Two Inhibitors Against the 3C-Like Proteases of Swine Coronavirus and Feline Coronavirus

Virologica Sinica - Coronaviruses (CoVs) are important human and animal pathogens that cause respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases. Porcine epidemic diarrhoea (PED), characterized by severe...     

Recent Advanced Materials for Electrochemical and Photoelectrochemical Synthesis of Ammonia from Dinitrogen: One Step Closer to a Sustainable Energy Future

Ammonia (NH₃), an important raw material for chemical industry and agriculture, is also considered to be an intriguing energy storage and transportation media for chemical conversion schemes. The world's primary NH₃ supply is based on the natural nitrogen fixation by diazotrophs through an enzymatic nitrogenase process and the industrial nitrogen fixation through a traditional Haber–Bosch process. The natural synthesis of NH₃ can hardly meet the rapidly growing global demand. Meanwhile, the industrial NH₃ production is still dominated by the high‐temperature and high‐pressure reaction between nitrogen and hydrogen (N₂ + 3H₂ → 2NH₃), requiring intensive energy input and generating massive CO₂. Therefore, seeking a breakthrough in the development of catalysts toward efficient ammonia synthesis has become the frontier of energy and chemical conversion schemes. This review summarizes and discusses the recent progress on developing new strategies to optimize the efficiency of NH₃ production coupled with renewable energy sources, with a specific focus on electrocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic conversion of N₂ to NH₃. The most recent advances in the development of catalytic materials, the design of the reaction systems, and the computational insights for electrochemical and photoelectrochemical ammonia synthesis are covered.     

Assessment of data processing to improve reliability of microarray experiments using genomic DNA reference

Background

Using genomic DNA as common reference in microarray experiments has recently been tested by different laboratories. Conflicting results have been reported with regard to the reliability of microarray results using this method. To explain it, we hypothesize that data processing is a critical element that impacts the data quality.

Results

Microarray experiments were performed in a γ-proteobacterium Shewanella oneidensis. Pair-wise comparison of three experimental conditions was obtained either with two labeled cDNA samples co-hybridized to the same array, or by employing Shewanella genomic DNA as a standard reference. Various data processing techniques were exploited to reduce the amount of inconsistency between both methods and the results were assessed. We discovered that data quality was significantly improved by imposing the constraint of minimal number of replicates, logarithmic transformation and random error analyses.

Conclusion

These findings demonstrate that data processing significantly influences data quality, which provides an explanation for the conflicting evaluation in the literature. This work could serve as a guideline for microarray data analysis using genomic DNA as a standard reference.

     

Promoting synergistic research and education in genomics and bioinformatics

Bioinformatics and Genomics are closely related disciplines that hold great promises for the advancement of research and development in complex biomedical systems, as well as public health, drug design, comparative genomics, personalized medicine and so on. Research and development in these two important areas are impacting the science and technology.High throughput sequencing and molecular imaging technologies marked the beginning of a new era for modern translational medicine and personalized healthcare. The impact of having the human sequence and personalized digital images in hand has also created tremendous demands of developing powerful supercomputing, statistical learning and artificial intelligence approaches to handle the massive bioinformatics and personalized healthcare data, which will obviously have a profound effect on how biomedical research will be conducted toward the improvement of human health and prolonging of human life in the future. The International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine (http://www.isibm.org) and its official journals, the International Journal of Functional Informatics and Personalized Medicine (http://www.inderscience.com/ijfipm) and the International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design (http://www.inderscience.com/ijcbdd) in collaboration with International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (Biocomp), touch tomorrow's bioinformatics and personalized medicine throughout today's efforts in promoting the research, education and awareness of the upcoming integrated inter/multidisciplinary field. The 2007 international conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (BIOCOMP07) was held in Las Vegas, the United States of American on June 25-28, 2007. The conference attracted over 400 papers, covering broad research areas in the genomics, biomedicine and bioinformatics. The Biocomp 2007 provides a common platform for the cross fertilization of ideas, and to help shape knowledge and scientific achievements by bridging these two very important disciplines into an interactive and attractive forum. Keeping this objective in mind, Biocomp 2007 aims to promote interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary education and research. 25 high quality peer-reviewed papers were selected from 400+ submissions for this supplementary issue of BMC Genomics. Those papers contributed to a wide-range of important research fields including gene expression data analysis and applications, high-throughput genome mapping, sequence analysis, gene regulation, protein structure prediction, disease prediction by machine learning techniques, systems biology, database and biological software development. We always encourage participants submitting proposals for genomics sessions, special interest research sessions, workshops and tutorials to Professor Hamid R. Arabnia (hra@cs.uga.edu) in order to ensure that Biocomp continuously plays the leadership role in promoting inter/multidisciplinary research and education in the fields. Biocomp received top conference ranking with a high score of 0.95/1.00. Biocomp is academically co-sponsored by the International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine and the Research Laboratories and Centers of Harvard University--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Indiana University--Purdue University, Georgia Tech--Emory University, UIUC, UCLA, Columbia University, University of Texas at Austin and University of Iowa etc. Biocomp--Worldcomp brings leading scientists together across the nation and all over the world and aims to promote synergistic components such as keynote lectures, special interest sessions, workshops and tutorials in response to the advances of cutting-edge research.     

RGCC balances self‐renewal and neuronal differentiation of neural stem cells in the developing mammalian neocortex

During neocortical development, neural stem cells (NSCs) divide symmetrically to self‐renew at the early stage and then divide asymmetrically to generate post‐mitotic neurons. The molecular mechanisms regulating the balance between NSC self‐renewal and neurogenesis are not fully understood. Using mouse in utero electroporation (IUE) technique and in vitro human NSC differentiation models including cerebral organoids (hCOs), we show here that regulator of cell cycle (RGCC) modulates NSC self‐renewal and neuronal differentiation by affecting cell cycle regulation and spindle orientation. RGCC deficiency hampers normal cell cycle process and dysregulates the mitotic spindle, thus driving more cells to divide asymmetrically. These modulations diminish the NSC population and cause NSC pre‐differentiation that eventually leads to brain developmental malformation in hCOs. We further show that RGCC might regulate NSC spindle orientation by affecting the organization of centrosome and microtubules. Our results demonstrate that RGCC is essential to maintain the NSC pool during cortical development and suggest that RGCC defects could have etiological roles in human brain malformations.     

The effects of dietary vitamin C on growth,liver vitamin C and serum cortisol in stressed and unstressed juvenile soft-shelled turtles (Pelodiscus sinensis)

We studied the effect of dietary vitamin C on growth, liver vitamin C and serum cortisol levels in stressed and unstressed juvenile soft-shelled turtles. Turtles were fed with vitamin C supplementation at dosages of 0, 250, 500, 2500, 5,000 or 10,000 mg/kg diet for 4 weeks. Vitamin C supplementation exerted significant effects on specific growth rate and liver vitamin C concentrations. The specific growth rate peaked in the group fed at 500 mg/kg diet, while liver vitamin C levels increased with increasing dietary vitamin C levels. Serum cortisol concentrations did not differ between groups of turtles fed diets supplemented with vitamin C in the range of 0-10,000 mg/kg. After acid stress, hepatic vitamin C levels were unaffected, while serum cortisol in the control group was significantly elevated (P<0.01). The other five groups of turtles did not show significant changes in serum cortisol compared with pre-stress levels.