NAD tagSeq reveals that NAD+-capped RNAs are mostly produced from a large number of protein-coding genes in Arabidopsis.

The 5' end of a eukaryotic mRNA transcript generally has a 7-methylguanosine (m7G) cap that protects mRNA from degradation and mediates almost all other aspects of gene expression. Some RNAs in Escherichia coli, yeast, and mammals were recently found to contain an NAD+ cap. Here, we report the development of the method NAD tagSeq for transcriptome-wide identification and quantification of NAD+-capped RNAs (NAD-RNAs). The method uses an enzymatic reaction and then a click chemistry reaction to label NAD-RNAs with a synthetic RNA tag. The tagged RNA molecules can be enriched and directly sequenced using the Oxford Nanopore sequencing technology. NAD tagSeq can allow more accurate identification and quantification of NAD-RNAs, as well as reveal the sequences of whole NAD-RNA transcripts using single-molecule RNA sequencing. Using NAD tagSeq, we found that NAD-RNAs in Arabidopsis were produced by at least several thousand genes, most of which are protein-coding genes, with the majority of these transcripts coming from <200 genes. For some Arabidopsis genes, over 5% of their transcripts were NAD capped. Gene ontology terms overrepresented in the 2,000 genes that produced the highest numbers of NAD-RNAs are related to photosynthesis, protein synthesis, and responses to cytokinin and stresses. The NAD-RNAs in Arabidopsis generally have the same overall sequence structures as the canonical m7G-capped mRNAs, although most of them appear to have a shorter 5' untranslated region (5' UTR). The identification and quantification of NAD-RNAs and revelation of their sequence features can provide essential steps toward understanding the functions of NAD-RNAs

Reduction of graphene oxide by an in-situ photoelectrochemical method in a dye-sensitized solar cell assembly

Reduction of graphene oxide [GO] has been achieved by an in-situ photoelectrochemical method in a dye-sensitized solar cell [DSSC] assembly, in which the semiconductor behavior of the reduced graphene oxide [RGO] is controllable. GO and RGO were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscope, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. It was found that the GO film, which assembled in the DSSC assembly as the counter electrode, was partly reduced. An optimized photoelectrochemical assembly is promising for modulating the reduction degree of RGO and controlling the band structure of the resulting RGO. Moreover, this method appeared to be a green progress for the production of RGO electrodes

Variant-Depth Neural Networks for Deblurring Traffic Images in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) with surveillance cameras capture traffic images or videos. However, images or videos in ITS often encounter blurs due to various reasons. Considering resource limitations, although recent technologies make progress in image-deblurring, there are still challenges in applying image-deblurring models in practical transportation systems: the model size and the running time. This work proposes an artful variant-depth network (VDN) to address the challenges. We design variant-depth sub-networks in a coarse-to-fine manner to improve the deblurring effect. We also adopt a new connection namely stack connection to connect all sub-networks to reduce the running time and model size while maintaining high deblurring quality. We evaluate the proposed VDN with the state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on several typical datasets. Results on Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) show that the VDN outperforms SOTA image-deblurring methods. Furthermore, the VDN also has the shortest running time and the smallest model size

Parthenolide induces proliferation inhibition and apoptosis of pancreatic cancer cells in vitro

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To explore the anti-tumor effects of parthenolide in human pancreatic cancer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>BxPC-3 cell, a human pancreatic cancer, was treated with parthenolide at different concentrations. The MTT assay was used to analyze cell viability. Flow cytometry and DNA fragmentation analysis were applied to evaluate apoptosis after parthenolide treatment. The wound closure and cell invasion assay were also employed in the study. Western blotting was used to demonstrate Bad, Bcl-2, Bax, caspase-9 and pro-caspase-3 expression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The MTT assay indicated that the pancreatic cancer growth could be dose-dependently inhibited by parthenoolide. This phenomenon was confirmed by flow cytometry and DNA fragmentation analysis. The wound closure assay and cell invasion assay showed that BxPC-3 cell was significantly suppressed by parthenolide at 7.5 μM and 15 μM. Western Blotting demonstrated the Bcl-2 and pro-caspase-3 were down-regulated while the Bax and caspase-9 were up-regulated. No alteration in Bad expression was found after treatment.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The parthenolide can inhibit the cell growth, migration, and induce the apoptosis in human pancreatic cancer. These findings may provide a novel approach for pancreatic cancer treatment.</p

Decreased Dicer expression elicits DNA damage and up-regulation of MICA and MICB

RNA interference (RNAi) acts constitutively to silence the innate immune response, and innate immunity genes are misregulated in Dicer-deficient Caenorhabditis elegans. Here, we show that inhibition of Dicer expression by RNAi in human cells up-regulates major histocompatibility complex class I–related molecules A and B (MICA and MICB). MICA and MICB are innate immune system ligands for the NKG2D receptor expressed by natural killer cells and activated CD8(+)T cells. We reveal that knockdown of Dicer elicits DNA damage. Up-regulation of MICA and MICB by Dicer knockdown is prevented by pharmacologic or genetic inhibition of DNA damage pathway components, including ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) kinase, ATM- and Rad3-related kinase, or checkpoint kinase 1. Therefore we conclude that up-regulation of MICA and MICB is the result of DNA damage response activation caused by Dicer knockdown. Our results suggest that RNAi is indirectly linked to the human innate immune system via the DNA damage pathway

Hawking radiation as tunneling and the unified first law of thermodynamics at the apparent horizon in the FRW universe

Relations between the tunneling rate and the unified first law of thermodynamics at the apparent horizon of the FRW universe are investigated. The tunneling rate arises as a consequence of the unified first law of thermodynamics in such a dynamical system. The analysis shows obviously how the tunneling is intimately connected with the unified first law of thermodynamics through the principle of conservation of energy.Comment: Latex, 9 pages, no figur

Electroacupuncture Ameliorates Learning and Memory and Improves Synaptic Plasticity via Activation of the PKA/CREB Signaling Pathway in Cerebral Hypoperfusion

Electroacupuncture (EA) has shown protective effects on cognitive decline. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms are ill-understood. The present study was undertaken to determine whether the cognitive function was ameliorated in cerebral hypoperfusion rats following EA and to investigate the role of PKA/CREB pathway. We used a rat 2-vessel occlusion (2VO) model and delivered EA at Baihui (GV20) and Dazhui (GV14) acupoints. Morris water maze (MWM) task, electrophysiological recording, Golgi silver stain, Nissl stain, Western blot, and real-time PCR were employed. EA significantly (1) ameliorated the spatial learning and memory deficits, (2) alleviated long-term potentiation (LTP) impairment and the reduction of dendritic spine density, (3) suppressed the decline of phospho-CREB (pCREB) protein, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) protein, and microRNA132 (miR132), and (4) reduced the increase of p250GAP protein of 2VO rats. These changes were partially blocked by a selective protein kinase A (PKA) inhibitor, N-[2-(p-bromocinnamylamino)ethyl]-5-isoquinoline-sulfonamide (H89), suggesting that the PKA/CREB pathway is potentially involved in the effects of EA. Moreover, any significant damage to the pyramidal cell layer of CA1 subregion was absent. These results demonstrated that EA could ameliorate learning and memory deficits and alleviate hippocampal synaptic plasticity impairment of cerebral hypoperfusion rats, potentially mediated by PKA/CREB signaling pathway

ReSimAD: Zero-Shot 3D Domain Transfer for Autonomous Driving with Source Reconstruction and Target Simulation

Domain shifts such as sensor type changes and geographical situation variations are prevalent in Autonomous Driving (AD), which poses a challenge since AD model relying on the previous-domain knowledge can be hardly directly deployed to a new domain without additional costs. In this paper, we provide a new perspective and approach of alleviating the domain shifts, by proposing a Reconstruction-Simulation-Perception (ReSimAD) scheme. Specifically, the implicit reconstruction process is based on the knowledge from the previous old domain, aiming to convert the domain-related knowledge into domain-invariant representations, e.g., 3D scene-level meshes. Besides, the point clouds simulation process of multiple new domains is conditioned on the above reconstructed 3D meshes, where the target-domain-like simulation samples can be obtained, thus reducing the cost of collecting and annotating new-domain data for the subsequent perception process. For experiments, we consider different cross-domain situations such as Waymo-to-KITTI, Waymo-to-nuScenes, Waymo-to-ONCE, etc, to verify the zero-shot target-domain perception using ReSimAD. Results demonstrate that our method is beneficial to boost the domain generalization ability, even promising for 3D pre-training.Comment: Code and simulated points are available at https://github.com/PJLab-ADG/3DTrans#resima