quality of life of cancer patients during their rehabilitation period, in order to provide scientific reference for the nursing of many cancer patients in clinical practice and improve the overall benefit level of patients. Aim: To observe the influence of psychological intervention on resilience, coping style and quality of life of 100 tumor patients (50 in the control group and 50 in the study group, with a mean age of 38.15 ± 3.15 years in the control group and 38.32 ± 3.21 years in the study group) during rehabilitation, so as to provide scientific reference for the nursing of many tumor patients and improve the overall benefit level of patients. Methods: 100 tumor patients who were admitted to our hospital from January 2022 to December 2023 were randomly divided into two groups. 50 patients in the control group were treated with conventional nursing mode, and 50 patients in the research group were given psychological intervention. The patients’ fear of recurrence [Fear of Progression Questionnaire-Short Form (FoP-Q-SF)], quality of life [European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC QOL-C30)], psychological resilience [Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC)], medical coping style [Medical Coping Modes Questionnaire (MCMQ)], self-perceived burden [Self-perceived burden Scale (SPBS)], and post-traumatic stress status [The PTSD Cheeklist-17 (PCL-17)] were compared between the two groups. Results: After the intervention, the scores of FoP-Q-SF and PCL-17 in both groups decreased, and the scores in the research group were lower than those in the control group, with statistical significance (P < 0.05); After the intervention, the scores of EORTC QOL-C30 and CD-RISC in the two groups increased, and the scores in the research group were higher than those in the control group, with statistical significance (P < 0.05); After the intervention, the scores of coping dimension in MCMQ scale in the two groups increased, while the scores of avoidance and yield dimensions decreased before the intervention (P < 0.05), and the scores of coping dimension in the research group were higher than those in the control group, while the scores of avoidance and yield dimensions were lower than those in the control group, with statistical significance (P < 0.05); After the intervention, the self-perceived burden of the research group was better than that of the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Choosing a psychological intervention model during the rehabilitation of oncology patients facilitates the reduction of patients’ fear of relapse, improves quality of life, improves psychological resilience, helps patients to establish a positive mode of coping with the disease, reduces the burden of self-feeling, and relieves patients’ post-traumatic stress, and it is recommended that a large-scale psychological intervention model be encouraged among clinical oncology patients with a view to increasing the overall level of benefit for the patients and improving the quality of life during the survivorship period.

Understanding the underlying linguistic rules of plant genomes remains a fundamental challenge in computational biology. Recent advances including AgroNT and PDLLMs have made notable progress although, they suffer from excessive parameter size and limited ability to model the bidirectional nature of DNA strands respectively. To address these limitations, we propose PlantBiMoE, a lightweight and expressive plant genome language model that integrates bidirectional Mamba and a Sparse Mixture-of-Experts (SparseMoE) framework. The bidirectional Mamba enables the model to effectively capture structural dependencies across both the forward and reverse DNA strands, while SparseMoE significantly reduces the number of active parameters, improving computational efficiency without sacrificing modeling capacity. We evaluated and tested our model on the Modified Plants Genome Benchmark (MPGB), an enhanced genomic benchmark, which consolidates 31 datasets across 11 representative tasks, with input sequence lengths ranging from 50 to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$6,000 \text{bp}$</tex>. Experimental results demonstrate that PlantBiMoE achieves the best performance on 20 out of 31 datasets and the average best when comparing with existing models. In summary, all above results demonstrate that our model can effectively represent plant genomic sequences, serving as a robust computational tool for diverse genomic tasks, while making substantive contributions to plant genomics, gene editing, and synthetic biology. The code is available at: https://github.com/HUST-Keep-Lin/PlantBiMoE.

Abstract Small proteins encoded by small open reading frames (smORFs; ≤ 100 aa) represent a largely unexplored dimension of microbial diversity, especially in the deep sea. By analyzing 708 metagenomes from five major deep-sea biomes (hadal trenches, cold seeps, hydrothermal vents, abyssal plains, and seamounts), we constructed the Deep-Sea Small Protein Atlas, comprising 88.7 million smORFs with exceptional novelty and strong habitat specificity. Deep-learning predictions identified 5.47 million candidate antimicrobial peptides (c_AMPs), revealing a peptide space far larger and structurally distinct from known AMPs. Deep-sea c_AMPs are longer, enriched in nonpolar and acidic residues, and exhibit low charge and high intrinsic disorder, suggesting non-membranolytic modes of action. We synthesized 131 representative peptides, of which 87% were antimicrobial, with MICs as low as 1.25 μM, broad-spectrum antibacterial and even antifungal efficacy, and minimal mammalian cytotoxicity. Transcriptomics, TEM imaging, and peptide–protein modeling showed that representative peptides preserve membrane integrity while disrupting intracellular processes such as translation and metabolism, supporting intracellular, non-lytic mechanisms. This work uncovers a vast reservoir of previously unrecognized deep-sea small proteins and structurally unconventional AMPs, providing a foundational resource for discovering next-generation peptide therapeutics.

Abstract Background Few studies have explored the association between occupational exposure of medical staff in the department of anesthesiology and the characteristics of their respiratory flora. Methods Thirty medical staff in the non-operating room (Group A) and 30 medical staff in the department of anesthesiology (Group B) from a general Class Ⅲ Grade A hospital between March 2024 to December 2024 were recruited. Ten medical staff from each group were randomly selected to provide nasal swab samples. 16S rDNA sequencing technology was used to analyze the diversity, taxonomic composition and species differences of the two groups of samples. Results Compared with group A, there were statistically significant differences in the Shannon and Simpson indices of the microbiota alpha diversity index in group B (P &lt; 0.05). The PCA and PCoA analysis results showed that there were statistically significant differences in beta diversity between the two groups (P &lt; 0.05). The taxonomic composition of the microbiota at the genus level showed that the relative abundance of Staphylococcus and Nocardia in Group B was significantly higher than that in Group A (P &lt; 0.05). The relative abundance of Streptococcus, Peptostreptococcus, Veillonella, Fusobacterium, Prevotella, Corynebacterium and Atopobium in Group B was obviously lower than that in Group A (P &lt; 0.05). The LDA value (degree of differential influence) in the LEfSe multi-level species difference analysis showed statistically differences between the two groups (P &lt; 0.05). Conclusions Long-term exposure to the operating room environment and various occupational exposure factors result in a reduction in the diversity of respiratory tract microbiota and dysbiosis of the microbiota structure and function among medical staff in the anesthesiology department. It is necessary to pay more attention to the respiratory health of medical staff in the anesthesiology department and prevent occupational exposure risks. Trial registration This study is retrospectively registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Regitry Network (ChiCTR2500110353) on October 13, 2025.