This review focuses on new endophyte-related findings in biology and ecology, and also summarises the various metabolites isolated from endophytes.

Polyketides with unknown architectures are highly desired for the discovery of new drugs and agrochemicals. Here, the mantis-associated Daldinia eschscholzii, a fungus known to produce immunosuppressants dalesconols A and B, was found to simultaneously generate four novel skeletons capable of shaping the unusual chemistry of the fungal polyketides, of which seven were structurally unique and substantially immunosuppressive. In particular, the scaled-up fermentation of the microbe enabled the structural characterization of minor or "transitional" intermediate polyketides that allowed the reasonable recognition of the four biosynthetic pathways initiated by condensations of four, five, six and eight acetate units, respectively. Furthermore, the decarbonylation reaction of triketone, as in the case of daeschol A, was described for the first time, in addition to the structural correction of sporothrin C and nodulone. The work provided a set of novel immunosuppressive molecules that are of significance to drug discovery.

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Going with a gut reaction: Dalesconols A (structure shown) and B were discovered in the title fungus (middle picture) derived from the mantis gut. The novel architecture and biological profiles of these natural products make the dalesconols attractive lead compounds for the development of immunosuppressive agents.

To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of computed tomography (CT)-guided percutaneous lung biopsy for solitary pulmonary nodules. Three hundred and eleven patients (211 males and 100 females), with a mean age of 59.6 years (range, 19–87 years), who were diagnosed with solitary pulmonary nodules and underwent CT-guided percutaneous transthoracic needle biopsy between January 2008 and January 2014 were reviewed. All patients were confirmed by surgery or the clinical course. The overall diagnostic accuracy and incidence of complications were calculated, and the factors influencing these were statistically evaluated and compared. Specimens were successfully obtained from all 311 patients. A total of 217 and 94 cases were found to be malignant and benign lesions, respectively, by biopsy. Two hundred and twenty-five (72.3%) carcinomas, 78 (25.1%) benign lesions, and 8 (2.6%) inconclusive lesions were confirmed by surgery and the clinical course. The diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of CT-guided percutaneous transthoracic needle biopsy were 92.9%, 95.3%, and 95.7%, respectively. The incidences of pneumothorax and self-limiting bleeding were 17.7% and 11.6%, respectively. Taking account of all evidence, CT-guided percutaneous lung biopsy for solitary pulmonary nodules is an efficient, and safe diagnostic method associated with few complications.

Background The overall prognosis of oral cancer remains poor because over half of patients are diagnosed at advanced-stages. Previously reported screening and earlier detection methods for oral cancer still largely rely on health workers’ clinical experience and as yet there is no established method. We aimed to develop a rapid, non-invasive, cost-effective, and easy-to-use deep learning approach for identifying oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OCSCC) patients using photographic images. Methods We developed an automated deep learning algorithm using cascaded convolutional neural networks to detect OCSCC from photographic images. We included all biopsy-proven OCSCC photographs and normal controls of 44,409 clinical images collected from 11 hospitals around China between April 12, 2006, and Nov 25, 2019. We trained the algorithm on a randomly selected part of this dataset (development dataset) and used the rest for testing (internal validation dataset). Additionally, we curated an external validation dataset comprising clinical photographs from six representative journals in the field of dentistry and oral surgery. We also compared the performance of the algorithm with that of seven oral cancer specialists on a clinical validation dataset. We used the pathological reports as gold standard for OCSCC identification. We evaluated the algorithm performance on the internal, external, and clinical validation datasets by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs), accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity with two-sided 95% CIs. Findings 1469 intraoral photographic images were used to validate our approach. The deep learning algorithm achieved an AUC of 0·983 (95% CI 0·973–0·991), sensitivity of 94·9% (0·915–0·978), and specificity of 88·7% (0·845–0·926) on the internal validation dataset ( n = 401), and an AUC of 0·935 (0·910–0·957), sensitivity of 89·6% (0·847–0·942) and specificity of 80·6% (0·757–0·853) on the external validation dataset ( n = 402). For a secondary analysis on the internal validation dataset, the algorithm presented an AUC of 0·995 (0·988–0·999), sensitivity of 97·4% (0·932–1·000) and specificity of 93·5% (0·882–0·979) in detecting early-stage OCSCC. On the clinical validation dataset ( n = 666), our algorithm achieved comparable performance to that of the average oral cancer expert in terms of accuracy (92·3% [0·902–0·943] vs 92.4% [0·912–0·936]), sensitivity (91·0% [0·879–0·941] vs 91·7% [0·898–0·934]), and specificity (93·5% [0·909–0·960] vs 93·1% [0·914–0·948]). The algorithm also achieved significantly better performance than that of the average medical student (accuracy of 87·0% [0·855–0·885], sensitivity of 83·1% [0·807–0·854], and specificity of 90·7% [0·889–0·924]) and the average non-medical student (accuracy of 77·2% [0...

A new cytotoxic cytochalasan-based alkaloid named chaetoglobosin U (1), along with four known analogues, chaetoglobosins C (2), F (3), and E (5) and penochalasin A (4), has been characterized from the EtOAc extract of a solid culture of Chaetomium globosum IFB-E019, an endophytic fungus residing inside the stem of healthy Imperata cylindrica. The structure of chaetoglobosin U was determined through correlative analyses of its UV, IR, CD, MS, and 1D ((1)H and(13)C NMR and DEPT) and 2D NMR (COSY, NOESY, HMQC, and HMBC) data. Chaetoglobosin U (1) exhibited cytotoxic activity against the human nasopharyngeal epidermoid tumor KB cell line with an IC(50) value of 16.0 microM, comparable to that (14.0 microM) of 5-fluorouracil co-assayed as a positive reference. The known analogues 2-5 were moderately active to the cell line, with IC(50) values of 34.0, 52.0, 48.0, and 40.0 microM, respectively.