Up-regulation of miR-20a ameliorates sevoflurane anesthesia-induced cognitive impairment in rats by targeting EphA4

Purpose: To evaluate the role of miR-20a in sevoflurane (SEV)-induced cognitive impairment in rats and to elucidate the mechanism of action. Methods: A SEV-induced cognitive impairment rat model was developed. The Morris water maze test and fear assay were carried out to assess impaired learning and memory. A cellular SEV-impaired model was developed and the miR-20a level was measured in the animal and cellular models. TUNEL staining and immunoblot assay were performed to determine the SEV effect on apoptosis. Bioinformatic analysis and luciferase assay were conducted to identify the target of miR-20a action. A rescue assay involving miR-20a overexpression in cellular and animal models was developed and used to evaluate function of miR-20a in cognitive defects. Results: The rats showed significant cognitive impairment upon SEV treatment, which inhibited the expression of miR-20a and promoted neuronal apoptosis. Further findings identified EphA4 as a target of miR-20a, which regulates its expression. Overexpression of miR-20a in rats effectively reduced cognitive dysfunction and apoptosis of hippocampus somatic cells caused by SEV treatment. Conclusion: Evidently, miR-20a ameliorates SEV anesthesia-induced cognitive impairment in rats and thus has the potential to serve as a therapeutic target for the treatment of post-operative cognitive dysfunction

Local Climate Zone in Xi’an City: A Novel Classification Approach Employing Spatial Indicators and Supervised Classification

The Local Climate Zone (LCZ), as a foundational element of urban climate zone classification proposed by Oke and Stewart, categorizes urban surface types based on 10 influential parameters affecting the urban heat island effect, such as building density, surface reflectivity, sky view factor, and surface roughness length. This method divides cities into 17 different Local Climate Zones (LCZs) to standardize climate observations and promote global climate research exchange, offering valuable insights for heat island studies. In this study, we enhance the existing local climate zones spatial classification approach by focusing on Xi’an city’s urban layout and architectural features. By using urban spatial indicators and employing a supervised classification approach and a spatial clustering method with land parcels as statistical units, we investigate typical urban areas and classify Xi’an’s land parcels into 17 or 15 distinct local climate zones. Subsequently, through the evaluation of two distinct classification methods, the most suitable urban microclimate zoning method for Xi’an city was selected. This optimization of the local climate zoning representation introduces a spatial classification method tailored to urban climate planning and control, utilizing urban spatial indicators and remote sensing data. The resulting urban climate zoning map not only supports sample selection for urban heat environment parameter observation but also aids urban planners in identifying spatial distribution patterns for climate zoning

Global Structure Knowledge-Guided Relation Extraction Method for Visually-Rich Document

Visual relation extraction (VRE) aims to extract relations between entities from visuallyrich documents. Existing methods usually predict relations for each entity pair independently based on entity features but ignore the global structure information, i.e., dependencies between entity pairs. The absence of global structure information may make the model struggle to learn long-range relations and easily predict conflicted results. To alleviate such limitations, we propose a GlObal Structure knowledgeguided relation Extraction (GOSE) framework, which captures dependencies between entity pairs in an iterative manner. Given a scanned image of the document, GOSE firstly generates preliminary relation predictions on entity pairs. Secondly, it mines global structure knowledge based on prediction results of the previous iteration and further incorporates global structure knowledge into entity representations. This "generate-capture-incorporate" schema is performed multiple times so that entity representations and global structure knowledge can mutually reinforce each other. Extensive experiments show that GOSE not only outperforms previous methods on the standard fine-tuning setting but also shows promising superiority in cross-lingual learning; even yields stronger data-efficient performance in the low-resource setting.Comment: Work in progres

Crucial role of the Cterminal domain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis leucyl-tRNA synthetase in aminoacylation and editing

ABSTRACT The C-terminal extension of prokaryotic leucy

Effects of Krill Oil on serum lipids of hyperlipidemic rats and human SW480 cells

© 2008 Zhu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Abnormal expression of SLIT3 induces intravillous vascularization dysplasia in ectopic pregnancy

Objective To investigate whether the morphology, capillary number, and transcriptome expression profiles of ectopic pregnancy (EP) villi differ from those of normal pregnancy (NP) villi. Methods Hematoxylin-eosin (HE) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining for CD31 were conducted to compare differences in morphology and capillary number between EP and NP villi. Differentially expressed (DE) miRNAs and mRNAs were determined from transcriptome sequencing of both types of villi and used to construct a miRNA–mRNA network, from which hub genes were identified. Candidate DE-miRNAs and DE-mRNAs were validated by quantitative reverse transcription (qRT)-PCR. Correlations were identified between the number of capillaries and serum beta human chorionic gonadotropin (β-HCG) levels and between the expression levels of hub genes associated with angiogenesis and β-HCG levels. Results The mean and total cross-sectional areas of placental villi were significantly increased in EP compared with NP villi. Capillary density was greatly reduced in EP villi and was positively correlated with β-HCG levels. A total of 49 DE-miRNAs and 625 DE-mRNAs were identified from the sequencing data. An integrated analysis established a miRNA–mRNA network containing 32 DE-miRNAs and 103 DE-mRNAs. Based on the validation of hub mRNAs and miRNAs in the network, a regulatory pathway involving miR-491-5p–SLIT3 was discovered, which may have a role in the development of villous capillaries. Conclusion Villus morphology, capillary number, and miRNA/mRNA expression profiles in villous tissues were aberrant in EP placentas. Specifically, SLIT3, which is regulated by miR-491-5p, may contribute to the regulation of villous angiogenesis and was established as a putative predictor of chorionic villus development, providing a basis for future research

Mediastinal Lymph Node Metastases in Thyroid Cancer: Characteristics, Predictive Factors, and Prognosis

Background. Mediastinal lymph node metastases (MLNM) have not been extensively studied. The aim of this study is to investigate the characteristics, predictive factors, and prognosis of MLNM in thyroid cancer. Methods. This is a retrospective study based on the thyroid cancer patients with MLNM at our institution from 2008 to 2015. Results. In total, 73 thyroid cancer patients with positive MLNM were included in this study. It contained sixty patients (82.2%) with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), twelve (16.4%) with medullary thyroid carcinoma, and one (1.4%) with anaplastic thyroid carcinoma. Forty-eight patients had the surgery as initial treatment. Fifty-three (72.6%) patients remained disease-free, and fifteen (20.5%) developed a regional recurrence. Distant metastases occurred in four (5.5%) patients and five (6.8%) patients died. Five-year overall survival rate and disease-free survival (DFS) rate of the PTC patients for initial treatment are 95.4% and 77.2%, respectively. Extrathyroidal extension and multiple lymph nodes involved were associated with DFS in PTC patients. Conclusions. Initial therapeutic control is very important for the thyroid cancer patients. Extrathyroidal extension and multiple mediastinal lymph nodes involved were the influence factors of prognosis in the thyroid cancer patients with MLNM

Outflows and Bubbles in Taurus: Star-formation Feedback Sufficient to Maintain Turbulence

We have identified outflows and bubbles in the Taurus molecular cloud based on the ~100 deg^2 Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory ^(12)CO(1-0) and ^(13)CO(1-0) maps and the Spitzer young stellar object catalogs. In the main 44 deg^2 area of Taurus, we found 55 outflows, of which 31 were previously unknown. We also found 37 bubbles in the entire 100 deg^2 area of Taurus, none of which had been found previously. The total kinetic energy of the identified outflows is estimated to be ~3.9 x 10^(45) erg, which is 1% of the cloud turbulent energy. The total kinetic energy of the detected bubbles is estimated to be ~9.2 x 10^(46) erg, which is 29% of the turbulent energy of Taurus. The energy injection rate from the outflows is ~1.3 x 10^(33) erg s^(-1), which is 0.4–2 times the dissipation rate of the cloud turbulence. The energy injection rate from bubbles is ~6.4 x 10^(33) erg s^(−1), which is 2–10 times the turbulent dissipation rate of the cloud. The gravitational binding energy of the cloud is ~1.5 x 10^(48) erg, that is, 385 and 16 times the energy of outflows and bubbles, respectively. We conclude that neither outflows nor bubbles can provide sufficient energy to balance the overall gravitational binding energy and the turbulent energy of Taurus. However, in the current epoch, stellar feedback is sufficient to maintain the observed turbulence in Taurus