Although inflammation plays critical roles in the development of atherosclerosis, its regulatory mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) has been reported to undergo inflammatory changes in response to vascular injury. Here, we show that vascular injury induces the beiging (brown adipose tissue-like phenotype change) of PVAT, which fine-tunes inflammatory response and thus vascular remodeling as a protective mechanism. In a mouse model of endovascular injury, macrophages accumulate in PVAT, causing beiging phenotype change. Inhibition of PVAT beiging by genetically silencing PRDM16, a key regulator to beiging, exacerbates inflammation and vascular remodeling following injury. Conversely, activation of PVAT beiging attenuates inflammation and pathological vascular remodeling. Single-cell RNA sequencing reveals that beige adipocytes abundantly express neuregulin 4 (Nrg4) which critically regulate alternative macrophage activation. Importantly, significant beiging is observed in the diseased aortic PVAT in patients with acute aortic dissection. Taken together, vascular injury induces the beiging of adjacent PVAT with macrophage accumulation, where NRG4 secreted from the beige PVAT facilitates alternative activation of macrophages, leading to the resolution of vascular inflammation. Our study demonstrates the pivotal roles of PVAT in vascular inflammation and remodeling and will open a new avenue for treating atherosclerosis.
Short carrier diffusion length and
poor photostability are two
major bottlenecks limiting the application of CuBi2O4 as a competitive candidate for photoelectrochemical (PEC)
hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). To overcome the bottlenecks, we
develop a novel template-assisted synthesis strategy to prepare the
CuBi2O4 dendrites and then protect the dendritic
structure with a conformal nanometer-thick TiO2 passivation
layer. The obtained CuBi2O4/TiO2 composite
dendrites exhibit high activity for the PEC HER with a photocurrent
density of ca. 0.90 mA cm–2 at 0.200 V vs reversible
hydrogen electrode (RHE) in neutral solution, and this value is among
the highest reported on CuBi2O4-based photocathodes
at the same potential. Moreover, the CuBi2O4/TiO2 dendrites show a high photostability with the photocurrent
density being stabilized at ca. 0.36 mA cm–2 (88.8%
of its original value) after 6 h measurements at a high applied potential
of 0.600 V vs RHE, which is superior to all CuBi2O4-based photocathodes reported recently in the literature.
This work provides an effective strategy to improve the activity and
stability of the copper-oxide-based materials for the HER via constructing
a dendritic structure and protecting the structure with a nanoscale
TiO2 passivation layer.
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