Investigation of Nonthermal Plasma Jet Excitation Mode and Optical Assessment of Its Electron Concentration

The results of a study of a plasma jet of atmospheric-pressure helium driven by a capacitive discharge using sine and pulsed modes of excitation are presented. The homogeneous discharge of a multi-channel plasma jet at gas temperature of 34 °C and helium flow rate of 0.5 L/min was achieved with short pulse excitation. A digital holography method is proposed to estimate a basic plasma parameter, i.e., its electron concentration. An automated digital holographic interferometry set-up for the observation and study of a nonthermal plasma jet in a pulse mode is developed and described. The synchronization features of recording devices with the generation of plasma pulses are considered. The electron concentration of the plasma jet is also estimated. The disadvantages of the proposed technique and its further application are discussed

Large-scale assessment of pros and cons of autopsy-derived or tumor-matched tissues as the norms for gene expression analysis in cancers

Normal tissues are essential for studying disease-specific differential gene expression. However, healthy human controls are typically available only in postmortal/autopsy settings. In cancer research, fragments of pathologically normal tissue adjacent to tumor site are frequently used as the controls. However, it is largely underexplored how cancers can systematically influence gene expression of the neighboring tissues. Here we performed a comprehensive pan-cancer comparison of molecular profiles of solid tumor-adjacent and autopsy-derived “healthy” normal tissues. We found a number of systemic molecular differences related to activation of the immune cells, intracellular transport and autophagy, cellular respiration, telomerase activation, p38 signaling, cytoskeleton remodeling, and reorganization of the extracellular matrix. The tumor-adjacent tissues were deficient in apoptotic signaling and negative regulation of cell growth including G2/M cell cycle transition checkpoint. We also detected an extensive rearrangement of the chemical perception network. Molecular targets of 32 and 37 cancer drugs were over- or underexpressed, respectively, in the tumor-adjacent norms. These processes may be driven by molecular events that are correlated between the paired cancer and adjacent normal tissues, that mostly relate to inflammation and regulation of intracellular molecular pathways such as the p38, MAPK, Notch, and IGF1 signaling. However, using a model of macaque postmortal tissues we showed that for the 30 min – 24-hour time frame at 4ºC, an RNA degradation pattern in lung biosamples resulted in an artifact “differential” expression profile for 1140 genes, although no differences could be detected in liver. Thus, such concerns should be addressed in practice