Search Results (3,287)

Subterranean termites, particularly Odontotermes obesus, cause severe damage to forest nurseries and plantations in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. This study demonstrates the dual functional role of endophytic entomopathogenic fungi, Metarhizium anisopliae and Beauveria bassiana, in termite suppression and induction of plant defense responses. Laboratory bioassays revealed significantly higher virulence of M. anisopliae, with a lower LT₅₀ (lethal time required to cause 50% mortality) of 33.1 h compared to B. bassiana (46.7 h), a steeper probit slope (5.4 ± 0.3), and strong model fit (R² = 0.95), indicating rapid and synchronized mortality. Endophytic colonization varied across host species and application methods, with soil incorporation consistently outperforming foliar inoculation. Maximum colonization (82.5%) was recorded in Tecomella undulata and exceeded 80% in Azadirachta indica under M. anisopliae. Biochemical analyses revealed significant increases in protein (up to 3.5 mg g⁻¹), phenols (3.7 mg g⁻¹), and tannins (2.7 mg g⁻¹). Activity of defense enzymes was significantly enhanced, with catalase reaching 263.5 U mL⁻¹, while Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase and Tyrosine ammonia-lyase exceeded 170 and 198 U mL⁻¹, respectively, indicating activation of antioxidant and phenylpropanoid pathways. Molecular docking analysis further revealed strong interactions between fungal metabolites and termite cellulase, with Bassianin (−8.4 kcal mol⁻¹) and Tenellin (−8.1 kcal mol⁻¹) showing the highest binding affinities. These findings highlight the combined biochemical and molecular mechanisms underlying fungal-mediated termite suppression and plant defense induction, and future research should prioritize transcriptomic validation, rhizosphere microbiome interactions, formulation optimization, and long-term multi-location field evaluation to support sustainable termite management strategies. Full article

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed across professional and societal domains, introducing security, privacy, and governance challenges beyond traditional software vulnerabilities. Despite extensive research on individual risk categories, a unified lifecycle-oriented perspective connecting architectural properties, adversarial threats, and governance implications remains limited. This review examines security and privacy risks associated with LLMs through a lifecycle framework covering data acquisition, model training, alignment procedures, deployment, and post-deployment interaction. The study synthesizes prior research to construct a taxonomy of threats including prompt injection, jailbreaking, adversarial manipulation, training-stage attacks, privacy leakage, and socio-technical misuse. Ethical issues such as hallucination, bias amplification, and malicious use are analyzed alongside governance and regulatory frameworks. Results indicate that vulnerabilities in LLM systems arise primarily from probabilistic generation mechanisms, large-scale data ingestion, and complex deployment ecosystems rather than isolated implementation defects. Classical software vulnerability models therefore provide only partial coverage of risks associated with generative AI systems. The review is grounded in the concept of the alignment gap to explain how discrepancies between training objectives and real-world interaction contribute to persistent vulnerabilities. The findings highlight the need for lifecycle-oriented defense-in-depth strategies combining technical safeguards, privacy-preserving training, runtime monitoring, and governance mechanisms to support responsible deployment of LLM-based systems. Full article

The m⁶A RNA methylation pathway plays a critical role in host antiviral defense. Host cells employ m⁶A readers such as YTHDF2 to regulate viral RNA fate through diverse mechanisms, including degradation, translational control, and immune recognition. However, we found that YTHDF2 is essential for SARS-CoV-2 replication, suggesting that a virus may exploit this host machinery to its advantage. Through integrative RNA-proteome analysis, we identified the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) transcript as the most heavily m⁶A-modified viral transcript and a direct interactor of YTHDF2. The N protein forms a complex with YTHDF2 in the cytoplasm and redirects this host RNA decay machinery toward host antiviral transcripts. N suppresses ISG15, IFIT1, MX1 and pro-inflammatory cytokines in a largely YTHDF2-dependent manner, an effect that is lost in YTHDF2-knockout cells. These findings reveal a viral immune evasion strategy wherein a viral protein actively hijacks an m⁶A reader to silence antiviral gene expression, establishing the N-YTHDF2 axis as a therapeutic target against SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses. Full article

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) causes lethal enteritis in neonatal piglets, yet the mechanisms underlying rapid intestinal injury remain unclear. In particular, it is unknown whether different regulated cell death pathways act separately or cooperatively to worsen mucosal damage. To address this question, we performed multi-omics analyses of infected intestinal tissues and found concurrent activation of pyroptosis and ferroptosis during PEDV infection. PEDV infection activated the Caspa-se-1/GSDMD pathway in the duodenum and jejunum, as shown by generation of the Caspase-1 p20 fragment and cleavage of GSDMD into its active N-terminal form, indicating pyroptosis. At the same time, infected tissues displayed key features of ferroptosis, including weakened antioxidant defenses, increased lipid peroxidation, iron accumulation, lipid remodeling, and dysregulated ACSL4 and GPX4 expression. These two processes were closely linked and together contributed to tight junction disruption and barrier instability. Molecular docking further suggested that PEDV NSP1 and S proteins may interact with Caspase-1, providing a possible explanation for pyroptosis induction. Correlation analysis also showed strong associations between pyroptosis-related genes and ferroptosis-associated metabolites. Overall, our findings indicate that pyroptosis and ferroptosis cooperate to drive PEDV-induced intestinal inflammation and barrier damage, highlighting their joint inhibition as a potential strategy to reduce PEDV pathogenicity. Full article

The abnormal activation of the Nlrp3 (Nod-like receptor pyrin 3) inflammasome, in response to oxidative stress or impaired antioxidant defense, is linked to aging-related diseases. Previously, we have shown that Peroxiredoxin (Prdx)6 deficiency triggers reactive oxygen species (ROS)-dependent activation of Kruppel-like factor (Klf)9/Nlrp3 inflammasome in aging lens epithelial cells (LECs). Herein, we test the therapeutic efficacy of Prdx6 delivery in abating the oxidative stress-induced aberrant activation of the Klf9/NF-ĸB/Nlrp3 pathway and subsequent pyroptotic cell death in LECs and Prdx6-deficient (Prdx6^−/−) LECs. Similar to aged LECs, Prdx6-depleted LECs exhibited activation of Nlrp3 inflammasome components—including ASC, Caspase-1, IL-1β, IL-18, GSDMD—and displayed heightened sensitivity to H₂O₂/ UVB-induced oxidative damage. The delivery of TAT-HA-Prdx6 or the overexpression of Prdx6 in Prdx6^−/− mLECs significantly suppressed the aberrant activation of these inflammatory components and restored redox balance by eliminating ROS levels during oxidative stress. Similarly, TAT-HA-Prdx6 effectively internalized into SRA-hLECs and suppressed the H₂O₂- and/or UVB-induced upregulation of Nlrp3 and its components. Furthermore, the oxidative stress or Prdx6 deficiency led to increased Nlrp3 promoter activity and NF-ĸB activation, accompanied by decreased cytosolic IĸBα and increased phosphorylation of IĸBα; these alterations were reversed by Prdx6 overexpression. The elevated Klf9 transcription observed in aging and Prdx6^−/− mLECs or under oxidative stress was also inhibited by Prdx6 delivery. Additionally, Prdx6^−/− mLECs and aging LECs displayed increased TXNIP and reduced TRX levels, which were normalized by Prdx6 restoration. Collectively, this study provides the first evidence that the loss of Prdx6 drives aberrant activation of Klf9/NF-ĸB/Nlrp3 inflammasome axis, leading to pyroptotic cell death. Prdx6 delivery represents a promising therapeutic strategy to rescue cells from pyroptosis (oxidative stress-induced inflammatory cell death). Full article

Plasmopara viticola (Pv), the causal agent of downy mildew, is one of the most damaging pathogens affecting grapevine. Current control strategies largely depend on copper-based fungicides and synthetic chemicals, raising increasing concerns related to environmental sustainability and pathogen resistance. This study evaluated the efficacy of a novel Saccharomyces cerevisiae extract (U) as an inducer of resistance in the grapevine–Pv interaction. Microscopic observations revealed the ability of U to inhibit Pv spread over the leaf. Additionally, biochemical and molecular responses were analyzed in grapevine leaves subjected to four treatments: plants treated only with water (U⁻/Pv⁻; i.e., control) or U (U⁺/Pv⁻), inoculated with Pv (U⁻/Pv⁺), or both treated with U and then inoculated with Pv (U⁺/Pv⁺). Fully expanded leaves were sampled at 2-, 5-, 24-, and 72-h post inoculation (hpi). In U⁺/Pv⁻ leaves, jasmonic, salicylic and abscisic acid (JA, SA, and ABA), as well as hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) increased at 2 hpi (+44, +33, +38%, and 3-fold, respectively), accompanied by upregulation of pr1 (2-fold higher than control, respectively), suggesting the capacity of U to trigger the plant alert system. In U⁻/Pv⁺ leaves, peaks of JA and H₂O₂ occurred at 24 hpi (+40% and 4-fold higher than control), followed by marked ethylene emissions and upregulation of pr1 and pr2 (i.e., genes associated with Pv defense; around 2-fold, averagely) at 72 hpi, confirming the progression of infection. In contrast, U⁺/Pv⁺ leaves showed stronger peaks of H₂O₂ at both 2 and 5 hpi (7-fold and +58%, respectively), together with SA accumulation and upregulation of pr1, pr2, eds1, and chit1b at 72 hpi (more than 2-fold), suggesting a priming effect of U. Overall, U effectively enhanced grapevine defense responses and limited Pv development, highlighting its potential as a sustainable disease management strategy. Full article

Background: Crocodilians rarely develop cancer despite long lifespans and continuous exposure to environmental carcinogens, suggesting robust natural anti-tumor defense mechanisms. Methods: We investigated the anti-cancer activity of sera derived from the phylogenetically related species—alligators, crocodiles, and chickens, and studied their underlying immune mechanisms. The anti-tumor activity of alligator serum was tested in murine models of melanoma and lymphoma. Results: Alligator serum (AS) and its (NH₄)₂SO₄-precipitated fraction (ASa) showed rapid and potent cytotoxicity toward multiple murine and human cancer cell lines while sparing non-malignant human cells. Importantly, ASa attenuated melanoma and lymphoma tumor growth in mice. Electrophysiological analyses in PN71 cancer cells treated with ASa revealed rapid membrane depolarization and formation of high-conductance pores consistent with Complement-mediated membrane attack complex (MAC) activity. Proteomic analyses identified the Complement component C5 as a major protein enriched in active fractions, implicating the Complement system in cancer cell killing. Based on phylogenetic similarity of C5, crocodile and chicken sera exhibit alligator-like comparable anti-cancer activity. Mechanistic studies in chicken serum showed that the anti-cancer activity depends on Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ ions, terminal Complement components (C5–C8), and IgM antibodies that initiate Complement activation. Immunodepletion of IgM from CSa significantly reduced cytotoxicity, whereas purified chicken IgM activated human Complement to induce cancer cell death. Conclusions: These findings identify a conserved IgM–Complement immune mechanism capable of selectively targeting malignant cells. The evolutionary conservation and cross-species functionality of this pathway highlight its potential as a bio-inspired strategy for developing novel Complement-based cancer immunotherapies. Full article

Coastal erosion poses a growing threat to natural systems and critical infrastructures, particularly in touristic coastal areas where beaches represent both ecological assets and economic resources. Beyond shoreline retreat, erosion processes progressively reduce emerged beach surfaces and increase the exposure and vulnerability of coastal roads, railways, and urban settlements, with cascading socio-economic consequences. This study presents an integrated geomorphological and economic assessment of coastal erosion impacts. The Coastal Degradation Calculator (CoDeC) is applied along the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Italy, focusing on the municipality of San Lucido. Shoreline variations are quantified to reconstruct long-term changes in the Surface of the Emerged Beach (SEB) before and after major coastal defense interventions using multi-temporal remote sensing data (1954–2018). Simple, science-based box models are implemented to estimate sediment deficits, restoration needs, and associated economic damages, expressed in both €/m² and €/year. Results highlight a reduction in SEB area exceeding 60%, significant downdrift erosion linked to hard defenses and additional losses caused by coastal urbanization. The methodology proved effective in supporting damage quantification and informed the resolution of a long-standing legal dispute between public authorities. Owing to its transparency and reproducibility, the proposed framework offers a transferable tool for coastal risk assessment and management under increasing climate-driven pressures. Full article

Background: Nutritional psychiatry increasingly links diet quality and specific bioactive nutrients to depression and anxiety outcomes. Mechanistic evidence implicates neuroimmune activation, inflammation, altered neurotransmitter synthesis, and microbiota-derived metabolites. Objective: The objective of this study is to synthesize evidence on omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs), the microbiota–gut–brain axis, and vitamins and minerals that influence neurotransmitter synthesis, inflammation, and brain function and to translate these findings into food-based strategies. Methods: This study consisted of a focused synthesis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), meta-analyses, and systematic reviews indexed in PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science, selected for relevance to omega-3s, probiotics/prebiotics, dietary patterns, and micronutrients (folate/B-vitamins, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, and vitamin C/copper pathways). Results: RCT and meta-analytic evidence suggest modest benefits of omega-3 supplementation for anxiety severity and depressive symptoms, with heterogeneity by dose, EPA: DHA composition, and baseline inflammatory status. The gut–brain axis literature supports bidirectional effects of stress and microbiota, and meta-analyses of probiotics/prebiotics show small improvements in depressive and anxiety symptoms, likely dependent on strain and host phenotype. Micronutrients serve as enzymatic cofactors for monoamine and GABA synthesis and modulate immune signaling; clinical effects are the most consistent when correcting insufficiency or in biomarker-defined subgroups. A whole-diet RCT demonstrates that structured dietary improvement can reduce depressive symptoms as adjunctive therapy. Conclusions: A food-first approach emphasizing Mediterranean-style dietary patterns, omega-3-rich seafood, a diverse array of fiber, and micronutrient density is the most defensible. Supplementation may be considered selectively, guided by clinical context and nutritional status. Full article

Human adenovirus (HAdV), a double-stranded DNA virus, targets terminally differentiated cells in the upper respiratory tract. As a key platform for gene therapy vectors, elucidating HAdV’s virulence factors is vital for optimizing therapeutic applications and mitigating risks. To achieve productive replication, HAdV strategically neutralizes host immune defenses and induces S-phase pathways essential for viral propagation. This review synthesizes the latest insights into the key pathways through which HAdVs harness these early proteins to enhance virulence, skilfully evading and counteracting host defense mechanisms while propelling viral replication. As foundational platforms for gene therapy vectors (e.g., in oncology and rare disease treatments) and vaccine backbones (e.g., COVID-19 vaccines like ChAdOx1), understanding HAdV’s immunoshadowing—the multifaceted strategies used to cloak innate and adaptive immunity—is crucial for enhancing vector safety and efficacy. Recent insights unveil how early viral proteins—including E1A, E1B-55K, E4orf1, E4orf3, E4orf6, and the E3 complex—participate in these processes. This review critically synthesizes these pathways, evaluating study limitations such as reliance on immortalized cell lines that underestimate the role of these proteins in immunological competent cells, and addresses unresolved controversies, including differential immunoshadowing efficacy across HAdV species that impacts vaccine design. Full article

Insect farming generates frass as a co-product alongside insect biomass, creating interest in its valorization within circular bioeconomy strategies and in its use as a fertilizer, soil improver, or plant biostimulant. This review adopts a claim-led framework linking product classification, composition, post-treatment, microbiological safety, environmental risks, and the evidence required to support specific agronomic claims, with particular emphasis on the EU regulatory context. Evidence from incubation, pot, greenhouse, and field studies, together with regulatory and technical sources, show that frass is a heterogeneous material whose performance depends on insect species, rearing substrate, product fraction, soil conditions, application rate, and processing history. Its relevance is increasing, particularly in regions where insect farming is expanding under established regulatory and industrial frameworks, including the European Union, North America, and parts of Asia. Across the reviewed evidence, the most scientifically and regulatorily defensible current positioning of frass is as a product-specific fertilizer or soil improver, whereas broader biostimulant or plant-protection claims require stronger product-level evidence. The review further concludes that safe and credible deployment depends on transparent characterization, appropriate hygienization and storage, contaminant screening where relevant, and claim-specific alignment with the applicable regulatory route. Full article

We developed an automated system to address orchard crop damage caused by Formosan macaques, a problem where traditional deterrent methods have proven to be ineffective. The system integrates an Internet Protocol camera with a You Only Look Once version 5 (YOLOv5) object detection model, which was trained on an augmented 6000-image dataset featuring a simulated monkey puppet in an indoor setting to validate its real-time identification capability through simulation. Upon target detection, a high-power laser, controlled via the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol, is actuated to perform dynamic and non-invasive repelling. A web-based Human–Machine Interface (HMI) is provided, allowing users to remotely monitor and adjust strategies. This system offers a low-cost, highly efficient, and scalable solution for smart agriculture, with potential for expansion to other scenarios requiring a high degree of security and defense, such as warehouses and construction sites. Full article

The tomato leaf miner, Phthorimaea (Tuta) absoluta, Meyrick 1917 is recognized as a highly destructive pest, causing significant economic losses to crops in both greenhouse and open field environments across four continents: Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. High genetic homogeneity among populations from various regions and countries indicates significant gene flow between P. absoluta populations, suggesting a lack of geographical barriers to dispersion. Furthermore, P. absoluta has developed resistance to insecticides due to target-site mutations or metabolic resistance, which enable the insect to withstand lethal doses of insecticides. To control this insect pest, the plant-mediated RNA interference (RNAi) is most promising host-induced gene silencing technique, utilized the plant’s machinery to express double-stranded (dsRNA), which triggers the RNAi pathway in P. absoluta. Due to thermal tolerance, the P. absoluta has increased its area of invasion by 600 km per year over 9 years. Female P. absoluta releases pheromones that are recognized by males with a sophisticated olfactory circuit on their antenna. Pheromone binding proteins (PBPs) play a crucial role in mate recognition and attraction, and their expression peaks during courtship, specifically around 6:00 a.m. Given its potential to significantly alter the insect genome, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) offer a revolutionary strategy to control P. absoluta. Furthermore, this pest has developed remarkable adaptations to survive on unfavorable hosts by secreting specific proteins from its salivary glands that detoxify plant defenses. Insecticide resistance is likely the cause of field control failures of P. absoluta. Biological control, sex pheromone traps, and cultural control are the most promising approaches to address insecticide resistance resulting from these failures. Therefore, the implementation of integrated control programs and appropriate resistance management strategies is necessary to keep P. absoluta infestations under economic damage thresholds. Full article

Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of infectious disease-related death globally. Most TB vaccine strategies have focused on conventional CD4 T cell responses, but to date, these have failed to deliver durable sterilizing protection. Donor unrestricted T cells (DURTs), including CD1-restricted T cells, HLA-E-restricted T cells, MR1-restricted T cells and γδ T cells represent an attractive complementary target for future TB vaccine development. They recognize antigens through conserved, non-polymorphic restricting elements and are therefore broadly targetable across genetically diverse populations. They are also enriched at mucosal sites, have rapid effector and cytotoxic capacities and recognize conserved mycobacterial ligands. Emerging human and animal data support their participation in antimycobacterial immunity and suggest they can be shaped by BCG vaccination and other immunization strategies. Here, we review the evidence for DURT involvement in TB host defense, assess their strengths and current limitations as vaccine targets, and discuss how DURT-directed approaches may help to enable faster, broader, and more durable protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Full article

Cloud-based intrusion detection systems (IDSs) increasingly rely on deep learning classifiers to identify malicious traffic; however, this reliance exposes them to adversarial evasion attacks in which adversaries craft near-imperceptible perturbations to bypass detection. Existing defenses based on conventional adversarial training often recover robustness against known perturbation patterns at the cost of degraded detection accuracy on canonical attack categories—a robustness–accuracy trade-off that remains an open challenge in the field. In this paper, we propose GT-CSAT (Game-Theoretic Cost-Sensitive Adversarial Training), a novel defense framework tailored for cloud security environments. GT-CSAT couples an improved Wasserstein GAN with Gradient Penalty (WGAN-GP) threat generator—conditioned on attack semantics to simulate functionally consistent and highly covert traffic variants—with a minimax adversarial training loop governed by a game-theoretic cost-sensitive loss function. The proposed loss function assigns asymmetric misclassification penalties derived from a two-player zero-sum payoff matrix, enabling the detector to maintain vigilance over both novel adversarial variants and well-characterized conventional threats simultaneously. Specifically, misclassifying an adversarially perturbed attack as benign incurs a strictly higher penalty than the symmetric cross-entropy baseline, while the cost weights are dynamically adapted via a Nash equilibrium-inspired update rule during training. We conduct comprehensive experiments on the Cloud Vulnerabilities Dataset (CVD), CICIDS-2017, and UNSW-NB15, which encompass diverse cloud-specific attack scenarios including denial-of-service, port scanning, brute-force, and SQL injection traffic. Under six representative evasion strategies—FGSM, PGD, C&W, BIM, DeepFool, and IDSGAN-style black-box perturbations—GT-CSAT achieves an average robust accuracy of 94.3%, surpassing standard adversarial training by 6.8 percentage points and the undefended baseline by 21.4 percentage points, while preserving clean-traffic detection at 97.1%. These results confirm that the game-theoretic cost structure effectively decouples robustness from accuracy, yielding a Pareto-superior detection profile relative to competing baselines across all evaluated threat models. The source code and experimental configurations have been publicly released to facilitate reproducibility. Full article