Effect of Off-Season Flooding on Growth,Photosynthesis, Carbohydrate Partitioning,and Nutrient Uptake in Distylium chinense

Distylium chinense is an evergreen shrub used for the vegetation recovery of floodplain and riparian areas in Three Gorges Reservoir Region. To clarify the morphological and physiological responses and tolerance of Distylium chinense to off-season flooding, a simulation flooding experiment was conducted during autumn and winter. Results indicated that the survival rate of seedlings was 100%, and that plant height and stem diameter were not significantly affected by flooding. Adventitious roots and hypertrophic lenticels were observed in flooded seedlings after 30 days of flooding. Flooding significantly reduced the plant biomass of roots, net photosynthetic rate (P _n), stomatal conductance (g _s), transpiration rate (T _r), maximum photochemical efficiency (Fv/Fm), photochemical quenching (qP), and electron transport rate (ETR) in leaves, and also affected the allocation and transport of carbohydrate and nutrients. However, D. chinense was able to maintain stable levels of P _n, Fv/Fm, qP, ETR, and nutrient content (N and P) in leaves and to store a certain amount of carbohydrate in roots over prolonged durations of flooding. Based on these results, we conclude that there is a high flooding tolerance in D. chinense, and the high survival rate of D. chinense may be attributable to a combination of morphological and physiological responses to flooding.     

Contourlet Textual Features: Improving the Diagnosis of Solitary Pulmonary Nodules in Two Dimensional CT Images

Objective

To determine the value of contourlet textural features obtained from solitary pulmonary nodules in two dimensional CT images used in diagnoses of lung cancer.

Materials and Methods

A total of 6,299 CT images were acquired from 336 patients, with 1,454 benign pulmonary nodule images from 84 patients (50 male, 34 female) and 4,845 malignant from 252 patients (150 male, 102 female). Further to this, nineteen patient information categories, which included seven demographic parameters and twelve morphological features, were also collected. A contourlet was used to extract fourteen types of textural features. These were then used to establish three support vector machine models. One comprised a database constructed of nineteen collected patient information categories, another included contourlet textural features and the third one contained both sets of information. Ten-fold cross-validation was used to evaluate the diagnosis results for the three databases, with sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, the area under the curve (AUC), precision, Youden index, and F-measure were used as the assessment criteria. In addition, the synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE) was used to preprocess the unbalanced data.

Results

Using a database containing textural features and patient information, sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, AUC, precision, Youden index, and F-measure were: 0.95, 0.71, 0.89, 0.89, 0.92, 0.66, and 0.93 respectively. These results were higher than results derived using the database without textural features (0.82, 0.47, 0.74, 0.67, 0.84, 0.29, and 0.83 respectively) as well as the database comprising only textural features (0.81, 0.64, 0.67, 0.72, 0.88, 0.44, and 0.85 respectively). Using the SMOTE as a pre-processing procedure, new balanced database generated, including observations of 5,816 benign ROIs and 5,815 malignant ROIs, and accuracy was 0.93.

Conclusion

Our results indicate that the combined contourlet textural features of solitary pulmonary nodules in CT images with patient profile information could potentially improve the diagnosis of lung cancer.     

IL-31 Associated with Coronary Artery Lesion Formation in Kawasaki Disease

Background

Kawasaki disease (KD) is known to be associated with T help (Th) 2 reaction and subsequently allergic diseases. Interleukin-31 (IL-31) has also been reported to be involved in Th2 mediated diseases such as allergic diseases. However, the role of IL-31 in KD has not been previously reported. The aim of this study is to investigate whether IL-31 is associated with KD and its clinical outcome.

Material

A total of 78 KD patients who met the criteria of KD were enrolled in this study as well as 20 age-matched controls. Plasma samples were conducted to measure IL-31 before intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatment (KD1), within 3 days after IVIG treatment (KD2) and at least 3 weeks after IVIG treatment (KD3) by utilizing enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

Result

Our findings showed that IL-31 expression was higher in KD patients after IVIG treatment significantly (KD2>KD1: 1265.0±199.3 vs. 840.2±152.5 pg/ml, p<0.0001). Further analysis revealed that IL-31 level was significantly higher in KD patients with coronary artery lesion (CAL) (656.6±139.5 vs. 1373.0±422.0 pg/ml, p = 0.04) before IVIG treatment (KD1). There were no significant differences between the IVIG resistance and IVIG responsiveness groups.

Conclusion

IL-31 was increased after IVIG treatment in patients with KD and was significantly associated with CAL formation. The results from this study may help to identify a novel risk factor for predicting KD and CAL formation.     

抗人血栓调节蛋白单克隆抗体的制备与鉴定

为了制备特异性抗人血栓调节蛋白(human thrombomodulin,hTM)的单克隆抗体(monoclonal antibody,McAb),利用脂质体Lipofectamine 2000将包含hTM全长cDNA序列的重组表达质粒pThr402转染CHO细胞,经G418筛选及相关鉴定后获得高效稳定表达hTM的CHO-TM5细胞株。将CHO-TM5细胞直接免疫Balb/c小鼠,应用杂交瘤技术,通过细胞ELISA (cellular enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay,CELISA)筛选出阳性克隆后,将杂交瘤细胞株腹腔注射Balb/c小鼠诱生腹水。用CELISA、流式细胞术、免疫组织化学染色法及免疫印迹法对所获McAb的特异性进行鉴定。我们获得了1株可稳定分泌抗hTM的McAb的杂交瘤细胞株NH-1,其亚型为IgGl,McAb腹水效价为1×10~(-6),腹水抗体含量为20 mg/ml。NH-1对相应抗原具有较高的组织特异性,在体内与正常组织的交叉反应少,对人脐静脉内皮细胞、CHO-TM5有特异性结合反应,说明NH-1可特异性识别天然的hTM分子,为进一步应用此McAb进行hTM生物学功能及临床意义研究提供了基础。     

大肠杆菌青霉素G酰化酶基因及其邻近区域的核苷酸全序列

Some of microorganisms have been known to possess penicillin G acylase activity. The E. coli derived penicillin G acylase (PGA) can catalyze the conversion of penicillin G into phenylacetic acid and 6-amino-penicillanic acid, the latter is used as the starting compound for the industrial formation of semi-synthetic penicillins. Apart from its industrial importance, the enzyme PGA displays a number of interesting properties. Catalytically active enzyme is localized in the periplasmic space of E. coli cells and composed of two dissimilar subunits. The two subunits are apparently produced from a precursor protein, via a processing pathway hitherto unique in its features for a prokaryotic enzyme. The studies on processing of the precursor and on the relationship between structure and function of the mature enzyme are important theoretically. Previously we cloned a 3.5 kb DNA fragment from a strain (E. coli AS 1.76), which displays PGA activity. In this paper, we report a nucleotide sequence of the 3.5 kb DNA fragment containing PGA gene. After insertion of the DNA fragment into EcoR I and Hind III sites in pWR 13, pPGA 20 had been obtained. We subcloned the Hind III and Bg1 II treated fragment of 1.6 kb in length from pPGA 20 into Hind III and BamH I sites of pWR 13 to get a pPGA 1.6, and Bg1 II and EcoR I treated fragment of 1.9 kb in length into BamH I and EcoR I sites of pWR 13 to get a pPGA 1.9. The linearized pPGA 1.9 which were digested with appropriate restriction enzymes were progressively shortened from both ends respectively by digestion with Bal 31 nuclease, followed by cleavage of shortened target DNA off vector DNA molecules with appropriate restriction enzymes. The series of the DNA fragments shortened from EcoR I end were then cloned into plasmid pWR 13 which had previously digested with Hind III and Sma I enzymes (Fig. 1). The DNA fragment cloned in pWR 13 were directly sequenced on the resulted plasmids by using primer I and primer II. Thus we have obtained the complete nucleotide sequence of the 3.5 kb DNA fragment. The 3.5 kb fragment contains an intact PGA gene which is 2.6 kb.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

大豆下胚轴线粒体产生超氧物自由基的效率

大豆下胚轴线粒体在呼吸基质存在下,显著地增加了肾上腺素氧化速率,这种氧化速率能为外源SOD抑制,表明线粒体呼吸时产生分子氧的单电子还原成O_2(?)。亚线粒体颗粒产生O_2(?)的效率略高于线粒体。大豆下胚轴线粒体吸链内O_2(?)的产生为NADH所支持并与交替途径无关。表明分子氧单电子还原的部位可能是NADH-黄素蛋白和UbQ-Cyt.B。     

嘉兰块茎形成过程中物质变化的研究

嘉兰(Gloriosa superba L.)系百合科草本植物,其块茎含有秋水仙碱。本文研究块茎形成规律及其形成过程中物质变化。研究结果表明:块茎播后,新生的块茎在生长初期和后期生长速度都较慢,中期生长速度最快,也是嘉兰块茎产量形成的主要时期。块茎中营养物质主要是淀粉。新生块茎中淀粉含量,是随着新块茎的生长,其含量逐渐增高。叶片的光合速率和叶面积,从播后逐渐增加,开花前达到高峰,花后又逐渐降低。开花前如能增加光合叶面积,可为后期块茎生长提供较多物质。块茎中秋水仙碱含量是随着块茎的成熟与淀粉含量的渐增而增加,至收获期达到高峰。这一结果表明:收获未充分成熟的块茎,会降低秋水仙碱含量。     

微卫星标记在不同壳色虾夷扇贝家系亲权鉴定的适用性

实验选取8 个多态性微卫星位点, 用于虾夷扇贝4 个不同壳色全同胞和半同胞家系160 个子代的亲权鉴定。在亲本未知和一亲本已知的情况下, 8 个微卫星位点累积排除概率分别为0.823 和0.961。鉴于亲权分析时子代的亲本在已知和未知情况下位点的累积排除概率不同, 实验采用了两种方法用于家系的亲权鉴定。方法1: 当子代的父母本情况未知时, 根据子代基因型数据, 通过CERVUS 2.0 软件计算子代所对应的候选亲本的LOD 值, 直接将候选亲本中具有最大的两个LOD 值的亲本确定为子代的父母本; 方法2: 在子代的亲本未知情况下, 视具有最大LOD 值的候选亲本为子代的第一候选亲本, 然后将该亲本视为已知, 通过CERVUS 2.0 软件重新计算每个侯选亲本的LOD 值, 再从中选择具有最大LOD 值的候选亲本作为该子代的第二候选亲本。结果表明, 采用方法2 得到的家系亲权鉴定成功率达到95%以上, 确定了微卫星标记在虾夷扇贝家系鉴定中的可行性。所检测的微卫星位点在子代中出现无效等位基因现象, 而无效等位基因存在会引起子代与亲本的错配。实验在家系鉴定时采用了无效等位基因存在(情况1)和缺失(情况2)两种子代基因型文件进行分析, 不同情况下同一方法家系鉴定成功率相差无几。这表明了基于多个微卫星位点计算候选亲本LOD 值大小寻找子代真实父母本可以降低由无效等位基因引起的错配的几率。研究表明了微卫星标记适合于不同壳色虾夷扇贝家系亲权鉴定工作。       

High Q Long-Range Surface Plasmon Polariton Modes in Sub-wavelength Metallic Microdisk Cavity

Metal-capped microdisk cavity supporting surface plasmon polaritons (SPP)-guided whispering gallery mode (WGM) can achieve higher cavity factor Q than traditional microdisk cavity in sub-wavelength dimensions. We have numerically analyzed the limiting factors on Q using finite difference time domain method. The Q of SPP-guided WGM is primarily limited by the loss of metal. A thin metal-sandwiched microdisk cavity supporting long-range surface plasmon polariton mode was proposed to reduce the metal loss. The proposed cavities have been shown to increase cavity Q by more than 15-fold and reduce threshold gain by more than threefold as opposed to traditional microdisk cavities.     

黑眉锦蛇消化道6种酶的组织化学定位

目的研究黑眉锦蛇消化道酸性磷酸酶(ACP)、碱性磷酸酶(ALP)、过氧化物酶(POX)、非特异性酯酶(NSE)、腺苷三磷酸酶(ATPase)、琥珀酸脱氢酶(SDH)等酶的分布。方法消化道分8个部位取材,应用冰冻切片、石蜡切片、酶组织化学技术及光密度定量分析。结果 ACP主要分布于十二指肠至回肠的黏膜上皮,十二指肠和空肠酶活性显著较高(P<0.05);ALP分布于食管、十二指肠至回肠的黏膜上皮,十二指肠酶活性最高(P<0.05);POX和NSE在整个消化道黏膜上皮和黏膜固有层中均有分布,胃幽门和直肠酶活性较低(P<0.05);ATPase在消化道除直肠未检测到酶活性外,其它部位均有分布,以十二指肠酶活性最高(P<0.05);SDH除食管未检测到酶活性外,其它部位均有分布,胃中胃腺部酶活性较高(P<0.05)。结论黑眉锦蛇消化道黏膜酶的分布同其它动物有相似之处,也有其自身特点。不同酶的分布和消化道各部位的生理机能密切相关。