To explore the role of the testicular leptin and JAK-STAT[leptin (LEP)-JAK-STAT] pathway in testosterone biosynthesis during juvenile stages and exercise for weight loss, male C57BL/6J mice were randomly divided into normal-diet and high-fat diet groups. After 10 wk, mice in the high-fat diet-fed group were further divided randomly into obese control, obese moderate-volume exercise, and obese high-volume exercise groups. Mice in the obese moderate-volume exercise group were provided with 2 h/day, 6 days/wk swimming exercise for 8 wk, and mice in the obese high-volume exercise group underwent twice the amount of daily exercise intervention as the obese moderate-volume exercise group. The results showed that a high-fat diet causes obesity, leptin resistance, inhibition of the testicular LEP-JAK-STAT pathway, decreased mRNA and protein expression of steroidogenic factor-1, steroidogenic acute regulatory protein, and the -450 side-chain cleavage enzyme, a decrease in the serum testosterone-to-estradiol ratio, and declines in sperm quality parameters. Both moderate and high-volume exercise were able to reduce body fat and increase the mRNA and protein expression of LEP-JAK-STAT, but only moderate exercise significantly increased the mRNA and protein expression of steroidogenic factor-1, steroidogenic acute regulatory protein, and-450 side-chain cleavage enzyme and significantly reversed the serum testosterone-to-estradiol ratio and sperm quality parameters. These findings suggest that by impairing the testicular LEP-JAK-STAT pathway, early-stage obesity inhibits the biosynthesis of testosterone and sexual development and reduces male reproductive potential. Long-term moderate and high-volume exercise can effectively reduce body fat and improve obesity-induced abnormalities in testicular leptin signal transduction, whereas only moderate-volume exercise can reverse the negative impacts of obesity on male reproductive function.
Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) is one of the most important economic crops and is cultivated in many areas of the world (Ai et al., 2017). Verticillium wilt is a vascular plant disease caused by the soilborne fungus Verticillium dahliae (Fradin & Thomma, 2006; Yadeta & Thomma, 2013; Zhang et al., 2019). The pathogen can adhere to the root surface, and its hyphae penetrate roots to colonize the cortex.
Previous research suggests that within Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics, only a subgroup has behavioral lexical tone perception impairments (tone agnosia), whereas the rest of amusics do not. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the categorical nature of lexical tone perception in Mandarin-speaking amusics with and without behavioral lexical tone deficits. Three groups of listeners (controls, pure amusics, and amusics with tone agnosia) participated in tone identification and discrimination tasks. Indexes of the categorical perception (CP) of a physical continuum of fundamental frequencies ranging from a rising to level tone were measured. Specifically, the stimulus durations were manipulated at 100 and 200 ms. For both stimulus durations, all groups exhibited similar categorical boundaries. The pure amusics showed sharp identification slopes and significantly peaked discrimination functions similar to those of normal controls. However, such essential characteristics for the CP of lexical tones were not observed in amusics with tone agnosia. An enlarged step-size from 20 to 35 Hz was not able to produce any discrimination peaks in tone agnosics either. The current study revealed that only amusics with tone agnosia showed a lack of categorical tone perception, while the pure amusics demonstrated typical CP of lexical tones, indicating that the deficit of pitch processing in music does not necessarily result in the deficit in the CP of lexical tones. The different performance between congenital amusics with and without tone agnosia provides a new perspective on the proposition of the relationship between music and speech perception.
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