Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) seriously affects children’s health, and the gut microbiome has been widely hypothesized to play a role in the regulation of ADHD behavior. The present study aims to the biosynthesize of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) by using Acinetobacter johnsonii strain RTN1, followed by their characterization through state-of-the-art material characterization techniques, viz., UV–vis spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and transmission and scanning electron microscopic analyses with energy dispersive spectrometry. Moreover, we investigated and compared the population composition of gut microbiota and their susceptibility to biogenic ZnONPs between healthy and ADHD children based on the traditional plate method and 16S rRNA amplicon sequence analysis. The antibacterial effect of ZnONPs against gut bacteria was also determined by measurement of live cell number, living/dead bacterial staining test, and flow cytometry observation. The present study revealed that the number of live gut bacteria in healthy children was more than 10-fold higher than that in ADHD children; however, the community structure of gut bacteria has changed, while greater diversity was found in gut bacteria from ADHD children. In addition, we found that the number of live gut bacteria in healthy and ADHD children was reduced by ZnONPs, which shows an increased and reduced effect in composition of gut bacteria from healthy and ADHD children, respectively. It was also noted that the main mechanism of ZnONPs may be to inhibit the growth of gut bacteria rather than to kill them, while the nanoparticle-resistant strains in healthy children is also different from that in ADHD children. Some representative bacteria, in particular nanoparticle-resistant bacteria, were successfully isolated and identified. Overall, this study revealed the potential correlation of ADHD with gut bacteria and provided a new possibility to prevent ADHD by the combination of nanoparticle and its resistant bacteria.

It is well known that soil fertility is poor in most newly reclaimed land, which has been developed as an effective way to compensate farmland occupation. In order to ameliorate the soil quality of the newly reclaimed land, this study investigated the effect of commercial organic fertilizer (COF) (0.45, 0.90, 1.35 and 1.80 kg/m2), sheep manure (SM) (0.45, 0.75, 1.05 and 1.35 kg/m2), mushroom residue (MR) (1.50, 2.25, 3.00 and 3.75 kg/m2), and chemical compound fertilizer (CCF) (0.075 kg/m2) on the growth of sweet potato, soil pH, organic matter content (OMC), available phosphate, total nitrogen, available potassium, exchangeable Ca and Mg, as well as bacterial and fungal microbial composition during 2019–2021. The results from this study indicated that the COF, SM, MR, and CCF did not significantly change the soil pH, but significantly increased the OMC, which has been regarded as the most significant soil quality parameter. This suggests that the soil amendments used in this study have great potential to improve the soil quality in newly reclaimed land. However, these soil amendments exhibited a differential effect on sweet potato biomass, nutrient elements and the microbial community of the newly reclaimed soil, which depend on the kind and concentration of organic/chemical fertilizer, the application time, as well as the plant and soil parameters. The change was also observed on the bacterial and fungal soil microbial community, which provides us with a microbial basis to understand why organic fertilizer has a great effect on soil improvement. Overall, our results suggest that soil amended with organic fertilizers has great potential for the production of sweet potato in immature soil from the new reclamation land.

Ralstonia Solanacearum is one of the most infectious soil-borne bacterial plant pathogens, causing tomato bacterial wilt (TBW). Nanotechnology is an emerging area of research, particularly the application of nanoparticles (NPs) as nanopesticides to manage plant disease is gaining attention nowadays. However, the interaction between NPs and rhizosphere bacterial communities remains largely elusive. This study indicated that metal NPs (CuO, ZnO, and FeO) reduced the incidence of bacterial wilt to varying degrees and affected the composition and structure of the rhizosphere bacterial community. The results revealed that the application of metal oxide NPs can improve the morphological and physiological parameters of TBW infected tomato plants. Among all, CuONPs amendments significantly increase the Chao1 and Shannon index. In the early stage (the second week), it significantly reduces the relative abundance of pathogens. However, the relative abundance of beneficial Streptomyces bacteria increased significantly, negatively correlated with the relative abundance of pathogenic bacteria. In addition, the nano-treatment group will enrich some potential beneficial bacteria such as species from Sphingomonadaceae, Rhizobiaceae, etc. In general, our research provides evidence and strategies for preventing and controlling soil-borne disease tomato bacterial wilt with metal oxide NPs.

To successfully colonize the plants, the pathogenic microbes secrete a mass of effector proteins which manipulate host immunity. Apple valsa canker is a destructive disease caused by the weakly parasitic fungus Valsa mali. A previous study indicated that the V. mali effector protein 1 (VmEP1) is an essential virulence factor. However, the pathogenic mechanism of VmEP1 in V. mali remains poorly understood. In this study, we found that the apple (Malus domestica) pathogenesis-related 10 proteins (MdPR10) are the virulence target of VmEP1 using a yeast two-hybrid screening. By bimolecular fluorescence (BiFC) and coimmunoprecipitation (Co-IP), we confirmed that the VmEP1 interacts with MdPR10 in vivo. Silencing of MdPR10 notably enhanced the V. mali infection, and overexpression of MdPR10 markedly reduced its infection, which corroborates its positive role in plant immunity against V. mali. Furthermore, we showed that the co-expression of VmEP1 with MdPR10 compromised the MdPR10-mediated resistance to V. mali. Taken together, our results revealed a mechanism by which a V. mali effector protein suppresses the host immune responses by interfering with the MdPR10-mediated resistance to V. mali during the infection.

Bacteria from the genus Pantoea have been reported to be widely distributed in rice paddy environments with contradictory roles. Some strains promoted rice growth and protected rice from pathogen infection or abiotic stress, but other strain exhibited virulence to rice, even causing severe rice disease. In order to effectively utilize Pantoea in rice production, this paper analyzed the mechanisms underlying beneficial and harmful effects of Pantoea on rice growth. The beneficial effect of Pantoea on rice plants includes growth promotion, abiotic alleviation and disease inhibition. The growth promotion may be mainly attributed to nitrogen-fixation, phosphate solubilization, plant physiological change, the biosynthesis of siderophores, exopolysaccharides, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid deaminase and phytohormones, including cytokinin, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), auxins, abscisic acid and gibberellic acid, while the disease inhibition may be mainly due to the induced resistance, nutrient and spatial competition, as well as the production of a variety of antibiotics. The pathogenic mechanism of Pantoea can be mainly attributed to bacterial motility, production of phytohormones such as IAA, quorum sensing-related signal molecules and a series of cell wall-degrading enzymes, while the pathogenicity-related genes of Pantoea include genes encoding plasmids, such as the pPATH plasmid, the hypersensitive response and pathogenicity system, as well as various types of secretion systems, such as T3SS and T6SS. In addition, the existing scientific problems in this field were discussed and future research prospects were proposed.