Cytokine-induced stable neuronal differentiation of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells in a serum/feeder cell-free condition

The characteristics and multilineage differentiation potential of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM MSC) remain controversial. This study aimed to characterize human BM MSC isolated by plastic adherent or antibody selection and their neuronal differentiation potential using growth factors or chemical inducing agents. MSC were found to express low levels of neuronal markers: neurofilament-M, beta tubulin III, and neuron specific enolase. Under a serum- and feeder cell-free condition, basic fibroblast growth factor, epidermal growth factor, and platelet-derived growth factor induced neuronal morphology in MSC. In addition to the above markers, these cells expressed neurotransmitters or associated proteins: gamma-aminobutyric acid, tyrosine hydroxylase and serotonin. These changes were maintained for up to 3 months in all bone marrow specimens (N = 6). In contrast, butylated hydroxyanisole and dimethylsulfoxide were unable to induce sustained neuronal differentiation. Our results show that MSC isolated by two different procedures produced identical lineage differentiation with defined growth factors in a serum- and feeder cell-free condition.     

The bias introduced by population stratification in IBD based linkage analysis

The lack of replication of model-free linkage analyses performed on complex diseases raises questions about the robustness of these methods to various biases. The confounding effect of population stratification on a genetic association study has long been recognized in the genetic epidemiology community. Because the estimation of the number of alleles shared identical by descent (IBD) does not depend on the marker allele frequency when founders of families are observed, model-free linkage analysis is usually thought to be robust to population stratification. However, for common complex diseases, the genotypes of founders are often unobserved and therefore population stratification has the potential to impair model-free linkage analysis. Here, we demonstrate that, when some or all of the founder genotypes are missing, population stratification can introduce deleterious effects on various model-free linkage methods or designs. For an affected sib pair design, it can cause excess false-positive discoveries even when the trait distribution is homogeneous among subpopulations. After incorporating a control group of discordant sib pairs or for a quantitative trait, two circumstances must be met for population stratification to be a confounder: the distributions for both the marker and the trait must be heterogeneous among subpopulations. When this occurs, the bias can result in either a liberal, and hence invalid, test or a conservative test. Bias can be eliminated or alleviated by inclusion of founders' or other family members' genotype data. When this is not possible, new methods need to be developed to be robust to population stratification.     

2010年宜昌市铜绿假单胞菌的耐药性分析

了解宜昌市铜绿假单胞菌（Pseudomonas aeruginosa）临床分离株的耐药现状。宜昌市城区5所医院临床分离的铜绿假单胞菌菌株,用K-B法作药敏试验,并根据统计其耐药情况及耐药表型（模式）分析可能存在的耐药机制。临床分离的铜绿假单胞菌共1 575株,耐药率依次为阿米卡星7.1%、美罗培南17.2%、头孢吡肟20.4%、头孢哌酮/舒巴坦21.0%、哌拉西林/他唑巴坦22.5%、环丙沙星23.1%、庆大霉素23.4%、头孢他啶25.0%、亚胺培南25.2%、哌拉西林30.4%、氨曲南34.5%、复方新诺明59.0%、米诺环素75.6%。多重耐药（MDR）和泛耐药（PDR）株分别占41.5%和0.17%。对各种抗假单胞菌药物分别耐药的菌株仍有13%～25.7%对阿米卡星敏感,提示在严重铜绿假单胞菌感染患者的治疗中,β内酰胺类抗假单胞菌药加氨基糖苷类仍是一个很好的联合用药组合。细菌耐药性仍呈增长趋势,临床上感染多重耐药和泛耐药的铜绿假单胞菌的治疗仍很棘手,应合理使用抗生素,尽量延缓耐药菌株的出现。     

温度对双纹须歧角螟生长发育和繁殖的影响

在室内研究了温度对双纹须歧角螟Trichophysetis cretacea (Butler)生长发育及繁殖的影响。结果表明,在19～31℃范围内,双纹歧角螟的发育速率随着温度的升高而加快;当温度超过31℃时,发育速率减慢。在各虫态中,蛹期的存活受温度变化的影响最大,35℃时蛹全部死亡。19℃、23℃、27℃、31℃和35℃下的世代存活率分别为87.1%、83.0%、85.2%、70.1%和0%。卵、幼虫、预蛹、蛹及从卵至成虫的发育起点温度分别为9.08℃、8.95℃、7.80℃、9.09℃和8.86℃,有效积温分别为62.4、122.0、16.0、108.1和309.1日·度。成虫的寿命随温度的升高而缩短,27℃时成虫的产卵量最高,平均为91.3粒。19℃、23℃、27℃和31℃条件下,实验种群的净生殖率分别为31.0、41.8、46.7、0.8,内禀增长率分别为0.0813、0.1439、0.1710、-0.0094,平均世代周期分别为42.2、26.3、23.1和19.2天。     

Prediction of tyrosine sulfation with mRMR feature selection and analysis

Protein tyrosine sulfation is a ubiquitous post-translational modification (PTM) of secreted and transmembrane proteins that pass through the Golgi apparatus. In this study, we developed a new method for protein tyrosine sulfation prediction based on a nearest neighbor algorithm with the maximum relevance minimum redundancy (mRMR) method followed by incremental feature selection (IFS). We incorporated features of sequence conservation, residual disorder, and amino acid factor, 229 features in total, to predict tyrosine sulfation sites. From these 229 features, 145 features were selected and deemed as the optimized features for the prediction. The prediction model achieved a prediction accuracy of 90.01% using the optimal 145-feature set. Feature analysis showed that conservation, disorder, and physicochemical/biochemical properties of amino acids all contributed to the sulfation process. Site-specific feature analysis showed that the features derived from its surrounding sites contributed profoundly to sulfation site determination in addition to features derived from the sulfation site itself. The detailed feature analysis in this paper might help understand more of the sulfation mechanism and guide the related experimental validation.     

Piperazine sulfonamide BACE1 inhibitors: Design,synthesis, and in vivo characterization

With collaboration between chemistry, X-ray crystallography, and molecular modeling, we designed and synthesized a series of novel piperazine sulfonamide BACE1 inhibitors. Iterative exploration of the non-prime side and S2′ sub-pocket of the enzyme culminated in identification of an analog that potently lowers peripheral Aβ₄₀ in transgenic mice with a single subcutaneous dose.     

The Composition of Microbiome in Larynx and the Throat Biodiversity between Laryngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Patients and Control Population

The throat is an ecological assemblage involved human cells and microbiota, and the colonizing bacteria are important factors in balancing this environment. However, this bacterial community profile has thus been poorly investigated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the microbial biology of the larynx and to analyze the throat biodiversity in laryngeal carcinoma patients compared to a control population in a case-control study. Barcoded pyrosequencing analysis of the 16S rRNA gene was used. We collected tissue samples from 29 patients with laryngeal carcinoma and 31 control patients with vocal cord polyps. The findings of high-quality sequence datasets revealed 218 genera from 13 phyla in the laryngeal mucosa. The predominant communities of phyla in the larynx were Firmicutes (54%), Fusobacteria (17%), Bacteroidetes (15%), Proteobacteria (11%), and Actinobacteria (3%). The leading genera were Streptococcus (36%), Fusobacterium (15%), Prevotella (12%), Neisseria (6%), and Gemella (4%). The throat bacterial compositions were highly different between laryngeal carcinoma subjects and control population (p = 0.006). The abundance of the 26 genera was significantly different between the laryngeal cancer and control groups by metastats analysis (p<0.05). Fifteen genera may be associated with laryngeal carcinoma by partial least squares discriminant analysis (p<0.001). In summary, this study revealed the microbiota profiles in laryngeal mucosa from tissue specimens. The compositions of bacteria community in throat were different between laryngeal cancer patients and controls, and probably were related with this carcinoma. The disruption of this bio-ecological niche might be a risk factor for laryngeal carcinoma.     

FLZ Alleviates the Memory Deficits in Transgenic Mouse Model of Alzheimer’s Disease via Decreasing Beta-Amyloid Production and Tau Hyperphosphorylation

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia worldwide and mainly characterized by the aggregated β-amyloid (Aβ) and hyperphosphorylated tau. FLZ is a novel synthetic derivative of natural squamosamide and has been proved to improve memory deficits in dementia animal models. In this study, we aimed to investigate the mechanisms of FLZ’s neuroprotective effect in APP/PS1 double transgenic mice and SH-SY5Y (APPwt/swe) cells. The results showed that treatment with FLZ significantly improved the memory deficits of APP/PS1 transgenic mice and decreased apoptosis of SH-SY5Y (APPwt/swe) cells. FLZ markedly attenuated Aβ accumulation and tau phosphorylation both in vivo and in vitro. Mechanistic study showed that FLZ interfered APP processing, i.e., FLZ decreased β-amyloid precursor protein (APP) phosphorylation, APP-carboxy-terminal fragment (APP-CTF) production and β-amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) expression. These results indicated that FLZ reduced Aβ production through inhibiting amyloidogenic pathway. The mechanistic study about FLZ’s inhibitory effect on tau phosphorylation revealed t the involvement of Akt/glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3β) pathway. FLZ treatment increased Akt activity and inhibited GSK3β activity both in vivo and in vitro. The inhibitory effect of FLZ on GSK3β activity and tau phosphorylation was suppressed by inhibiting Akt activity, indicating that Akt/GSK3β pathway might be the possible mechanism involved in the inhibitory effect of FLZ on tau hyperphosphorylation. These results suggested FLZ might be a potential anti-AD drug as it not only reduced Aβ production via inhibition amyloidogenic APP processing pathway, but also attenuated tau hyperphosphoylation mediated by Akt/GSK3β.