Explore the vast range of titles available.

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is considered the most common, abundant, and conserved internal transcript modification, especially in eukaryotic messenger RNA (mRNA). m6A is installed by m6A methyltransferases (METTL3/14, WTAP, RBM15/15B, VIRMA and ZC3H13, termed “writers”), removed by demethylases (FTO, ALKBH5, and ALKBH3, termed “erasers”), and recognized by m6A-binding proteins (YTHDC1/2, YTHDF1/2/3, IGF2BP1/2/3, HNRNP, and eIF3, termed “readers”). Accumulating evidence suggests that m6A RNA methylation greatly impacts RNA metabolism and is involved in the pathogenesis of many kinds of diseases, including cancers. In this review, we focus on the physiological functions of m6A modification and its related regulators, as well as on the potential biological roles of these elements in human tumors.

Metal halide solid-state electrolytes have gained widespread attention due to their high ionic conductivities, wide electrochemical stability windows, and good compatibility with oxide cathode materials. The exploration of highly ionic conductive halide electrolytes is actively ongoing. Thus, understanding the relationship between composition and crystal structure can be a critical guide for designing better halide electrolytes, which still remains obscure for reliable prediction. Here we show that the cationic polarization factor, which describes the geometric and ionic conditions, is effective in predicting the stacking structure of halide electrolytes formation. By supplementing this principle with rational design and preparation of more than 10 lithium halide electrolytes with high conductivity over 10 −3  S cm −1 at 25 °C, we establish that there should be a variety of promising halide electrolytes that have yet to be discovered and developed. This methodology may enable the systematic screening of various potential halide electrolytes and demonstrate an approach to the design of halide electrolytes with superionic conductivity beyond the structure and stability predictions. Predicting the structure of lithium halide solid-state electrolytes from their composition alone is a challenge. Here, the authors introduce the “cationic polarization factor” that captures the key interactions of halide-based solid-state electrolytes and predicts the stacking structures.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs), a novel type of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), have a covalently closed circular structure resulting from pre-mRNA back splicing via spliceosome and ribozymes. They can be classified differently in accordance with different criteria. As circRNAs are abundant, conserved, and stable, they can be used as diagnostic markers in various diseases and targets to develop new therapies. There are various functions of circRNAs, including sponge for miR/proteins, role of scaffolds, templates for translation, and regulators of mRNA translation and stability. Without m7G cap and poly-A tail, circRNAs can still be degraded in several ways, including RNase L, Ago-dependent, and Ago-independent degradation. Increasing evidence indicates that circRNAs can be modified by N-6 methylation (m6A) in many aspects such as biogenesis, nuclear export, translation, and degradation. In addition, they have been proved to play a regulatory role in the progression of various cancers. Recently, methods of detecting circRNAs with high sensitivity and specificity have also been reported. This review presents a detailed overview of circRNAs regarding biogenesis, biomarker, functions, degradation, and dynamic modification as well as their regulatory roles in various cancers. It’s particularly summarized in detail in the biogenesis of circRNAs, regulation of circRNAs by m6A modification and mechanisms by which circRNAs affect tumor progression respectively. Moreover, existing circRNA detection methods and their characteristics are also mentioned.

Glioma is characterized by high morbidity, high mortality and poor prognosis. Recent studies exhibited that lncRNA CCAT2 is overexpressed in glioma and promotes glioma progression, but the specific molecular biological mechanism remains to be determined. We performed qRT-PCR to evaluate the expression of related genes, Western blotting analysis to measure protein levels, colony formation assay to detect the proliferative ability of glioma cells, flow cytometry to measure cell apoptosis, bioinformatics analysis and dual luciferase assay to verify the binding sites and the targeted regulatory relationship in A172 and U251 cell lines and tube formation assay to determine endothelial angiogenesis. LncRNA CCAT2 and VEGFA were highly expressed, while miR-424 was expressed at low levels in NHA cells. Furthermore, knockdown of lncRNA CCAT2 decreased cell proliferation, increased cell apoptosis and inhibited endothelial angiogenesis in glioma. Moreover, lncRNA CCAT2 shared a complementary sequence with miR-424 which in turn directly bound to the 3′-UTR of VEGFA. Further investigation indicated that lncRNA CCAT2 promoted cell proliferation and endothelial angiogenesis by inducing the PI3K/AKT signalling pathway in glioma. The oncogenic lncRNA CCAT2 is highly associated with the development of glioma and exerts its function by upregulating VEGFA via miR-424.

Background: Exercise is an effective nonpharmaceutical therapy for knee osteoarthritis (KOA). Purpose: To identify the most effective type of exercise therapy for KOA with regard to pain, stiffness, joint function, and quality of life. Study Design: Systematic review; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: The PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases were searched, from inception to April 4, 2022. Included were randomized controlled trials that assessed the efficacy on KOA among 5 different exercise therapy groups (aquatic exercise [AE], stationary cycling [CY], resistance training [RT], traditional exercise [TC], and yoga [YG]) and compared with the control group. Outcomes among the groups were assessed with the Western Ontario and McMaster University Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC), 6-minute walk test (6-MWT), visual analog scale (VAS) for pain, and Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS); weighted mean differences (WMDs) and 95% confidence intervals were calculated. Network meta-analyses comparing outcomes between all groups and with controls were performed, and group rankings were calculated using the surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA). Results: A total of 39 studies (N = 2646 participants) were included. Most of the studies failed to blind participants and researchers, resulting in a high risk of performance bias. Significantly worse WOMAC-Pain scores were seen in controls compared with all exercise interventions except AE (WMD [95% CI]: CY, –4.45 [–5.69 to –3.20]; RT, –4.28 [–5.48 to –3.07]; TC, –4.20 [–5.37 to –3.04]; and YG, –0.57 [–1.04 to –1.04]), and worse scores were seen in controls compared with YG regarding WOMAC-Stiffness (WMD, –1.40 [95% CI, –2.45 to –0.34]) and WOMAC-Function (WMD, –0.49 [95% CI, –0.95 to –0.02]). According to the SUCRA, CY was the most effective for improving WOMAC-Pain (80.8%) and 6-MWT (76.1%); YG was most effective for improving WOMAC-Stiffness (90.6%), WOMAC-Function (77.4%), KOOS–Activities of Daily Living (72.0%), and KOOS–Quality of Life (79.1%); AE was the most effective regarding VAS pain (77.2%) and KOOS-Pain (64.0%); and RT was the most effective regarding KOOS-Symptoms (84.5%). Conclusion: All 5 types of exercise were able to ameliorate KOA. AE (for pain relief) and YG (for joint stiffness, limited knee function, and quality of life) were the most effective approaches, followed by RT, CY, and TC.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) may play a crucial regulatory role in the process of muscle atrophy induced by high-altitude hypoxia and its amelioration through resistance training. However, research in this aspect is still lacking. Therefore, this study aimed to employ miRNA microarray analysis to investigate the expression profile of miRNAs in skeletal muscle from an animal model of hypoxia-induced muscle atrophy and resistance training aimed at mitigating muscle atrophy. The study utilized a simulated hypoxic environment (oxygen concentration at 11.2%) to induce muscle atrophy and established a rat model of resistance training using ladder climbing, with a total intervention period of 4 weeks. The miRNA expression profile revealed 9 differentially expressed miRNAs influenced by hypoxia (e.g., miR-341, miR-32-5p, miR-465-5p) and 14 differentially expressed miRNAs influenced by resistance training under hypoxic conditions (e.g., miR-338-5p, miR-203a-3p, miR-92b-3p) (∣log2(FC)∣ ≥ 1.5, p  < 0.05). The differentially expressed miRNAs were found to target genes involved in muscle protein synthesis and degradation (such as Utrn, mdm2, eIF4E), biological processes (such as negative regulation of transcription from RNA polymerase II promoter, regulation of transcription, DNA-dependent), and signaling pathways (such as Wnt signaling pathway, MAPK signaling pathway, ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, mTOR signaling pathway). This study provides a foundation for understanding and further exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying hypoxia-induced rats muscle atrophy and the mitigation of atrophy through resistance training.

Motion capture of the human body potentially holds great significance for exoskeleton robots, human-computer interaction, sports analysis, rehabilitation research, and many other areas. Dielectric elastomer sensors (DESs) are excellent candidates for wearable human motion capture systems because of their intrinsic characteristics of softness, light weight, and compliance. In this paper, DESs were applied to measure all component motions of the wrist joints. Five sensors were mounted to different positions on the wrist, and each one is for one component motion. To find the best position to mount the sensors, the distribution of the muscles is analyzed. Even so, the component motions and the deformation of the sensors are coupled; therefore, a decoupling method was developed. By the decoupling algorithm, all component motions can be measured with a precision of 5°, which meets the requirements of general motion capture systems.

Automatic pavement crack detection is a critical technique in the intelligent transportation system, which can effectively replace the person with a machine to detect the pavement crack automatically. This task is excellently challenging due to the tiny texture and the various shapes of each crack object. Previous crack detection networks mainly aim to perform complicated multi-scale feature fusion to learn the semantic information of cracks. However, the typical symmetrical networks with high-to-low resolution are undesirable to extract detailed crack texture information, and these existing methods cannot effectively deal with the issue of the various shapes.This paper proposes a novel end-to-end U-shaped convolutional neural network, termed CrackUNet, for the pavement crack detection task. To extract the information of the tiny texture, we design a novel network-in-network structure, which can enlarge the receptive field and obtain multi-scale features by putting a sub-network into each convolutional layer. Besides, to handle the issue of the various shapes for the crack object, we exploit the deformable convolution to capture contextual information of each crack, which can further improve the performance of crack detection. We train and evaluate the proposed CrackUNet on three public pavement crack datasets. The quantitative experimental results illustrate that our network outperforms the current state-of-the-art methods with almost the same efficiency. Specifically, the precision, recall, and F1-score of the CrackUNet are approximately 92.27%, 93.99%, and 92.94%, respectively.

We employ the spinor analysis method to evaluate exact expressions of spin-spin correlation functions of the two-dimensional rectangular Ising model on a finite lattice, special process enables us to actually carry out the calculation process. We first present some exact expressions of correlation functions of the model with periodic-periodic boundary conditions on a finite lattice. The corresponding forms in the thermodynamic limit are presented, which show the short-range order. Then, we present the exact expression of the correlation function of the two farthest pair of spins in a column of the model with periodic-free boundary conditions on a finite lattice. Again, the corresponding form in the thermodynamic limit is discussed, from which the long-range order clearly emerges as the temperature decreases.

Bactrocera tau (Walker) (Diptera: Tephritidae) is an economically important invasive pest, that is capable of seriously reducing the quality and yield of vegetables and fruits, it was first recorded from Fujian province in 1849 and later introduced to Yunnan province in 1912 as a result in trade fruits and vegetables of China. In recent years, with the onset of global climate change and the accompanying increase in the greenhouse effect, elevated climatic temperatures have become one of the main environmental factors affecting growth and reproduction in insects, and the optimal developmental temperature of B. tau was found to be from 25 °C to 31 °C, the growth, development and reproduction of B. tau are normal under the optimal temperature conditions. In order to determine the repercussions that elevated temperature have on B. tau , we assessed the effects that short-term (12 h) high-temperature exposures (34 °C, 36 °C, 38 °C, 40 °C, 42 °C, 44 °C, 46 °C, and 48 °C) had on the growth, development and reproduction of B. tau at different developmental stages of the fly. The results showed that the survival rate of B. tau gradually decreased in all stages following exposure to short-term high-temperatures. The pupal stage was the least sensitive to increased temperatures. The pupae withstood the highest lethal temperature, having an LT 50 of 42.060 °C, followed by female adults (40.447 °C), male adults (40.013 °C), and larvae (36.740 °C). The egg stage, which was the most susceptible to heat increases, had the lowest LT 50 (38.310 °C). No significant effects were observed in the developmental stages of B. tau at temperatures from 24 °C to 38 °C. The development duration was significantly prolonged at 40 °C ( P  < 0.05) in the eggs (2.830d), larvae (7.330d), and pupae (8.170d) ( P  < 0.05). B. tau was unable to survive at temperatures above 42 °C. The pre-oviposition of female adults was extended, the average egg number per female showed a downward trend, the longevity of adults gradually shortened, and the ratio of female to male offspring increased as temperature increments were increased. In summary, short-term high-temperatures over 42 °C were not suitable for successful development of B. tau , while short-term high-temperatures over 40 °C were not suitable for successful reproduction in B. tau .