Comparison of the protein acetylome of endothelial cells upon shear flow and resveratrol treatment

Background: Posttranslational acetylation/deacetylation known as the acetylome is important in regulating protein activity. Shear flow (SF) and resveratrol (RSV) are two stimuli that represent physical and chemical signal separately. The acetylome co-regulated by these two stimuli remain unclear. Methods: Human umbilical cord vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were subjected to either SF of 12 dynes/cm2 or 10 μM RSV. The purified acetylated peptides were labeled by isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) analysis. The signaling cascades of the identified acetylome were predicted by ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA). Co-immunoprecipitation was applied to confirm the acetylation status of proteins. Results: Five groups of proteins showed an increased acetylation upon SF and RSV treatment. After algorithm, 628 proteins with increased acetylation and 22 proteins with decreased acetylation were identified in the SF acetylome. For the acetylome regulated by RSV, 145 proteins with increased acetylation and 23 proteins with decreased acetylation were identified. Compared these two acetylomes, 129 proteins with increased acetylation and 2 proteins with decreased acetylation were co-regulated by both SF and RSV treatments. IPA analysis showed that this co-regulated acetylome was involved in heat shock response, and the signals of eNOS, STAT3, JAK/STAT and ERK/MAPK. Co-immunoprecipitation analysis further confirmed the acetylated status of mitochondrial HSP60 and mitochondrial citrate synthase. Conclusions: This study indicated that physical signal is more complicated than chemical signal in the case of acetylome. The co-regulated proteins are worthy for further study in discussing synergetic effect between physical and chemical signal in cardioprotection

Differentiation of Foot-and-Mouth Disease-Infected pigs from Vaccinated Pigs Using Antibody-Detecting Sandwich ELISA

The presence of serum antibodies for nonstructural proteins of the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) can differentiate FMDV-infected animals from vaccinated animals. In this study, a sandwich ELISA was developed for rapid detection of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) antibodies; it was based on an Escherichia coli-expressed, highly conserved region of the 3ABC nonstructural protein of the FMDV O/TW/99 strain and a monoclonal antibody derived from the expressed protein. The diagnostic sensitivity of the assay was 98.4%, and the diagnostic specificity was 100% for naïve and vaccinated pigs; the detection ability of the assay was comparable those of the PrioCHECK and UBI kits. There was 97.5, 93.4 and 66.6% agreement between the results obtained from our ELISA and those obtained from the PrioCHECK, UBI and CHEKIT kits, respectively. The kappa statistics were 0.95, 0.87 and 0.37, respectively. Moreover, antibodies for nonstructural proteins of the serotypes A, C, Asia 1, SAT 1, SAT 2 and SAT 3 were also detected in bovine sera. Furthermore, the absence of cross-reactions generated by different antibody titers against the swine vesicular disease virus and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) was also highlighted in this assay's specificit

Evaluating the Primary Prevention of Ischemic Stroke of Oral Antithrombotic Therapy in Head and Neck Cancer Patients with Radiation Therapy

Although previous studies demonstrated the risk of ischemic stroke (IS) in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC), the impact of oral antithrombotic therapy (OAT) on this risk has not yet been assessed. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of OAT in patients with HNC treated with RT. This retrospective cohort study was performed using the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan. A total of 37,638 patients diagnosed with HNC included in the study were classified as users and nonusers of OAT. Primary outcome was IS or transient ischemic attack (TIA), and secondary outcomes were death and major bleeding. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). There was no significant difference in the risk of IS or TIA between patients on continuous OAT and nonusers (adjusted HR, 0.812; 95% CI,). The risk of major bleeding was not significantly different between the groups. From a national population database, we did not find an association between OAT and decreasing risk of ischemic stroke/TIA or increasing hazard of major bleeding

Robust Speaker Verification Using Short-Time Frequency with Long-Time Window and Fusion of Multi-Resolutions

Abstract This study presents a novel approach of feature analysis to speaker verification. There are two main contributions in this paper. First, the feature analysis of short-time frequency with long-time window (SFLW) is a compact feature for the efficiency of speaker verification. The purpose of SFLW is to take account of short-time frequency characteristics and longtime resolution at the same time. Secondly, the fusion of multi-resolutions is used for the effectiveness of robust speaker verification. The speaker verification system can be further improved using multi-resolution features. The experimental results indicate that the proposed approaches not only speed up the processing time but also improve the performance of speaker verification

A Facile Strategy for the Fabrication of Cell-Laden Porous Alginate Hydrogels based on Two-Phase Aqueous Emulsions

Porous alginate (Alg) hydrogels possess many advantages as cell carriers. However, current pore generation methods require either complex or harsh fabrication processes, toxic components, or extra purification steps, limiting the feasibility and affecting the cellular survival and function. In this study, a simple and cell-friendly approach to generate highly porous cell-laden Alg hydrogels based on two-phase aqueous emulsions is reported. The pre-gel solutions, which contain two immiscible aqueous phases of Alg and caseinate (Cas), are cross-linked by calcium ions. The porous structure of the hydrogel construct is formed by subsequently removing the Cas phase from the ion-cross-linked Alg hydrogel. Those porous Alg hydrogels possess heterogeneous pores ≈100 μm and interconnected paths. Human white adipose progenitors (WAPs) encapsulated in these hydrogels self-organize into spheroids and show enhanced viability, proliferation, and adipogenic differentiation, compared to non-porous constructs. As a proof of concept, this porous Alg hydrogel platform is employed to prepare core-shell spheres for coculture of WAPs and colon cancer cells, with WAP clusters distributed around cancer cell aggregates, to investigate cellular crosstalk. This efficacious approach is believed to provide a robust and versatile platform for engineering porous-structured Alg hydrogels for applications as cell carriers and in disease modeling

A Facile Strategy for the Fabrication of Cell-Laden Porous Alginate Hydrogels based on Two-Phase Aqueous Emulsions

Porous alginate (Alg) hydrogels possess many advantages as cell carriers. However, current pore generation methods require either complex or harsh fabrication processes, toxic components, or extra purification steps, limiting the feasibility and affecting the cellular survival and function. In this study, a simple and cell-friendly approach to generate highly porous cell-laden Alg hydrogels based on two-phase aqueous emulsions is reported. The pre-gel solutions, which contain two immiscible aqueous phases of Alg and caseinate (Cas), are cross-linked by calcium ions. The porous structure of the hydrogel construct is formed by subsequently removing the Cas phase from the ion-cross-linked Alg hydrogel. Those porous Alg hydrogels possess heterogeneous pores ≈100 µm and interconnected paths. Human white adipose progenitors (WAPs) encapsulated in these hydrogels self-organize into spheroids and show enhanced viability, proliferation, and adipogenic differentiation, compared to non-porous constructs. As a proof of concept, this porous Alg hydrogel platform is employed to prepare core-shell spheres for coculture of WAPs and colon cancer cells, with WAP clusters distributed around cancer cell aggregates, to investigate cellular crosstalk. This efficacious approach is believed to provide a robust and versatile platform for engineering porous-structured Alg hydrogels for applications as cell carriers and in disease modeling

Direct ink writing of polycaprolactone / polyethylene oxide based 3D constructs

There has been increasing interest over recent years in the application of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies in the biomedical field. One such method is Direct Ink Writing (DIW); this approach has the potential advantage of allowing room-temperature deposition of materials, presented as an ink, to build complex architectures. DIW offers the ability to process biomaterials containing temperature-sensitive components. Due to the fabrication principles of DIW, there are specific rheological requirements that the ink must exhibit for the 3D construction. For this reason, hydrogel-based liquid feed stocks have been the focal point of ink development. As a consequence, studies based on inks comprising hydrophobic biomaterials, which are insoluble in water and hence unsuited to the hydrogel approach, have been limited. In this study, we investigate novel inks that utilize polycaprolactone (PCL), a hydrophobic polymer, as the primary constituent by dissolving the polymer in solvent systems based on dichloromethane (DCM) and acetone (ACE). Moreover, polyethylene oxide (PEO) was incorporated into the PCL systems in order to extend the range of hydrophilicity of the systems. The rheological properties of the inks were investigated as a function of polymer composition and solvent system. Woodpile constructs of PCL and PCL/PEO were fabricated using DIW method and were assessed by a series of material characterisation. The type of solvent system had a noticeable impact on the ink rheology, which ultimately affected the surface properties. The incorporation of PEO particularly enhanced the roughness and wettability of the constructs. Our results support the use of DIW as a new means to process hydrophobic polymers for biomedical applications

A comprehensive study on the effects of gamma radiation on the physical properties of a two-dimensional WS2 monolayer semiconductor

© 2020 The Royal Society of Chemistry. This article reports the effects of gamma radiation on the structural, optical and magnetic properties of monolayer tungsten disulfide (WS2) grown by a scalable van der Waals epitaxial (VdWE) process on a SiO2 coated Si substrate. We found that ionizing radiation (gamma ray) interacts strongly with two-dimensional WS2, which induces effective p-doping in the samples. As the radiation dose increases, the p-doping concentration increases substantially. In addition, in the small radiation dose regime, the WS2 monolayers exhibit usual diamagnetic behavior. However, a remarkable ferromagnetic hysteresis emerges when the WS2 monolayer is irradiated with 400 Gys. This is attributed to the presence of irradiation-induced complex vacancies composed of one tungsten and a pair of its nearby sulfurs. Moreover, these results have shown that the detector based on the large scale monolayer VdWE-grown two-dimensional WS2 is an appealing candidate for sensing high-energy photons at small radiation doses