Interactions of Lignin with Optical Brightening Agents and Their Effect on Paper Optical Properties

Optical brightening agents (OBAs) are widely used in the production of uncoated and coated paper grades to improve their optical properties. The presence of lignin in the pulp furnishes is well-known to have a significant effect on the OBA brightening efficiency, but how OBA interacts with lignin is still not well understood. In this study we used wood lignin to investigate the lignin/OBA interactions and its effect on OBA brightening. Three lignin samples isolated from spruce, pine, and aspen were used. Both di- and tetra-sulfonated OBAs were studied. It was found that the OBA addition can effectively improve the optical properties of paper, such as ISO brightness, CIE whiteness, and <i>b</i>*, but disulfonated OBA was found to be more effective at a lower dosage (less than 0.6%) than the tetra-sulfonated OBA. The addition of a small amount of lignin (0.4%) onto filter paper had negative effects on the optical properties, but the impact depends strongly on lignin structures (lignin samples from spruce, pine, and aspen), which explain the early results that mechanical pulps from different wood species respond very differently to OBA brightening. A modified Kubelka–Munk equation was used to predict and model the brightness and whiteness response of different lignin types and OBA, which can be used to provide guidance in determining the amount of OBA needed to reach specified optical property target

DataSheet_1_Identification of Differentially Expressed Hub Genes Associated With Immune Cell Recruitment in Claudin-Low Breast Cancer.pdf

Breast cancer (BCa) is the most common malignancy in women and claudin-low breast cancer (CL-BCa) is a newly identified BCa subtype characterized by low expression of claudin 3&4&7. However, the hub genes associated with the recruitment of immune cells into CL-BCa were rarely described. This study aimed at exploring the differentially expressed hub genes associated with tumor-infiltrating immune cells in CL-BCa by a multi-approach bioinformatics analysis. The top 200 genes associated with CL-BCa were screened in the METABRIC dataset; the PPI network was constructed using STRING and Cytoscape; tumor-infiltrating immune cells were analyzed by TIMER 2.0; and the correlation of feature cytokines and claudins on survival was examined in METABRIC and TCGA datasets. Consequently, we found that the fraction of tumor-infiltrating immune cells, especially CD8+T cells and macrophages, increased in the CL-BCa. Differentially expressed cytokines (CCL5, CCL19, CXCL9 and CXCL10) were related to the overall survival, and their expression levels were also examined both in tumor tissues of CL-BCa patients by IHC and in typical CL-BCa cell lines by qPCR. Moreover, the BCa patients with low expression of these differentially expressed claudins (CLDN8, CLDN11 and CLDN19) showed a worse overall survival. This study sheds light on molecular features of CL-BCa on immune microenvironments and contributes to identification of prognosis biomarkers for the CL-BCa patients.</p

Difference of <i>ADTRP</i> mRNA expression between groups with different genotypes of rs7753407, and between early-onset CAD cases and controls.

<p>Levels of <i>ADTRP</i> mRNA expression in leukocytes from 134 randomly selected subjects were measured using real-time qRT-PCR. The average level of it in 61 subjects with the risk genotype AA of rs7753407 was significantly lower than that in 73 subjects with genotype GG or GA (<i>P</i> < 0.01, bars represent mean±S.E.). The average level in 37 early-onset CAD cases was significantly lower than that in 49 controls (<i>P</i> < 0.05, bars represent mean±S.E.).</p

Analysis of allelic association of eight SNPs with CAD.

<p>MAF, minor allele frequency; <i>P</i>_HWE, <i>P</i> values for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium tests; <i>P</i>_obs, observed <i>P</i> value; <i>P</i>_adj, <i>P</i> value after adjustment for covariates of gender, age, hypertension, diabetes, blood lipid profiles, smoking; OR_obs, observed odds ratio; OR_adj, odds ratio after adjustment for the covariates; CI, confidence interval.</p><p>Analysis of allelic association of eight SNPs with CAD.</p

Analysis of genotypic association of eight SNPs with CAD.

<p><i>P</i>_obs, observed <i>P</i> value; <i>P</i>_adj, <i>P</i> value after adjusted for covariates of gender, age, hypertension, diabetes, blood lipid profiles, smoking; OR_adj, odds ratio after adjustment for the covariates; CI, confidence interval.</p><p>Analysis of genotypic association of eight SNPs with CAD.</p

Overview of LD structure among eight SNPs.

<p>A was constructed based on the genotype data of all the subjects in this work, B was constructed based on the genotype data of subjects excluding late-onset CAD patients. D’ was signed with a number in a diamond. Red diamond without a number refers to D’ = 100. F refers to exon 1, L refers to the last exon. Arrow refers to the transcription direction of <i>ADTRP</i>.</p

Clinical and biochemical characteristics of the study subjects.

<p>^aAge at the first diagnosis for CAD and age at the time of enrollment for control. T2DM, type 2 diabetes mellitus; Tch, total cholesterol; TG, triglyceride; LDL-C, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol; HDL-C, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol.</p><p>Clinical and biochemical characteristics of the study subjects.</p