The conservation and uniqueness of the caspase family in the basal chordate, amphioxus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The caspase family, which plays a central role in apoptosis in metazoans, has undergone an expansion in amphioxus, increasing to 45 members through domain recombination and shuffling.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In order to shed light on the conservation and uniqueness of this family in amphioxus, we cloned three representative caspase genes, designated as <it>bbtCaspase-8, bbtCaspase-1/2 </it>and <it>bbtCaspase3</it>-like, from the amphioxus <it>Branchiostoma belcheri tsingtauense</it>. We found that <it>bbtCaspase-8 </it>with conserved protein architecture is involved in the Fas-associated death domain-Caspase-8 mediated pro-apoptotic extrinsic pathway, while <it>bbtCaspase3</it>-like may mediate a nuclear apoptotic pathway in amphioxus. Also, <it>bbtCaspase-1/2 </it>can co-localize with <it>bbtFADD2 </it>in the nucleus, and be recruited to the cytoplasm by amphioxus apoptosis associated speck-like proteins containing a caspase recruitment domain, indicating that <it>bbtCaspase-1/2 </it>may serve as a switch between apoptosis and caspase-dependent innate immune response in invertebrates. Finally, amphioxus extrinsic apoptotic pathway related caspases played important roles in early embryogenesis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study not only demonstrates the conservation of <it>bbtCaspase-8 </it>in apoptosis, but also reveals the unique features of several amphioxus caspases with novel domain architectures arose some 500 million years ago.</p

Neutrino Physics with JUNO

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a 20 kton multi-purposeunderground liquid scintillator detector, was proposed with the determinationof the neutrino mass hierarchy as a primary physics goal. It is also capable ofobserving neutrinos from terrestrial and extra-terrestrial sources, includingsupernova burst neutrinos, diffuse supernova neutrino background, geoneutrinos,atmospheric neutrinos, solar neutrinos, as well as exotic searches such asnucleon decays, dark matter, sterile neutrinos, etc. We present the physicsmotivations and the anticipated performance of the JUNO detector for variousproposed measurements. By detecting reactor antineutrinos from two power plantsat 53-km distance, JUNO will determine the neutrino mass hierarchy at a 3-4sigma significance with six years of running. The measurement of antineutrinospectrum will also lead to the precise determination of three out of the sixoscillation parameters to an accuracy of better than 1\%. Neutrino burst from atypical core-collapse supernova at 10 kpc would lead to ~5000inverse-beta-decay events and ~2000 all-flavor neutrino-proton elasticscattering events in JUNO. Detection of DSNB would provide valuable informationon the cosmic star-formation rate and the average core-collapsed neutrinoenergy spectrum. Geo-neutrinos can be detected in JUNO with a rate of ~400events per year, significantly improving the statistics of existing geoneutrinosamples. The JUNO detector is sensitive to several exotic searches, e.g. protondecay via the $p\to K^++\bar\nu$ decay channel. The JUNO detector will providea unique facility to address many outstanding crucial questions in particle andastrophysics. It holds the great potential for further advancing our quest tounderstanding the fundamental properties of neutrinos, one of the buildingblocks of our Universe

Improved Adaptive Vibe and the Application for Segmentation of Complex Background

To solve the problems that basic Vibe algorithm cannot effectively eliminate the influence of background noise, follower shadow, and ghost under complex background effectively, an adaptive threshold algorithm, AdaVibe, based on the framework of basic Vibe is proposed. Aiming at the shortage of the basic algorithm, this paper puts forward some improvement measures in threshold setting, shadow eliminating, and ghost suppression. Firstly, judgment threshold takes adjustment with the changes of background. Secondly, a fast eliminating ghost algorithm depending on adaptive threshold is introduced. Finally, follower shadow is detected and inhibited effectively through the gray properties and texture characteristics. Experiments show that the proposed AdaVibe algorithm works well in complex environment without affecting computing speed and has stronger robustness and better adaptability than the basic algorithm. Meanwhile, the ghost and follower shadow can be absorbed quickly as well. Therefore, the accuracy of target detection is effectively improved

The linear-dependence of adhesion strength and adhesion range on temperature in soft membranes

The adhesion of a soft membrane plays a central role for the functionality of many biological and engineering systems, from cell adhesion to advanced materials. In this work, we demonstrated via a combination of statistical mechanics analysis and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations that the adhesion of a membrane-buffered interface could be significantly modulated due to thermally induced surface corrugations in the membrane. Not expected from classical mechanics theories, the adhesion strength is highly temperature sensitive and reduces linearly with increasing temperature. Through statistical mechanics analysis, the dependence of adhesion on temperature is found to result from thermally induced ripples which facilitate long-range adhesion between the soft membrane like graphene sheets or lipid bilayers with the substrate. The results from MD simulations agree well with the statistical mechanics analysis. Such surprising findings may pave the way to understand temperature-sensitive kinetics in many biological systems where the interaction of cell membranes with extra-cellular environments is pivotal. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Introducing the Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence Applications for Sustainable Urban Living

All global cities are in the process of transforming from classical cities to sustainable smart cities [...

Adaptive Sliding Mode Robust Control for Virtual Compound-Axis Servo System

A structure mode of virtual compound-axis servo system is proposed to improve the tracking accuracy of the ordinary optoelectric tracking platform. It is based on the structure and principles of compound-axis servo system. A hybrid position control scheme combining the PD controller and feed-forward controller is used in subsystem to track the tracking error of the main system. This paper analyzes the influences of the equivalent disturbance in main system and proposes an adaptive sliding mode robust control method based on the improved disturbance observer. The sliding mode technique helps this disturbance observer to deal with the uncompensated disturbance in high frequency by making use of the rapid switching control value, which is based on the subtle error of disturbance estimation. Besides, the high-frequency chattering is alleviated effectively in this proposal. The effectiveness of the proposal is confirmed by experiments on optoelectric tracking platform