The development of ovary in quail’s embryo

The experiment was conducted to study the development of ovary in quails’ embryos which were incubated for 4 to 17 days and incubated out for 1 day. The quails’ embryos or gonads were cut out and HE staining was carried out. The results showed that when embryo was hatched for 4 days, lots of primordial germ cells (PGCs) clustered in the region where gonad would be formed. On the 5th day of hatching, the gonad of the embryo began to be formed and exhibited the feature of ovary or testis. On the 7th hatching day, the right ovary began to degenerate, just a few PGCs began to differentiate into oogonia. On the 10th day, there were many oogonia in the ovary, some of which were surrounded by some other cells distributed like circles. On the 11th day, there were more oogonia, the skinniness became thicker while the medulla was thinner. On the 13th day, the division between skinniness and medulla was obvious and the ovary formed the early original ovum. On the 14th day, more original ovums were seen in the skinniness. On the 17th hatching day and on the 1st day of hatching out, the shape of ovary tended to be mature, also the ovum was clear and more; the medulla was full of vessels. On the 5th hatching day, gonad began to differentiate. On the 7th hatching day and later, thedifferentiation of gonad was obvious; the right ovary began to degenerate. On the 13th hatching day, early original ovum began to be formed in the skinniness of ovary. The results established groundwork for the research of the development of gonads of quail and other poultry.Key words: Quail, embryo, gonad, ovary

Branched chain α-ketoacid dehydrogenase kinase 111–130, a T cell epitope that induces both autoimmune myocarditis and hepatitis in A/J mice

Introduction: Organ-specific autoimmune diseases are believed to result from immune responses generated against self-antigens specific to each organ. However, when such responses target antigens expressed promiscuously in multiple tissues, then the immune-mediated damage may be wide spread. Methods: In this report, we describe a mitochondrial protein, branched chain α-ketoacid dehydrogenase kinase (BCKDk) that can act as a target autoantigen in the development of autoimmune inflammatory reactions in both heart and liver. Results: We demonstrate that BCKDk protein contains at least nine immunodominant epitopes, three of which, BCKDk 71–90, BCKDk 111–130 and BCKDk 141–160, were found to induce varying degrees of myocarditis in immunized mice. One of these, BCKDk 111–130, could also induce hepatitis without affecting lungs, kidneys, skeletal muscles, and brain. In immunogenicity testing, all three peptides induced antigen-specific T cell responses, as verified by proliferation assay and/or major histocompatibility complex class II/IAk dextramer staining. Finally, the disease-inducing abilities of BCKDk peptides were correlated with the production of interferon-γ, and the activated T cells could transfer disease to naive recipients. Conclusions: The disease induced by BCKDk peptides could serve as a useful model to study the autoimmune events of inflammatory heart and liver diseases

Down-Regulation of AP-4 Inhibits Proliferation, Induces Cell Cycle Arrest and Promotes Apoptosis in Human Gastric Cancer Cells

BACKGROUND: AP-4 belongs to the basic helix-loop-helix leucine-zipper subgroup; it controls target gene expression, regulates growth, development and cell apoptosis and has been implicated in tumorigenesis. Our previous studies indicated that AP-4 was frequently overexpressed in gastric cancers and may be associated with the poor prognosis. The purpose of this study is to examine whether silencing of AP-4 can alter biological characteristics of gastric cancer cells. METHODS: Two specific siRNAs targeting AP-4 were designed, synthesized, and transfected into gastric cancer cell lines and human normal mucosa cells. AP-4 expression was measured with real-time quantitative PCR and Western blot. Cell proliferation and chemo-sensitivity were detected by CCK-8 assay. Cell cycle assay and apoptosis assay were performed by flow cytometer, and relative expression of cell cycle regulators were detected by real-time quantitative PCR and Western blot, expression of the factors involved in the apoptosis pathway were examined in mRNA and protein level. RESULTS: The expression of AP-4 was silenced by the siRNAs transfection and the effects of AP-4 knockdown lasted 24 to 96 hrs. The siRNA-mediated silencing of AP-4 suppressed the cellular proliferation, induced apoptosis and sensitized cancer cells to anticancer drugs. In addition, the expression level of p21, p53 and Caspase-9 were increased when AP-4 was knockdown, but the expression of cyclin D1, Bcl-2 and Bcl-x(L) was inhibited. It didn't induce cell cycle arrest when AP-4 was knockdown in p53 defect gastric cancer cell line Kato-III. CONCLUSIONS: These results illustrated that gene silencing of AP-4 can efficiently inhibited cell proliferation, triggered apoptosis and sensitized cancer cells to anticancer drugs in vitro, suggesting that AP-4 siRNAs mediated silencing has a potential value in the treatment of human gastric cancer

New padding technique for coding of arbitrarily-shaped image/video segments

Object-based coding is becoming more and more important in today's multimedia applications. Shape-adaptive DCT (SA-DCT) provides a useful tool for coding of arbitrarily-shaped image/video segments which is indispensable to achieve object-based coding. In this paper, we introduce a new padding technique based on which the arbitrarily-shaped DCT can be implemented using normal N×N DCT. The new padding is carried out for each arbitrarily-shaped block in such a way that the number of non-zero coefficients after DCT is guaranteed to be no more than that of the original image data, thereby never expanding the data set in the DCT-domain. Arbitrarily-shaped DCT coding based on this padding technique is developed, and then analyzed and compared against some of the existing algorithms in terms of rate-distortion performance, computational complexity, and implementation cost

Method and apparatus for coding an image object of arbitrary shape

At the internet age, transmittal of video signal in digital form is very common. Among various video compression standards or processes established, Discrete cosine transform (DCT)- based block transform coding is one of the frequently used coding techniques for compression of still image. This method provides a compromise between energy packing ability and computation complexity. However, the existing shape-adaptive DCT (SA-DCT) method suffers from its non-regular structure and the non-existence of efficient implementation methods. Its hardware implementation requirement can make fabrication very costly. This invention offers a new method and apparatus based on which the arbitrarily-shaped transform coding can be accomplished using the regular N-point DCT/IDCT. The existing fast algorithms and/or available chipsets could be thus utilized directly. The new method consistently provides several dB improvement over the LPE padding that is recommended in MPEG-4, at just a minimal increase in computation requirement at the encoder side only. It has low computational complexity, slightly better encoding performance, and no requirement for depadding process at the decoder side. Last but not least, this method can be easily integrated into any object-based video/image control system that supports arbitrarily-shaped coding functionally