Neutrophils are the most abundant innate immune cells. The pathogenic roles of neutrophils are related to chronic inflammation and autoimmune diseases. Psoriasis is a chronic systemic inflammatory disease affecting ∼2-3% of the world population. The abundant presence of neutrophils in the psoriatic skin lesions serves as a typical histopathologic hallmark of psoriasis. Recent reports indicated that oxidative stress, granular components, and neutrophil extracellular traps from psoriatic neutrophils are related to the initial and maintenance phases of psoriasis. This review provides an overview on the recent (up to 2019) advances in understanding the role of neutrophils in the pathophysiology of psoriasis, including the effects of respiratory burst, degranulation, and neutrophil extracellular trap formation on psoriatic immunity and the clinical relationships.

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Secondary metabolites (SM) produced by fungi and bacteria have long been of exceptional interest owing to their unique biomedical ramifications. The traditional discovery of new natural products that was mainly driven by bioactivity screening has now experienced a fresh new approach in the form of genome mining. Several bioinformatics tools have been continuously developed to detect potential biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) that are responsible for the production of SM. Although the principles underlying the computation of these tools have been discussed, the biological background is left underrated and ambiguous. In this review, we emphasize the biological hypotheses in BGC formation driven from the observations across genomes in bacteria and fungi, and provide a comprehensive list of updated algorithms/tools exclusively for BGC detection. Our review points to a direction that the biological hypotheses should be systematically incorporated into the BGC prediction and assist the prioritization of candidate BGC.

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Aculenes are a unique class of norsequiterpenes (C14) that are produced by Aspergillus aculeatus. The nordaucane skeleton in aculenes A–D may be derived from an ent‐daucane precursor through demethylation, however, the enzymes involved remain unexplored. We identified the biosynthetic gene cluster and characterized the biosynthetic pathway based on gene inactivation, feeding experiments, and heterologous reconstitution in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Aspergillus oryzae. We discovered that three cytochrome P450 monoxygenases are required to catalyze the stepwise demethylation process. AneF converts the 12‐methyl group into a carboxylic acid and AneD installs the 10‐hydroxy group for later tautomerization and stabilization. Finally, AneG installs an electron‐withdrawing carbonyl group at the C‐2 position, which triggers C‐12 decarboxylation to yield the nordaucane skeleton. Additionally, a terpene cyclase (AneC) was found that forms a new product (dauca‐4,7‐diene).

Heterologous expression of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) has become a widely used tool for genome mining of cryptic pathways, bottom-up investigation of biosynthetic enzymes, and engineered biosynthesis of new natural product variants.

The photoluminescence (PL) of high quality GaN epitaxial layer grown by MOCVD was investigated for various excitation power and temperatures from 8.3 to 300K. The PL at 8.3 K and with relatively low excitation power of GaN film grown on c-plane sapphire by using MOCVD shows clearly free-exciton A, B and exciton A bound to neutral donors (D o X) at 3.502 eV, 3.509 eV, and 3.496 eV, respectively. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) and binding energy of exciton A of the high quality GaN film were evaluated as small as 3.7 meV and 27.9 ± 0.5 meV, respectively. In addition, PL and Raman scattering of GaN films grown on r-plane sapphire and (111) Si substrates by using MOCVD were examined. The residual stress effect was detected in all films.