Radiographic joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis is associated with differences in cartilage turnover and can be predicted by serum biomarkers: an evaluation from 1 to 4 years after diagnosis

Introduction  

The objective of this study was to determine whether serum biomarkers for degradation and synthesis of the extracellular matrix of cartilage are associated with, and can predict, radiographic damage in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).     

不同强度静电磁场对体外培养骨髓间充质干细胞增殖与分化的影响

本实验研究不同强度静电磁场对体外培养大鼠骨髓间充质干细胞增殖与分化作用. 体外分离培养大鼠骨髓间充质干细胞,传代后随机分为6组,分别用强度为0（对照组）、0.9、1.2、1.5、1.8和2.1 mT的静电磁场处理,每d每次处理30 min. 在磁场处理后的9~10 d ,骨髓间充质干细胞开始出现钙化小颗粒. 0.9 mT组抑制骨髓间充质干细胞增殖,1.5到2.1mT组促进骨髓间充质干细胞增殖. 在磁场处理后的12 d和15 d ,1.5和1.8 mT组极显著地增加了碱性磷酸酶(AKP)活性. 采用AKP组织化学染色和钙化结节染色对骨髓间充质干细胞成骨性分化进行鉴定,AKP组织化学染色和钙化结节染色都呈现了极强的阳性结果,尤以1.5 mT和1.8 mT阳性染色面积最大. 在SEMFs处理后的48 h 和96 h ,1.5 mT和1.8 mT组胶原I(collagen-Ⅰ)和骨形态发生蛋白2(bone morphogenetic protein-2, Bmp-2) 基因表达水平显著高于对照组.在SEMFs处理后的12 d, BMP-2蛋白表达量高于对照组. 研究表明,0.9 mT 组抑制骨髓间充质干细胞增殖,1.5 mT到2.1 mT组不同强度静电磁场促进体外培养骨髓间充质干细胞的增殖. 磁场组能促进骨髓间充质干细胞成骨性分化,其中尤以1.5 mT和1.8 mT组促进大鼠骨髓间充质干细胞分化作用效果最为明显.     

Introduction

At the first international symposium of Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden held on October11-14,2010,26representatives from13countries and 111 represents from69institutes and organizations of China came together for a program of presentations.The symposiumwas organized by Shanghai Landscaping Administrative Bureau,Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences     

Saccharina japonica,a potential feedstock for pigment production using submerged fermentation

In this study, the feasibility and applicability of marine algal biomass Saccharina (Laminaria) japonica as a sole substrate for the production of pigments by Talaromyces amestolkiae GT11 in submerged fermentation was evaluated. Results indicated that the fungus T. amestolkiae GT11 produced the highest amount of extracellular yellow (444.83 ± 22) and red (200.94 ± 12), and intracellular yellow (362.28 ± 34) and red (193.87 ± 10) pigments, utilizing 1% (w/v) of S. japonica powder at an initial pH of 5 and 30°C, as compared to other physiochemical parameters tested. The pH and thermostability analysis results demonstrated that even after 5 h of incubation the pigment was found to be highly stable at pH 6 and 40 ~ 60°C with 98% and 90.56 ~ 84.69% of residual absorbance, respectively. Apart from the application of pigment as a natural colorant instead of synthetic one in biotechnology industry, the fermented substrate itself can be exploited as food and feed with enhanced nutrient content, improved protein quality and fiber digestibility, etc. However, further studies concerning the safety and functional properties of the pigment and fermented substrate are required. Furthermore, this study provides the evidences about the biological method of making easily fermentable biomass for biorefiners or other metabolite production.     

tigaR: integrative significance analysis of temporal differential gene expression induced by genomic abnormalities

Background

To determine which changes in the host cell genome are crucial for cervical carcinogenesis, a longitudinal in vitro model system of HPV-transformed keratinocytes was profiled in a genome-wide manner. Four cell lines affected with either HPV16 or HPV18 were assayed at 8 sequential time points for gene expression (mRNA) and gene copy number (DNA) using high-resolution microarrays. Available methods for temporal differential expression analysis are not designed for integrative genomic studies.

Results

Here, we present a method that allows for the identification of differential gene expression associated with DNA copy number changes over time. The temporal variation in gene expression is described by a generalized linear mixed model employing low-rank thin-plate splines. Model parameters are estimated with an empirical Bayes procedure, which exploits integrated nested Laplace approximation for fast computation. Iteratively, posteriors of hyperparameters and model parameters are estimated. The empirical Bayes procedure shrinks multiple dispersion-related parameters. Shrinkage leads to more stable estimates of the model parameters, better control of false positives and improvement of reproducibility. In addition, to make estimates of the DNA copy number more stable, model parameters are also estimated in a multivariate way using triplets of features, imposing a spatial prior for the copy number effect.

Conclusion

With the proposed method for analysis of time-course multilevel molecular data, more profound insight may be gained through the identification of temporal differential expression induced by DNA copy number abnormalities. In particular, in the analysis of an integrative oncogenomics study with a time-course set-up our method finds genes previously reported to be involved in cervical carcinogenesis. Furthermore, the proposed method yields improvements in sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility compared to existing methods. Finally, the proposed method is able to handle count (RNAseq) data from time course experiments as is shown on a real data set.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2105-15-327) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

保护我国生物安全的检疫对策研究

本文提出广义生物安全的概念应包括人类健康,农业和环境生物（生物多样性）安全三个方面,通过回顾与其相关的国际和国内组织及法规的发展历史,分析了生物安全管理的发展方向和存在问题,并从口岸卫生和检疫的角度对我国的生物安全保护提出了对策。     

应用免疫荧光技术检测肺微小根毛霉的感染

近几年因医源性导致患者机体免疫功能低下或受损有所增加,从而使深部丝状真菌感染有逐年上升的趋势,由于检测上的种种原因,大部份是尸检后发现,难以鉴定到属种,对临床治疗带来直接影响,为进一步探讨丝状真菌的快速诊断,我们从肺活组织中分离出的微小根毛霉,注射接种到不同剂量的~(60)Co-γ辐照鼠体内后,间隔一定时间,用间接免疫荧光法检测,发现3GY辐照后14—28日检出率是41.87%(皮下注射),66.66%(腹腔注射),7GY、5GY、1GY的辐照均低于3GY,除与根霉有交叉反应外,曲霉、青霉、白色假丝酵母等均无交叉反应。     

Ribosomal RNA secondary structure: compensatory mutations and implications for phylogenetic analysis

Using sequence data from the 28S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes of selected vertebrates, we investigated the effects that constraints imposed by secondary structure have on the phylogenetic analysis of rRNA sequence data. Our analysis indicates that characters from both base-pairing regions (stems) and non-base-pairing regions (loops) contain phylogenetic information, as judged by the level of support of the phylogenetic results compared with a well-established tree based on both morphological and molecular data. The best results (the greatest level of support of well-accepted nodes) were obtained when the complete data set was used. However, some previously supported nodes were resolved using either the stem or loop bases alone. Stem bases sustain a greater number of compensatory mutations than would be expected at random, but the number is < 40% of that expected under a hypothesis of perfect compensation to maintain secondary structure. Therefore, we suggest that in phylogenetic analyses, the weighting of stem characters be reduced by no more than 20%, relative to that of loop characters. In contrast to previous suggestions, we do not recommend weighting of stem positions by one-half, compared with that of loop positions, because this overcompensates for the constraints that selection imposes on the secondary structure of rRNA.