BMC BiologyPub Date : 2024-09-30DOI: 10.1186/s12915-024-02014-9
Edoardo Piombo, Ramesh Raju Vetukuri, Naga Charan Konakalla, Pruthvi B Kalyandurg, Poorva Sundararajan, Dan Funck Jensen, Magnus Karlsson, Mukesh Dubey
{"title":"RNA silencing is a key regulatory mechanism in the biocontrol fungus Clonostachys rosea-wheat interactions.","authors":"Edoardo Piombo, Ramesh Raju Vetukuri, Naga Charan Konakalla, Pruthvi B Kalyandurg, Poorva Sundararajan, Dan Funck Jensen, Magnus Karlsson, Mukesh Dubey","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-02014-9","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s12915-024-02014-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Small RNA (sRNAs)- mediated RNA silencing is emerging as a key player in host-microbe interactions. However, its role in fungus-plant interactions relevant to biocontrol of plant diseases is yet to be explored. This study aimed to investigate Dicer (DCL)-mediated endogenous and cross-kingdom gene expression regulation in the biocontrol fungus Clonostachys rosea and wheat roots during interactions.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>C. rosea Δdcl2 strain exhibited significantly higher root colonization than the WT, whereas no significant differences were observed for Δdcl1 strains. Dual RNA-seq revealed the upregulation of CAZymes, membrane transporters, and effector coding genes in C. rosea, whereas wheat roots responded with the upregulation of stress-related genes and the downregulation of growth-related genes. The expression of many of these genes was downregulated in wheat during the interaction with DCL deletion strains, underscoring the influence of fungal DCL genes on wheat defense response. sRNA sequencing identified 18 wheat miRNAs responsive to C. rosea, and three were predicted to target the C. rosea polyketide synthase gene pks29. Two of these miRNAs (mir_17532_x1 and mir_12061_x13) were observed to enter C. rosea from wheat roots with fluorescence analyses and to downregulate the expression of pks29, showing plausible cross-kingdom RNA silencing of the C. rosea gene by wheat miRNAs.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>We provide insights into the mechanisms underlying the interaction between biocontrol fungi and plant roots. Moreover, the study sheds light on the role of sRNA-mediated gene expression regulation in C. rosea-wheat interactions and provides preliminary evidence of cross-kingdom RNA silencing between plants and biocontrol fungi.</p>","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"22 1","pages":"219"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11441109/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142342103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BMC BiologyPub Date : 2024-09-27DOI: 10.1186/s12915-024-02010-z
Emily Hartop, Leshon Lee, Amrita Srivathsan, Mirkka Jones, Pablo Peña-Aguilera, Otso Ovaskainen, Tomas Roslin, Rudolf Meier
{"title":"Resolving biology's dark matter: species richness, spatiotemporal distribution, and community composition of a dark taxon.","authors":"Emily Hartop, Leshon Lee, Amrita Srivathsan, Mirkka Jones, Pablo Peña-Aguilera, Otso Ovaskainen, Tomas Roslin, Rudolf Meier","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-02010-z","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s12915-024-02010-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Zoology's dark matter comprises hyperdiverse, poorly known taxa that are numerically dominant but largely unstudied, even in temperate regions where charismatic taxa are well understood. Dark taxa are everywhere, but high diversity, abundance, and small size have historically stymied their study. We demonstrate how entomological dark matter can be elucidated using high-throughput DNA barcoding (\"megabarcoding\"). We reveal the high abundance and diversity of scuttle flies (Diptera: Phoridae) in Sweden using 31,800 specimens from 37 sites across four seasonal periods. We investigate the number of scuttle fly species in Sweden and the environmental factors driving community changes across time and space.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Swedish scuttle fly diversity is much higher than previously known, with 549 putative specie) detected, compared to 374 previously recorded species. Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities reveals that scuttle fly communities are highly structured by latitude and strongly driven by climatic factors. Large dissimilarities between sites and seasons are driven by turnover rather than nestedness. Climate change is predicted to significantly affect the 47% of species that show significant responses to mean annual temperature. Results were robust regardless of whether haplotype diversity or species-proxies were used as response variables. Additionally, species-level models of common taxa adequately predict overall species richness.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Understanding the bulk of the diversity around us is imperative during an era of biodiversity change. We show that dark insect taxa can be efficiently characterised and surveyed with megabarcoding. Undersampling of rare taxa and choice of operational taxonomic units do not alter the main ecological inferences, making it an opportune time to tackle zoology's dark matter.</p>","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"22 1","pages":"215"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11438253/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142342102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BMC BiologyPub Date : 2024-09-27DOI: 10.1186/s12915-024-02020-x
Junpeng Zhang, Lin Liu, Xuemei Wei, Chunwen Zhao, Yanbi Luo, Jiuyong Li, Thuc Duy Le
{"title":"Scanning sample-specific miRNA regulation from bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing data.","authors":"Junpeng Zhang, Lin Liu, Xuemei Wei, Chunwen Zhao, Yanbi Luo, Jiuyong Li, Thuc Duy Le","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-02020-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-024-02020-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>RNA-sequencing technology provides an effective tool for understanding miRNA regulation in complex human diseases, including cancers. A large number of computational methods have been developed to make use of bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing data to identify miRNA regulations at the resolution of multiple samples (i.e. group of cells or tissues). However, due to the heterogeneity of individual samples, there is a strong need to infer miRNA regulation specific to individual samples to uncover miRNA regulation at the single-sample resolution level.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Here, we develop a framework, Scan, for scanning sample-specific miRNA regulation. Since a single network inference method or strategy cannot perform well for all types of new data, Scan incorporates 27 network inference methods and two strategies to infer tissue-specific or cell-specific miRNA regulation from bulk or single-cell RNA-sequencing data. Results on bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing data demonstrate the effectiveness of Scan in inferring sample-specific miRNA regulation. Moreover, we have found that incorporating the prior information of miRNA targets can generally improve the accuracy of miRNA target prediction. In addition, Scan can contribute to construct cell/tissue correlation networks and recover aggregate miRNA regulatory networks. Finally, the comparison results have shown that the performance of network inference methods is likely to be data-specific, and selecting optimal network inference methods is required for more accurate prediction of miRNA targets.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Scan provides a useful method to help infer sample-specific miRNA regulation for new data, benchmark new network inference methods and deepen the understanding of miRNA regulation at the resolution of individual samples.</p>","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"22 1","pages":"218"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11438147/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142342104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BMC BiologyPub Date : 2024-09-27DOI: 10.1186/s12915-024-02008-7
Yu C J Chey, Mark A Corbett, Jayshen Arudkumar, Sandra G Piltz, Paul Q Thomas, Fatwa Adikusuma
{"title":"CRISPR-mediated megabase-scale transgene de-duplication to generate a functional single-copy full-length humanized DMD mouse model.","authors":"Yu C J Chey, Mark A Corbett, Jayshen Arudkumar, Sandra G Piltz, Paul Q Thomas, Fatwa Adikusuma","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-02008-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-024-02008-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The development of sequence-specific precision treatments like CRISPR gene editing therapies for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) requires sequence humanized animal models to enable the direct clinical translation of tested strategies. The current available integrated transgenic mouse model containing the full-length human DMD gene, Tg(DMD)72Thoen/J (hDMDTg), has been found to have two copies of the transgene per locus in a tail-to-tail orientation, which does not accurately simulate the true (single) copy number of the DMD gene. This duplication also complicates analysis when testing CRISPR therapy editing outcomes, as large genetic alterations and rearrangements can occur between the cut sites on the two transgenes.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>To address this, we performed long read nanopore sequencing on hDMDTg mice to better understand the structure of the duplicated transgenes. Following that, we performed a megabase-scale deletion of one of the transgenes by CRISPR zygotic microinjection to generate a single-copy, full-length, humanized DMD transgenic mouse model (hDMDTgSc). Functional, molecular, and histological characterisation shows that the single remaining human transgene retains its function and rescues the dystrophic phenotype caused by endogenous murine Dmd knockout.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our unique hDMDTgSc mouse model simulates the true copy number of the DMD gene, and can potentially be used for the further generation of DMD disease models that would be better suited for the pre-clinical assessment and development of sequence specific CRISPR therapies.</p>","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"22 1","pages":"214"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11438084/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142342097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BMC BiologyPub Date : 2024-09-27DOI: 10.1186/s12915-024-02013-w
Monika M Wiśniewska, Eric D Salomaki, Jeffrey D Silberman, Kristina X Terpis, Eva Mazancová, Petr Táborský, Vasana Jinatham, Eleni Gentekaki, Ivan Čepička, Martin Kolisko
{"title":"Expanded gene and taxon sampling of diplomonads shows multiple switches to parasitic and free-living lifestyle.","authors":"Monika M Wiśniewska, Eric D Salomaki, Jeffrey D Silberman, Kristina X Terpis, Eva Mazancová, Petr Táborský, Vasana Jinatham, Eleni Gentekaki, Ivan Čepička, Martin Kolisko","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-02013-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-024-02013-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Diplomonads are anaerobic flagellates classified within Metamonada. They contain both host-associated commensals and parasites that reside in the intestinal tracts of animals, including humans (e.g., Giardia intestinalis), as well as free-living representatives that inhabit freshwater and marine anoxic sediments (e.g., Hexamita inflata). The evolutionary trajectories within this group are particularly unusual as the free-living taxa appear to be nested within a clade of host-associated species, suggesting a reversal from host-dependence to a secondarily free-living lifestyle. This is thought to be an exceedingly rare event as parasites often lose genes for metabolic pathways that are essential to a free-living life strategy, as they become increasingly reliant on their host for nutrients and metabolites. To revert to a free-living lifestyle would require the reconstruction of numerous metabolic pathways. All previous studies of diplomonad evolution suffered from either low taxon sampling, low gene sampling, or both, especially among free-living diplomonads, which has weakened the phylogenetic resolution and hindered evolutionary insights into this fascinating transition.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We sequenced transcriptomes from 1 host-associated and 13 free-living diplomonad isolates; expanding the genome scale data sampling for diplomonads by roughly threefold. Phylogenomic analyses clearly show that free-living diplomonads form several branches nested within endobiotic species. Moreover, the phylogenetic distribution of genes related to an endobiotic lifestyle suggest their acquisition at the root of diplomonads, while traces of these genes have been identified in free-living diplomonads as well. Based on these results, we propose an evolutionary scenario of ancestral and derived lifestyle transitions across diplomonads.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Free-living taxa form several clades nested within endobiotic taxa in our phylogenomic analyses, implying multiple transitions between free-living and endobiotic lifestyles. The evolutionary history of numerous virulence factors corroborates the inference of an endobiotic ancestry of diplomonads, suggesting that there have been several reversals to a free-living lifestyle. Regaining host independence may have been facilitated by a subset of laterally transferred genes. We conclude that the extant diversity of diplomonads has evolved from a non-specialized endobiont, with some taxa becoming highly specialized parasites, others becoming free-living, and some becoming capable of both free-living and endobiotic lifestyles.</p>","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"22 1","pages":"217"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11437800/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142342099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BMC BiologyPub Date : 2024-09-27DOI: 10.1186/s12915-024-02012-x
Zhen Tian, Yue Yu, Fengming Ni, Quan Zou
{"title":"Drug-target interaction prediction with collaborative contrastive learning and adaptive self-paced sampling strategy.","authors":"Zhen Tian, Yue Yu, Fengming Ni, Quan Zou","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-02012-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-024-02012-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Drug-target interaction (DTI) prediction plays a pivotal role in drug discovery and drug repositioning, enabling the identification of potential drug candidates. However, most previous approaches often do not fully utilize the complementary relationships among multiple biological networks, which limits their ability to learn more consistent representations. Additionally, the selection strategy of negative samples significantly affects the performance of contrastive learning methods.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>In this study, we propose CCL-ASPS, a novel deep learning model that incorporates Collaborative Contrastive Learning (CCL) and Adaptive Self-Paced Sampling strategy (ASPS) for drug-target interaction prediction. CCL-ASPS leverages multiple networks to learn the fused embeddings of drugs and targets, ensuring their consistent representations from individual networks. Furthermore, ASPS dynamically selects more informative negative sample pairs for contrastive learning. Experiment results on the established dataset demonstrate that CCL-ASPS achieves significant improvements compared to current state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, ablation experiments confirm the contributions of the proposed CCL and ASPS strategies.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>By integrating Collaborative Contrastive Learning and Adaptive Self-Paced Sampling, the proposed CCL-ASPS effectively addresses the limitations of previous methods. This study demonstrates that CCL-ASPS achieves notable improvements in DTI predictive performance compared to current state-of-the-art approaches. The case study and cold start experiments further illustrate the capability of CCL-ASPS to effectively predict previously unknown DTI, potentially facilitating the identification of new drug-target interactions.</p>","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"22 1","pages":"216"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11437672/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142342098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BMC BiologyPub Date : 2024-09-19DOI: 10.1186/s12915-024-01988-w
Bruno C. Vellutini, José M. Martín-Durán, Aina Børve, Andreas Hejnol
{"title":"Combinatorial Wnt signaling landscape during brachiopod anteroposterior patterning","authors":"Bruno C. Vellutini, José M. Martín-Durán, Aina Børve, Andreas Hejnol","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-01988-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-024-01988-w","url":null,"abstract":"Wnt signaling pathways play crucial roles in animal development. They establish embryonic axes, specify cell fates, and regulate tissue morphogenesis from the early embryo to organogenesis. It is becoming increasingly recognized that these distinct developmental outcomes depend upon dynamic interactions between multiple ligands, receptors, antagonists, and other pathway modulators, consolidating the view that a combinatorial “code” controls the output of Wnt signaling. However, due to the lack of comprehensive analyses of Wnt components in several animal groups, it remains unclear if specific combinations always give rise to specific outcomes, and if these combinatorial patterns are conserved throughout evolution. In this work, we investigate the combinatorial expression of Wnt signaling components during the axial patterning of the brachiopod Terebratalia transversa. We find that T. transversa has a conserved repertoire of ligands, receptors, and antagonists. These genes are expressed throughout embryogenesis but undergo significant upregulation during axial elongation. At this stage, Frizzled domains occupy broad regions across the body while Wnt domains are narrower and distributed in partially overlapping patches; antagonists are mostly restricted to the anterior end. Based on their combinatorial expression, we identify a series of unique transcriptional subregions along the anteroposterior axis that coincide with the different morphological subdivisions of the brachiopod larval body. When comparing these data across the animal phylogeny, we find that the expression of Frizzled genes is relatively conserved, whereas the expression of Wnt genes is more variable. Our results suggest that the differential activation of Wnt signaling pathways may play a role in regionalizing the anteroposterior axis of brachiopod larvae. More generally, our analyses suggest that changes in the receptor context of Wnt ligands may act as a mechanism for the evolution and diversification of the metazoan body axis.","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142249406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Effects of phosphorus-solubilizing bacteria and biochar application on phosphorus availability and tomato growth under phosphorus stress","authors":"Kaihong Bai, Wanying Wang, Jingnan Zhang, Pei Yao, Chuanying Cai, Zimei Xie, Laixin Luo, Tingting Li, Zhenlong Wang","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-02011-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-024-02011-y","url":null,"abstract":"Phosphorus-solubilizing bacteria (PSB) are vital in converting insoluble phosphorus into a soluble form that plants can readily absorb and utilize in soil. While previous studies have mainly focused on the extracellular secretion of microorganisms, few have explored the intricate intracellular metabolic processes involved in PSB-mediated phosphorus solubilization. Here, we uncovered that Ca3(PO4)2 could serve as a source of insoluble phosphorus for the PSB, Pseudomonas sp. NK2. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) results indicated higher levels of organic acids released from insoluble phosphorus compared to a soluble phosphorus source (KH2PO4), with acetic acid released exclusively under insoluble phosphorus condition. Moreover, non-target metabolomics was employed to delve into the intracellular metabolic profile. It unveiled that insoluble phosphorus significantly enhanced the tricarboxylic acid cycle, glycolysis, glyoxylic acid metabolism, and other pathways, leading to the production of acetic acid, gluconic acid, oxalic acid, and citric acid for insoluble phosphorus solubilization. In our quest to identify suitable biochar carriers, we assessed seven types of biochar through the conjoint analysis of NBRIP medium culture and application to soil for 30 days, with cotton straw-immobilized NK2 emerging as the most potent phosphorus content provider. Lastly, NK2 after cotton straw immobilization demonstrated the ability to enhance biomass, plant height, and root development of Solanum lycopersicum L. cv. Micro Tom. Pseudomonas sp. NK2 with cotton straw biochar could enhance phosphorus availability and tomato growth. These findings bear significant implications for the practical application of phosphorus-solubilizing bacteria in agricultural production and the promotion of environmentally sustainable farming practices.","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142249083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cyclic stretch enhances neutrophil extracellular trap formation","authors":"Manijeh Khanmohammadi, Habiba Danish, Nadia Chandra Sekar, Sergio Aguilera Suarez, Chanly Chheang, Karlheinz Peter, Khashayar Khoshmanesh, Sara Baratchi","doi":"10.1186/s12915-024-02009-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-024-02009-6","url":null,"abstract":"Neutrophils, the most abundant leukocytes circulating in blood, contribute to host defense and play a significant role in chronic inflammatory disorders. They can release their DNA in the form of extracellular traps (NETs), which serve as scaffolds for capturing bacteria and various blood cells. However, uncontrolled formation of NETs (NETosis) can lead to excessive activation of coagulation pathways and thrombosis. Once neutrophils are migrated to infected or injured tissues, they become exposed to mechanical forces from their surrounding environment. However, the impact of transient changes in tissue mechanics due to the natural process of aging, infection, tissue injury, and cancer on neutrophils remains unknown. To address this gap, we explored the interactive effects of changes in substrate stiffness and cyclic stretch on NETosis. Primary neutrophils were cultured on a silicon-based substrate with stiffness levels of 30 and 300 kPa for at least 3 h under static conditions or cyclic stretch levels of 5% and 10%, mirroring the biomechanics of aged and young arteries. Using this approach, we found that neutrophils are sensitive to cyclic stretch and that increases in stretch intensity and substrate stiffness enhance nuclei decondensation and histone H3 citrullination (CitH3). In addition, stretch intensity and substrate stiffness promote the response of neutrophils to the NET-inducing agents phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and lipopolysaccharides (LPS). Stretch-induced activation of neutrophils was dependent on calpain activity, the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/focal adhesion kinase (FAK) signalling and actin polymerization. In summary, these results demonstrate that the mechanical forces originating from the surrounding tissue influence NETosis, an important neutrophil function, and thus identify a potential novel therapeutic target.\u0000","PeriodicalId":9339,"journal":{"name":"BMC Biology","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142249087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}