This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Humans rely on microbial communities in both natural and applied settings. One such applied setting is wastewater treatment plants, which use microbial communities to remove pollutants. However, the stability of the taxonomic diversity in these settings is not well understood. To close this gap, researchers examined how the microbial community in activated sludge changed over time in a full-scale wastewater treatment plant. For the first 3 years of a 9-year series, the microbial community fluctuated around a stable average. Then a bleaching event, marked in red under the timeline, abruptly pushed the community to an alternative stable state, where the originally dominant Actinobacteriota were disproportionally depleted and replaced with Proteobacteria, but these taxonomic changes led to little change in either the metabolic profile of the community or system performance. In a fine-scale analysis of dynamics, the researchers identified cohorts that dominated at different periods..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a type of blood and bone marrow cancer with a low survival rate. One reason AML is so deadly is because it can evade the immune system, in part by downregulating proteins like MICA, which normally marks damaged or cancerous cells in the body for immune destruction. To improve treatment prospects, researchers recently searched for molecules that can restore MICA levels in AML cells. They found that the transcription factor KFL4 is involved in MICA expression. In addition, treating cultured AML cells with the KLF4-activating compound APTO253 successfully induced MICA expression, while inhibiting the expression of the cancer gene MYC. These changes made the AML cells more susceptible to being killed by immune cells. Although studies in animals and humans are still needed, these findings reveal that APTO253 can improve immune cells’ ability to detect and kill AML cells and suggest that targeting KFL4/MICA is a promising option for AML treatment..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"In northern ecosystems, winter carbon loss is estimated to exceed growing season carbon uptake, primarily because of microbial decomposition. Viruses in soil alter microbial carbon cycling by affecting metabolic pathways and killing their hosts, but whether viruses are active under anoxic and sub-freezing soil conditions remains unknown. To find out, a recent study used stable isotope probing (SIP) targeted metagenomics to investigate active microbes in Alaskan Arctic peat soils under simulated winter conditions, with a particular focus on viruses and virus-host dynamics. Overall, 46 bacterial and 243 viral populations actively took up soil water labeled with ¹⁸O and respired CO₂. Active bacteria represented a small proportion of the total microbial community but were able to ferment and degrade organic matter. In contrast, a large diversity of viruses were found to be active, one-third of which were linked to active bacteria..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Some pain after a major operation is expected -- but some patients suffer more than others. More than 60% of surgical patients have moderate-to-severe postoperative pain, potentially predisposing them to persistent postsurgical pain. But who falls into which category? To better predict patients’ pain -- and thereby provide better treatment -- researchers at the University of Florida studied a large group of surgical patients to identify different pain trajectories. The team’s work published in _Anesthesiolog_y revealed five distinct patterns determined in large part by patient-specific factors such as age, sex, and psychologic features. The researchers monitored patents’ pain reports for 7 days in 360 patients recovering from a variety of different surgeries. Pain was evaluated using the [Brief Pain Inventory], which asks for a patient’s average, worst, and least pain in the last 24 hours on a scale from zero to 10..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Chemotherapy failure is a devastating problem that frequently results from cancer multidrug resistance (MDR). MDR is often due to overexpression of proteins called ABC transporters, which can pump chemotherapy drugs out of cancer cells. However, there are currently no effective treatments for MDR. A new study tested whether adagrasib (MRTX849), a promising anticancer drug targeting a mutant KRAS protein, can help fight MDR in cancer cell lines overexpressing the ABC transporter ABCB1 and in mice with ABCB1-overexpressing tumors. Both in vitro and in vivo, adagrasib increased the anticancer efficacy of conventional chemotherapy drugs. Adagrasib did not change the expression level or location of ABCB1 in the cells to exert its MDR- reversing effects. Rather, it suppressed the ability of ABCB1 to pump the drugs out of the cancer cells, likely by preventing binding of the energy molecule ATP, which normally powers the transporter’s pumping action..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Cases of the fungal disease candidiasis in infants have been increasing over the past two decades, but our understanding of the behavior and evolution of Candida spp. outside laboratory models has been lacking. Researchers assembled new C. albicans and C. parapsilosis genomes using data from premature infant feces, hospital surfaces, clinical samples, and non-hospital environmental samples. Relative to an existing reference genome, the C. parapsilosis genomes analyzed had genomic “hotspots” of single nucleotide variants, and the C. parapsilosis genomes from premature infants had hotspots that matched hospital and subway surface samples, which may suggest a common ancestor. The researchers also analyzed a microbial gene expression time course in one infant being treated for Candida infection. The in situ transcriptomic profiles were highly variable relative to cultured C..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Many microbiome studies have matched-pair or matched-set designs, in which data naturally cluster into sets, with some within-set variation in traits of interest. Statistical methods help us make sense of these data, testing hypotheses at the community or operational taxonomic unit (OTU) level. Now, researchers present a new strategy for analyzing matched-set microbial data. The method can be used with both PERMANOVA, a commonly used distance-based method for testing hypotheses at the community level, and the linear decomposition model (LDM), which unifies the community-level and OTU-level tests into one framework. An indicator variable for each set is included as a covariate to constrain comparisons between samples within a set. Simulations using this method showed that the strategy outperformed alternative strategies in a wide range of scenarios, and the flexibility of these methods to allow discrete or continuous traits or interactions to be tested was illustrated with analysis of two real datasets..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Our bodies are home to millions of microscopic organisms – our microbiome. While these microbes have many important functions that maintain our health and well-being, our microbiome changes as we age, which can cause infection or inflammation. Understanding these changes in humans is difficult due to our long lifespan and confounding factors such as healthcare and diet. A recent study used an animal model – free-ranging rhesus macaques – to better understand the changes that occur in our microbiomes with age, using a cross-sectional dataset of oral, rectal, and genital swabs collected from 105 macaques belonging to one social group. In contrast to adult macaques, researchers found that infant gut microbial communities had higher abundances of Bifidobacterium and Bacteroides, consistent with a milk-rich diet. The genital microbiome varied substantially between males and females, and while penile microbiomes changed with age, vaginal microbiomes did not..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Changes in the gut microbiota are associated with numerous ageing-related disorders. Microbiome rejuvenation through probiotic treatment or faecal microbiota transplantation can promote healthy ageing. However, in animal studies, it remains difficult to successfully prolong the health span of aged mice via gut microbiome manipulation. Researchers recently attempted several methods to rejuvenate the microbiomes of aged mice by co-housing young and old mice, injecting old mice with serum from young mice, and surgically combining young and old mice via their circulatory systems. As mice aged, the gut microbiota composition and gene abundance changed dynamically, but the rejuvenation procedures reversed the deterioration of microbe communities and intestinal immunity in aged mice. According to metagenomics, high abundance of Akkermansia (AK) bacteria and the activity of the butyrate synthesis pathway played key roles in the restorative effects..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A new study has found that the amount of agitation experienced by residents of care homes who have dementia has an important impact on their quality of life. At least forty percent of people living with dementia experience significant symptoms of agitation. These include restlessness, pacing, shouting, and verbal or even physical aggression. People with dementia who display such behavior are more likely to move to a care home. The study, the largest of its type ever conducted, explored how agitation affects the quality of life of this growing population of people. Researchers interviewed more than 1400 residents with dementia and staff caregivers in 92 care homes in England. They also talked to next-of-kin and staff looking after the residents. The goal was to understand staff coping style and to monitor resident’s quality of life and agitation over a period of 16 months. Caring for people living with dementia can be challenging..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Metastasis is the leading cause of breast cancer-related death, but traditional Chinese medicines such as Aiduqing (ADQ) can help prevent it. ADQ is known to target caveolin-1, CXCL1-mediated autophagy, and matrix metalloproteinase-related epithelial-mesenchymal transition, but it remains unclear whether it also modulates tumor-associated macrophage (TAM)/CXCL1 activity to remodel the tumor microenvironment. To find out, researchers recently examined the effects of ADQ in mice and cultured cells. In mice, ADQ significantly reduced xenograft tumor growth and lung metastasis without causing toxicity. ADQ also remodeled the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Mechanistic studies revealed that ADQ reduced CXCL1 expression and secretion from TAMs to suppress CD4+ T cell chemotaxis and Treg differentiation, thus increasing CD8+ T cell cytotoxicity..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"This video is based on a preprint. Preprints are preliminary reports that have not undergone peer review. They should not be considered conclusive, used to inform clinical practice, or referenced by the media as validated information. As the COVID-19 pandemic wages on, scientific research is uncovering multiple forces that alter the spread of the disease. One enhancing factor could be air pollution. Researchers at the University of Cambridge recently linked COVID-19 to air pollution levels in England, where more than 45,000 patients have died of COVID-19. Initial findings revealed that regional variations in nitrogen oxide and ozone in particular could predict COVID-19 cases and deaths. The risk of infection was found to be increased by exposure to particulate matter (PM). Such pollution can lead to increased inflammation in the lungs or even help carry the virus that causes COVID-19 across large distances..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A new algorithm has successfully mapped part of the brain’s circuitry during shock therapy. For those suffering from severe depression, the approach could make for safer and more effective treatment. For brain research at large, it could lead to better ways of untangling noisy neural data to reveal real connections between different focal regions of the brain. Despite the gruesome picture painted by pop culture, modern shock therapy is a mild treatment option. In fact, over 2 million treatments are administered worldwide every year. Under general anesthesia, patients receive a small amount of current to the brain, triggering a brief seizure. The resulting changes in brain chemistry have been shown to reverse symptoms of mental health conditions like severe depression or bipolar disorder. But the procedure isn’t perfect. One of the most troubling side effects is memory loss, a result of poor targeting. To be effective and safe, induced seizures should be restricted to the pre-frontal cortex..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Individuals with metabolic syndrome have a 2-fold increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but few strategies provide adequate cardiovascular risk reduction for this group. One option to lower this risk is to reduce atherogenic lipids, particularly low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Statins are a recommended first-line therapy for this purpose, but this approach doesn’t always provide sufficient LDL-C lowering to optimally reduce cardiovascular risk. Now, researchers have shown that alirocumab, a proprotein converstase subtilisin/kexin type 9 inhibitor, or PCSK9 inhibitor, approved for LDL-C reduction, may address this need. Pooled clinical trial data from ten phase 3 clinical trials from the ODYSSEY clinical development program showed alirocumab significantly lowered LDL-C in individuals both with and without metabolic syndrome..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Alirocumab, a drug that inhibits PCSK9 and helps clear the blood of atherogenic lipids, may be of benefit for individuals with type 2 diabetes who are most at risk of cardiovascular disease. According to the International Diabetes Federation, heart disease is the leading cause of death among people with type 2 diabetes. One factor that might contribute to that grim statistic is the high mixed dyslipidemia prevalence in this population. Mixed dyslipidemia is characterized by elevated triglycerides, and hence high triglyceride-rich lipoprotein, or remnant cholesterol, and high cholesterol levels; and low serum levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or HDL-C. Despite treatment with statins and other lipid-lowering therapies targeting atherogenic lipoproteins, management of mixed dyslipidemia remains challenging, especially among individuals with diabetes..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A recent analysis suggests that ixazomib, an oral proteasome inhibitor (or PI), is tolerable and enhances therapeutic responses in patients with multiple myeloma. Ixazomib is approved for use in combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone for patients who have already received 1 or more prior therapy. The promising results obtained for non-transplant patients taking ixazomib alone, if their disease has responded to primary induction therapy, point to a new possible treatment option for multiple myeloma. Multiple myeloma is a form of cancer that develops in bone marrow. Here, the body normally generates white blood cells that help fight off infection. But in multiple myeloma, malignant cells gradually crowd out these disease-fighting cells, compromising the body’s immune response, while also damaging the bones. The malignant cells also secrete large amounts of a non-functional protein which leads to kidney failure and other harms..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Certain gut microbes and their metabolites contribute to the progression of benign colorectal adenoma (CRA) into colorectal cancer (CRC), but the specific microbes, metabolites, and mechanisms involved are unclear. To learn more, researchers recently analyzed stool samples from patients with CRA or CRC and normal control (NC) subjects. The levels of certain stool metabolites significantly differed among the groups. For example, myristic acid and norvaline became more abundant with progression from health to CRC. The CRC-associated metabolites were largely branched- chain amino acids and aromatic amino acids and were involved in aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis pathways. A metabolite “signature” distinguished CRC samples from NC samples and CRC samples from CRA samples and the relationships among CRC-related metabolites and gut bacteria differed in the different sample types..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Autophagy is an important cellular recycling process that degrades misfolded proteins and damaged organelles. In typical (“canonical”) autophagy, membranes derived from the endoplasmic reticulum surround damaged materials that need to be degraded, and the proteins Atg5 and Atg7 help form specialized digestion compartments (autophagosomes), but another type of autophagy, called alternative autophagy, was recently discovered. In alternative autophagy, the membranes that envelop the damaged materials are derived from the trans-Golgi membrane, and Atg5 and Atg7 do not participate in autophagosome formation. Alternative autophagy seems to be activated primarily under conditions of cell stress, and it plays roles in many diseases, such as heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and bacterial infection..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The gut microbiome interacts intimately with its human host, both in health and in disease. A recent study examined how different states of the gut microbiome might be linked to varying degrees of disease in rats. Researchers exposed rats to different concentrations of dextran sodium sulfate (DSS), a polysaccharide known to induce human-like colitis. The effects on the intestinal microbiome over time were tracked by gene profiling. The results provide some of the first experimental evidence of “alternative states” in the rat intestinal ecosystem. These are distinct microbial profiles related to markers of disease. Importantly, these alternative states were found to be tied to both the host and microbiome, rather than one or the other. That led to a conceptual model of how host inflammatory status and microbiome status interact and how the whole ecosystem may slip into and out of different states of disease..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Since its appearance in late 2019, COVID-19 has caused well over one million deaths worldwide. Large-scale testing and contact tracing remain critical for controlling viral spread. Complying with the US CDC and WHO protocols for sample collection requires a ready supply of inexpensive swabs and collection reagents. Unfortunately, CDC-approved clinical-grade sampling supplies are expensive, and additionally, current methods prevent further analysis of the microbiome due to the presence of antibiotics in viral transport media. Researchers sought out new testing supplies in a recent study comparing five consumer-grade swabs and one clinical-grade swab. They found that using 95% ethanol instead of viral transfer media reduced RNase activity, preserving samples for microbiome analysis, and extracting directly from the swab head instead of the surrounding liquid resulted in 2-4x higher RNA recovery than the clinical standard..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.