Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) generally arises from a background of liver cirrhosis (LC). Patients with cirrhosis and suspected HCC are recommended to undergo serum biomarker tests and imaging diagnostic evaluation. However, the performance of routine diagnostic methods in detecting early HCC remains unpromising.
Methods
Here, we conducted a large-scale, multicenter study of 1675 participants including 490 healthy controls, 577 LC patients, and 608 HCC patients from nine clinical centers across nine provinces of China, profiled gene mutation signatures of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) using Circulating Single-Molecule Amplification and Resequencing Technology (cSMART) through detecting 931 mutation sites across 21 genes.
Results
An integrated diagnostic model called “Combined method” was developed by combining three mutation sites and three serum biomarkers. Combined method outperformed AFP in the diagnosis of HCC, especially early HCC, with sensitivities of 81.25% for all stages and 66.67% for early HCC, respectively. Importantly, the integrated model exhibited high accuracy in differentiating AFP-negative, AFP-L3-negative, and PIVKA-II-negative HCCs from LCs.
Phosphorus is a major nutrient vital for plant growth and development, with a substantial amount of cellular phosphorus being used for the biosynthesis of membrane phospholipids. Here, we report that NON-SPECIFIC PHOSPHOLIPASE C4 (NPC4) in rapeseed (Brassica napus) releases phosphate from phospholipids to promote growth and seed yield, as plants with altered NPC4 levels showed significant changes in seed production under different phosphate conditions. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated nuclease 9 (Cas9)-mediated knockout of BnaNPC4 led to elevated accumulation of phospholipids and decreased growth, whereas overexpression (OE) of BnaNPC4 resulted in lower phospholipid contents and increased plant growth and seed production. We demonstrate that BnaNPC4 hydrolyzes phosphosphingolipids and phosphoglycerolipids in vitro, and plants with altered BnaNPC4 function displayed changes in their sphingolipid and glycerolipid contents in roots, with a greater change in glycerolipids than sphingolipids in leaves, particularly under phosphate deficiency conditions. In addition, BnaNPC4-OE plants led to the upregulation of genes involved in lipid metabolism, phosphate release, and phosphate transport and an increase in free inorganic phosphate in leaves. These results indicate that BnaNPC4 hydrolyzes phosphosphingolipids and phosphoglycerolipids in rapeseed to enhance phosphate release from membrane phospholipids and promote growth and seed production. 相似文献
The unscientific application of synthetic pesticides has brought various negative effects on the environment, hindering the sustainable development of agriculture. Nanoparticles can be applied as carriers to improve pesticide delivery, showing great potential in the development of pesticide formulation in recent years. Herein, a star polymer (SPc) was constructed as an efficient pesticide nanocarrier/adjuvant that could spontaneously assemble with thiocyclam or monosultap into a complex, through hydrophobic association and hydrogen bonding, respectively, with the pesticide-loading contents of 42.54% and 19.3%. This complexation reduced the particle sizes of thiocyclam from 543.54 to 52.74 nm for pure thiocyclam, and 3 814.16 to 1 185.89 nm for commercial preparation (cp) of thiocyclam. Interestingly, the introduction of SPc decreased the contact angles of both pure and cp thiocyclam on plant leaves, and increased the plant uptake of cp thiocyclam to 2.4–1.9 times of that without SPc. Meanwhile, the SPc could promote the bioactivity of pure/cp thiocyclam against green peach aphids through leaf dipping method and root application. For leaf dipping method, the 50% lethal concentration decreased from 0.532 to 0.221 g/L after the complexation of pure thiocyclam with SPc, and that decreased from 0.390 to 0.251 g/L for cp thiocyclam. SPc seems a promising adjuvant for nanometerization of both pure and cp insecticides, which is beneficial for improving the delivery efficiency and utilization rate of pesticides. 相似文献
Polymyxin resistance is conferred by MCR-1 (mobile colistin resistance 1)-induced lipopolysaccharide (LPS) modification of G− bacteria. However, the peptide MSI-1 exerts potent antimicrobial activity against mcr-1-carrying bacteria. To further investigate the potential role of MCR-1 in improving bacterial virulence and facilitating immune evasion, and the immunomodulatory effect of peptide MSI-1, we first explored outer membrane vesicle (OMV) alterations of mcr-1-carrying bacteria in the presence and absence of sub-MIC MSI-1, and host immune activation during bacterial infection and OMV stimulation. Our results demonstrated that LPS remodelling induced by MCR-1 negatively affected OMV formation and protein cargo by E. coli. In addition, MCR-1 diminished LPS-stimulated pyroptosis but facilitated mitochondrial dysfunction, further aggravating apoptosis in macrophages induced by OMVs of E. coli. Similarly, TLR4-mediated NF-κB activation was markedly alleviated once LPS was modified by MCR-1. However, peptide MSI-1 at the sub-MIC level inhibited the expression of MCR-1, further partly rescuing OMV alteration and attenuation of immune responses in the presence of MCR-1 during both infection and OMV stimulation, which can be exploited for anti-infective therapy. 相似文献
Diversification rates are critically important for understanding patterns of species richness among clades. However, the effects of climatic niche width on plant diversification rates remain to be elucidated. Based on the phylogenetic, climatic, and distributional information of angiosperms in China, a total of 26 906 species from 182 families were included in this study. We aimed to test relationships between diversification rate and climatic niche width and climatic niche width related variables (including climatic niche divergence, climatic niche position, geographic extent, and climatic niche evolutionary rate) using phylogenetic methods. We found that climatic niche divergence had the largest unique contribution to the diversification rate, while the unique effects of climatic niche width, climatic niche position, geographic extent, and climatic niche evolutionary rate on the diversification rate were negligible. We also observed that the relationship between diversification rate and climatic niche divergence was significantly stronger than the null assumption (artefactual relationship between diversification and clade-level climatic niche width by sampling more species). Our study supports the hypothesis that wider family climatic niche widths explain faster diversification rates through a higher climatic niche divergence rather than through higher geographic extent, higher climatic niche evolutionary rate, or separated climatic niche position. Hence, the results provide a potential explanation for large-scale diversity patterns within families of plants. 相似文献
Professor Wen-Tsai Wang (王文采, June 5, 1926–November 16, 2022) was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and a legendary plant taxonomist at the Institute of Botany of CAS (Fig.1). Herein, we organize a virtual special issue in Journal of Systematics and Evolution (JSE) to celebrate the legacy and life of Professor Wang, who was a leading plant taxonomist in China and made important contributions toward advancing the understanding of the flora of China, the biogeography of eastern Asia, and biodiversity research in the vast Hengduan Mountains. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica (now JSE) for 6 years from 1982 to 1988, and trained several generations of plant taxonomists in China (Li,2001). 相似文献
The relationship between head pteridine fluorescence (HPF) levels and age in adult females and males of a common necrophagous fly, Chrysomya megacephala, and effects of temperature and fly sex on the relationship were studied by pteridine fluorescence spectrophotometry. Factors affecting HPF levels in flies were found to include fly age, temperature and fly sex, among which the fly age was the most dominant one. There were significant linear relationships between HPF levels and age both for female and male adult flies at five constant temperatures, i. e. 16°C, 20°C, 24°C, 28°C and 32°C. The relationship between mean rate of pteridine accumulation (FV or MV) and temperature (t) could be well described by a modified exponential equation of FV=0.01288 e(0.2241t‐3.127)+0.3649 (r2= 0.9987) for females and a linear regression equation of MV= 0.0574 t ‐ 0.3637 (r2= 0.9557) for males. Using the information from the experiments at five constant temperatures, three calculated methods as the candidates were developed for accurately determining the age of the fly by HPF levels at ambient temperature. The results revealed that these three methods were suitable for estimating the age only for male flies, but not for female flies. The smallest average error of the predicated age was 2.55 days for males. In addition, how to employ which of these three developed methods for determining ages of male flies in practical was also discussed. 相似文献
The objective of this study was to determine if mothers' retrospective reports about events in their pregnancies with twins are reliable and stable. Six hundred and twenty-four mothers completed psychiatric interviews about their twins. These interviews also contained questions about the mothers' pregnancies, the perinatal period, and the child's early development. The mothers reported first on one twin and then on the other with interviews spaced from 3 days to 2 weeks apart. Thus mothers reported on the same pregnancy twice. Of these mothers, 47 were re-interviewed 6 to 18 months later by raters blind to the results of the initial interview. The twin design allowed us to compare the short-term reliability of the 624 mothers' reports of the same pregnancy. The re-interview of the 47 mothers enabled us to compare the stability of reports over a longer time period. Agreement between the reports was measured with the kappa statistic. Kappas were good to excellent for the short-term reports of pregnancy for each twin for the 624 mothers. Kappas were equally high for the 47 mothers that were re-interviewed 6 to 18 months later. Mothers show good reliability and stability of reporting about events during pregnancy. 相似文献