Sexual Propagation of Pteris Vittata L. Influenced by pH, Calcium, and Temperature

National High-tech Program (863 Program) of China 2007AA061001;Foundation of the Ministry of Agricultural Key Laboratory of Plant Nutrition and Nutrient CyclingWe aimed to optimize germination and growth conditions of the arsenic hyperaccumulating fern, Pteris vittata L. Pot experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of soil pH, soil calcium (Ca) concentration, and temperature on the sexual propagation of P. vittata. At 25 degrees C, germination was both accelerated and increased by high soil pH and Ca concentration. Spores of P. vittata did not germinate on medium with a pH of 4.6. Amending strongly acid soils with 27.5 or 40 mol/g Ca(OH)2 significantly improved the growth rate during both the germination phase and the gametophyte phase. Amending strongly acid soils with NaOH (55 mol/g) promoted germination, but did not affect subsequent growth. Among the different temperature, germination and growth rates were higher at 25 degrees C than at 20 degrees C or 30 degrees C. The distribution of P. vittata in China might be influenced by its requirement for high pH and high Ca concentration in the soil, and appropriate growth temperature to complete sexual propagation. These results provided important information for improving breeding conditions of P. vitatta and will be helpful for extending the range of areas in which P. vittata can be used for phytoremediation

Genetics, recombination and clinical features of human rhinovirus species C (HRV-C) infections; interactions of HRV-C with other respiratory viruses

To estimate the frequency, molecular epidemiological and clinical associations of infection with the newly described species C variants of human rhinoviruses (HRV), 3243 diagnostic respiratory samples referred for diagnostic testing in Edinburgh were screened using a VP4-encoding region-based selective polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for HRV-C along with parallel PCR testing for 13 other respiratory viruses. HRV-C was the third most frequently detected behind respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and adenovirus, with 141 infection episodes detected among 1885 subjects over 13 months (7.5%). Infections predominantly targeted the very young (median age 6–12 months; 80% of infections in those <2 years), occurred throughout the year but with peak incidence in early winter months. HRV-C was detected significantly more frequently among subjects with lower (LRT) and upper respiratory tract (URT) disease than controls without respiratory symptoms; HRV-C mono-infections were the second most frequently detected virus (behind RSV) in both disease presentations (6.9% and 7.8% of all cases respectively). HRV variants were classified by VP4/VP2 sequencing into 39 genotypically defined types, increasing the current total worldwide to 60. Through sequence comparisons of the 5′untranslated region (5′UTR), the majority grouped with species A (n = 96; 68%, described as HRV-Ca), the remainder forming a phylogenetically distinct 5′UTR group (HRV-Cc). Multiple and bidirectional recombination events between HRV-Ca and HRV-Cc variants and with HRV species A represents the most parsimonious explanation for their interspersed phylogeny relationships in the VP4/VP2-encoding region. No difference in age distribution, seasonality or disease associations was identified between HRV-Ca and HRV-Cc variants. HRV-C-infected subjects showed markedly reduced detection frequencies of RSV and other respiratory viruses, providing evidence for a major interfering effect of HRV-C on susceptibility to other respiratory virus infections. HRV-C's disease associations, its prevalence and evidence for interfering effects on other respiratory viruses mandates incorporation of rhinoviruses into future diagnostic virology screening

Construction of Vascular Tissues with Macro-Porous Nano-Fibrous Scaffolds and Smooth Muscle Cells Enriched from Differentiated Embryonic Stem Cells

Vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) have been broadly used for constructing tissue-engineered blood vessels. However, the availability of mature SMCs from donors or patients is very limited. Derivation of SMCs by differentiating embryonic stem cells (ESCs) has been reported, but not widely utilized in vascular tissue engineering due to low induction efficiency and, hence, low SMC purity. To address these problems, SMCs were enriched from retinoic acid induced mouse ESCs with LacZ genetic labeling under the control of SM22α promoter as the positive sorting marker in the present study. The sorted SMCs were characterized and then cultured on three-dimensional macro-porous nano-fibrous scaffolds in vitro or implanted subcutaneously into nude mice after being seeded on the scaffolds. Our data showed that the LacZ staining, which reflected the corresponding SMC marker SM22α expression level, was efficient as a positive selection marker to dramatically enrich SMCs and eliminate other cell types. After the sorted cells were seeded into the three-dimensional nano-fibrous scaffolds, continuous retinoic acid treatment further enhanced the SMC marker gene expression level while inhibited pluripotent maker gene expression level during the in vitro culture. Meanwhile, after being implanted subcutaneously into nude mice, the implanted cells maintained the positive LacZ staining within the constructs and no teratoma formation was observed. In conclusion, our results demonstrated the potential of SMCs derived from ESCs as a promising cell source for therapeutic vascular tissue engineering and disease model applications

Spin Caloritronics

This is a brief overview of the state of the art of spin caloritronics, the science and technology of controlling heat currents by the electron spin degree of freedom (and vice versa).Comment: To be published in "Spin Current", edited by S. Maekawa, E. Saitoh, S. Valenzuela and Y. Kimura, Oxford University Pres

One-Pot Synthesis of Biocompatible CdSe/CdS Quantum Dots and Their Applications as Fluorescent Biological Labels

We developed a novel one-pot polyol approach for the synthesis of biocompatible CdSe quantum dots (QDs) using poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) as a capping ligand at 240°C. The morphological and structural characterization confirmed the formation of biocompatible and monodisperse CdSe QDs with several nanometers in size. The encapsulation of CdS thin layers on the surface of CdSe QDs (CdSe/CdS core–shell QDs) was used for passivating the defect emission (650 nm) and enhancing the fluorescent quantum yields up to 30% of band-to-band emission (530–600 nm). Moreover, the PL emission peak of CdSe/CdS core–shell QDs could be tuned from 530 to 600 nm by the size of CdSe core. The as-prepared CdSe/CdS core–shell QDs with small size, well water solubility, good monodispersity, and bright PL emission showed high performance as fluorescent cell labels in vitro. The viability of QDs-labeled 293T cells was evaluated using a 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol)-2-diphenyltertrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The results showed the satisfactory (>80%) biocompatibility of as-synthesized PAA-capped QDs at the Cd concentration of 15 μg/ml

Identification of Colorectal Cancer Related Genes with mRMR and Shortest Path in Protein-Protein Interaction Network

One of the most important and challenging problems in biomedicine and genomics is how to identify the disease genes. In this study, we developed a computational method to identify colorectal cancer-related genes based on (i) the gene expression profiles, and (ii) the shortest path analysis of functional protein association networks. The former has been used to select differentially expressed genes as disease genes for quite a long time, while the latter has been widely used to study the mechanism of diseases. With the existing protein-protein interaction data from STRING (Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes), a weighted functional protein association network was constructed. By means of the mRMR (Maximum Relevance Minimum Redundancy) approach, six genes were identified that can distinguish the colorectal tumors and normal adjacent colonic tissues from their gene expression profiles. Meanwhile, according to the shortest path approach, we further found an additional 35 genes, of which some have been reported to be relevant to colorectal cancer and some are very likely to be relevant to it. Interestingly, the genes we identified from both the gene expression profiles and the functional protein association network have more cancer genes than the genes identified from the gene expression profiles alone. Besides, these genes also had greater functional similarity with the reported colorectal cancer genes than the genes identified from the gene expression profiles alone. All these indicate that our method as presented in this paper is quite promising. The method may become a useful tool, or at least plays a complementary role to the existing method, for identifying colorectal cancer genes. It has not escaped our notice that the method can be applied to identify the genes of other diseases as well

Predicting Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) Classification of Drugs by Integrating Chemical-Chemical Interactions and Similarities

The Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classification system, recommended by the World Health Organization, categories drugs into different classes according to their therapeutic and chemical characteristics. For a set of query compounds, how can we identify which ATC-class (or classes) they belong to? It is an important and challenging problem because the information thus obtained would be quite useful for drug development and utilization. By hybridizing the informations of chemical-chemical interactions and chemical-chemical similarities, a novel method was developed for such purpose. It was observed by the jackknife test on a benchmark dataset of 3,883 drug compounds that the overall success rate achieved by the prediction method was about 73% in identifying the drugs among the following 14 main ATC-classes: (1) alimentary tract and metabolism; (2) blood and blood forming organs; (3) cardiovascular system; (4) dermatologicals; (5) genitourinary system and sex hormones; (6) systemic hormonal preparations, excluding sex hormones and insulins; (7) anti-infectives for systemic use; (8) antineoplastic and immunomodulating agents; (9) musculoskeletal system; (10) nervous system; (11) antiparasitic products, insecticides and repellents; (12) respiratory system; (13) sensory organs; (14) various. Such a success rate is substantially higher than 7% by the random guess. It has not escaped our notice that the current method can be straightforwardly extended to identify the drugs for their 2nd-level, 3rd-level, 4th-level, and 5th-level ATC-classifications once the statistically significant benchmark data are available for these lower levels

Imbalanced Multi-Modal Multi-Label Learning for Subcellular Localization Prediction of Human Proteins with Both Single and Multiple Sites

It is well known that an important step toward understanding the functions of a protein is to determine its subcellular location. Although numerous prediction algorithms have been developed, most of them typically focused on the proteins with only one location. In recent years, researchers have begun to pay attention to the subcellular localization prediction of the proteins with multiple sites. However, almost all the existing approaches have failed to take into account the correlations among the locations caused by the proteins with multiple sites, which may be the important information for improving the prediction accuracy of the proteins with multiple sites. In this paper, a new algorithm which can effectively exploit the correlations among the locations is proposed by using Gaussian process model. Besides, the algorithm also can realize optimal linear combination of various feature extraction technologies and could be robust to the imbalanced data set. Experimental results on a human protein data set show that the proposed algorithm is valid and can achieve better performance than the existing approaches

The Changes in Maternal Mortality in 1000 Counties in Mid-Western China by a Government-Initiated Intervention

BACKGROUND: Since 2000, the Chinese government has implemented an intervention program to reduce maternal mortality and eliminate neonatal tetanus in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals 5. To assess the effectiveness of this intervention program, we analyzed the level, trend and reasons defining the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in the 1,000 priority counties before and after implementation of the intervention between 1999 and 2007. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The data was obtained from the National Maternal and Child Health Routine Reporting System. The intervention included providing basic and emergency obstetric equipment and supplies to local medical hospitals, and also included providing professional training to local obstetric doctors, development of obstetric emergency centers and "green channel" express referral networks, reducing or waiving the cost of hospital delivery, and conducting community health education. Based on the initiation time of the intervention and the level of poverty, 1,000 counties, containing a total population of 300 million, were categorized into three groups. MMR significantly decreased by about 50%, with an average reduction rate of 9.24%, 16.06%, and 18.61% per year in the three county groups, respectively. The hospital delivery rate significantly increased. Obstetric hemorrhage was the leading cause of maternal deaths and significantly declined, with an average decrease in the MMR of 11.25%, 18.03%, and 24.90% per year, respectively. The magnitude of the MMR, the average reduction rate of the MMR, and the occurrence of the leading causes of death were closely associated with the percentage of poverty. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The intervention program implemented by the Chinese government has significantly reduced the MMR in mid-western China, suggesting that well-targeted interventions could be an efficient strategy to reducing MMR in resource-poor areas. Reduction of the MMR not only depends on conducting proven interventions, but also relies on economic development in rural areas with a high burden of maternal death