Mitochondrial DNA common deletion is not associated with thyroid, breast and colorectal tumors in Turkish patients

Recently, efforts have been focused on mitochondrial DNA changes and their relation to human cancers. Among them, a 4977 bp deletion of mitochondrial DNA, named “common deletion”, has been investigated in several types of tumors, with inconsistent results. In this study, we investigated the presence of the common deletion in tissues from 25 breast, 25 colorectal and 50 thyroid tumors and in the adjacent healthy tissues from Turkish patients. Samples from healthy volunteers were also evaluated for comparison. Two PCR-based methods were used for the detection of the common deletion. First, two pairs of primers were used to amplify wild-type and deleted mtDNA. Then, a highly sensitive nested-PCR was performed, to determine low amounts of deleted genomes. By the first method, wild-type mtDNAs were observed in all samples, but a deletion was observed in only six thyroid samples, by using the nested-PCR method. In conclusion, the mitochondrial common deletion was very rare in our study group and did not appear to be not related with cancer

A Hybrid Wavelet de-noising and Rank-Set Pair Analysis approach for forecasting hydro-meteorological time series

Accurate, fast forecasting of hydro-meteorological time series is presently a major challenge in drought and flood mitigation. This paper proposes a hybrid approach, wavelet de-noising (WD) and Rank-Set Pair Analysis (RSPA), that takes full advantage of a combination of the two approaches to improve forecasts of hydro-meteorological time series. WD allows decomposition and reconstruction of a time series by the wavelet transform, and hence separation of the noise from the original series. RSPA, a more reliable and efficient version of Set Pair Analysis, is integrated with WD to form the hybrid WD-RSPA approach. Two types of hydro-meteorological data sets with different characteristics and different levels of human influences at some representative stations are used to illustrate the WD-RSPA approach. The approach is also compared to three other generic methods: the conventional Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) method, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) (BP-error Back Propagation, MLP-Multilayer Perceptron and RBF-Radial Basis Function), and RSPA alone. Nine error metrics are used to evaluate the model performance. Compared to three other generic methods, the results generated by WD-REPA model presented invariably smaller error measures which means the forecasting capability of the WD-REPA model is better than other models. The results show that WD-RSPA is accurate, feasible, and effective. In particular, WD-RSPA is found to be the best among the various generic methods compared in this paper, even when the extreme events are included within a time series

Nuclear Factor Kappa B Promotes Ferritin Heavy Chain Expression in <i>Bombyx mori</i> in Response to <i>B. mori</i> Nucleopolyhedrovirus Infection

Ferritin heavy chain (FerHCH) is a major component of ferritin and plays an important role in maintaining iron homeostasis and redox equilibrium. Our previous studies have demonstrated that the Bombyx mori ferritin heavy chain homolog (BmFerHCH) could respond to B. mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) infection. However, the mechanism by which BmNPV regulates the expression of BmFerHCH remains unclear. In this study, BmFerHCH increased after BmNPV infection and BmNPV infection enhanced nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) activity in BmN cells. An NF-κB inhibitor (PDTC) reduced the expression of the virus-induced BmFerHCH in BmN cells, and overexpression of BmRelish (NF-κB) increased the expression of virus-induced BmFerHCH in BmN cells. Furthermore, BmNPV infection enhanced BmFerHCH promoter activity. The potential NF-κB cis-regulatory elements (CREs) in the BmFerHCH promoter were screened by using the JASPAR CORE database, and two effective NF-κB CREs were identified using a dual luciferase reporting system and electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). BmRelish (NF-κB) bound to NF-κB CREs and promoted the transcription of BmFerHCH. Taken together, BmNPV promotes activation of BmRelish (NF-κB), and activated BmRelish (NF-κB) binds to NF-κB CREs of BmFerHCH promoter to enhance BmFerHCH expression. Our study provides a foundation for future research on the function of BmFerHCH in BmNPV infection

Regional Characteristics of Long-Term Variability of Summer Precipitation in the Poyang Lake Basin and Possible Links with Large-Scale Circulations

Understanding the spatiotemporal regime of summer precipitation at local scales plays a key role in regional prevention and mitigation of floods disasters and water resources management. Previous works focused on spatiotemporal characteristics of a region as a whole but left the influence of associated physical factors on sub-regions unexplored. Based on the precipitation data of 77 meteorological stations in the Poyang Lake basin (PYLB) from 1959 to 2013, we have investigated regional characteristics of summer precipitation in the PYLB by integrating the rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) analysis with hierarchical clustering algorithm (HCA). Then the long-term variability of summer precipitation in sub-regions of the PYLB and possible links with large-scale circulations was investigated using multiple trend analyses, wavelet analysis and correlation analysis. The results indicate that summer precipitation variations in the PYLB were of very striking regional characteristics. The PYLB was divided into three independent sub-regions based on two leading REOF modes and silhouette coefficient (SC). These sub-regions were located in northern PYLB (sub-region I), central PYLB (sub-region II), and southern PYLB (sub-region III). The summer precipitation in different sub-regions exhibited distinct variation trends and periodicities, which was associated with different factors. All sub-regions show no trends over the whole period 1959&ndash;2013, rather they show trends in different periods. Trends per decade in annual summer precipitation in sub-region I and sub-region II were consistent for all periods with different start and end years. The oscillations periods with 2&ndash;3 years were found in summer precipitation of all the three sub-regions. Summer precipitation in sub-region I was significantly positively correlated with the previous Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event, but negatively correlated with East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM). While summer precipitation in sub-region II and sub-region III showed weak teleconnections with climate indices. All of the results of this study are conducive to further understand both the regional climate variations in the PYLB and response to circulation patterns variations

Recyclable and reprocessable crosslinked rubber enabled by constructing ionic crosslinked networks

© 2020 American Chemical Society. The recycling of covalently crosslinked rubber faces paramount challenges as it is difficult to be recycled by melting or solution procedures because of its irreversible crosslinked structure formed in the vulcanization process. Here, a new ionic crosslinker was formed from two commonly used additives in the rubber industry (i.e., bis[3-(triethoxysilyl)propyl]tetrasulfide and zinc methacrylate) for crosslinking unsaturated rubber with a reversible ionic three-dimensional structure. The crosslinked styrene butadiene rubber with comparable toughness can be easily recycled via the solution process and re-formed by simply adding zinc oxide as a crosslinker. This work demonstrates that constructing ionic crosslinked structure is an effective approach to prepare recyclable and reprocessable rubber, thus solving the problem of recycling and pollution

Recyclable and Reprocessable Crosslinked Rubber Enabled by Constructing Ionic Crosslinked Networks

© 2020 American Chemical Society. The recycling of covalently crosslinked rubber faces paramount challenges as it is difficult to be recycled by melting or solution procedures because of its irreversible crosslinked structure formed in the vulcanization process. Here, a new ionic crosslinker was formed from two commonly used additives in the rubber industry (i.e., bis[3-(triethoxysilyl)propyl]tetrasulfide and zinc methacrylate) for crosslinking unsaturated rubber with a reversible ionic three-dimensional structure. The crosslinked styrene butadiene rubber with comparable toughness can be easily recycled via the solution process and re-formed by simply adding zinc oxide as a crosslinker. This work demonstrates that constructing ionic crosslinked structure is an effective approach to prepare recyclable and reprocessable rubber, thus solving the problem of recycling and pollution

Clinical Features, Phenotypic Markers and Outcomes of Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma between HIV-Infected and HIV-Uninfected Chinese Patients

Background: The effect of HIV infection on the clinicopathological characteristics of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) remains debatable. Methods: Fifty-three HIV-infected and ninety-three HIV-uninfected DLBCL patients were enrolled in the retrospective study by propensity score matching for sex, age, body mass index and international prognostic index (IPI) at a ratio of 1:2. The clinicopathological characteristics were compared between the two groups. Results: HIV-infected DLBCL patients had lower white blood cell counts [&times;109/L; 4.4 (3.4&ndash;5.6) vs. 6.1 (4.2&ndash;8.2), p &lt; 0.001], platelet counts (&times;109/L; 184.7 &plusmn; 89.3 vs. 230.0 &plusmn; 113.9, p = 0.014) and serum albumin (g/L; 37.3 &plusmn; 6.9 vs. 41.3 &plusmn; 6.2, p &lt; 0.001) but higher incidences of central nervous system (CNS) involvement (9.4% vs. 1.1%, p = 0.014), bone marrow involvement (24.5% vs. 11.5%, p = 0.044) and Epstein&ndash;Barr viremia (61.1% vs. 26.7%, p = 0.002) than HIV-uninfected patients. In terms of histopathology, HIV-infected patients had higher positivity of Epstein&ndash;Barr virus-encoded small RNA (EBER) (41.7% vs. 6.7%, p = 0.002), but lower CD20 (90.2% vs. 98.7%, p= 0.029) and CD79a (23.1% vs. 53.7%, p &lt; 0.001) expression. The overall response rate (ORR) at the end of chemotherapy (70.2% vs. 87.8%, p= 0.012) and 1-year overall survival (OS) (61.7% vs. 84.2%, log-rank p = 0.006) in HIV-infected patients were significantly lower than those in HIV-uninfected patients. Multivariate analysis suggested IPI &le;2.0 [adjusted odds ratio (AOR) (95% confidence interval): 5.0 (1.2&ndash;21.2), p = 0.030] was associated with ORR, hypoalbuminemia [AOR: 3.3 (1.3&ndash;9.1), p = 0.018] and CNS involvement [AOR: 3.3 (1.0&ndash;10.5), p = 0.044] were associated with reduced 1-year OS in HIV-infected patients. Conclusion: HIV-infected DLBCL patients have unique blood profiles and phenotypic markers. Low ORR and 1-year OS were observed in HIV-infected DLBCL patients in our study, even in the HAART era