In this study, medium-carbon steel was subjected to warm deformation experiments on a Gleeble 3500 thermosimulator machine at temperatures of 550°C and 650°C and strain rates of 0.001 s–1 to 1 s–1. The warm deformation behavior of martensite and the effects of strain rate on the microstructure of ultrafine grained medium-carbon steel were investigated. The precipitation behavior of Fe3C during deformation was analyzed and the results showed that recrystallization occurred at a low strain rate. The average ultrafine ferrite grains of 500 ± 58 nm were fabricated at 550°C and a strain rate of 0.001 s–1. In addition, the size of Fe3C particles in the ferrite grains did not show any apparent change, while that of the Fe3C particles at the grain boundaries was mainly affected by the deformation temperature. The size of Fe3C particles increased with the increasing deformation temperature, while the strain rate had no significant effect on Fe3C particles. Moreover, the grain size of recrystallized ferrite decreased with an increase in the strain rate. The effects of the strain rate on the grain size of recrystallized ferrite depended on the deformation temperature and the strain rate had a prominent effect on the grain size at 550°C deformation temperature. Finally, the deformation resistance apparently decreased at 550°C and strain rate of 1 s–1 due to the maximum adiabatic heating in the material.

MDAP-2 is a new antibacterial peptide with a unique structure that was isolated from house- flies. However, its biological characteristics and antibacterial mechanisms against bacteria are still poorly understood. To study the biological characteristics, antibacterial activity, hemolytic activi- ty, cytotoxicity to mammalian cells, and the secondary structure of MDAP-2 were detected; the results showed that MDAP-2 displayed high antibacterial activity against all of the tested Gram-negative bacteria. MDAP-2 had lower hemolytic activity to rabbit red blood cells; only 3.4% hemolytic activity was observed at a concentration of 800μg/ml. MDAP-2 also had lower cytotoxicity to mammalian cells; IC50 values for HEK-293 cells, VERO cells, and IPEC-J2 cells were greater than 1000 μg/ml. The circular dichroism (CD) spectra showed that the peptide most- ly has α-helical properties and some β-fold structure in water and in membrane-like conditions. MDAP-2 is therefore a promising antibacterial agent against Gram-negative bacteria. To deter- mine the antibacterial mechanism(s) of action, fluorescent probes, flow cytometry, and transmis- sion electron microscopy (TEM) were used to study the effects of MDAP-2 on membrane perme- ability, polarization ability, and integrity of Gram-negative bacteria. The results indicated that the peptide caused membrane depolarization, increased membrane permeability, and destroyed membrane integrity. In conclusion, MDAP-2 is a broad-spectrum, lower hemolytic activity, and lower cytotoxicity antibacterial peptide, which is mainly effective on Gram-negative bacteria. It exerts its antimicrobial effects by causing bacterial cytoplasm membrane depolarization, increas- ing cell membrane permeability and disturbing the membrane integrity of Gram-negative bacte- ria. MDAP-2 may offer a new strategy to for defense against Gram-negative bacteria.

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is the causative agent of a wide range of diseases, which are the important cause of illness and mortality in piglets. ETEC strains expressing F4 fimbriae are frequently associated with post-weaning diarrhea (PWD) and lead to great economic losses in swine production industry worldwide. The aim of this study was to establish a rapid and effective isothermal amplification method for detection of F4 fimbriae. Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), Polymerase spiral reaction (PSR) and cross-priming ampli- fication (CPA) were used to develop and optimize the detection method first time. Subsequently, the specificity and sensitivity of these methods were evaluated, and the clinical samples were detected with these methods. All the F4-positive samples could produce ladder-like amplifica- tions products and lead the chromogenic substrate SYBR Green I produce green fluorescence, while in blank control and negative samples lack of this pattern or remained orange. The sensi- tivity of LAMP and CPA were 10 times higher than PSR method. Meanwhile, these three methods were validated with clinical samples, 7 were found positive, while 125 samples were negative, the testing results were consisted with the real-time PCR method. These findings suggested that the isothermal amplification based on the F4 fimbriae is a rapid, effective and sensitive method under resource constrains.