Literati Entrepreneur: Wei Zhiyan in the Tonkin-Nagasaki Silk Trade

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Essential role of MARCKS in cortical actin dynamics during gastrulation movements

Myristoylated alanine-rich C kinase substrate (MARCKS) is an actin-binding, membrane-associated protein expressed during Xenopus embryogenesis. We analyzed its function in cytoskeletal regulation during gastrulation. Here, we show that blockade of its function impaired morphogenetic movements, including convergent extension. MARCKS was required for control of cell morphology, motility, adhesion, protrusive activity, and cortical actin formation in embryonic cells. We also demonstrate that the noncanonical Wnt pathway promotes the formation of lamellipodia- and filopodia-like protrusions and that MARCKS is necessary for this activity. These findings show that MARCKS regulates the cortical actin formation that is requisite for dynamic morphogenetic movements

PLOD2 is essential to functional activation of integrin β1 for invasion/metastasis in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas.

Identifying the specific functional regulator of integrin family molecules in cancer cells is critical because they are directly involved in tumor invasion and metastasis. Here we report high expression of PLOD2 in oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) and its critical role as a stabilizer of integrin β1, enabling integrin β1 to initiate tumor invasion/metastasis. Integrin β1 stabilized by PLOD2-mediated hydroxylation was recruited to the plasma membrane, its functional site, and accelerated tumor cell motility, leading to tumor metastasis in vivo, whereas loss of PLOD2 expression abrogated it. In accordance with molecular analysis, examination of oropharyngeal SCC tissues from patients corroborated PLOD2 expression associated with integrin β1 at the invasive front of tumor nests. PLOD2 is thus implicated as the key regulator of integrin β1 that prominently regulates tumor invasion and metastasis, and it provides important clues engendering novel therapeutics for these intractable cancers

DialMAT: Dialogue-Enabled Transformer with Moment-Based Adversarial Training

This paper focuses on the DialFRED task, which is the task of embodied instruction following in a setting where an agent can actively ask questions about the task. To address this task, we propose DialMAT. DialMAT introduces Moment-based Adversarial Training, which incorporates adversarial perturbations into the latent space of language, image, and action. Additionally, it introduces a crossmodal parallel feature extraction mechanism that applies foundation models to both language and image. We evaluated our model using a dataset constructed from the DialFRED dataset and demonstrated superior performance compared to the baseline method in terms of success rate and path weighted success rate. The model secured the top position in the DialFRED Challenge, which took place at the CVPR 2023 Embodied AI workshop.Comment: Accepted for presentation at Fourth Annual Embodied AI Workshop at CVP

Efficient detection of RNA–protein interactions using tethered RNAs

The diverse localization of transcripts in cells suggests that there are many specific RNA–protein interactions that have yet to be identified. Progress has been limited, however, by the lack of a robust method to detect and isolate the RNA-binding proteins. Here we describe the use of an RNA aptamer, scaffolded to a tRNA, to create an affinity matrix that efficiently pulls down transcript-specific RNA-binding proteins from cell lysates. The addition of the tRNA scaffold to a Streptavidin aptamer (tRSA) increased binding efficiency by ∼10-fold. The tRSA system with an attached G-quartet sequence also could efficiently and specifically capture endogenous Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein (FMRP), which recognizes this RNA sequence. An alternative method, using biotinylated RNA, captured FMRP less efficiently than did our tRSA method. Finally we demonstrate the identification of novel RNA-binding proteins that interact with intron2 or 3′-UTR of the polarity protein Crumbs3 transcript. Proteins captured by these RNA sequences attached to the tRNA scaffold were identified by mass spectrometry. GFP-tagged versions of these proteins also showed specific interaction with either the Crb3 intron2 or 3′-UTR. Our tRSA technique should find wide application in mapping the RNA–protein interactome

ケア センモンショク ニオケル キョウカンセイ ト バーンアウト ノ カンケイセイ

高齢者福祉施設の援助者（特に介護福祉士）を対象に、ケアにおける共感性とバーンアウト傾向の関係性を明らかにするための質問紙法調査を行った。その結果は以下の通りである。①バーンアウト傾向と共感性には負の相関がみられた。②介護経験年数毎に特徴をみると、バーンアウト傾向は新人（１～２年目）から中堅（６～８年目）まで増え続けるが、達人（９年目）以降は減少し、新人の頃よりも低くなる。共感性はバーンアウトとは逆の傾向を示し、働き続けることによって低下していくが、９年目以降より高くなっていく。③利用者との関わりの中で、援助者がストレスを一番感じるのは、利用者が同じことを繰り返したり意思疎通困難な状況、次に拒否的な態度、三番目は暴力や暴言であった。④バーンアウト傾向の高い人は、認知的共感性の「視点取得」や「想像性」が低い。⑤心揺さぶられるほどの体験とバーンアウト傾向の関係をみると、バーンアウト傾向が一番高いのは、「ショックな体験」があり「嬉しい体験」の無い人であった。また、「ショックな体験」があったとしても「嬉しい体験」があると、バーンアウト傾向は低いという結果になった。超高齢社会であるわが国にとって、高齢者福祉施設への社会的ニーズは高まり続けているが、その役割を担う介護福祉士資格に対する法整備や教育体制づくりは遅れをとっている。現在の介護福祉士は以前のように三大介護を行っていればよい職種ではなく、「ケア」に関する高度な専門的知識・技術の必要な専門職であることを認識し、ケアに内在する共感性のあり方やバーンアウト、虐待に至るプロセス等の研究を続け、適切かつ明確な対策を早急に立てる必要性のある領域であることが明らかになった