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Every gene has a birthplace and an age, that is, a cis-regulatory environment and an evolution lifespan since its origination, yet how the two shape the evolution trajectories of genes remains unclear. Here, we address this basic question by comparing phylogenetically dated new genes in the context of both their ages and origination mechanisms. In both Drosophila and vertebrates, we confirm a clear “out of the testis” transition from the specifically expressed young genes to the broadly expressed old housekeeping genes, observed only in testis but not in other tissues. Many new genes have gained important functions during embryogenesis, manifested as either specific activation at maternal–zygotic transition, or different spatiotemporal expressions from their parental genes. These expression patterns are largely driven by an age-dependent evolution of cis-regulatory environment. We discover that retrogenes are more frequently born in a pre-existing repressive regulatory domain, and are more diverged in their enhancer repertoire than the DNA-based gene duplications. During evolution, new gene duplications gradually gain active histone modifications and undergo more enhancer turnovers when becoming older, but exhibit complex trends of gaining or losing repressive histone modifications in Drosophila or vertebrates, respectively. Interestingly, vertebrate new genes exhibit an “into the testis” epigenetic transition that older genes become more likely to be co-occupied by both active and repressive (“bivalent”) histone modifications specifically in testis. Our results uncover the regulatory mechanisms underpinning the stepwise acquisition of novel and complex functions by new genes, and illuminate the general evolution trajectory of genes throughout their life history.

To address the challenges of low accuracy and limited real-time efficiency in detecting subsurface defects within concrete structures, this study proposes an enhanced YOLOv5 model integrated with an Efficient Channel Attention (ECA) mechanism for automated ground-penetrating radar (GPR) defect detection. A Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (DCGAN)-based augmentation strategy is introduced to mitigate class imbalance, synthesizing realistic minority-class defect samples while preserving wave scattering characteristics.​​ A specialized dataset encompassing diverse defect types was constructed to reflect real-world concrete inspection scenarios. The proposed YOLOv5 + ECA model was rigorously evaluated against other attention-enhanced variants and the baseline YOLOv5. Experimental results demonstrate that ECA’s channel-specific feature recalibration significantly improves detection accuracy, achieving the highest mean average precision, while maintaining real-time inference speeds suitable for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-mounted deployment. This work advances the precision and efficiency of infrastructure health monitoring, offering a robust solution for subsurface defect diagnosis in concrete structures such as tunnel linings and bridge decks.

Menthae Haplocalycis herba, one kind of Chinese edible herbs, has been widely utilized for the clinical use in China for thousands of years. Over the last decades, studies on chemical constituents of Menthae Haplocalycis herba have been widely performed. However, less attention has been paid to non-volatile components which are also responsible for its medical efficacy than the volatile constituents. Therefore, a rapid and sensitive method was developed for the comprehensive identification of the non-volatile constituents in Menthae Haplocalycis herba using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with linear ion trap-Orbitrap mass spectrometry (UHPLC-LTQ-Orbitrap). Separation was performed with Acquity UPLC® BEH C18 column (2.1 mm × 100 mm, 1.7 μm) with 0.2% formic acid aqueous solution and acetonitrile as the mobile phase under gradient conditions. Based on the accurate mass measurement (<5 ppm), MS/MS fragmentation patterns and different chromatographic behaviors, a total of 64 compounds were unambiguously or tentatively characterized, including 30 flavonoids, 20 phenolic acids, 12 terpenoids and two phenylpropanoids. Finally, target isolation of three compounds named Acacetin, Rosmarinic acid and Clemastanin A (first isolated from Menthae Haplocalycis herba) were performed based on the obtained results, which further confirmed the deduction of fragmentation patterns and identified the compounds profile in Menthae Haplocalycis herba. Our research firstly systematically elucidated the non-volatile components of Menthae Haplocalycis herba, which laid the foundation for further pharmacological and metabolic studies. Meanwhile, our established method was useful and efficient to screen and identify targeted constituents from traditional Chinese medicine extracts.

The impact of acetaminophen on the prognosis of ischemic stroke patients admitted to intensive care units remains unclear. Although acetaminophen is commonly used for fever and pain management, its potential benefits beyond temperature control require further investigation. Using the MIMIC-IV database, we retrospectively identified 494 ICU-admitted ischemic stroke patients, of whom 362 (73.28%) received early acetaminophen treatment within 48 h after ICU admission. Patients were stratified based on acetaminophen exposure. Weighted Cox regression was applied after inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) adjustment. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the consistency of associations. After IPTW adjustment, early acetaminophen use was associated with reduced 30-day mortality (HR 0.54, 95% CI 0.31-0.94, p = 0.030), and reduced 90-day mortality (HR 0.53, 95% CI 0.32-0.87, p = 0.013). There were no significant differences in in-hospital mortality or hospital length of stay. Subgroup analyses revealed no significant interaction effects, suggesting a consistent association across different clinical strata. Early acetaminophen use may be associated with improved survival outcomes in critically ill ischemic stroke patients. These findings highlight the potential therapeutic value of acetaminophen beyond symptomatic treatment, warranting confirmation through prospective, multicenter randomized controlled trials.

Background The importance of self-regulated learning (SRL) has been broadly recognised by medical education institutions and medical professionals. Self-regulated learning, which is a context-specific process, is affected by personal, contextual and social factors. Although many studies on exploring the factors that influenced SRL and the relationship of between SRL and clinical achievement levels have been carried out in western countries, little is known about the factors associated with self-regulated learning and its relationship with clinical performance among medical students in China. Methods A cross-sectional online survey was distributed to 3rd year clinical medicine students who were in the clinical clerkship stage in a medical college in Wuhan. We used Self-regulated Learning Scale for Undergraduates (SLSU) to measure the self-regulated learning of students and Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in the national proficiency test to assess the clinical performance of students. The participation rate was 73.95% (193 students). An independent t-test and analysis of variance were used to analyse the factors associated with self-regulated learning. The relationship between self-regulated learning and clinical performance was analysed with multilinear regression analysis. Results Univariate analysis showed that having a clear career planning and a professional idol, providing full-time teaching clinical teachers in the clerkship department and seeking the help of the surrounding classmates and the guidance of teachers or senior students were significant predictors of self-regulated learning. Multilinear regression analysis has revealed a positive relationship among extrinsic goals (partial r  = 0.171), clinical clerkship evaluation (partial r  = 0.197) and clinical performance (F = 4.070, p  = 0.004). Conclusions Motivation-related personal and social factors related to clinical context could promote the SRL level of medical students in China. Extrinsic goals and clinical clerkship evaluation could facilitate students’ clinical achievements on clinical skills. External support, such as clinical clerkship management, might improve clinical performance on clinical skills in clinical clerkship context.

G-quadruplex structures formed by guanine-rich nucleic acids are implicated in essential physiological and pathological processes and nanodevices. G-quadruplexes are normally composed of four Gn (n≥ 3) tracts assembled into a core of multiple stacked G-quartet layers. By dimethyl sulfate footprinting, circular dichroism spectroscopy, thermal melting, and photo-cross-linking, here we describe a unique type of intramolecular G-quadruplex that forms with one G₂ and three G₃ tracts and bears a guanine vacancy (G-vacancy) in one of the G-quartet layers. The G-vacancy can be filled up by a guanine base from GTP or GMP to complete an intact G-quartet by Hoogsteen hydrogen bonding, resulting in significant G-quadruplex stabilization that can effectively alter DNA replication in vitro at physiological concentration of GTP and Mg2+. A bioinformatic survey shows motifs of such G-quadruplexes are evolutionally selected in genes with unique distribution pattern in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms, implying such G-vacancy–bearing G-quadruplexes are present and play a role in gene regulation. Because guanine derivatives are natural metabolites in cells, the formation of such G-quadruplexes and guanine fill-in (G-fill-in) may grant an environment-responsive regulation in cellular processes. Our findings thus not only expand the sequence definition of G-quadruplex formation, but more importantly, reveal a structural and functional property not seen in the standard canonical G-quadruplexes.