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Context Pterostilbene (PTE), a common polyphenol compound, exerts an anti-inflammatory effect in many diseases, including acute lung injury (ALI). Objective This study explores the potential mechanism of PTE pre-treatment against lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced ALI. Materials and methods Sixty Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into control, ALI, 10 mg/kg PTE + LPS, 20 mg/kg PTE + LPS, and 40 mg/kg PTE + LPS groups. At 24 h before LPS instillation, PTE was administered orally. At 2 h before LPS instillation, PTE was again administered orally. After 24 h of LPS treatment, the rats were euthanized. The levels of inflammatory cells and inflammatory factors in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), the expression of nuclear receptor subfamily 4 group A member 1 (NR4A1), and the nuclear factor (NF)-κB pathway-related protein levels were detected. NR4A1 agonist was used to further investigate the mechanism of PTE pre-treatment. Results After PTE pre-treatment, the LPS induced inflammation was controlled and the survival rate was increased to 100% from 70% after LPS treatment 24 h. For lung injury score, it decreased to 1.5 from 3.5 after treating 40 mg/kg PTE. Compared with the control group, the expression of NR4A1 in the ALI group was decreased by 20–40%. However, the 40 mg/kg PTE pre-treatment increased the NR4A1 expression by 20–40% in the lung tissue. The results obtained with pre-treatment NR4A1 agonist were similar to those obtained by pre-treatment 40 mg/kg PTE. Conclusions PTE pre-treatment might represent an appropriate therapeutic target and strategy for preventing ALI induced by LPS.

Density functional theory was employed to investigate the (111), (200), (210), (211) and (220) surfaces of CoS 2 . The surface energies were calculated with a sulfur environment using first-principle-based thermodynamics. It is founded that surfaces with metal atoms at their outermost layer have higher energy. The stoichiometric (220) surface terminated by two layer of sulfur atoms is most stable under the sulfur-rich condition, while the non-stoichiometric (211) surface terminated by a layer of Co atoms has the lower energy under the sulfur-poor environment. The electric structure results show that the front valence electrons of (200) surface are active, indicating that there may be some active sites on this face. There is an energy gap between the stoichiometric (220) and (211), which has low Fermi energy, indicating that their electronic structures are dynamically stable. Spin-polarized bands are calculated on the stoichiometric surfaces, and these two (200) and (210) surfaces are predicted to be noticeably spin-polarized. The Bravais–Friedel–Donnay–Harker (BFDH) method is adopted to predict crystal growth habit. The results show that the most important crystal planes for the CoS 2 crystal growth are (111) and (200) planes, and the macroscopic morphology of CoS 2 crystal may be spherical, cubic, octahedral, prismatic or plate-shaped, which have been verified by experiments.