Chitin, the most abundant polysaccharide found in nature after cellulose, is known for its ability to support wound healing and to lower plasma-oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels. Studies have also revealed immunomodulatory potential but contradicting results are often impossible to coalesce through usage of chitin of different or unknown physicochemical consistency. In addition, only a limited set of cellular models have been used to test the bioactivity of chitin.

Chitin is investigated with well-defined physicochemical consistency for its immunomodulatory potency using THP-1 macrophages, impact on intestinal epithelial barrier using Caco-2 cells, and fermentation by fecal-derived microbiota. Results show that chitin with a degree of acetylation (DA) of ≈83%, regardless of size, does not affect the intestinal epithelial barrier integrity. Large-sized chitin significantly increases acetic acid production by gut microbiota without altering the composition. Exposure of small-sized chitin to THP-1 macrophages lead to significantly increased secretion of IL-1β, IL-8, IL-10, and CXCL10 in a multi-receptor and clathrin-mediated endocytosis dependent manner.

These findings indicate that small-sized chitin does not harm the intestinal barrier nor affects SCFA secretion and microbiota composition, but does impact immune activity which could be beneficial to subjects in need of immune support or activation.

These findings indicate that small-sized chitin does not harm the intestinal barrier nor affects SCFA secretion and microbiota composition, but does impact immune activity which could be beneficial to subjects in need of immune support or activation.Recent research on temporary work has suggested that temporary work experiences vary greatly in quality. In light of concerns about diminished quality of some temporary work experiences, we suggest that temporary workers may experience a variety of stressful work situations that could precipitate detrimental outcomes not only for these workers, but also for their co-workers and organizations. Using a multi-wave survey of temporary workers, this study examines the relationship between economic, interpersonal, and organizational stressors and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). Specifically, we hypothesize that economic stressors (operationalized as economic hardship and job insecurity), interpersonal conflict and organizational constraints will predict the extent to which temporary workers perform CWB via emotional exhaustion and moral disengagement pathways. Three waves of data show that temporary workers experiencing higher levels of economic hardship, interpersonal conflict and organizational constraints reported greater emotional exhaustion, which was linked to increased frequency of CWBs. Additionally, higher levels of job insecurity and interpersonal conflict were related to higher levels of moral disengagement, which related to increased frequency of CWBs. These findings highlight relationships of different stressors with emotional and cognitive reactions that may trigger CWB in temporary workers.Histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) is a potential drug target for treatment of human diseases such as cancer, chronic inflammation, neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes. Machine learning (ML) as an essential cheminformatics approach has been widely used for QSAR modeling. However, none of them has been applied to HDAC3. To this end, we carefully compiled a set of 1098 compounds from the ChEMBL database that have been assayed against HDAC3 and calculated three different sets of molecular features for each compound, i. e. two-dimensional Mordred descriptors, MACCS keys (166 bits) and Morgan2 fingerprints (1024 bits). Five ML classifiers, i. e. k-Nearest Neighbour (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random forest (RF), eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and Deep Neural Network (DNN) were trained on each feature set and optimized for classification. A total of 15 models were generated and carefully compared, among which the best-performing one was the XGBoost model based on the Morgan2 fingerprints, i. e. XGBoost_morgan2. Evaluated on a well-curated benchmarking set named MUBD-HDAC3, this model achieved a high early ROC enrichment (ROCE0.5 % 41.02). A further retrospective screening of an annotated chemical library in PubChem demonstrated that the best model could identify 8 novel-scaffold HDAC3 inhibitors while assaying only 1 % of the compounds. To make this model accessible for the scientific community, we developed a python GUI application named HDAC3i-Finder to facilitate prospective screening for HDAC3 inhibitors. The source code of HDAC3i-Finder is available at https//github.com/jwxia2014/HDAC3i-Finder.Increasing aridity is a challenge for forest managers and reducing stand density to minimize competition is a recognized strategy to mitigate drought impacts on growth. In many dry forests, the most widespread and common forest management programs currently being implemented focus on restoration of historical stand structures, primarily to minimize fire risk and enhance watershed function. The implications of these restoration projects for drought vulnerability are not well understood. Here, we examined how planned restoration treatments in the Four Forests Restoration Initiative, the largest forest restoration project in the United States, would alter landscape-scale patterns of forest growth and drought vulnerability throughout the 21st century. Using drought-growth relationships developed within the landscape, we considered a suite of climate and treatment scenarios and estimated average forest growth and the proportion of years with extremely low growth as a measure of vulnerability to long-term decline. d-century and under RCP4.5 than under RCP8.5 at the end of the century. Future climate is inherently uncertain, and our results only reflect the climate projections from the representative suite of models examined. find more Nevertheless, these results indicate that forest restoration projects designed for other objectives also have substantial benefits for minimizing future drought vulnerability in dry forests and provide additional incentive to accelerate the pace of restoration.