Targeting mesenchymal stem cell therapy for severe pneumonia patients

Pneumonia is the inflammation of the lungs and it is the world’s leading cause of death for children under 5 years of age.The latest coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)virus is a prominent culprit to severe pneumonia.With the pandemic running rampant for the past year,more than 1590000 deaths has occurred worldwide up to December 2020 and are substantially attributable to severe pneumonia and induced cytokine storm.Effective therapeutic approaches in addition to the vaccines and drugs under development are hence greatly sought after.Therapies harnessing stem cells and their derivatives have been established by basic research for their versatile capacity to specifically inhibit inflammation due to pneumonia and prevent alveolar/pulmonary fibrosis while enhancing antibacterial/antiviral immunity,thus significantly alleviating the severe clinical conditions of pneumonia.In recent clinical trials,mesenchymal stem cells have shown effectiveness in reducing COVID-19-associated pneumonia morbidity and mortality;positioning these cells as worthy candidates for combating one of the greatest challenges of our time and shedding light on their prospects as a nextgeneration therapy to counter future challenges.     

海南猕猴岭自然保护区海南锥+黄牛木群落特征研究

采用样地调查法,对海南猕猴岭自然保护区海南锥+黄牛木（Castanopsis hainanensis Merr.+Cratoxylum cochinchinense（Lour.）Blume）群落的植物区系组成、结构特征和物种多样性进行研究。结果显示：（1）在2500 m²样地中,有维管束植物39科73属85种;种子植物区系以热带性质为主。（2）生活型以高位芽为主,占94.12%;叶级以中型叶为主,占71.76%。（3）优势种群处于增长阶段;群落物种频度等级分布为A > C > B > E > D。（4）群落物种丰富度指数为9.85,均匀度指数为0.74,Simpson指数为0.95,Shannon-Wiener指数为3.29;优势种群的优势地位明显,但幼苗更新不足,群落均匀度和多样性指数较低,应加强就地保护力度。     

miR-92a-3p和miR-25-3p海绵上调Kiss1并影响雌性小鼠的青春期启动及动情周期

下丘脑Kiss1神经元产生的神经肽kisspeptin通过影响促性腺激素释放激素的分泌,参与青春期的启动、生殖系统的成熟以及排卵等过程的神经内分泌调节.Kiss1基因的表达受到包括多种反式调控因子及表观遗传的调控.预测与前期研究表明,miR-92a-3p、miR-25-3p的种子序列能够与Kiss1的3'-UTR直接结...     

Structural, electronic and magnetic effects of Al-doped niobium clusters: a density functional theory study

The application of the ab initio stochastic search procedure with Saunders "kick" method has been carried out for the elucidation of global minimum structures of a series of Al-doped clusters, Nb(n)Al (1 ≤ n ≤ 10). We have studied the structural characters, growth behaviors, electronic and magnetic properties of Nb(n)Al by the density functional theory calculations. Unlike the previous literature reported on Al-doped systems where ground state structures undergo a structural transition from the Al-capped frame to Al-encapsulated structure, we found that Al atom always occupies the surface of Nb(n)Al clusters and structural transition does not take place until n = 10. Note that the fragmentation proceeds preferably by the ejection of an aluminum atom other than niobium atom. According to the natural population analysis, charges always transfer from aluminum to niobium atoms. Furthermore, the magnetic moments of the Nb(n)Al clusters are mainly located on the 4d orbital of niobium atoms, and aluminum atom possesses very small magnetic moments.     

Coupling of Whispering-Gallery Modes in the Graphene Nanodisk Plasmonic Dimers

In this paper, we proposed plasmonic dimers consisted of two evanescent field coupled graphene monolayer nanodisks. The electromagnetic properties including the split modes with non-degenerate wavelengths, enhancement of the quality factors (Q factors) and mode areas, and the coupling between the fundamental and the first-order whispering-gallery modes are numerically predicted and analyzed systematically. Compared with the single graphene nanodisk, the Q factor of TM_4,1 reaches 356 in a dimer with a radius of 5 nm of each nanodisk and an inter-disk gap of 0.4 nm, where the corresponding mode area is as small as 6.88?×?10^‐?5(λ ₀)². In addition, the enhanced performances of size-mismatched coupled graphene plasmonic dimers are investigated. This graphene monolayer plasmonic dimer could be one of the fundamental components in the future ultra-high density plasmonic circuit technique, on-chip plasmonic interconnect, and transformation plasmonics. It also could be used as the test-beds for added explorations of cavity quantum electrodynamic experiments.     

濒危特有种掌叶木的微卫星遗传多样性研究

掌叶木居群具有较丰富的遗传多样性,该研究利用9对微卫星(SSR)分子标记揭示了掌叶木(Handeliodendron bodinieri)的遗传多样性。结果表明:观测等位基因数(Na)平均为3.903,有效等位基因数(Ne)平均为2.545,期望杂合度(He)平均为0.521,Shannon’s多态性信息指数(I)为0.962,PIC平均值为0.465。掌叶木的自然分布居群有相对较高的遗传多样性,但由于人为破坏等因素导致该群体濒危,而濒危并不是因为遗传多样性降低而造成的。居群间的遗传分化为掌叶木8个居群间的遗传一致度为(GI=0.849~0.970),遗传距离为(GD=0.032~0.164)。基于Nei’s遗传距离用UPGMA法对掌叶木居群进行聚类,Nei’s的基因分化系数为(G_(st))为0.027,平均Nei标准遗传分化系数(G'_(st)N)为0.031,平均Herick’s标准遗传分化系数(G'_(st)H)为0.064,基因流(N_m)为3.368。AMOVA分析结果表明:掌叶木居群间变异占3%,居群内变异占97%,居群内的遗传分化大于居群间的分化。利用Mantel检测发现,居群间的遗传距离与地理距离显著正相关(r=0.299,P0.05)。该研究结果为掌叶木生物多样性和资源保护与利用提供了更充分的科学依据。     

MYH9-dependent polarization of ATG9B promotes colorectal cancer metastasis by accelerating focal adhesion assembly

Tumour metastasis is a major reason accounting for the poor prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC), and the discovery of targets in the primary tumours that can predict the risk of CRC metastasis is now urgently needed. In this study, we identified autophagy-related protein 9B (ATG9B) as a key potential target gene for CRC metastasis. High expression of ATG9B in tumour significantly increased the risk of metastasis and poor prognosis of CRC. Mechanistically, we further find that ATG9B promoted CRC invasion mainly through autophagy-independent manner. MYH9 is the pivotal interacting protein for ATG9B functioning, which directly binds to cytoplasmic peptide segments aa368–411 of ATG9B by its head domain. Furthermore, the combination of ATG9B and MYH9 enhance the stability of each other by decreasing their binding to E3 ubiquitin ligase STUB1, therefore preventing them from ubiquitin-mediated degradation, which further amplified the effect of ATG9B and MYH9 in CRC cells. During CRC cell invasion, ATG9B is transported to the cell edge with the assistance of MYH9 and accelerates focal adhesion (FA) assembly through mediating the interaction of endocytosed integrin β1 and Talin-1, which facilitated to integrin β1 activation. Clinically, upregulated expression of ATG9B in human CRC tissue is always accompanied with highly elevated expression of MYH9 and associated with advanced CRC stage and poor prognosis. Taken together, this study highlighted the important role of ATG9B in CRC metastasis by promoting focal adhesion assembly, and ATG9B together with MYH9 can provide a pair of potential therapeutic targets for preventing CRC progression.Subject terms: Metastasis, Oncogenes     

光温互作和培养基中的附加成分对香蕉试管苗生长的影响

光照强度和温度对香蕉试管苗的长根数、总根数、苗高和青叶数影响极显著。光照强度为10μmol·m-2·s-1时,总根数和长根数最多;光照强度为25μmol·m-2·s-1时,青叶数最多,苗高随其升高而降低。温度为28℃时,总根数和长根数最多;26℃时,苗最高;32℃时,青叶数最多。培养基中添加85mg·L-1磷酸二氢钾后,试管苗的鲜重、干重、苗高、茎径、叶长、叶宽和青叶数增加;添加5mg·L-1腺嘌呤后,鲜重、茎径和叶长增加;添加4.8mg·L-1多效唑的发根数、最长根长、叶鲜重和茎径显著增加,苗高降低。     

Identification of a delayed leaf greening gene from a mutation of pummelo

Delayed greening of young leaves is an unusual phenomenon of plants in nature. Citrus are mostly evergreen tree species. Here, a natural mutant of “Guanxi” pummelo(Citrus maxima), which shows yellow leaves at the young stage, was characterized to identify the genes underlying the trait of delayed leaf greening in plants. A segregating population with this mutant as the seed parent and a normal genotype as the pollen parent was generated. Two DNA pools respectively from the leaves of segregating seedlings with extreme phenotypes of normal leaf greening and delayed leaf greening were collected for sequencing. Bulked segregant analysis(BSA) and In Del marker analysis demonstrated that the delayed leaf greening trait is governed by a 0.3 Mb candidate region on chromosome 6. Gene expression analysis further identified a key candidate gene(Citrus Delayed Greening gene 1, CDG1) in the 0.3 Mb region, which showed significantly differential expression between the genotypes with delayed and normal leaf greening phenotypes. There was a 67 bp In Del region difference in the CDG1 promoter and the In Del region contains a TATA-box element. Confocal laser-scanning microscopy revealed that the CDG1-GFP fusion protein signals were co-localized with the chloroplast signals in the protoplasts. Overexpression of CDG1 in tobacco and Arabidopsis led to the phenotype of delayed leaf greening. These results suggest that the CDG1 gene is involved in controlling the delayed leaf greening phenotype with important functions in chloroplast development.