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"Meng, Wei"
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Functional Roles of JNK and p38 MAPK Signaling in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma
c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family members integrate signals that affect proliferation, differentiation, survival, and migration in a cell context- and cell type-specific way. JNK and p38 MAPK activities are found upregulated in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Studies have shown that activation of JNK and p38 MAPK signaling can promote NPC oncogenesis by mechanisms within the cancer cells and interactions with the tumor microenvironment. They regulate multiple transcription activities and contribute to tumor-promoting processes, ranging from cell proliferation to apoptosis, inflammation, metastasis, and angiogenesis. Current literature suggests that JNK and p38 MAPK activation may exert pro-tumorigenic functions in NPC, though the underlying mechanisms are not well documented and have yet to be fully explored. Here, we aim to provide a narrative review of JNK and p38 MAPK pathways in human cancers with a primary focus on NPC. We also discuss the potential therapeutic agents that could be used to target JNK and p38 MAPK signaling in NPC, along with perspectives for future works. We aim to inspire future studies further delineating JNK and p38 MAPK signaling in NPC oncogenesis which might offer important insights for better strategies in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment decision-making in NPC patients.
Journal Article
SGN-YOLO: Detecting Wood Defects with Improved YOLOv5 Based on Semi-Global Network
Object detection based on wood defects involves using bounding boxes to label defects in the surface image of the wood. This step is crucial before the transformation of wood products. Due to the small size and diverse shape of wood defects, most previous object detection models are unable to filter out critical features effectively. Consequently, they have faced challenges in generating adequate contextual information to detect defects accurately. In this paper, we proposed a YOLOv5 model based on a Semi-Global Network (SGN) to detect wood defects. Unlike previous models, firstly, a lightweight SGN is introduced in the backbone to model the global context, which can improve the accuracy and reduce the complexity of the network at the same time; the backbone is embedded with the Extended Efficient Layer Aggregation Network (E-ELAN), which continuously enhances the learning ability of the network; and finally, the Efficient Intersection and Merger (EIOU) loss is used to solve the problems of slow convergence speed and inaccurate regression results. Experimental results on public wood defect datasets demonstrated that our approach outperformed existing target detection models. The mAP value was 86.4%, a 3.1% improvement over the baseline network model, a 7.1% improvement over SSD, and a 13.6% improvement over Faster R-CNN. These results show the effectiveness of our proposed methodology.
Journal Article
HDAC2 inhibits EMT-mediated cancer metastasis by downregulating the long noncoding RNA H19 in colorectal cancer
Background
Emerging evidence suggests that epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) and epigenetic mechanisms promote metastasis
.
Histone deacetylases (HDACs) and noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) are important epigenetic regulators. Here, we elucidated a novel role of histone deacetylase 2 (
HDAC2
) in regulating EMT and CRC metastasis via ncRNA.
Methods
The expression of HDACs in CRC was analyzed using the public databases and matched primary and metastatic tissues, and CRC cells with different metastatic potentials (DLD1, HCT116, SW480 and SW620). Microarray analysis was used to identify differential genes in parental and
HDAC2
knockout CRC cells. EMT and histone modifications were determined using western blot and immunofluorescence. Migration ability was assessed by transwell assay, and metastasis was assessed in vivo using a tail vain injection. Gene expression and regulation was assessed by RT-PCR, chromatin immunoprecipitation and reporter assays. Protein interaction was assessed by immunoprecipitation. Specific siRNAs targeting
H19
,
SP1
and
MMP14
were used to validate their role in
HDAC2
loss induced EMT and metastasis.
Results
Reduced HDAC2 expression was associated with poor prognosis in CRC patients and found in CRC metastasis.
HDAC2
deletion or knockdown induced EMT and metastasis by upregulating the long noncoding RNA
H19
(
LncRNA H19
). HDAC2 inhibited LncRNA H19 expression by histone H3K27 deacetylation in its promoter via binding with SP1. LncRNA H19 functioned as a
miR-22-3P
sponge to increase the expression of MMP14.
HDAC2
loss strongly promoted CRC lung metastasis, which was suppressed
LncRNA H19
knockdown.
Conclusion
Our study supports HDAC2 as a CRC metastasis suppressor through the inhibition of EMT and the expression of H19 and MMP14.
Journal Article
Impact of Microplastics and Nanoplastics on Human Health
Plastics have enormous impacts to every aspect of daily life including technology, medicine and treatments, and domestic appliances. Most of the used plastics are thrown away by consumers after a single use, which has become a huge environmental problem as they will end up in landfill, oceans and other waterways. These plastics are discarded in vast numbers each day, and the breaking down of the plastics from micro- to nano-sizes has led to worries about how toxic these plastics are to the environment and humans. While, there are several earlier studies reported the effects of micro- and nano-plastics have on the environment, there is scant research into their impact on the human body at subcellular or molecular levels. In particular, the potential of how nano-plastics move through the gut, lungs and skin epithelia in causing systemic exposure has not been examined thoroughly. This review explores thoroughly on how nanoplastics are created, how they behave/breakdown within the environment, levels of toxicity and pollution of these nanoplastics, and the possible health impacts on humans, as well as suggestions for additional research. This paper aims to inspire future studies into core elements of micro- and nano-plastics, the biological reactions caused by their specific and unusual qualities.
Journal Article
iHofman: a predictive model integrating high-order and low-order features with weighted attention mechanisms for circRNA-miRNA interactions
Background
Increasing research indicates that the complex interactions between circular RNAs (circRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) are critical for diagnosing and treating various human diseases. Consequently, accurately predicting potential circRNA-miRNA interactions (CMIs) has become increasingly important and urgent. Traditional biological experiments, however, are often labor-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to external influences.
Results
To tackle this challenge, we present a novel model, iHofman, designed to predict CMIs by
i
ntegrating
h
igh-order and l
o
w-order
f
eatures with weighted attention
m
ech
an
isms. Specifically, we first extract sequence and structural information representations using FastText and GraRep, respectively, and capture high-order and low-order features from sequence information representations using stacked autoencoders. Subsequently, weighted attention mechanisms are applied for feature fusion, focusing on the most relevant information. Finally, multi-layer perceptron is employed to accurately infer potential CMIs. In the fivefold cross-validation (CV) experiment on the baseline dataset, iHofman achieved an accuracy of 82.49% with an AUC of 0.9092. iHofman also demonstrates solid performance on other CMI datasets. In case studies, 26 of the top 30 CMIs with the highest iHofman predictive scores were confirmed in relevant literature.
Conclusions
The above experimental results indicate that iHofman can effectively predict potential CMIs and has achieved outstanding performance compared with existing methods. It provides a reliable supplementary approach for subsequent biological wet experiments.
Journal Article
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) membrane (M) protein inhibits type I and III interferon production by targeting RIG-I/MDA-5 signaling
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has quickly spread worldwide and has affected more than 10 million individuals. A typical feature of COVID-19 is the suppression of type I and III interferon (IFN)-mediated antiviral immunity. However, the molecular mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 evades antiviral immunity remains elusive. Here, we reported that the SARS-CoV-2 membrane (M) protein inhibits the production of type I and III IFNs induced by the cytosolic dsRNA-sensing pathway mediated by RIG-I/MDA-5–MAVS signaling. In addition, the SARS-CoV-2 M protein suppresses type I and III IFN induction stimulated by SeV infection or poly (I:C) transfection. Mechanistically, the SARS-CoV-2 M protein interacts with RIG-I, MAVS, and TBK1, thus preventing the formation of the multiprotein complex containing RIG-I, MAVS, TRAF3, and TBK1 and subsequently impeding the phosphorylation, nuclear translocation, and activation of IRF3. Consequently, ectopic expression of the SARS-CoV-2 M protein facilitates the replication of vesicular stomatitis virus. Taken together, these results indicate that the SARS-CoV-2 M protein antagonizes type I and III IFN production by targeting RIG-I/MDA-5 signaling, which subsequently attenuates antiviral immunity and enhances viral replication. This study provides insight into the interpretation of SARS-CoV-2-induced antiviral immune suppression and illuminates the pathogenic mechanism of COVID-19.
Journal Article
Novel Thermal Diffusion Temperature Engineering Leading to High Thermoelectric Performance in Bi2Te3‐Based Flexible Thin‐Films
Flexible Bi2Te3‐based thermoelectric devices can function as power generators for powering wearable electronics or chip‐sensors for internet‐of‐things. However, the unsatisfied performance of n‐type Bi2Te3 flexible thin films significantly limits their wide application. In this study, a novel thermal diffusion method is employed to fabricate n‐type Te‐embedded Bi2Te3 flexible thin films on flexible polyimide substrates, where Te embeddings can be achieved by tuning the thermal diffusion temperature and correspondingly result in an energy filtering effect at the Bi2Te3/Te interfaces. The energy filtering effect can lead to a high Seebeck coefficient ≈160 µV K−1 as well as high carrier mobility of ≈200 cm2 V−1 s−1 at room‐temperature. Consequently, an ultrahigh room‐temperature power factor of 14.65 µW cm−1 K−2 can be observed in the Te‐embedded Bi2Te3 flexible thin films prepared at the diffusion temperature of 623 K. A thermoelectric sensor is also assembled through integrating the n‐type Bi2Te3 flexible thin films with p‐type Sb2Te3 counterparts, which can fast reflect finger‐touch status and demonstrate the applicability of as‐prepared Te‐embedded Bi2Te3 flexible thin films. This study indicates that the thermal diffusion method is an effective way to fabricate high‐performance and applicable flexible Te‐embedded Bi2Te3‐based thin films. In this study, flexible n‐type Bi2Te3‐based thin‐films are successfully prepared through facile thermal diffusion method and further induce Te/Bi2Te3 heterojunctions and energy filtering effect at the Te/Bi2Te3 interfaces to optimize the thermoelectric performance through tuning the diffusion temperature.
Journal Article
Analytic study on chiral phase transition in holographic QCD
A
bstract
The chiral symmetry breaking (χ
sb
) is one of the most fundamental problems in QCD. In this paper, we calculate quark condensation analytically in a holographic QCD model dual to the Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton (EMD) system coupled to a probe scalar field. We find that the black hole phase transition in the EMD system seriously affects χ
sb
. At small chemical potential, χ
sb
behaves as a crossover. For large chemical potential
μ
>
μ
c
,
χ
sb
becomes first order with exactly the same transition temperature as the black hole phase transition by a bypass mechanism. The phase diagram we obtained is qualitatively consistent with the recent results from lattice QCD simulations and NJL models.
Journal Article