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"Yin Hong"
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The Hong Kong legal system
\"This book provides an introduction to the legal system in Hong Kong. Understanding Hong Kong's legal system today requires an understanding of the British origins of many of its laws and legal institutions as well as of the uniquely Hong Kong developments in the application of the Basic Law under 'one country, two systems'. These features of the Hong Kong legal system are explored in this book, which takes into account developments in the two decades or so of the new legal framework in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover. In providing an exposition of the legal institutions in Hong Kong and legal method under Hong Kong's legal system (including practical guidance and examples on case law, statutory interpretation and legal research), this book is ideal for first-year law students, students of other disciplines who study law and readers who have an interest in Hong Kong's unique legal system\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Update Advances on C-Reactive Protein in COVID-19 and Other Viral Infections
Severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can manifest as a viral-induced hyperinflammation with multiorgan dysfunction. It has been documented that severe COVID-19 is associated with higher levels of inflammatory mediators than a mild disease, and tracking these markers may allow early identification or even prediction of disease progression. It is well known that C-reactive protein (CRP) is the acute-phase protein and the active regulator of host innate immunity, which is highly predictive of the need for mechanical ventilation and may guide escalation of treatment of COVID-19-related uncontrolled inflammation. There are numerous causes of an elevated CRP, including acute and chronic responses, and these can be infectious or non-infectious in etiology. CRP are normally lacking in viral infections, while adaptive immunity appears to be essential for COVID-19 virus clearance, and the macrophage activation syndrome may explain the high serum CRP contents and contribute to the disease progression. Nevertheless, for the assessment of host inflammatory status and identification of viral infection in other pathologies, such as bacterial sepsis, the acute-phase proteins, including CRP and procalcitonin, can provide more important information for guiding clinical diagnosis and antibiotic therapy. This review is aimed to highlight the current and most recent studies with regard to the clinical significance of CRP in severe COVID-19 and other viral associated illnesses, including update advances on the implication of CRP and its form specifically on the pathogenesis of these diseases. The progressive understanding in these areas may be translated into promising measures to prevent severe outcomes and mitigate appropriate treatment modalities in critical COVID-19 and other viral infections.
Journal Article
Cost-efficient boundary-free surface patterning achieves high effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments
Time-lapse microscopy plays critical roles in the studies of cellular dynamics. However, setting up a time-lapse movie experiments is not only laborious but also with low output, mainly due to the cell-losing problem (i.e., cells moving out of limited field of view), especially in a long-time recording. To overcome this issue, we have designed a cost-efficient way that enables cell patterning on the imaging surfaces without any physical boundaries. Using mouse embryonic stem cells as an example system, we have demonstrated that our boundary-free patterned surface solves the cell-losing problem without disturbing their cellular phenotype. Statistically, the presented system increases the effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments by an order of magnitude.
Journal Article
Revisiting the Role of Plant Transcription Factors in the Battle against Abiotic Stress
Owing to diverse abiotic stresses and global climate deterioration, the agricultural production worldwide is suffering serious losses. Breeding stress-resilient crops with higher quality and yield against multiple environmental stresses via application of transgenic technologies is currently the most promising approach. Deciphering molecular principles and mining stress-associate genes that govern plant responses against abiotic stresses is one of the prerequisites to develop stress-resistant crop varieties. As molecular switches in controlling stress-responsive genes expression, transcription factors (TFs) play crucial roles in regulating various abiotic stress responses. Hence, functional analysis of TFs and their interaction partners during abiotic stresses is crucial to perceive their role in diverse signaling cascades that many researchers have continued to undertake. Here, we review current developments in understanding TFs, with particular emphasis on their functions in orchestrating plant abiotic stress responses. Further, we discuss novel molecular mechanisms of their action under abiotic stress conditions. This will provide valuable information for understanding regulatory mechanisms to engineer stress-tolerant crops.
Journal Article
Anthocyanin improves kidney function in diabetic kidney disease by regulating amino acid metabolism
Background
Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is among the most important causes for chronic kidney disease. Anthocyanins (ANT) are polyphenolic compounds present in various food and play an important role in ameliorating hyperglycemia and insulin sensitivity. However, the effects of ANT in DKD are still poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate the effect of ANT (cyanidin-3-O-glucoside [C3G]) on the renal function of DKD, and whether the anti-DKD effect of ANT is related to metabolic pathways.
Methods
To explore the role of ANT in DKD, we performed the examination of blood glucose, renal function, and histopathology. As for the mechanism, we designed the label-free quantification proteomics and nontargeted metabolomics analysis for kidney and serum. Subsequently, we revealed the anti-DKD effect of ANT through the bioinformatic analysis.
Results
We showed that the fasting blood glucose level (− 6.1 mmol/L,
P
= 0.037), perimeter of glomerular lesions (− 24.1 μm,
P
= 0.030), fibrosis score of glomerular (− 8.8%,
P
= 0.002), and kidney function (Cystatin C: − 701.4 pg/mL,
P
= 0.043; urine creatinine: − 701.4 mmol/L,
P
= 0.032) were significantly alleviated in DKD mice after ANT treatment compared to untreated in the 20th week. Further, proteins and metabolites in the kidneys of DKD mice were observed to be dramatically altered due to changes in amino acid metabolism with ANT treatment; mainly, taurine and hypotaurine metabolism pathway was upregulated (
P
= 0.0001, t value = 5.97). Furthermore, upregulated tryptophan metabolism (
P
< 0.0001, t value = 5.94) and tyrosine metabolism (
P
= 0.0037, t value = 2.91) pathways had effects on serum of DKD mice as responsed ANT regulating.
Conclusions
Our results suggested that prevention of the progression of DKD by ANT could be related to the regulation of amino acid metabolism. The use of dietary ANT may be one of the dietary strategies to prevent and treat DKD.
Journal Article
Membrane Heterogeneity Beyond the Plasma Membrane
The structure and organization of cellular membranes have received intense interest, particularly in investigations of the raft hypothesis. The vast majority of these investigations have focused on the plasma membrane of mammalian cells, yielding significant progress in understanding membrane heterogeneity in terms of lipid composition, molecular structure, dynamic regulation, and functional relevance. In contrast, investigations on lipid organization in other membrane systems have been comparatively scarce, despite the likely relevance of membrane domains in these contexts. In this review, we summarize recent observations on lipid organization in organellar membranes, including endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi, endo-lysosomes, lipid droplets, and secreted membranes like lung surfactant, milk fat globule membranes, and viral membranes. Across these non-plasma membrane systems, it seems that the biophysical principles underlying lipid self-organization contribute to lateral domains.
Journal Article
A two-circular RNA signature as a noninvasive diagnostic biomarker for lung adenocarcinoma
Background
Recently, circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been reported to be microRNA sponges and play essential roles in cancer development. This study aimed to evaluate whether circulating circRNAs could be used as diagnostic biomarkers for lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD).
Methods
The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) dataset was used to investigate differentially expressed circRNAs (DEcircRNAs) in paired LUAD tissues and adjacent nontumor tissues. The expression levels of the host genes were analyzed in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-LUAD dataset, and the prognostic value was assessed using the Kaplan–Meier plotter. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to validate the expression of candidate circRNAs in the LUAD plasma and cells. The CCK8 assay was used to measure the function of circRNAs in cell proliferation. Competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network, gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses were performed to predict the possible mechanisms and functions of circRNAs in LUAD.
Results
Two upregulated and two downregulated circRNAs were identified as candidate circRNAs using bioinformatics analysis. qRT-PCR demonstrated that hsa_circ_0005962 was upregulated in LUAD plasma and cells, whereas hsa_circ_0086414 was downregulated. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis confirmed that a signature comprising the two circRNAs had good diagnostic potential, with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.81 (
P
< 0.0001). In addition, we observed that overexpression of plasma hsa_circ_0086414 was related to EGFR mutations (
P
= 0.001). Plasma hsa_circ_0005962 displayed significantly different expression before and after surgery in patients with LUAD (
P
< 0.0001). In vitro experiments suggested that hsa_circ_0005962 promoted LUAD cell proliferation. For future studies, we predicted the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA network for hsa_circ_0005962. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that hsa_circ_0005962 might be involved in LUAD development.
Conclusion
A circRNA signature was identified as a potential noninvasive biomarker for LUAD diagnosis.
Journal Article
Nesfatin‐1 inhibits myocardial ischaemia/reperfusion injury through activating Akt/ERK pathway‐dependent attenuation of endoplasmic reticulum stress
Nesfatin‐1 (encoded by NUCB2) is a cardiac peptide possessing protective activities against myocardial ischaemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury. However, the regulation of NUCB2/nesfatin‐1 and the molecular mechanisms underlying its roles in MI/R injury are not clear. Here, by investigating a mouse MI/R injury model developed with transient myocardial ischaemia followed by reperfusion, we found that the levels of NUCB2 transcript and nesfatin‐1 amount in the heart were both decreased, suggesting a transcriptional repression of NUCB2/nesfatin‐1 in response to MI/R injury. Moreover, cardiac nesfatin‐1 restoration reduced infarct size, troponin T (cTnT) level and myocardial apoptosis, supporting its cardioprotection against MI/R injury in vivo. Mechanistically, the Akt/ERK pathway was activated, and in contrast, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress was attenuated by nesfatin‐1 following MI/R injury. In an in vitro system, similar results were obtained in nesfatin‐1‐treated H9c2 cardiomyocytes with hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) injury. More importantly, the treatment of wortmannin, an inhibitor of Akt/ERK pathway, abrogated nesfatin‐1 effects on attenuating ER stress and H/R injury in H9c2 cells. Furthermore, nesfatin‐1‐mediated protection against H/R injury also vanished in the presence of tunicamycin (TM), an ER stress inducer. Lastly, Akt/ERK inhibition reversed nesfatin‐1 effects on mouse ER stress and MI/R injury in vivo. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that NUCB2/nesfatin‐1 inhibits MI/R injury through attenuating ER stress, which relies on Akt/ERK pathway activation. Hence, our study provides a molecular basis for understanding how NUCB2/nesfatin‐1 reduces MI/R injury.
Journal Article
Combination of ultrasonication and deep eutectic solvent in pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for enhanced enzymatic saccharification
The synergistic effect of ultrasonication with deep eutectic solvent (DES) on pretreatment of oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) was investigated. Three different types of DESs, namely choline chloride:lactic acid (ChCl:LA), choline chloride:urea (ChCl:U) and choline chloride:glycerol (ChCl:G) were applied. The performance of the pretreatment was evaluated based on yield of reducing sugars, lignin content, crystallinity index, structural and morphology changes. ChCl:LA pretreated OPEFB attained the highest yield of reducing sugars (36.7%) under the action of ultrasonication for 15 min at sonication power 60% (210 W) and temperature 50 °C, followed by ChCl:U (35.8%) and ChCl:G (35.3%). Under these conditions, ChCl:LA pretreated OPEFB showed significant change in structural and morphology, associated with the lowest crystallinity and lignin content. ChCl:LA promoted the pretreatment process in view of its intrinsic properties of low viscosity and low surface tension. The incorporation of ultrasonication in DES pretreatment significantly increased the reducing sugars yield suggested the synergistic effect of ultrasonication with DES pretreatment. These signifies that ultrasound-assisted DES pretreatment could be a promising alternative pretreatment technique for lignocellulosic biomass.Graphic abstract
Journal Article
Principal Leadership Styles and Teacher Job Performance: Viewpoint of Middle Management
Achievement-oriented leaders let their followers know their expectations. They regularly set clear goals with potential high-performance standards, they trust in the capabilities of their subordinates, and they encourage the continued performance improvement of their subordinates. This investigation studied the effects of private secondary school principals’ leadership styles on teachers’ job performance. Four leadership styles outlined in the path–goal theory and five key performance indicators (KPIs) of teacher job performance were chosen for the present research. Numerous prior studies have documented this subject. However, they reported on teacher job performance as a single unit. Therefore, a concerted effort was required to examine the effects of adopted principal leadership styles on each of the five key performance indicators of teacher job performance. A total of 253 middle management personnel took part in this empirical study. The correlation findings from the structural equation modeling revealed that the directive leadership style had a significant effect on teacher job performance in the studied schools, followed by the supportive and achievement-oriented leadership styles. Conversely, although participative leadership was identified as a significant predictor, it was not considered a promising predictor of teacher job performance. This research was conducted in a non-Western culture, where directive leadership is beneficial for encouraging teacher job performance; this claim is greatly supported by the available rigorous literature.
Journal Article