Comparison of the Plasma Metabolome Profiles Between the Internal Thoracic Artery and Ascending Aorta in Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery Using Gas Chromatography Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry.

BackgroundThe left internal thoracic artery (LITA) has been used as the first conduit of choice in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) because of excellent long-term patency and outcomes. However, no studies have examined substances other than nitric oxide that could be beneficial for the bypass conduit, native coronary artery or ischemic myocardium. This study was conducted to evaluate differences in metabolic profiles between the LITA and ascending aorta using gas chromatography-time of flight-mass spectrometry (GC-TOF-MS).MethodsTwenty patients who underwent CABG using the LITA were prospectively enrolled. Plasma samples were collected simultaneously from the LITA and ascending aorta. GC-TOF-MS based untargeted metabolomic analyses were performed and a 2-step volcano plot analysis was used to identify distinguishable markers from two plasma metabolome profiles. Semi-quantitative and quantitative analyses were performed using GC-TOF-MS and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, respectively, after selecting target metabolites based on the metabolite set enrichment analysis.ResultsInitial volcano plot analysis demonstrated 5 possible markers among 851 peaks detected. The final analysis demonstrated that the L-cysteine peak was significantly higher in the LITA than in the ascending aorta (fold change = 1.86). The concentrations of intermediate metabolites such as L-cysteine, L-methionine and L-cystine in the 'cysteine and methionine metabolism pathway' were significantly higher in the LITA than in the ascending aorta (2.0-, 1.4- and 1.2-fold, respectively). Quantitative analysis showed that the concentration of hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) was significantly higher in the LITA.ConclusionThe plasma metabolome profiles of the LITA and ascending aorta were different, particularly higher plasma concentrations of L-cysteine and H₂S in the LITA

Domain Reduction Strategy for Non Line of Sight Imaging

This paper presents a novel optimization-based method for non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging that aims to reconstruct hidden scenes under various setups. Our method is built upon the observation that photons returning from each point in hidden volumes can be independently computed if the interactions between hidden surfaces are trivially ignored. We model the generalized light propagation function to accurately represent the transients as a linear combination of these functions. Moreover, our proposed method includes a domain reduction procedure to exclude empty areas of the hidden volumes from the set of propagation functions, thereby improving computational efficiency of the optimization. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in various NLOS scenarios, including non-planar relay wall, sparse scanning patterns, confocal and non-confocal, and surface geometry reconstruction. Experiments conducted on both synthetic and real-world data clearly support the superiority and the efficiency of the proposed method in general NLOS scenarios

Thiol-linked peroxidase activity of human ceruloplasmin

AbstractHuman ceruloplasmin exhibited different antioxidant effects according to the electron donors in a metal-catalyzed oxidation system. Purified ceruloplasmin did not play a significant role in the protection of DNA strand breaks in the ascorbate/Fe3+/O2 system. However, when ascorbates were replaced with a thiol-reducing equivalent such as dithiothreitol, DNA strand breaks were significantly prevented by the same amount of ceruloplasmin. Ceruloplasmin did not catalyze the decomposition of H2O2 in the absence of reduced glutathione. On the contrary, ceruloplasmin showed a potent peroxidase ability to destroy H2O2 in the presence of reduced glutathione. In conclusion, the removal of H2O2 by human ceruloplasmin is not simply stoichiometric but thiol-dependent