ZNF507 affects TGF-β signaling via TGFBR1 and MAP3K8 activation in the progression of prostate cancer to an aggressive state

Background: The progression of prostate cancer (PC) to the highly aggressive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) or neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC) is a fatal condition and the underlying molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we identified the novel transcriptional factor ZNF507 as a key mediator in the progression of PC to an aggressive state. Methods: We analyzed ZNF507 expression in the data from various human PC database and high-grade PC patient samples. By establishment of ZNF507 knockdown and overexpression human PC cell lines, we assessed in vitro PC phenotype changes including cell proliferation, survival, migration and invasion. By performing microarray with ZNF507 knockdown PC cells, we profiled the gene clusters affected by ZNF507 knockdown. Moreover, ZNF507 regulated key signal was evaluated by dual-luciferase reporter and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays. Finally, we performed xenograft and in vivo metastasis assay to confirm the effect of ZNF507 knockdown in PC cells. Results: We found that ZNF507 expression was increased, particularly in the highly graded PC. ZNF507 was also found to be associated with metastatic PC of a high grade. Loss- or gain-of-function–based analysis revealed that ZNF507 promotes the growth, survival, proliferation, and metastatic properties of PC (e.g., epithelial-mesenchymal transition) by upregulating TGF-β signaling. Profiling of gene clusters affected by ZNF507 knockdown revealed that ZNF507 positively regulated the transcription of TGFBR1, MAP3K8, and FURIN, which in turn promoted the progression of PC to highly metastatic and aggressive state. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that ZNF507 is a novel key regulator of TGF-β signaling in the progression of malignant PC and could be a promising target for studying the development of advanced metastatic PCs. © 2021, The Author(s).1

ABST-RED

The exhibit was held from October 11 - November 4, 2012 at the Boise State Student Union Gallery. Featuring 21 digital picture/graphic works on canvas and a video installation work for the public, Daehwan Cho utilized metaphor creating ambiguity to distort literal meaning and strengthen poetic implications

Automatic Actuation of the Anti-Freezing System Using SMA Coil Springs

Studies have been actively conducted on systems that prevent the breakage of water pipes from freezing in winter. Shape memory alloy (SMA) coil springs have been used as the key components of actuators that can operate automatically by detecting the real-time outside temperature changes, but research on its use as an actuator that can operate at sub-zero temperatures is insufficient. This study proposes the anti-freezing system using Ni-44.08Ti-1.46Co (wt.%) SMA coil springs that operate near sub-zero temperatures to prevent the freezing accident of water pipes. After fabricating the SMA coil springs, the test for performance evaluation of the springs applied static load conditions was conducted on the specific outside temperature. To examine the operation of anti-freezing systems applied the SMA coil spring as an actuator, the water discharge test (WDT) was also conducted along with the computational fluid simulation. The results of water discharge measurement obtained by WDT, simulations, and theoretical equations applied to the fluid resupply system constructed were compared with each other to verify the reliability. Consequently, it was confirmed that water discharge can be automatically controlled in real time according to temperature changes of SMA coil springs in the anti-freezing system

A Study on the Design of Bending Process According to the Shape of Initial Billets for Bi-Metal Elbow

Studies have been steadily conducted on the forming process of the bending pipe that enables the transport of underground resources. Recently, it has been suggested that bent pipes for transport withstand high pressure during the forming process, but it is judged that the research on methods able to overcome the limitations of non-uniform dimensional distribution due to the difference in the mechanical properties and thickness of the outer and inner pipes is insufficient. This study proposes a new precision forging method called the cut-forged-joint process (CFJP) for the manufacture of bent pipe containing bi-metal. The initial billet and mandrel were designed considering the standard dimensions of bent pipes, and pre-simulation was performed applied to the designed models. The results of dimensional accuracy obtained by forging experiments and the computational forming simulation were compared with each other to verify the reliability. As a final outcome, it was confirmed that it is possible to secure the dimensional accuracy of bi-metal bent pipes by applying the newly proposed CFJP

Core-Shell Dual-Gate Nanowire Synaptic Transistor with Short/Long-Term Plasticity

This work demonstrates design and performances of core-shell dual-gate nanowire synaptic transistor with short/long term plasticity. The novel structure helps equip better capacitive coupling between dual gates through full depletion of carriers from the Si channel and construct deeper potential well for charge storage, which eventually increases the probability for short-term-to-long-term memory transition by reducing the recombination. The dual-gate operation effectively realizes the short-and the long-term potentiation in the proposed device for hardware-driven neuromorphic system.N

B.-G.: Progressive AAM based robust face alignment

Abstract—AAM has been successfully applied to face alignment, but its performance is very sensitive to initial values. In case the initial values are a little far distant from the global optimum values, there exists a pretty good possibility that AAM-based face alignment may converge to a local minimum. In this paper, we propose a progressive AAM-based face alignment algorithm which first finds the feature parameter vector fitting the inner facial feature points of the face and later localize the feature points of the whole face using the first information. The proposed progressive AAM-based face alignment algorithm utilizes the fact that the feature points of the inner part of the face are less variant and less affected by the background surrounding the face than those of the outer part (like the chin contour). The proposed algorithm consists of two stages: modeling and relation derivation stage and fitting stage. Modeling and relation derivation stage first needs to construct two AAM models: the inner face AAM model and the whole face AAM model and then derive relation matrix between the inner face AAM parameter vector and the whole face AAM model parameter vector. In the fitting stage, the proposed algorithm aligns face progressively through two phases. In the first phase, the proposed algorithm will find the feature parameter vector fitting the inner facial AAM model into a new input face image, and then in the second phase it localizes the whole facial feature points of the new input face image based on the whole face AAM model using the initial parameter vector estimated from using the inner feature parameter vector obtained in the first phase and the relation matrix obtained in the first stage. Through experiments, it is verified that the proposed progressive AAM-based face alignment algorithm is more robust with respect to pose, illumination, and face background than the conventional basic AAM-based face alignment algorithm. Keywords—Face Alignment, AAM, facial feature detection, model matching