Mytilus contain abundant antimicrobial peptides(AMPs)that play a key role in the innate immunity.However,heterologous production of these AMPs remains challenging due to their short sequences,multiple disulfide bonds,...Mytilus contain abundant antimicrobial peptides(AMPs)that play a key role in the innate immunity.However,heterologous production of these AMPs remains challenging due to their short sequences,multiple disulfide bonds,and high content of cationic amino acids,which hinder functional expression in prokaryotic systems such as Escherichia coli.To establish a eukaryotic recombinant expression system for the AMPs of mussel and obtain recombinant mussel AMPs for subsequent studies,we reported the successful recombinant expression of myticofensin B1,a novel defensin-like AMP identified previously in Mytiluscoruscus,using the eukaryotic host Pichia pastoris.The codon-optimized gene encoding the mature myticofensin-B1(composed of 65 amino acid residues,including 6 conserved cysteine residues)was cloned into a pPICZαA vector and expressed in P.pastoris GS115.Structural fidelity of the recombinant peptide was confirmed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry(LC-MS/MS),showing a molecular weight of 8849.9 Da,which was consistent with the theoretical prediction.Functional assays demonstrated a broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity of the recombinant myticofensin-B1,with stronger inhibition against Gram-negative bacteria.Scanning electron microscopy revealed different effects of the recombinant myticofensin-B1 against different bacteria.In addition,the recombinant myticofensin-B1 exhibited a very low hemolytic activity against sheep red blood cells and weak cytotoxicity against human A549 lung cancer cells.This study establishes P.pastoris as a powerful platform to produce functional mussel AMP and highlights the potential of the recombinant myticofensin-B1 as a therapeutic agent for aquaculture pathogens and infections.展开更多
[Objectives]To investigate the structure and function of the lipoxygenase(LOX)gene family in Physcomitrella patens.[Methods]This study employed bioinformatics methods to identify and predict LOX gene family members.Qu...[Objectives]To investigate the structure and function of the lipoxygenase(LOX)gene family in Physcomitrella patens.[Methods]This study employed bioinformatics methods to identify and predict LOX gene family members.Quantitative real-time PCR(qRT-PCR)was utilized to analyze the expression patterns of LOX genes at different stages of Botrytis cinerea infection.[Results]The P.patens LOX gene family comprises eight putative proteins,including two 12-LOX-type members and six 13-LOX-type members.Among the eight LOX proteins,PpLOX7 exhibited the lowest molecular weight and shortest amino acid sequence.PpLOX7 was identified as a basic protein with an isoelectric point(pI)of 8.54,while all other members were acidic.Subcellular localization analysis indicated that PpLOX7 was localized to the chloroplast,whereas the remaining members were distributed in the cytoplasm.Secondary structure prediction showed that all eight proteins were predominantly composed of random coils andα-helixes.Chromosomal mapping revealed that the LOX genes were distributed across 7 of the 27 chromosomes in P.patens,with PpLOX1 and PpLOX2 tandemly arranged on chromosome 15.The qRT-PCR analysis demonstrated distinct expression patterns among the eight PpLOX genes following B.cinerea infection.PpLOX1-3 and PpLOX7 were upregulated to varying degrees,suggesting their potential involvement in the early defense response of P.patens against B.cinerea.Notably,PpLOX2 exhibited highly significant differential expression,making it a key candidate for further investigation.[Conclusions]This study provides foundational insights into the functional roles of the LOX gene family in P.patens during biotic stress responses.展开更多
Background:Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi is a medicinal plant prized for its bioactive flavonoid derivatives.Flavonoid O-methyltransferases(OMTs)in this species play a vital role in enhancing these compounds’pharmac...Background:Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi is a medicinal plant prized for its bioactive flavonoid derivatives.Flavonoid O-methyltransferases(OMTs)in this species play a vital role in enhancing these compounds’pharmacological activities,including their antioxidant,anti-inflammatory,and anticancer effects.However,a comprehensive genomic overview of the OMT gene family in S.baicalensis is lacking.Methods:This study conducted a genome-wide identification of the OMT gene family in S.baicalensis using bioinformatics approaches.The identified genes were characterized through phylogenetic,physicochemical,and structural analyses.Furthermore,the response of methoxylated flavonoids and key SbOMT genes to drought stress was investigated.Results:A total of 54 SbOMTs were identified and classified into 9 CCoAOMT and 45 COMT subfamily members.These proteins,with lengths from 129 to 695 amino acids and molecular weights from 14.42 to 76.94 kDa,were predominantly acidic.Subcellular localization predicted 43% to be cytoplasmic.Structurally,the CCoAOMT subfamily was more conserved than the COMT subfamily.Promoter analysis revealed hormone-and stress-responsive cis-elements.Under drought stress,the root content of methoxylated flavonoids(wogonin,wogonoside,and oroxylin A)decreased initially and then increased.The expression of SbOMT06,SbOMT41,SbOMT27,and SbOMT29 was positively correlated with this accumulation,suggesting their involvement in biosynthesis.Conclusion:This study provides foundational insights into the SbOMT gene family,revealing key candidates likely involved in methoxyflavonoid biosynthesis.The findings advance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms in S.baicalensis and offer valuable resources for future metabolic engineering and pathway optimization efforts.展开更多
Objective To develop a depression recognition model by integrating the spirit-expression diagnostic framework of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)with machine learning algorithms.The proposed model seeks to establish ...Objective To develop a depression recognition model by integrating the spirit-expression diagnostic framework of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)with machine learning algorithms.The proposed model seeks to establish a TCM-informed tool for early depression screening,thereby bridging traditional diagnostic principles with modern computational approaches.Methods The study included patients with depression who visited the Shanghai Pudong New Area Mental Health Center from October 1,2022 to October 1,2023,as well as students and teachers from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine during the same period as the healthy control group.Videos of 3–10 s were captured using a Xiaomi Pad 5,and the TCM spirit and expressions were determined by TCM experts(at least 3 out of 5 experts agreed to determine the category of TCM spirit and expressions).Basic information,facial images,and interview information were collected through a portable TCM intelligent analysis and diagnosis device,and facial diagnosis features were extracted using the Open CV computer vision library technology.Statistical analysis methods such as parametric and non-parametric tests were used to analyze the baseline data,TCM spirit and expression features,and facial diagnosis feature parameters of the two groups,to compare the differences in TCM spirit and expression and facial features.Five machine learning algorithms,including extreme gradient boosting(XGBoost),decision tree(DT),Bernoulli naive Bayes(BernoulliNB),support vector machine(SVM),and k-nearest neighbor(KNN)classification,were used to construct a depression recognition model based on the fusion of TCM spirit and expression features.The performance of the model was evaluated using metrics such as accuracy,precision,and the area under the receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve(AUC).The model results were explained using the Shapley Additive exPlanations(SHAP).Results A total of 93 depression patients and 87 healthy individuals were ultimately included in this study.There was no statistically significant difference in the baseline characteristics between the two groups(P>0.05).The differences in the characteristics of the spirit and expressions in TCM and facial features between the two groups were shown as follows.(i)Quantispirit facial analysis revealed that depression patients exhibited significantly reduced facial spirit and luminance compared with healthy controls(P<0.05),with characteristic features such as sad expressions,facial erythema,and changes in the lip color ranging from erythematous to cyanotic.(ii)Depressed patients exhibited significantly lower values in facial complexion L,lip L,and a values,and gloss index,but higher values in facial complexion a and b,lip b,low gloss index,and matte index(all P<0.05).(iii)The results of multiple models show that the XGBoost-based depression recognition model,integrating the TCM“spirit-expression”diagnostic framework,achieved an accuracy of 98.61%and significantly outperformed four benchmark algorithms—DT,BernoulliNB,SVM,and KNN(P<0.01).(iv)The SHAP visualization results show that in the recognition model constructed by the XGBoost algorithm,the complexion b value,categories of facial spirit,high gloss index,low gloss index,categories of facial expression and texture features have significant contribution to the model.Conclusion This study demonstrates that integrating TCM spirit-expression diagnostic features with machine learning enables the construction of a high-precision depression detection model,offering a novel paradigm for objective depression diagnosis.展开更多
[Objectives]The present study was conducted to investigate the change rule ofβ-fructofuranosidase gene expression and its enzyme activity in the midgut of 5 th instar silkworm(Bombyx mori),in order to provide a refer...[Objectives]The present study was conducted to investigate the change rule ofβ-fructofuranosidase gene expression and its enzyme activity in the midgut of 5 th instar silkworm(Bombyx mori),in order to provide a reference for illustrating the enzymatic mechanism of usingβ-fructofuranosidase to absorb sucrose nutrition from mulberry leaves.[Methods]Real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR was applied to analyze the expression of BmSuc1 and BmSuc2 in midgut of 5 th-instar silkworm larvae,meanwhile the activities ofβ-fructofuranosidase was determined.[Results]BmSuc1 was expressed in the midgut of 5 th-instar silkworm larvae at different developmental stages.Its expression was upregulated at the beginning of the 5 th instar and during the peak feeding period,whereas BmSuc2 expression remained very low throughout the entire 5 th instar.The activity ofβ-fructofuranosidase was relatively high during the peak feeding period of 5 th-instar larvae,showing a trend of increasing first and then decreasing.[Conclusions]The expression pattern of the BmSuc1 gene and the changes inβ-fructofuranosidase activity were generally consistent with the physiological process of sugar nutrient absorption and utilization from mulberry leaves in 5 th-instar silkworms.It suggests that BmSuc1,as a sucrose hydrolase gene,plays a major role in the digestion and absorption of sucrose nutrients from mulberry leaves in the midgut tissue.展开更多
The pathogenesis-related protein PR10 plays a vital role in plant growth,development,and stress responses.This study systematically identified and analyzed PR10 genes in cultivated peanut(Arachis hypogaea L.),examinin...The pathogenesis-related protein PR10 plays a vital role in plant growth,development,and stress responses.This study systematically identified and analyzed PR10 genes in cultivated peanut(Arachis hypogaea L.),examining their phylogenetic relationships,conserved motifs,gene structures,and syntenic relationships.The analysis identified 54 Ah PR10 genes,which were classified into eight groups based on phylogenetic relationships,supported by gene structure and conserved motif characterization.Analysis of chromosomal distribution and synteny demonstrated that segmental duplications played a crucial role in the expansion of the Ah PR10 gene family.The identified Ah PR10 genes exhibited both constitutive and inducible expression patterns.Significantly,Ah PR10-7,Ah PR10-33,and Ah PR10-41 demonstrated potential importance in peanut resistance to Aspergillus flavus.In vitro fungistatic experiments demonstrated that recombinant Ah PR10-33 effectively inhibited A.flavus mycelial growth.These findings provide valuable insights for future investigations into Ah PR10 functions in protecting peanut from A.flavus infection.展开更多
The primary role of the gastrointestinal tract in broiler chickens is nutrient assimilation,with transporter proteins facilitating the uptake of amino acids,peptides,monosaccharides,fatty acids,and minerals across the...The primary role of the gastrointestinal tract in broiler chickens is nutrient assimilation,with transporter proteins facilitating the uptake of amino acids,peptides,monosaccharides,fatty acids,and minerals across the intestinal epithelium.Among these nutrient transporters,members of the solute carrier family are particularly important,and gene expression analyses targeting these transporters have provided informative insights into how birds adapt to diverse dietary,environmental,and physiological challenges to maintain nutrient homeostasis.These transporters are expressed either at the brush border membrane,where they facilitate the absorption of nutrients from the gut lumen into enterocytes,or at the basolateral membrane,where they mediate the transfer of nutrients from the enterocytes into the bloodstream.The expression of these transporters is influenced by a range of factors,including bird age,sex,intestinal segment,dietary substrate availability and source,as well as external stressors such as heat stress and pathogen exposure.While upregulation of transporter genes often suggests an enhanced capacity for nutrient uptake,it does not always correlate with improved growth performance,due to compensatory physiological responses and fluctuations in nutrient bioavailability.Understanding the regulation and functional dynamics of nutrient transporters presents valuable opportunities to develop targeted dietary and management strategies aimed at optimizing nutrient utilization and improving bird performance.This review summarizes current knowledge on the classification,function,and regulation of key nutrient transporters in broilers,highlights factors influencing their expression,and explores their implications for nutrition and production efficiency.展开更多
Due to the unique microstructure and diverse opsin genes of the trinocular compound eye,stomatopoda possess an extraordinary ability to perceive multiple properties of light.They not only can detect natural light(NL)a...Due to the unique microstructure and diverse opsin genes of the trinocular compound eye,stomatopoda possess an extraordinary ability to perceive multiple properties of light.They not only can detect natural light(NL)and linearly polarized light(LPL),but also are the only animals capable of recognizing circularly polarized light(CPL).Here,we integrated single-cell RNA sequencing,previously published Illumina data,and in-situ hybridization(ISH)to quantify and localize functional opsin genes in Oratosquilla oratoria,a common stomatopoda species in the China Sea.A total of high-quality 31777 cells were captured for the first time in the O.oratoria compound eye,which were classified into 25 cell subpopulations,and hypothesized that cluster 22 is a critical cell subpopulation responsible for light(whether NL,LPL,or CPL)response in O.oratoria.Furthermore,we propose that the long-wavelengthsensitive opsin gene(lws)gene family,retinol dehydrogenase(rdh),voltage-gated ion channel(vgic),arrestin(arr),and myosin(myo)collectively mediate the light response in O.oratoria.Considering that very few vision-related opsin genes show differential expression in right-handed CPL(RCPL)-vs.-dark(DL),which provides additional evidence that stomatopoda cannot recognize RCPL.Meanwhile,we believe that UV-stimulated scaffold protein A(uvssa)and red pigment concentrating hormone(rpch)play special contributions in the left-handed CPL(LCPL)environment response.ISH revealing that 16 lws,6 middle-wavelength-sensitive(mws),and 2 ultraviolet(uv)opsin genes were expressed in the photoreceptors of the O.oratoria compound eye.Although the inability to determine the functional types of cell subpopulations limits the resolution of opsin genes,these findings systematically elucidate the specific expression patterns of opsin genes in O.oratoria and represent a significant step toward refining the visual ecological theory of O.oratoria and other stomatopod species.展开更多
While methodology for determining the mode of evolution in coding sequences has been well established,evaluation of adaptation events in emerging types of phenotype data needs further development.Here,we propose an an...While methodology for determining the mode of evolution in coding sequences has been well established,evaluation of adaptation events in emerging types of phenotype data needs further development.Here,we propose an analysis framework(expression variance decomposition,EVaDe)for comparative single-cell expression data based on phenotypic evolution theory.After decomposing the gene expression variance into separate components,we use two strategies to identify genes exhibiting large between-taxon expression divergence and small within-cell-type expression noise in certain cell types,attributing this pattern to putative adaptive evolution.In a dataset of primate prefrontal cortex,we find that such humanspecific key genes enrich with neurodevelopment-related functions,while most other genes exhibit neutral evolution patterns.Specific neuron types are found to harbor more of these key genes than other cell types,thus likely to have experienced more extensive adaptation.Reassuringly,at the molecular sequence level,the key genes are significantly associated with the rapidly evolving conserved non-coding elements.An additional case analysis comparing the naked mole-rat(NMR)with the mouse suggests that innateimmunity-related genes and cell types have undergone putative expression adaptation in NMR.Overall,the EVaDe framework may effectively probe adaptive evolution mode in single-cell expression data.展开更多
Coconut(Cocos nucifera L.),a major oil and fruit crop of the Arecaceae family,is extensively cultivated across the Asia—Pacific region.Despite its agricultural importance,genome assembly in coconut remains challengin...Coconut(Cocos nucifera L.),a major oil and fruit crop of the Arecaceae family,is extensively cultivated across the Asia—Pacific region.Despite its agricultural importance,genome assembly in coconut remains challenging due to its large genome size and high proportion of repetitive sequences.Allele-specific expression(ASE)plays a key role in regulating plant development and evolution,yet research on ASE in coconut is limited(Shao et al.,2019;Li et al.,2021;Zhang et al.,2021;Hu et al.,2022).Among phenotypic traits,fruit color is especially important as an indicator of maturity,guiding harvest timing and post-harvest processes(Kapoor et al.,2022).While prior studies have explored various coconut traits such as salt tolerance,fiber content,and plant height(Wang et al.,2021;Yang et al.,2021),investigations into ASE and fruit color remain scarce.展开更多
The prognostic and therapeutic roles of biological markers in early-stage breast cancer(eBC)warrant further investigation.Non-Breast Cancer(BRCA)genes,along with moderate-and low-penetrance breast cancer risk variant ...The prognostic and therapeutic roles of biological markers in early-stage breast cancer(eBC)warrant further investigation.Non-Breast Cancer(BRCA)genes,along with moderate-and low-penetrance breast cancer risk variant genes,are crucial formaintaining genome stability,yet their prognostic significance in eBCremains unclear.This study aimed to evaluate the impact of non-BRCA genes on clinical outcomes in eBC patients.Significant correlations were observed between the messenger ribonucleic acid(mRNA)expression levels of the genes Ataxia-telangiectasia mutated(ATM),Bloom helicase gene(BLM),and WRN RecQ Like Helicase(WRN)and patient prognosis.High mRNA expression of ATM was associated with longer metastasis-free survival(MFS).Conversely,lower mRNA expression of BLM correlated with favorable outcomes,particularly in triple-negative tumors.Additionally,high levels of WRN mRNA expression were linked to significantly longer MFS compared to low expression levels.This study highlights the prognostic significance of ATM,BLM,and WRN in predicting survival outcomes in eBC patients.Background:The prognostic significance of various biological and non-BRCA genetic in early-stage breast cancer(eBC)remains unclear and warrants further investigation.This study therefore aimed to evaluate the prognostic impact of these genes on clinical outcomes in breast cancer.Methods:Patients included in this study were subdivided into two groups based on low and high messenger ribonucleic acid(mRNA)expression levels.Statistical analysis,including Kaplan-Meier curves,univariable,andmultivariable Cox regression analyses,was performed to assess metastasis-free survival(MFS)of mRNA expression of non-BRCA genes.Subgroup analyses were also conducted among four different molecular subtypes of eBC.Results:Our analysis revealed significant correlations between mRNA-expression levels of Ataxiatelangiectasia mutated(ATM),Bloom helicase gene(BLM),and WRN RecQ Like Helicase(WRN)and patient prognosis.High mRNA expression of ATM correlated with longer MFS in the entire cohort(p=0.022,Log Rank),and in luminal-B-like tumors(p=0.036).Lower mRNA expression of BLM was associated with favorable outcomes(p=0.011,Log Rank),particularly in triple-negative eBC(p=0.030,Log Rank).Finally,high levels of WRN mRNA expression correlated with significantly longerMFS compared to lowmRNA expression levels(p=0.009,Log Rank).Conclusions:This study underscores the prognostic significance of moderate penetrance breast cancer risk variant genes,such as ATM,BLM,and WRN,for survival outcomes in eBC.展开更多
Temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis(TMJ-OA) affects a significant proportion of the population worldwide.However,there has been no substantial progress in the development of FDA-approved drugs for treatment due to ...Temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis(TMJ-OA) affects a significant proportion of the population worldwide.However,there has been no substantial progress in the development of FDA-approved drugs for treatment due to a lack of understanding of the specific factors regulating key TMJ-OA molecular mechanisms.Lysyl Oxidase-Like-2(LOXL2) promotes knee joint cartilage protection and is down regulated in a TMJ-OA animal model.We evaluated the role of LOXL2 in TMJ cartilage,its molecular mechanism,and gene networks using in vivo Loxl2 knockout mice(Acan-Cre;Loxl2^(flox/flox)) and ex vivo goat TMJ cartilage.Our results show that Loxl2 knockout in mouse cartilage upregulates Il1b,Mmp9,Mmp13,Adamts4,and Adamts5,but reduces the levels of aggrecan and proteoglycan.Loxl2 deleted TMJ cartilage show a higher enrichment of inflammatory response,TNFA signaling via NF-κB,extracellular matrix(ECM),and collagen degradation pathway network.Conversely,LOXL2 treatment reduces interleukin-1beta(IL-1β)-induced expression of Mmp13,protects mitochondrial function,and ECM from degeneration.Importantly,LOXL2attenuates IL-1 β-induced chondrocyte apoptosis via the phosphorylation of NF-κB and expression of the pain-related gene PTGS2(encodes COX2).Taken together,Loxl2 knockout mice exacerbate TMJ-OA through cartilage/ECM degradation,mitochondrial dysfunction,chondrocyte apoptosis,and inflammatory gene expression,whereas LOXL2 treatment mitigate these effects.展开更多
Micro-expressions(ME)recognition is a complex task that requires advanced techniques to extract informative features fromfacial expressions.Numerous deep neural networks(DNNs)with convolutional structures have been pr...Micro-expressions(ME)recognition is a complex task that requires advanced techniques to extract informative features fromfacial expressions.Numerous deep neural networks(DNNs)with convolutional structures have been proposed.However,unlike DNNs,shallow convolutional neural networks often outperform deeper models in mitigating overfitting,particularly with small datasets.Still,many of these methods rely on a single feature for recognition,resulting in an insufficient ability to extract highly effective features.To address this limitation,in this paper,an Improved Dual-stream Shallow Convolutional Neural Network based on an Extreme Gradient Boosting Algorithm(IDSSCNN-XgBoost)is introduced for ME Recognition.The proposed method utilizes a dual-stream architecture where motion vectors(temporal features)are extracted using Optical Flow TV-L1 and amplify subtle changes(spatial features)via EulerianVideoMagnification(EVM).These features are processed by IDSSCNN,with an attention mechanism applied to refine the extracted effective features.The outputs are then fused,concatenated,and classified using the XgBoost algorithm.This comprehensive approach significantly improves recognition accuracy by leveraging the strengths of both temporal and spatial information,supported by the robust classification power of XgBoost.The proposed method is evaluated on three publicly available ME databases named Chinese Academy of Sciences Micro-expression Database(CASMEII),Spontaneous Micro-Expression Database(SMICHS),and Spontaneous Actions and Micro-Movements(SAMM).Experimental results indicate that the proposed model can achieve outstanding results compared to recent models.The accuracy results are 79.01%,69.22%,and 68.99%on CASMEII,SMIC-HS,and SAMM,and the F1-score are 75.47%,68.91%,and 63.84%,respectively.The proposed method has the advantage of operational efficiency and less computational time.展开更多
Schizophrenia(SZ)stands as a severe psychiatric disorder.This study applied diffusion tensor imaging(DTI)data in conjunction with graph neural networks to distinguish SZ patients from normal controls(NCs)and showcases...Schizophrenia(SZ)stands as a severe psychiatric disorder.This study applied diffusion tensor imaging(DTI)data in conjunction with graph neural networks to distinguish SZ patients from normal controls(NCs)and showcases the superior performance of a graph neural network integrating combined fractional anisotropy and fiber number brain network features,achieving an accuracy of 73.79%in distinguishing SZ patients from NCs.Beyond mere discrimination,our study delved deeper into the advantages of utilizing white matter brain network features for identifying SZ patients through interpretable model analysis and gene expression analysis.These analyses uncovered intricate interrelationships between brain imaging markers and genetic biomarkers,providing novel insights into the neuropathological basis of SZ.In summary,our findings underscore the potential of graph neural networks applied to multimodal DTI data for enhancing SZ detection through an integrated analysis of neuroimaging and genetic features.展开更多
Facial expression recognition is a hot topic in computer vision, but it remains challenging due to the feature inconsistency caused by person-specific 'characteristics of facial expressions. To address such a chal...Facial expression recognition is a hot topic in computer vision, but it remains challenging due to the feature inconsistency caused by person-specific 'characteristics of facial expressions. To address such a challenge, and inspired by the recent success of deep identity network (DeepID-Net) for face identification, this paper proposes a novel deep learning based framework for recognising human expressions with facial images. Compared to the existing deep learning methods, our proposed framework, which is based on multi-scale global images and local facial patches, can significantly achieve a better performance on facial expression recognition. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of our proposed framework through experiments on the public benchmarking datasets JAFFE and extended Cohn-Kanade (CK+).展开更多
Testis specific protein Y-encoded(TSPY) is a Y-located proto-oncogene predominantly expressed in normal male germ cells and various types of germ cell tumor. Significantly, TSPY is frequently expressed in somatic ca...Testis specific protein Y-encoded(TSPY) is a Y-located proto-oncogene predominantly expressed in normal male germ cells and various types of germ cell tumor. Significantly, TSPY is frequently expressed in somatic cancers including liver cancer but not in adjacent normal tissues, suggesting that ectopic TSPY expression could be associated with oncogenesis in non-germ cell cancers. Various studies demonstrated that TSPY expression promotes growth and proliferation in cancer cells; however, its relationship to other oncogenic events in TSPY-positive cancers remains unknown. The present study seeks to correlate TSPY expression with other molecular features in clinical cancer samples, by analyses of RNA-seq transcriptome and DNA methylation data in the Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA) database. A total of 53 genes,including oncogenic lineage protein 28 homolog B(LIN28B) gene and RNA-binding motif protein Y-linked(RBMY) gene, are identified to be consistently co-expressed with TSPY, and have been collectively designated as the TSPY co-expression network(TCN). TCN genes were simultaneously activated in subsets of liver hepatocellular carcinoma(30%) and lung adenocarcinoma(10%) regardless of pathological stage, but only minimally in other cancer types. Further analysis revealed that the DNA methylation level was globally lower in the TCN-active than TCN-silent cancers. The specific expression and methylation patterns of TCN genes suggest that they could be useful as biomarkers for the diagnosis,prognosis and clinical management of cancers, especially those for liver and lung cancers, associated with TSPY co-expression network genes.展开更多
AIM: To identify and understand the relationship between co-expression pattern and clinic traits in uveal melanoma, weighted gene co-expression network analysis(WGCNA) is applied to investigate the gene expression lev...AIM: To identify and understand the relationship between co-expression pattern and clinic traits in uveal melanoma, weighted gene co-expression network analysis(WGCNA) is applied to investigate the gene expression levels and patient clinic features. Uveal melanoma is the most common primary eye tumor in adults. Although many studies have identified some important genes and pathways that were relevant to progress of uveal melanoma, the relationship between co-expression and clinic traits in systems level of uveal melanoma is unclear yet. We employ WGCNA to investigate the relationship underlying molecular and phenotype in this study.METHODS: Gene expression profile of uveal melanoma and patient clinic traits were collected from the Gene Expression Omnibus(GEO) database. The gene co-expression is calculated by WGCNA that is the R package software. The package is used to analyze the correlation between pairs of expression levels of genes.The function of the genes were annotated by gene ontology(GO).RESULTS: In this study, we identified four co-expression modules significantly correlated with clinictraits. Module blue positively correlated with radiotherapy treatment. Module purple positively correlates with tumor location(sclera) and negatively correlates with patient age. Module red positively correlates with sclera and negatively correlates with thickness of tumor. Module black positively correlates with the largest tumor diameter(LTD). Additionally, we identified the hug gene(top connectivity with other genes) in each module. The hub gene RPS15 A, PTGDS, CD53 and MSI2 might play a vital role in progress of uveal melanoma.CONCLUSION: From WGCNA analysis and hub gene calculation, we identified RPS15 A, PTGDS, CD53 and MSI2 might be target or diagnosis for uveal melanoma.展开更多
Maize (Zea mays) is the most widely grown grain crop in the world, playing important roles in agriculture and industry. However, the functions of maize genes remain largely unknown. High-quality genome- wide transcr...Maize (Zea mays) is the most widely grown grain crop in the world, playing important roles in agriculture and industry. However, the functions of maize genes remain largely unknown. High-quality genome- wide transcriptome datasets provide important biological knowledge which has been widely and suc- cessfully used in plants not only by measuring gene expression levels but also by enabling co-expression analysis for predicting gene functions and modules related to agronomic traits. Recently, thousands of maize transcriptomic data are available across different inbred lines, development stages, tissues, and treatments, or even across different tissue sections and cell lines. Here, we integrated 701 transcriptomic and 108 epigenomic data and studied the different conditional networks with multi-dimensional omics levels. We constructed a searchable, integrative, one-stop online platform, the maize conditional co- expression network (MCENet) platform. MCENet provides 10 global/conditional co-expression net- works, 5 network accessional analysis toolkits (i.e., Network Search, Network Remodel, Module Finder, Network Comparison, and Dynamic Expression View) and multiple network functional support toolkits (e.g., motif and module enrichment analysis). We hope that our database might help plant research communities to identify maize functional genes or modules that regulate important agronomic traits.展开更多
Autophagy plays a vital role in cerebral ischemia and may be a potential target for developing novel therapy for stroke. In this study, we constructed an autophagy-related pathway network by analyzing the genes relate...Autophagy plays a vital role in cerebral ischemia and may be a potential target for developing novel therapy for stroke. In this study, we constructed an autophagy-related pathway network by analyzing the genes related to autophagy and ischemic stroke, and the risk genes were screened. Two autophagy-related modules were significantly up-regulated and clustered to influence cerebral ischemia. Besides, three key modular genes (NFKB1, RELA, and STAT3) were revealed. With 5-fold cross validation, the ROC curves of NFKB1, RELA, and STAT3 were 0.8256, 0.8462, and 0.8923. They formed a complex module and competitively mediated the activation of autophagy in cerebral ischemia. In conclusion, a module containing NFKB1, RELA, and STAT3 mediates autophagy, serving as a potential biomarker for the diagnosis and therapy of ischemic stroke.展开更多
Esophageal cancer is a common malignant tumor, whose pathogenesis and prognosis factors are not fully understood. This study aimed to discover the gene clusters that have similar functions and can be used to predict t...Esophageal cancer is a common malignant tumor, whose pathogenesis and prognosis factors are not fully understood. This study aimed to discover the gene clusters that have similar functions and can be used to predict the prognosis of esophageal cancer. The matched microarray and RNA sequencing data of 185 patients with esophageal cancer were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA), and gene co-expression networks were built without distinguishing between squamous carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. The result showed that 12 modules were associated with one or more survival data such as recurrence status, recurrence time, vital status or vital time. Furthermore, survival analysis showed that 5 out of the 12 modules were related to progression-free survival(PFS) or overall survival(OS). As the most important module, the midnight blue module with 82 genes was related to PFS, apart from the patient age, tumor grade, primary treatment success, and duration of smoking and tumor histological type. Gene ontology enrichment analysis revealed that 'glycoprotein binding' was the top enriched function of midnight blue module genes. Additionally, the blue module was the exclusive gene clusters related to OS. Platelet activating factor receptor(PTAFR) and feline Gardner-Rasheed(FGR) were the top hub genes in both modeling datasets and the STRING protein interaction database. In conclusion, our study provides novel insights into the prognosis-associated genes and screens out candidate biomarkers for esophageal cancer.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(32271580,42020104009)the Fundamental Research Funds for Zhejiang Provincial Universities and Research Institutes(JX6311101923)。
文摘Mytilus contain abundant antimicrobial peptides(AMPs)that play a key role in the innate immunity.However,heterologous production of these AMPs remains challenging due to their short sequences,multiple disulfide bonds,and high content of cationic amino acids,which hinder functional expression in prokaryotic systems such as Escherichia coli.To establish a eukaryotic recombinant expression system for the AMPs of mussel and obtain recombinant mussel AMPs for subsequent studies,we reported the successful recombinant expression of myticofensin B1,a novel defensin-like AMP identified previously in Mytiluscoruscus,using the eukaryotic host Pichia pastoris.The codon-optimized gene encoding the mature myticofensin-B1(composed of 65 amino acid residues,including 6 conserved cysteine residues)was cloned into a pPICZαA vector and expressed in P.pastoris GS115.Structural fidelity of the recombinant peptide was confirmed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry(LC-MS/MS),showing a molecular weight of 8849.9 Da,which was consistent with the theoretical prediction.Functional assays demonstrated a broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity of the recombinant myticofensin-B1,with stronger inhibition against Gram-negative bacteria.Scanning electron microscopy revealed different effects of the recombinant myticofensin-B1 against different bacteria.In addition,the recombinant myticofensin-B1 exhibited a very low hemolytic activity against sheep red blood cells and weak cytotoxicity against human A549 lung cancer cells.This study establishes P.pastoris as a powerful platform to produce functional mussel AMP and highlights the potential of the recombinant myticofensin-B1 as a therapeutic agent for aquaculture pathogens and infections.
基金Supported by the Science and Technology Program of Guizhou Provence(Qiankehejichu-ZK[2023]Yiban 271).
文摘[Objectives]To investigate the structure and function of the lipoxygenase(LOX)gene family in Physcomitrella patens.[Methods]This study employed bioinformatics methods to identify and predict LOX gene family members.Quantitative real-time PCR(qRT-PCR)was utilized to analyze the expression patterns of LOX genes at different stages of Botrytis cinerea infection.[Results]The P.patens LOX gene family comprises eight putative proteins,including two 12-LOX-type members and six 13-LOX-type members.Among the eight LOX proteins,PpLOX7 exhibited the lowest molecular weight and shortest amino acid sequence.PpLOX7 was identified as a basic protein with an isoelectric point(pI)of 8.54,while all other members were acidic.Subcellular localization analysis indicated that PpLOX7 was localized to the chloroplast,whereas the remaining members were distributed in the cytoplasm.Secondary structure prediction showed that all eight proteins were predominantly composed of random coils andα-helixes.Chromosomal mapping revealed that the LOX genes were distributed across 7 of the 27 chromosomes in P.patens,with PpLOX1 and PpLOX2 tandemly arranged on chromosome 15.The qRT-PCR analysis demonstrated distinct expression patterns among the eight PpLOX genes following B.cinerea infection.PpLOX1-3 and PpLOX7 were upregulated to varying degrees,suggesting their potential involvement in the early defense response of P.patens against B.cinerea.Notably,PpLOX2 exhibited highly significant differential expression,making it a key candidate for further investigation.[Conclusions]This study provides foundational insights into the functional roles of the LOX gene family in P.patens during biotic stress responses.
基金funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(82404814,82404863)Start-up Research Fund of Nanjing Agricultural University(130-804141)+1 种基金the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine High-level Key Discipline Construction Project(zyyzdxk-2023293)Scientific research Project of Jiangsu Institute of Product Quality Supervision and Inspection(KJ2025008).
文摘Background:Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi is a medicinal plant prized for its bioactive flavonoid derivatives.Flavonoid O-methyltransferases(OMTs)in this species play a vital role in enhancing these compounds’pharmacological activities,including their antioxidant,anti-inflammatory,and anticancer effects.However,a comprehensive genomic overview of the OMT gene family in S.baicalensis is lacking.Methods:This study conducted a genome-wide identification of the OMT gene family in S.baicalensis using bioinformatics approaches.The identified genes were characterized through phylogenetic,physicochemical,and structural analyses.Furthermore,the response of methoxylated flavonoids and key SbOMT genes to drought stress was investigated.Results:A total of 54 SbOMTs were identified and classified into 9 CCoAOMT and 45 COMT subfamily members.These proteins,with lengths from 129 to 695 amino acids and molecular weights from 14.42 to 76.94 kDa,were predominantly acidic.Subcellular localization predicted 43% to be cytoplasmic.Structurally,the CCoAOMT subfamily was more conserved than the COMT subfamily.Promoter analysis revealed hormone-and stress-responsive cis-elements.Under drought stress,the root content of methoxylated flavonoids(wogonin,wogonoside,and oroxylin A)decreased initially and then increased.The expression of SbOMT06,SbOMT41,SbOMT27,and SbOMT29 was positively correlated with this accumulation,suggesting their involvement in biosynthesis.Conclusion:This study provides foundational insights into the SbOMT gene family,revealing key candidates likely involved in methoxyflavonoid biosynthesis.The findings advance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms in S.baicalensis and offer valuable resources for future metabolic engineering and pathway optimization efforts.
基金General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China(82474390)Construction Project of Pudong New Area Famous TCM Studios(National Pilot Zone for TCM Development,Shanghai)(PDZY-2025-0716)Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Program Project Shanghai Key Laboratory of Health Identification and Assessment(21DZ2271000).
文摘Objective To develop a depression recognition model by integrating the spirit-expression diagnostic framework of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)with machine learning algorithms.The proposed model seeks to establish a TCM-informed tool for early depression screening,thereby bridging traditional diagnostic principles with modern computational approaches.Methods The study included patients with depression who visited the Shanghai Pudong New Area Mental Health Center from October 1,2022 to October 1,2023,as well as students and teachers from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine during the same period as the healthy control group.Videos of 3–10 s were captured using a Xiaomi Pad 5,and the TCM spirit and expressions were determined by TCM experts(at least 3 out of 5 experts agreed to determine the category of TCM spirit and expressions).Basic information,facial images,and interview information were collected through a portable TCM intelligent analysis and diagnosis device,and facial diagnosis features were extracted using the Open CV computer vision library technology.Statistical analysis methods such as parametric and non-parametric tests were used to analyze the baseline data,TCM spirit and expression features,and facial diagnosis feature parameters of the two groups,to compare the differences in TCM spirit and expression and facial features.Five machine learning algorithms,including extreme gradient boosting(XGBoost),decision tree(DT),Bernoulli naive Bayes(BernoulliNB),support vector machine(SVM),and k-nearest neighbor(KNN)classification,were used to construct a depression recognition model based on the fusion of TCM spirit and expression features.The performance of the model was evaluated using metrics such as accuracy,precision,and the area under the receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve(AUC).The model results were explained using the Shapley Additive exPlanations(SHAP).Results A total of 93 depression patients and 87 healthy individuals were ultimately included in this study.There was no statistically significant difference in the baseline characteristics between the two groups(P>0.05).The differences in the characteristics of the spirit and expressions in TCM and facial features between the two groups were shown as follows.(i)Quantispirit facial analysis revealed that depression patients exhibited significantly reduced facial spirit and luminance compared with healthy controls(P<0.05),with characteristic features such as sad expressions,facial erythema,and changes in the lip color ranging from erythematous to cyanotic.(ii)Depressed patients exhibited significantly lower values in facial complexion L,lip L,and a values,and gloss index,but higher values in facial complexion a and b,lip b,low gloss index,and matte index(all P<0.05).(iii)The results of multiple models show that the XGBoost-based depression recognition model,integrating the TCM“spirit-expression”diagnostic framework,achieved an accuracy of 98.61%and significantly outperformed four benchmark algorithms—DT,BernoulliNB,SVM,and KNN(P<0.01).(iv)The SHAP visualization results show that in the recognition model constructed by the XGBoost algorithm,the complexion b value,categories of facial spirit,high gloss index,low gloss index,categories of facial expression and texture features have significant contribution to the model.Conclusion This study demonstrates that integrating TCM spirit-expression diagnostic features with machine learning enables the construction of a high-precision depression detection model,offering a novel paradigm for objective depression diagnosis.
基金Supported by General Project of Yunnan Provincial Agricultural Basic Research Joint Special Project(202301BD070001-229)Yunnan Provincial Key R&D Program(202403AK140075)+1 种基金Modern Sericulture Industry Technology System of Yunan Province(KJTX-07)Honghe Comprehensive Test Station of National Sericulture Industry Technology System(CARS-18).
文摘[Objectives]The present study was conducted to investigate the change rule ofβ-fructofuranosidase gene expression and its enzyme activity in the midgut of 5 th instar silkworm(Bombyx mori),in order to provide a reference for illustrating the enzymatic mechanism of usingβ-fructofuranosidase to absorb sucrose nutrition from mulberry leaves.[Methods]Real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR was applied to analyze the expression of BmSuc1 and BmSuc2 in midgut of 5 th-instar silkworm larvae,meanwhile the activities ofβ-fructofuranosidase was determined.[Results]BmSuc1 was expressed in the midgut of 5 th-instar silkworm larvae at different developmental stages.Its expression was upregulated at the beginning of the 5 th instar and during the peak feeding period,whereas BmSuc2 expression remained very low throughout the entire 5 th instar.The activity ofβ-fructofuranosidase was relatively high during the peak feeding period of 5 th-instar larvae,showing a trend of increasing first and then decreasing.[Conclusions]The expression pattern of the BmSuc1 gene and the changes inβ-fructofuranosidase activity were generally consistent with the physiological process of sugar nutrient absorption and utilization from mulberry leaves in 5 th-instar silkworms.It suggests that BmSuc1,as a sucrose hydrolase gene,plays a major role in the digestion and absorption of sucrose nutrients from mulberry leaves in the midgut tissue.
基金supported by the National Key R&D Program of China(2022YFD1200400)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(32301851)。
文摘The pathogenesis-related protein PR10 plays a vital role in plant growth,development,and stress responses.This study systematically identified and analyzed PR10 genes in cultivated peanut(Arachis hypogaea L.),examining their phylogenetic relationships,conserved motifs,gene structures,and syntenic relationships.The analysis identified 54 Ah PR10 genes,which were classified into eight groups based on phylogenetic relationships,supported by gene structure and conserved motif characterization.Analysis of chromosomal distribution and synteny demonstrated that segmental duplications played a crucial role in the expansion of the Ah PR10 gene family.The identified Ah PR10 genes exhibited both constitutive and inducible expression patterns.Significantly,Ah PR10-7,Ah PR10-33,and Ah PR10-41 demonstrated potential importance in peanut resistance to Aspergillus flavus.In vitro fungistatic experiments demonstrated that recombinant Ah PR10-33 effectively inhibited A.flavus mycelial growth.These findings provide valuable insights for future investigations into Ah PR10 functions in protecting peanut from A.flavus infection.
文摘The primary role of the gastrointestinal tract in broiler chickens is nutrient assimilation,with transporter proteins facilitating the uptake of amino acids,peptides,monosaccharides,fatty acids,and minerals across the intestinal epithelium.Among these nutrient transporters,members of the solute carrier family are particularly important,and gene expression analyses targeting these transporters have provided informative insights into how birds adapt to diverse dietary,environmental,and physiological challenges to maintain nutrient homeostasis.These transporters are expressed either at the brush border membrane,where they facilitate the absorption of nutrients from the gut lumen into enterocytes,or at the basolateral membrane,where they mediate the transfer of nutrients from the enterocytes into the bloodstream.The expression of these transporters is influenced by a range of factors,including bird age,sex,intestinal segment,dietary substrate availability and source,as well as external stressors such as heat stress and pathogen exposure.While upregulation of transporter genes often suggests an enhanced capacity for nutrient uptake,it does not always correlate with improved growth performance,due to compensatory physiological responses and fluctuations in nutrient bioavailability.Understanding the regulation and functional dynamics of nutrient transporters presents valuable opportunities to develop targeted dietary and management strategies aimed at optimizing nutrient utilization and improving bird performance.This review summarizes current knowledge on the classification,function,and regulation of key nutrient transporters in broilers,highlights factors influencing their expression,and explores their implications for nutrition and production efficiency.
基金Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province(No.ZR2021QD110)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.42106128)。
文摘Due to the unique microstructure and diverse opsin genes of the trinocular compound eye,stomatopoda possess an extraordinary ability to perceive multiple properties of light.They not only can detect natural light(NL)and linearly polarized light(LPL),but also are the only animals capable of recognizing circularly polarized light(CPL).Here,we integrated single-cell RNA sequencing,previously published Illumina data,and in-situ hybridization(ISH)to quantify and localize functional opsin genes in Oratosquilla oratoria,a common stomatopoda species in the China Sea.A total of high-quality 31777 cells were captured for the first time in the O.oratoria compound eye,which were classified into 25 cell subpopulations,and hypothesized that cluster 22 is a critical cell subpopulation responsible for light(whether NL,LPL,or CPL)response in O.oratoria.Furthermore,we propose that the long-wavelengthsensitive opsin gene(lws)gene family,retinol dehydrogenase(rdh),voltage-gated ion channel(vgic),arrestin(arr),and myosin(myo)collectively mediate the light response in O.oratoria.Considering that very few vision-related opsin genes show differential expression in right-handed CPL(RCPL)-vs.-dark(DL),which provides additional evidence that stomatopoda cannot recognize RCPL.Meanwhile,we believe that UV-stimulated scaffold protein A(uvssa)and red pigment concentrating hormone(rpch)play special contributions in the left-handed CPL(LCPL)environment response.ISH revealing that 16 lws,6 middle-wavelength-sensitive(mws),and 2 ultraviolet(uv)opsin genes were expressed in the photoreceptors of the O.oratoria compound eye.Although the inability to determine the functional types of cell subpopulations limits the resolution of opsin genes,these findings systematically elucidate the specific expression patterns of opsin genes in O.oratoria and represent a significant step toward refining the visual ecological theory of O.oratoria and other stomatopod species.
文摘While methodology for determining the mode of evolution in coding sequences has been well established,evaluation of adaptation events in emerging types of phenotype data needs further development.Here,we propose an analysis framework(expression variance decomposition,EVaDe)for comparative single-cell expression data based on phenotypic evolution theory.After decomposing the gene expression variance into separate components,we use two strategies to identify genes exhibiting large between-taxon expression divergence and small within-cell-type expression noise in certain cell types,attributing this pattern to putative adaptive evolution.In a dataset of primate prefrontal cortex,we find that such humanspecific key genes enrich with neurodevelopment-related functions,while most other genes exhibit neutral evolution patterns.Specific neuron types are found to harbor more of these key genes than other cell types,thus likely to have experienced more extensive adaptation.Reassuringly,at the molecular sequence level,the key genes are significantly associated with the rapidly evolving conserved non-coding elements.An additional case analysis comparing the naked mole-rat(NMR)with the mouse suggests that innateimmunity-related genes and cell types have undergone putative expression adaptation in NMR.Overall,the EVaDe framework may effectively probe adaptive evolution mode in single-cell expression data.
基金supported by Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund(CATAS-Nos.1630152023007,1630152023011,1630152023012,1630152023013)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.32071805).
文摘Coconut(Cocos nucifera L.),a major oil and fruit crop of the Arecaceae family,is extensively cultivated across the Asia—Pacific region.Despite its agricultural importance,genome assembly in coconut remains challenging due to its large genome size and high proportion of repetitive sequences.Allele-specific expression(ASE)plays a key role in regulating plant development and evolution,yet research on ASE in coconut is limited(Shao et al.,2019;Li et al.,2021;Zhang et al.,2021;Hu et al.,2022).Among phenotypic traits,fruit color is especially important as an indicator of maturity,guiding harvest timing and post-harvest processes(Kapoor et al.,2022).While prior studies have explored various coconut traits such as salt tolerance,fiber content,and plant height(Wang et al.,2021;Yang et al.,2021),investigations into ASE and fruit color remain scarce.
文摘The prognostic and therapeutic roles of biological markers in early-stage breast cancer(eBC)warrant further investigation.Non-Breast Cancer(BRCA)genes,along with moderate-and low-penetrance breast cancer risk variant genes,are crucial formaintaining genome stability,yet their prognostic significance in eBCremains unclear.This study aimed to evaluate the impact of non-BRCA genes on clinical outcomes in eBC patients.Significant correlations were observed between the messenger ribonucleic acid(mRNA)expression levels of the genes Ataxia-telangiectasia mutated(ATM),Bloom helicase gene(BLM),and WRN RecQ Like Helicase(WRN)and patient prognosis.High mRNA expression of ATM was associated with longer metastasis-free survival(MFS).Conversely,lower mRNA expression of BLM correlated with favorable outcomes,particularly in triple-negative tumors.Additionally,high levels of WRN mRNA expression were linked to significantly longer MFS compared to low expression levels.This study highlights the prognostic significance of ATM,BLM,and WRN in predicting survival outcomes in eBC patients.Background:The prognostic significance of various biological and non-BRCA genetic in early-stage breast cancer(eBC)remains unclear and warrants further investigation.This study therefore aimed to evaluate the prognostic impact of these genes on clinical outcomes in breast cancer.Methods:Patients included in this study were subdivided into two groups based on low and high messenger ribonucleic acid(mRNA)expression levels.Statistical analysis,including Kaplan-Meier curves,univariable,andmultivariable Cox regression analyses,was performed to assess metastasis-free survival(MFS)of mRNA expression of non-BRCA genes.Subgroup analyses were also conducted among four different molecular subtypes of eBC.Results:Our analysis revealed significant correlations between mRNA-expression levels of Ataxiatelangiectasia mutated(ATM),Bloom helicase gene(BLM),and WRN RecQ Like Helicase(WRN)and patient prognosis.High mRNA expression of ATM correlated with longer MFS in the entire cohort(p=0.022,Log Rank),and in luminal-B-like tumors(p=0.036).Lower mRNA expression of BLM was associated with favorable outcomes(p=0.011,Log Rank),particularly in triple-negative eBC(p=0.030,Log Rank).Finally,high levels of WRN mRNA expression correlated with significantly longerMFS compared to lowmRNA expression levels(p=0.009,Log Rank).Conclusions:This study underscores the prognostic significance of moderate penetrance breast cancer risk variant genes,such as ATM,BLM,and WRN,for survival outcomes in eBC.
基金supported by an NIH grant R01 DE031413 (M.V.B.)。
文摘Temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis(TMJ-OA) affects a significant proportion of the population worldwide.However,there has been no substantial progress in the development of FDA-approved drugs for treatment due to a lack of understanding of the specific factors regulating key TMJ-OA molecular mechanisms.Lysyl Oxidase-Like-2(LOXL2) promotes knee joint cartilage protection and is down regulated in a TMJ-OA animal model.We evaluated the role of LOXL2 in TMJ cartilage,its molecular mechanism,and gene networks using in vivo Loxl2 knockout mice(Acan-Cre;Loxl2^(flox/flox)) and ex vivo goat TMJ cartilage.Our results show that Loxl2 knockout in mouse cartilage upregulates Il1b,Mmp9,Mmp13,Adamts4,and Adamts5,but reduces the levels of aggrecan and proteoglycan.Loxl2 deleted TMJ cartilage show a higher enrichment of inflammatory response,TNFA signaling via NF-κB,extracellular matrix(ECM),and collagen degradation pathway network.Conversely,LOXL2 treatment reduces interleukin-1beta(IL-1β)-induced expression of Mmp13,protects mitochondrial function,and ECM from degeneration.Importantly,LOXL2attenuates IL-1 β-induced chondrocyte apoptosis via the phosphorylation of NF-κB and expression of the pain-related gene PTGS2(encodes COX2).Taken together,Loxl2 knockout mice exacerbate TMJ-OA through cartilage/ECM degradation,mitochondrial dysfunction,chondrocyte apoptosis,and inflammatory gene expression,whereas LOXL2 treatment mitigate these effects.
基金supported by the Key Research and Development Program of Jiangsu Province under Grant BE2022059-3,CTBC Bank through the Industry-Academia Cooperation Project,as well as by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan through Grants MOST-108-2218-E-002-055,MOST-109-2223-E-009-002-MY3,MOST-109-2218-E-009-025,and MOST431109-2218-E-002-015.
文摘Micro-expressions(ME)recognition is a complex task that requires advanced techniques to extract informative features fromfacial expressions.Numerous deep neural networks(DNNs)with convolutional structures have been proposed.However,unlike DNNs,shallow convolutional neural networks often outperform deeper models in mitigating overfitting,particularly with small datasets.Still,many of these methods rely on a single feature for recognition,resulting in an insufficient ability to extract highly effective features.To address this limitation,in this paper,an Improved Dual-stream Shallow Convolutional Neural Network based on an Extreme Gradient Boosting Algorithm(IDSSCNN-XgBoost)is introduced for ME Recognition.The proposed method utilizes a dual-stream architecture where motion vectors(temporal features)are extracted using Optical Flow TV-L1 and amplify subtle changes(spatial features)via EulerianVideoMagnification(EVM).These features are processed by IDSSCNN,with an attention mechanism applied to refine the extracted effective features.The outputs are then fused,concatenated,and classified using the XgBoost algorithm.This comprehensive approach significantly improves recognition accuracy by leveraging the strengths of both temporal and spatial information,supported by the robust classification power of XgBoost.The proposed method is evaluated on three publicly available ME databases named Chinese Academy of Sciences Micro-expression Database(CASMEII),Spontaneous Micro-Expression Database(SMICHS),and Spontaneous Actions and Micro-Movements(SAMM).Experimental results indicate that the proposed model can achieve outstanding results compared to recent models.The accuracy results are 79.01%,69.22%,and 68.99%on CASMEII,SMIC-HS,and SAMM,and the F1-score are 75.47%,68.91%,and 63.84%,respectively.The proposed method has the advantage of operational efficiency and less computational time.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(62276049,61701078,61872068,and 62006038)the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province(2025ZNSFSC0487)+3 种基金the Science and Technology Innovation 2030-Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence Project(2021ZD0200200)the National Key R&D Program of China(2023YFE0118600)Sichuan Province Science and Technology Support Program(2019YJ0193,2021YFG0126,2021YFG0366,and 2022YFS0180)Medico-Engineering Cooperation Funds from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China(ZYGX2021YGLH014).
文摘Schizophrenia(SZ)stands as a severe psychiatric disorder.This study applied diffusion tensor imaging(DTI)data in conjunction with graph neural networks to distinguish SZ patients from normal controls(NCs)and showcases the superior performance of a graph neural network integrating combined fractional anisotropy and fiber number brain network features,achieving an accuracy of 73.79%in distinguishing SZ patients from NCs.Beyond mere discrimination,our study delved deeper into the advantages of utilizing white matter brain network features for identifying SZ patients through interpretable model analysis and gene expression analysis.These analyses uncovered intricate interrelationships between brain imaging markers and genetic biomarkers,providing novel insights into the neuropathological basis of SZ.In summary,our findings underscore the potential of graph neural networks applied to multimodal DTI data for enhancing SZ detection through an integrated analysis of neuroimaging and genetic features.
基金supported by the Academy of Finland(267581)the D2I SHOK Project from Digile Oy as well as Nokia Technologies(Tampere,Finland)
文摘Facial expression recognition is a hot topic in computer vision, but it remains challenging due to the feature inconsistency caused by person-specific 'characteristics of facial expressions. To address such a challenge, and inspired by the recent success of deep identity network (DeepID-Net) for face identification, this paper proposes a novel deep learning based framework for recognising human expressions with facial images. Compared to the existing deep learning methods, our proposed framework, which is based on multi-scale global images and local facial patches, can significantly achieve a better performance on facial expression recognition. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of our proposed framework through experiments on the public benchmarking datasets JAFFE and extended Cohn-Kanade (CK+).
基金partially supported by a Merit-Reviewed grant from the Department of Veterans Affairsa Peer-Reviewed Cancer Research Program grant from the Department of Defense (W81XWH-16-1-0488) to Y-FCL
文摘Testis specific protein Y-encoded(TSPY) is a Y-located proto-oncogene predominantly expressed in normal male germ cells and various types of germ cell tumor. Significantly, TSPY is frequently expressed in somatic cancers including liver cancer but not in adjacent normal tissues, suggesting that ectopic TSPY expression could be associated with oncogenesis in non-germ cell cancers. Various studies demonstrated that TSPY expression promotes growth and proliferation in cancer cells; however, its relationship to other oncogenic events in TSPY-positive cancers remains unknown. The present study seeks to correlate TSPY expression with other molecular features in clinical cancer samples, by analyses of RNA-seq transcriptome and DNA methylation data in the Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA) database. A total of 53 genes,including oncogenic lineage protein 28 homolog B(LIN28B) gene and RNA-binding motif protein Y-linked(RBMY) gene, are identified to be consistently co-expressed with TSPY, and have been collectively designated as the TSPY co-expression network(TCN). TCN genes were simultaneously activated in subsets of liver hepatocellular carcinoma(30%) and lung adenocarcinoma(10%) regardless of pathological stage, but only minimally in other cancer types. Further analysis revealed that the DNA methylation level was globally lower in the TCN-active than TCN-silent cancers. The specific expression and methylation patterns of TCN genes suggest that they could be useful as biomarkers for the diagnosis,prognosis and clinical management of cancers, especially those for liver and lung cancers, associated with TSPY co-expression network genes.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.81271019No.61463046)Gansu Province Science Foundation for Youths(No.145RJYA282)
文摘AIM: To identify and understand the relationship between co-expression pattern and clinic traits in uveal melanoma, weighted gene co-expression network analysis(WGCNA) is applied to investigate the gene expression levels and patient clinic features. Uveal melanoma is the most common primary eye tumor in adults. Although many studies have identified some important genes and pathways that were relevant to progress of uveal melanoma, the relationship between co-expression and clinic traits in systems level of uveal melanoma is unclear yet. We employ WGCNA to investigate the relationship underlying molecular and phenotype in this study.METHODS: Gene expression profile of uveal melanoma and patient clinic traits were collected from the Gene Expression Omnibus(GEO) database. The gene co-expression is calculated by WGCNA that is the R package software. The package is used to analyze the correlation between pairs of expression levels of genes.The function of the genes were annotated by gene ontology(GO).RESULTS: In this study, we identified four co-expression modules significantly correlated with clinictraits. Module blue positively correlated with radiotherapy treatment. Module purple positively correlates with tumor location(sclera) and negatively correlates with patient age. Module red positively correlates with sclera and negatively correlates with thickness of tumor. Module black positively correlates with the largest tumor diameter(LTD). Additionally, we identified the hug gene(top connectivity with other genes) in each module. The hub gene RPS15 A, PTGDS, CD53 and MSI2 might play a vital role in progress of uveal melanoma.CONCLUSION: From WGCNA analysis and hub gene calculation, we identified RPS15 A, PTGDS, CD53 and MSI2 might be target or diagnosis for uveal melanoma.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31771467, 31571360 and 31371291)
文摘Maize (Zea mays) is the most widely grown grain crop in the world, playing important roles in agriculture and industry. However, the functions of maize genes remain largely unknown. High-quality genome- wide transcriptome datasets provide important biological knowledge which has been widely and suc- cessfully used in plants not only by measuring gene expression levels but also by enabling co-expression analysis for predicting gene functions and modules related to agronomic traits. Recently, thousands of maize transcriptomic data are available across different inbred lines, development stages, tissues, and treatments, or even across different tissue sections and cell lines. Here, we integrated 701 transcriptomic and 108 epigenomic data and studied the different conditional networks with multi-dimensional omics levels. We constructed a searchable, integrative, one-stop online platform, the maize conditional co- expression network (MCENet) platform. MCENet provides 10 global/conditional co-expression net- works, 5 network accessional analysis toolkits (i.e., Network Search, Network Remodel, Module Finder, Network Comparison, and Dynamic Expression View) and multiple network functional support toolkits (e.g., motif and module enrichment analysis). We hope that our database might help plant research communities to identify maize functional genes or modules that regulate important agronomic traits.
基金supported by a Shanghai Leading Talents Project (54[2012])a Pudong New Area Leading Talents Project of Health System (PWR12011-02)
文摘Autophagy plays a vital role in cerebral ischemia and may be a potential target for developing novel therapy for stroke. In this study, we constructed an autophagy-related pathway network by analyzing the genes related to autophagy and ischemic stroke, and the risk genes were screened. Two autophagy-related modules were significantly up-regulated and clustered to influence cerebral ischemia. Besides, three key modular genes (NFKB1, RELA, and STAT3) were revealed. With 5-fold cross validation, the ROC curves of NFKB1, RELA, and STAT3 were 0.8256, 0.8462, and 0.8923. They formed a complex module and competitively mediated the activation of autophagy in cerebral ischemia. In conclusion, a module containing NFKB1, RELA, and STAT3 mediates autophagy, serving as a potential biomarker for the diagnosis and therapy of ischemic stroke.
文摘Esophageal cancer is a common malignant tumor, whose pathogenesis and prognosis factors are not fully understood. This study aimed to discover the gene clusters that have similar functions and can be used to predict the prognosis of esophageal cancer. The matched microarray and RNA sequencing data of 185 patients with esophageal cancer were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA), and gene co-expression networks were built without distinguishing between squamous carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. The result showed that 12 modules were associated with one or more survival data such as recurrence status, recurrence time, vital status or vital time. Furthermore, survival analysis showed that 5 out of the 12 modules were related to progression-free survival(PFS) or overall survival(OS). As the most important module, the midnight blue module with 82 genes was related to PFS, apart from the patient age, tumor grade, primary treatment success, and duration of smoking and tumor histological type. Gene ontology enrichment analysis revealed that 'glycoprotein binding' was the top enriched function of midnight blue module genes. Additionally, the blue module was the exclusive gene clusters related to OS. Platelet activating factor receptor(PTAFR) and feline Gardner-Rasheed(FGR) were the top hub genes in both modeling datasets and the STRING protein interaction database. In conclusion, our study provides novel insights into the prognosis-associated genes and screens out candidate biomarkers for esophageal cancer.