Transcriptome Analysis Revealed a Highly Connected Gene Module Associated With Cirrhosis to Hepatocellular Carcinoma Development

IntroductionCirrhosis is one of the most important risk factors for development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Recent studies have shown that removal or well control of the underlying cause could reduce but not eliminate the risk of HCC. Therefore, it is important to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that drive the progression of cirrhosis to HCC.Materials and MethodsMicroarray datasets incorporating cirrhosis and HCC subjects were identified from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were determined by GEO2R software. Functional enrichment analysis was performed by the clusterProfiler package in R. Liver carcinogenesis-related networks and modules were established using STRING database and MCODE plug-in, respectively, which were visualized with Cytoscape software. The ability of modular gene signatures to discriminate cirrhosis from HCC was assessed by hierarchical clustering, principal component analysis (PCA), and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Association of top modular genes and HCC grades or prognosis was analyzed with the UALCAN web-tool. Protein expression and distribution of top modular genes were analyzed using the Human Protein Atlas database.ResultsFour microarray datasets were retrieved from GEO database. Compared with cirrhotic livers, 125 upregulated and 252 downregulated genes in HCC tissues were found. These DEGs constituted a liver carcinogenesis-related network with 272 nodes and 2954 edges, with 65 nodes being highly connected and formed a liver carcinogenesis-related module. The modular genes were significantly involved in several KEGG pathways, such as “cell cycle,” “DNA replication,” “p53 signaling pathway,” “mismatch repair,” “base excision repair,” etc. These identified modular gene signatures could robustly discriminate cirrhosis from HCC in the validation dataset. In contrast, the expression pattern of the modular genes was consistent between cirrhotic and normal livers. The top modular genes TOP2A, CDC20, PRC1, CCNB2, and NUSAP1 were associated with HCC onset, progression, and prognosis, and exhibited higher expression in HCC compared with normal livers in the HPA database.ConclusionOur study revealed a highly connected module associated with liver carcinogenesis on a cirrhotic background, which may provide deeper understanding of the genetic alterations involved in the transition from cirrhosis to HCC, and offer valuable variables for screening and surveillance of HCC in high-risk patients with cirrhosis

Efficient Asynchronous Federated Learning with Sparsification and Quantization

While data is distributed in multiple edge devices, Federated Learning (FL) is attracting more and more attention to collaboratively train a machine learning model without transferring raw data. FL generally exploits a parameter server and a large number of edge devices during the whole process of the model training, while several devices are selected in each round. However, straggler devices may slow down the training process or even make the system crash during training. Meanwhile, other idle edge devices remain unused. As the bandwidth between the devices and the server is relatively low, the communication of intermediate data becomes a bottleneck. In this paper, we propose Time-Efficient Asynchronous federated learning with Sparsification and Quantization, i.e., TEASQ-Fed. TEASQ-Fed can fully exploit edge devices to asynchronously participate in the training process by actively applying for tasks. We utilize control parameters to choose an appropriate number of parallel edge devices, which simultaneously execute the training tasks. In addition, we introduce a caching mechanism and weighted averaging with respect to model staleness to further improve the accuracy. Furthermore, we propose a sparsification and quantitation approach to compress the intermediate data to accelerate the training. The experimental results reveal that TEASQ-Fed improves the accuracy (up to 16.67% higher) while accelerating the convergence of model training (up to twice faster).Comment: To appear in Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience (CCPE), 21 page

1-(4-{[(E)-3-Eth­oxy-2-hy­droxy­benzyl­idene]amino}­phen­yl)ethanone oxime

In the title compound, C17H18N2O3, the benzene rings form a dihedral angle of 3.34 (2)°. There is a strong intra­molecular O—H⋯N hydrogen bonds (which induces planarity of the structure). In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by pairs of O—H⋯N hydrogen bonds, forming inversion dimers

Sesquiterpenes from the marine red alga Laurencia composita.

Four new chamigrane derivatives, laurecomin A (1). laurecomin B (2), laurecomin C (3), and laurecomin D (4), one new naturally occurring sesquiterpene, 2,10-dibromo-3-chloro-7-chamigren-9-ol acetate (5), and three known halogenated structures, deoxyprepacifenol (6), 1-bromoselin-4(14),11-diene (7), and 9-bromoselin-4(14).11-diene (8), were isolated from the marine red alga Laurencia cornposita collected from Pingtan Island, China. The structures of these compounds were unambiguously established by 1D, 2D NMR and mass spectroscopic techniques. The bioassay results showed that 2 was active against both brine shrimp and fungus Colletotrichum lagenarium. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Four new chamigrane derivatives, laurecomin A (1). laurecomin B (2), laurecomin C (3), and laurecomin D (4), one new naturally occurring sesquiterpene, 2,10-dibromo-3-chloro-7-chamigren-9-ol acetate (5), and three known halogenated structures, deoxyprepacifenol (6), 1-bromoselin-4(14),11-diene (7), and 9-bromoselin-4(14).11-diene (8), were isolated from the marine red alga Laurencia cornposita collected from Pingtan Island, China. The structures of these compounds were unambiguously established by 1D, 2D NMR and mass spectroscopic techniques. The bioassay results showed that 2 was active against both brine shrimp and fungus Colletotrichum lagenarium. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved