To apply the sterilisation effect of low-temperature plasma to the oral cavity, the issue of ozone from plasma must be addressed. In this study, a new technology for generating cold plasma with almost no ozone is developed and is named Nozone (no-ozone) Cold Plasma (NCP) technology. The antimicrobial efficacy of the NCP against four oral pathogens is tested, and its specific mechanism is elucidated. The treatment of NCP on oral pathogenic microbes on a solid medium generated a growth inhibition zone. When NCP is applied to oral pathogens in a liquid medium, the growth of microbes decreased by more than 105 colony forming units, and the bactericidal effect of NCP remained after the installation of dental tips. The bactericidal effect of NCP in the liquid medium is due to the increase in hydrogen peroxide levels in the medium. However, the bactericidal effect of NCP in the solid medium depends on the charged elements of the NCP. Furthermore, the surface bactericidal efficiency of the dental-tip-installed NCP is proportional to the pore size of the tips and inversely proportional to the length of the tips. Overall, we expect this NCP device to be widely used in dentistry in the near future.

The genome of the rhesus monkey has diverged as an average sequence identity of~93%. The rhesus monkey has been widely used as a non-human primate in the field of biomedical and evolutional research. Insertion of transposable elements (TEs) induced several events such as transcriptional diversity and different expression in host genes. In this study, 112 transcripts were identified from a full-length cDNA library of brain tissues of the rhesus monkey. One transcript (R54) showed a different expression pattern between human and rhesus monkey tissues. This phenomenon can be an explanation that R54 transcript was acquired by splicing a donor site derived from exonization of the L2A element. Therefore, integration of TEs during primate radiation could contribute to transcriptional diversity and gene regulation.