No abstract

The intestinal bile salt concentration of infants is lower than that of adults, and the necessary bile salt tolerance of probiotics for infants remains unclear. In this study, Lactobacillus strains were isolated from breast milk and infant feces. The strains with better bile salt tolerance were screened, and their bile salt tolerance was compared with Lactobacillus strains from the adult intestine. The results showed that the bile salt concentration had a better distinguishing effect when it was 0.075 and 0.1%. Among the 28 strains of Lactobacillus with better bile salt tolerance, there were 16 strains of Lactobacillus plantarum, among which eight strains had greater than 70% survival under 0.075% bile salt and two strains had more than 50% survival under 0.1% bile salt. L. plantarum strains iso-lated from breast milk and infant feces had a significantly lower survival rate than those isolated from the adult intestine (P < 0.05) under 0.1% bile salt, while there was no significant difference in the survival rate under 0.075% bile salt (P > 0.05). Therefore, the demands for bile salt tolerance of probiotics for infants might be lower than that for adults. It is suggested that the standard for the screening of probiotics from breast milk and infant feces should differ from adults.

Objectives: Bladder carcinoma (BLCA) is one of the most common malignant diseases of urinary system. Our study aimed to investigate the autophagy-related signatures in the tumor immune microenvironment and construct effective prognosis prediction model.Methods: RNA sequencing data and corresponding clinical information of BLCA were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Autophagy-related genes were extracted from TCGA dataset for consensus clustering analysis, and differences in survival rate were analyzed. STIMATE algorithm was used to analyze the tumor microenvironment (TME) and immune cell infiltration was compared between different clusters. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between different clusters were identified, followed by function annotation. Independent prognostic signatures were further revealed to construct prognostic prediction model.Results: We identified 35 autophagy-related genes associated with prognosis. Survival rate of samples in cluster 1 was significant lower than that in cluster 2. Cluster 2 had markedly lower tumor purity and significantly higher estimate score and stromal score than cluster 1. The proportions of T cells CD8, macrophages M1, T cells CD4 memory activated, NK cells activated, and dendritic cells activated were higher in cluster 1. There were 1,275 DEGs which were mainly enriched in functions and pathways related to immune response and cancer. Seven genes (ATF6, CAPN2, NAMPT, NPC1, P4HB, PIK3C3, and RPTOR) were further identified as the independent prognostic signatures to construct risk score prediction model, which had good prediction performance.Conclusion: Prognosis prediction model based on 7 autophagy-related genes may have great value in BLCA prognosis prediction.