Clinical application of transcranial magnetic stimulation for functional bowel disease

Functional bowel disorder (FBD) is a common gastrointestinal disease syndrome characterized by dysmotility and secretion without known organic lesions. The pathogenesis of FBD is still unclear. In recent years, with the rise of neurogastroenterology, it has initially revealed its close relationship with the “brain-gut axis.” Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technique for detecting and treating the nervous system, that is characterized by non-invasiveness and painlessness. TMS plays an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and provides a new method for the treatment of FBD. In this paper, we summarized and analyzed the research progress of using TMS therapy applied to patients with irritable bowel syndrome and functional constipation by domestic and foreign scholars in recent years by means of literature search, and found that TMS therapy could improve the intestinal discomfort and accompanying mental symptoms in patients with FBD

Robust and accurate depth estimation by fusing LiDAR and Stereo

Depth estimation is one of the key technologies in some fields such as autonomous driving and robot navigation. However, the traditional method of using a single sensor is inevitably limited by the performance of the sensor. Therefore, a precision and robust method for fusing the LiDAR and stereo cameras is proposed. This method fully combines the advantages of the LiDAR and stereo camera, which can retain the advantages of the high precision of the LiDAR and the high resolution of images respectively. Compared with the traditional stereo matching method, the texture of the object and lighting conditions have less influence on the algorithm. Firstly, the depth of the LiDAR data is converted to the disparity of the stereo camera. Because the density of the LiDAR data is relatively sparse on the y-axis, the converted disparity map is up-sampled using the interpolation method. Secondly, in order to make full use of the precise disparity map, the disparity map and stereo matching are fused to propagate the accurate disparity. Finally, the disparity map is converted to the depth map. Moreover, the converted disparity map can also increase the speed of the algorithm. We evaluate the proposed pipeline on the KITTI benchmark. The experiment demonstrates that our algorithm has higher accuracy than several classic methods

Cell transcriptomic atlas of the non-human primate Macaca fascicularis.

Studying tissue composition and function in non-human primates (NHPs) is crucial to understand the nature of our own species. Here we present a large-scale cell transcriptomic atlas that encompasses over 1 million cells from 45 tissues of the adult NHP Macaca fascicularis. This dataset provides a vast annotated resource to study a species phylogenetically close to humans. To demonstrate the utility of the atlas, we have reconstructed the cell-cell interaction networks that drive Wnt signalling across the body, mapped the distribution of receptors and co-receptors for viruses causing human infectious diseases, and intersected our data with human genetic disease orthologues to establish potential clinical associations. Our M. fascicularis cell atlas constitutes an essential reference for future studies in humans and NHPs.We thank W. Liu and L. Xu from the Huazhen Laboratory Animal Breeding Centre for helping in the collection of monkey tissues, D. Zhu and H. Li from the Bioland Laboratory (Guangzhou Regenerative Medicine and Health Guangdong Laboratory) for technical help, G. Guo and H. Sun from Zhejiang University for providing HCL and MCA gene expression data matrices, G. Dong and C. Liu from BGI Research, and X. Zhang, P. Li and C. Qi from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health for experimental advice or providing reagents. This work was supported by the Shenzhen Basic Research Project for Excellent Young Scholars (RCYX20200714114644191), Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Single-Cell Omics (ZDSYS20190902093613831), Shenzhen Bay Laboratory (SZBL2019062801012) and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Genome Read and Write (2017B030301011). In addition, L.L. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31900466), Y. Hou was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2018A030313379) and M.A.E. was supported by a Changbai Mountain Scholar award (419020201252), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA16030502), a Chinese Academy of Sciences–Japan Society for the Promotion of Science joint research project (GJHZ2093), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (92068106, U20A2015) and the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2021B1515120075). M.L. was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFC2600200).S

Cellular Signal Transduction Pathways Involved in Acute Lung Injury Induced by Intestinal Ischemia-Reperfusion

Intestinal ischemia-reperfusion (II/R) injury is a common type of tissue and organ injury, secondary to intestinal and mesenteric vascular diseases. II/R is characterized by a high incidence rate and mortality. In the II/R process, intestinal barrier function is impaired and bacterial translocation leads to excessive reactive oxygen species, inflammatory cytokine release, and even apoptosis. A large number of inflammatory mediators and oxidative factors are released into the circulation, leading to severe systemic inflammation and multiple organ failure of the lung, liver, and kidney. Acute lung injury (ALI) is the most common complication, which gradually develops into acute respiratory distress syndrome and is the main cause of its high mortality. This review summarizes the signal transduction pathways and key molecules in the pathophysiological process of ALI induced by II/R injury and provides a new therapeutic basis for further exploration of the molecular mechanisms of ALI induced by II/R injury. In particular, this article will focus on the biomarkers involved in II/R-induced ALI

Increasing the Editing Efficiency of the MS2-ADAR System for Site-Directed RNA Editing

Site-directed RNA editing (SDRE) technologies have great potential in gene therapy. Our group has developed a strategy to redirect exogenous adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADARs) to specific sites by making editable structures using antisense RNA oligonucleotides. Improving the editing efficiency of the MS2-ADAR system is important in treating undesirable G-to-A point mutations. This work demonstrates an effective strategy to enhance the editing efficiency of this SDRE system. The strategy involves changing the number of MS2 stem-loops on both sides of the antisense RNA and the mismatch base on the antisense part. The enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) with W58X mutation is used as the reporter gene. Subsequently, we adjusted the amount of plasmids for transfection to tune the expression level of the guide RNA, and finally, we observed the fluorescence signal after transfection. After equalizing number of MS2 stem-loops at both sides of the antisense RNA, high editing efficiency was achieved. In the same level of guide RNA expression, when the paired base position was the target uridine, the editing efficiency was higher than cytidine, adenosine, and guanosine

Population genetic characteristics for populations on the Shandong Peninsula revealed by autosomal STR

The Shandong Peninsula is the largest peninsula in China and has played a vital part in Chinese civilisation. The ancient independent Laizi kingdom was located on the Shandong peninsula. While large demographic changes have happened at this peninsula throughout history, the genetic landscape of modern populations on this peninsula has never been clarified. The aims of our study were to investigate population genetic characteristics of the populations on the Shandong peninsula and to reveal their genetic affinities with other populations around the world. Allele frequencies, Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium, and forensic parameters of 15 autosomal STRs in the AmpFlSTR® Identifiler system were obtained from the studied populations with 2441 individuals in total. Allele frequencies were used to reveal the phylogenetic relationships among 287 worldwide populations. The combined power of discrimination (CPD) and the combined power of exclusion (CPE) in the whole of the Han population on the Shandong Peninsula were 0.999999999999999983 and 0.999998155, respectively. The 15 autosomal loci were polymorphic and informative among our studied populations. Genetic homogeneities were revealed between the modern populations on the Shandong Peninsula and Han nationalities from Northeastern China as well as East China

The Plasmodesmata-Located β-1,3-Glucanase Enzyme PdBG4 Regulates Trichomes Growth in Arabidopsis thaliana

Intercellular material transport and information transmission in plants are carried out through the plasmodesmata (PD). The amount of callose around the PD controls channel permeability. In plants, β-1,3-glucanase can degrade callose and affect plant growth and development. In this study, the gene producing PD-localized β-1,3-glucanase and regulating the leaf trichomes is identified and named PdBG4. Based on functional analysis through a series of genetic manipulation assays, we found that the high expression of PdBG4 was associated with strong PD permeability and short Arabidopsis thaliana leaf trichomes. Conversely, the low expression of PdBG4 correlated with weak PD permeability and long Arabidopsis thaliana leaf trichomes. This study revealed that the PdBG4 gene negatively modulates leaf trichome growth and development by regulating PD permeability