Xueli Niu’s research while affiliated with Lingnan Normal University and other places

The skin, the largest organ of the human body, covers the body surface and serves as a crucial barrier for maintaining internal environmental stability. Various microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses reside on the skin surface, and densely arranged keratinocytes exhibit inhibitory effects on pathogenic microorganisms. The skin is an essential barrier against pathogenic microbial infections, many of which manifest as skin lesions. Therefore, the rapid diagnosis of related skin lesions is of utmost importance for early treatment and intervention of infectious diseases. With the continuous rapid development of artificial intelligence, significant progress has been made in healthcare, transforming healthcare services, disease diagnosis, and management, including a significant impact in the field of dermatology. In this review, we provide a detailed overview of the application of artificial intelligence in skin and sexually transmitted diseases caused by pathogenic microorganisms, including auxiliary diagnosis, treatment decisions, and analysis and prediction of epidemiological characteristics.

Background and aim Decomposition plays a crucial role in regulating the structure and function of microbial ecosystems. However, the response of soil microorganisms to endophyte-mediated decomposition in salinized soils remains elusive. Methods The diversity and composition of microbial communities in soil samples with Epichloë gansuensis-infected (E+) or E. gansuensis-free (E−) Achnatherum inebrians litter, which underwent decomposition under 0, 100, and 200 mM NaCl concentrations, were evaluated by Illumina sequencing. Meanwhile, soil metabolome was determined by LC–MS. Results The diversity and richness of fungal community in E− soil samples were more sensitive to salinity than bacterial community, and E. gansuensis mitigated the adverse effects of NaCl on microbial community diversity. Salinity led to an increase in the relative abundance of Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Bacteroidota while decreasing the Acidobacteriota abundance. Additionally, E. gansuensis significantly enriched pathways involved in stress responses such as “replication and repair” and “folding, sorting and degradation” in soil bacterial community. E. gansuensis infection increased the activities of invertase and catalase while decreasing the activities of alkaline phosphatase and urease after its host litter decomposition under 100 mM NaCl concentration. Additionally, salinity increased the ectoine content and decreased the levels of choline sulfate and O-acetylserine following A. inebrians decomposition. The co-occurrence network analysis indicated that salinity enhanced the E. gansuensis-mediated association among the soil properties, differential metabolites, and microbial communities. Conclusions These findings could further enhance our understanding of the role played by Epichloë endophytes in grassland ecosystems and provide valuable insights for sustainable management of salinized soils.

Cadmium (Cd) contamination poses serious risks to soil ecosystems and human health. Herein, the effect of two drunken horse grasses (Achnatherum inebrians) including endophytes Epichloë gansuensis infected (E+ ) and uninfected (E-) on the phytoremediation of Cd-contaminated soils were analyzed by coupling high-throughput sequencing and soil metabolomics. The results showed that the high-risk soil Cd decreased and the medium- and low-risk Cd fraction increased to varying degrees after planting E+ and E- plants in the soil. Meanwhile, total Cd content decreased by 19.7 % and 35.1 % in E+ and E- A. inebrians-planted soils, respectively. Principal coordinate analysis revealed a significant impact of E+ and E- plants on the soil microbial community. Most stress-tolerant and gram-positive functional bacterial taxa were enriched to stabilize Cd(II) in E+ planted soil. Several beneficial fungal groups related to saprotroph and symbiotroph were enriched to absorb Cd(II) in E- soil. Soil metabolomic analysis showed that the introduction of A. inebrians could weaken the threat of CdCl2 to soil microbe metabolism and improve soil quality, which in turn promoted plant growth and improved phytoremediation efficiency in Cd-contaminated soil. In conclusion, A. inebrians plants alleviate soil Cd pollution by regulating soil microbial metabolism and microbial community structure. These results provide valuable information for an in-depth understanding of the phytoremediation mechanisms of A. inebrians.

Background and aimPhosphorus (P) addition is a common practice to alleviate P limitation in agricultural ecosystems. However, information regarding microbial communities’ response to P addition in grasslands remains limited. The present study aimed to investigate the response of bacterial communities from rhizosphere and root endosphere of Achnatherum inebrians to P addition, and assess the potential roles played by mutualistic endophyte Epichloë gansuensis in these processes.Methods The response of bacterial communities to P addition was investigated based on 16S rRNA sequencing. Soil properties were determined and Mantel test was employed to evaluate the main factors contributing to bacterial community alteration. Additionally, the root exudates were assessed by GC-MS.ResultsP addition influenced the bacterial community composition in both the rhizosphere and root endosphere of A. inebrians with (E+) or without (E−) E. gansuensis, while not affecting community diversity. Moreover, P addition increased the soil available P, total P, and pH levels, which exhibited significant correlation with the bacterial communities in both rhizosphere and root endosphere of A. inebrians. Additionally, P addition increased the exudation of xylose, glycine, alanine, mandelic acid, and lactic acid from E+ plant roots.ConclusionsP addition shapes the bacterial communities in rhizosphere and root endosphere of A. inebrians by altering soil total P, available P, pH levels. Meanwhile, P addition modulates the root exudate profiles that mediated by E. gansuensis. This study provides new insights into the response of plant-soil-microbe ecosystem to P addition, which is helpful for the fertilization management during grassland sustainability.

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are anticancer drugs that combine cytotoxic small-molecule drugs (payloads) with monoclonal antibodies through a chemical linker and that transfer toxic payloads to tumor cells expressing target antigens. All ADCs are based on human IgG. In 2009, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved gemtuzumab ozogamicin as the initial first-generation ADC. Since then, at least 100 ADC-related projects have been initiated, and 14 ADCs are currently being tested in clinical trials. The limited success of gemtuzumab ozogamicin has led to the development of optimization strategies for the next generation of drugs. Subsequently, experts have improved the first-generation ADCs and have developed second-generation ADCs such as ado-trastuzumab emtansine. Second-generation ADCs have higher specific antigen levels, more stable linkers and longer half-lives and show great potential to transform cancer treatment models. Since the first two generations of ADCs have served as a good foundation, the development of ADCs is accelerating, and third-generation ADCs, represented by trastuzumab deruxtecan, are ready for wide application. Third-generation ADCs are characterized by strong pharmacokinetics and high pharmaceutical activity, and their drug-to-antibody ratio mainly ranges from 2 to 4. In the past decade, the research prospects of ADCs have broadened, and an increasing number of specific antigen targets and mechanisms of cytotoxic drug release have been discovered and studied. To date, seven ADCs have been approved by the FDA for lymphoma, and three have been approved to treat breast cancer. The present review explores the function and development of ADCs and their clinical use in cancer treatment.

Background and Objectives Local hyperthermia at 44°C can clear multiple human papillomavirus (HPV)-infected skin lesions (warts) by targeting a single lesion, which is considered as a success of inducing antiviral immunity in the human body. However, approximately 30% of the patients had a lower response to this intervention. To identify novel molecular targets for anti-HPV immunity induction to improve local hyperthermia efficacy, we conducted a lysine succinylome assay in HaCaT cells (subjected to 44°C and 37°C water baths for 30 min). Methods The succinylome analysis was conducted on HaCaT subjected to 44°C and 37°C water bath for 30 min using antibody affinity enrichment together with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The results were validated by western blot (WB), immunoprecipitation (IP), and co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP). Then, bioinformatic analysis including Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment, motif characterization, secondary structure, and protein-protein interaction (PPI) was performed. Results A total of 119 proteins with 197 succinylated sites were upregulated in 44°C-treated HaCaT cells. GO annotation demonstrated that differential proteins were involved in the immune system process and viral transcription. Succinylation was significantly upregulated in annexin A2. We found that hyperthermia upregulated the succinylated level of global proteins in HaCaT cells by downregulating the desuccinylase sirtuin7 (SIRT7), which can interact with annexin A2. Conclusions Taken together, these data indicated that succinylation of annexin A2 may serve as a new drug target, which could be intervened in combination with local hyperthermia for better treatment of cutaneous warts.

Microorganisms are closely related to skin diseases, and microbiological imbalances or invasions of exogenous pathogens can be a source of various skin diseases. The development and prognosis of such skin diseases are also closely related to the type and composition ratio of microorganisms present. Therefore, through detection of the characteristics and changes in microorganisms, the possibility for diagnosis and prediction of skin diseases can be markedly improved. The abundance of microorganisms and an understanding of the vast amount of biological information associated with these microorganisms has been a formidable task. However, with advances in large-scale sequencing, artificial intelligence (AI)-related machine learning can serve as a means to analyze large-scales of data related to microorganisms along with determinations regarding the type and status of diseases. In this review, we describe some uses of this exciting, new emerging field. In specific, we described the recognition of fungi with convolutional neural networks (CNN), the combined application of microbial genome sequencing and machine learning and applications of AI in the diagnosis of skin diseases as related to the gut-skin axis.