Detection and identification of NAP-2 as a biomarker in hepatitis B-related hepatocellular carcinoma by proteomic approach

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><b>A </b>lack of sensitive and specific biomarkers is a major reason for the high rate of Primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)-related mortality. The aim of this study was to investigate potential proteomic biomarkers specific for HCC.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>81 patients with hepatitis B-related HCC and 33 healthy controls were randomly divided into a training set (33 HCC, 33 controls) and a testing set (48 HCC, 33 controls). Serum proteomic profiles were measured using Surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight mass spectroscopy (SELDI-TOF-MS).) A classification tree was established by Biomarker Pattern Software (BPS). Candidate SELDI peaks were isolated by tricine-SDS-PAGE, identified by HPLC-MS/MS and validated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) in liver tissues.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 6 proteomic peaks (3157.33 m/z, 4177.02 m/z, 4284.79 m/z, 4300.80 m/z, 7789.87 m/z, and 7984.14 m/z) were chosen by BPS to establish a classification tree with the highest discriminatory power in the training set. The sensitivity and specificity of this classification tree were 95.92%, and 100% respectively in the testing set. A candidate marker of about 7984 m/z was isolated and identified as neutrophil-activating peptide 2 (NAP-2). IHC staining showed that NAP-2 signals were positive in HCC tissues but negative in adjacent tissues.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The NAP-2 may be a specific proteomic biomarker of hepatitis B-related HCC.</p

Regulation of NDVI and ET negative responses to increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit by water availability in global drylands

Atmospheric vapor pressure deficit (VPD, indicative of atmospheric water conditions) has been identified as a major driver of global vegetation dynamics. Drylands, including deserts, temperate grasslands, savannas, and dry forests, are more sensitive to water conditions and affect carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles. However, our knowledge is limited on the way increasing VPD affects vegetation growth and evapotranspiration (ET) in global drylands. In this study, we used long-term satellite datasets combined with multiple statistical analyses to examine the relationship between the satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), a proxy for vegetation growth, and ET to VPD across global drylands. We found that significant decreases in NDVI and ET predominantly influenced the NDVI (RVPD − NDVI) and ET (RVPD − ET) responses to VPD in both the savannas and dry forests of South American, African, and Australian savannas and dry forests, as well as in temperate grasslands (e.g., Eurasian steppes and American prairies). Notably, more than 60% of global drylands exhibited significantly negative RVPD − NDVI and RVPD − ET values. In contrast, the percentage of significantly negative RVPD − NDVI and RVPD − ET decreased to &lt;10% in cold drylands (&gt;60° N). In predominantly warm drylands (60° N~60° S), negative VPD effects were significantly and positively regulated by soil water availability, as determined by multiple linear regression models. However, these significant regulatory effects were not observed in cold drylands. Moving-window analyses further revealed that temporal changes in RVPD − NDVI and RVPD − ET were positively correlated with changes in the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). In warm drylands, areas with increasing RVPD − NDVI and RVPD − ET over time showed an increasing trend in the SPEI, whereas areas with a decreasing SPEI showed a negative trend in RVPD − NDVI and RVPD − ET values over time. Given the increasing atmospheric dryness due to climate change, this study highlighted the importance of re-evaluating the representation of the role of water availability in driving the response of the carbon-water cycle to increased VPD across global drylands

The genomic and bulked segregant analysis of \u3ci\u3eCurcuma alismatifolia\u3c/i\u3e revealed its diverse bract pigmentation

Compared with most flowers where the showy part comprises specialized leaves (petals) directly subtending the reproductive structures, most Zingiberaceae species produce showy ‘‘flowers’’ through modifications of leaves (bracts) subtending the true flowers throughout an inflorescence. Curcuma alismatifolia, belonging to the Zingiberaceae family, a plant species originating from Southeast Asia, has become increasingly popular in the flower market worldwide because of its varied and esthetically pleasing bracts produced in different cultivars. Here, we present the chromosome-scale genome assembly of C. alismatifolia ‘‘Chiang Mai Pink’’ and explore the underlying mechanisms of bract pigmentation. Comparative genomic analysis revealed C. alismatifolia contains a residual signal of wholegenome duplication. Duplicated genes, including pigment-related genes, exhibit functional and structural differentiation resulting in diverse bract colors among C. alismatifolia cultivars. In addition, we identified the key genes that produce different colored bracts in C. alismatifolia, such as F3\u275’H, DFR, ANS and several transcription factors for anthocyanin synthesis, as well as chlH and CAO in the chlorophyll synthesis pathway by conducting transcriptomic analysis, bulked segregant analysis using both DNA and RNA data, and population genomic analysis. This work provides data for understanding the mechanism of bract pigmentation and will accelerate breeding in developing novel cultivars with richly colored bracts in C. alismatifolia and related species. It is also important to understand the variation in the evolution of the Zingiberaceae family

Growth Of Large Single Crystals Of Meta-Nitroaniline

Large single crystals of metal-nitroaniline (m-NA) have been grown from solution by the lowering-temperature method. A small seed was used in the solution and a large single crystal with high optical quality, measuring 30×40×50 mm (a×b×c) was g The growth conditions and results of this crystal are described. © 1992

Hepatitis E seroprevalence and related risk factors among seafood processing workers: a cross-sectional survey in Shandong Province, China

Objective: This study aimed to assess the seroprevalence of hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection and the potential risk factors for acquiring HEV infection in the seafood processing factories in Yantai City of Shandong Province, China. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in five randomly selected seafood processing factories in Yantai City. Subjects were 15–66 years of age and were raw seafood processing workers, semi-finished products processing workers, and administrative staff, etc. Each participant completed a structured questionnaire and agreed to blood drawing. Anti-HEV IgG antibody was detected in the blood samples by ELISA method. Results: A total of 1028 of 1044 eligible workers were tested for HEV IgG antibody (response rate 98.5%). The prevalence of HEV IgG seropositivity was found to be 22.20%. Occupation was significantly associated with anti-HEV IgG antibody seropositivity (p < 0.05). Subjects who had direct contact with raw seafood had a higher anti-HEV IgG antibody prevalence (32.54%) than the semi-finished products processing workers (24.74%) and less exposed group (11.85%). HEV seroprevalence in the workers showed an increasing trend with the increase in working years, and this phenomenon was most obvious in raw seafood processing workers. Conclusions: There is a higher risk of HEV infection in those who have direct contact with raw seafood. This study will help identify the risk factors for HEV infection and provide guidance on controlling HEV infection in the seafood processing occupations

Research on Blast Furnace Tuyere Image Anomaly Detection, Based on the Local Channel Attention Residual Mechanism

The channel attention mechanism is widely used in deep learning. However, the existing channel attention mechanism directly performs the global average pooling and then full connection for all channels, which causes the local information to be ignored and the feature information cannot be reasonably assigned with the proper weights. This paper proposed a local channel attention module, based on the channel attention. This module focuses on the local information of the feature image, obtains the weight of each regional channel through convolution, and then integrates the information, so that the regional information can be fully utilized. Moreover, the local channel attention module is combined with the residual module, and the local channel attention residual network LSERNet is constructed to detect the abnormal state of the blast furnace tuyere image. With sufficient experiments on the collected datasets of the blast furnace tuyere, the results show that the proposed method can efficiently extract the feature information, and the recognition accuracy of the LSERNet model reached 98.59%. Further, our model achieved the highest accuracy, compared with SE-ResNet50, ResNet50, LSE-ResNeXt, SE-ResNeXt, and ResNeXt models

Vegetation and Evapotranspiration Responses to Increased Atmospheric Vapor Pressure Deficit across the Global Forest

A forest is vulnerable to drought and plays important roles in the regulation of carbon and water cycling in a terrestrial ecosystem. Atmospheric vapor pressure deficit (VPD) has been identified as an increasingly major factor in plant functioning and has been established as a main contributor to recent drought-induced plant mortality, independent of other drivers associated with climate change. However, most previous studies have focused on the effects of climate warming and CO2 enrichment on vegetation growth, without considering the effects of an increased VPD on vegetation growth and evapotranspiration (ET) in forest ecosystems. This could lead to a large uncertainty in estimating the variability in forest carbon sinks. Based on the long-term satellite data, we investigated the response of the leaf area index (LAI) and ET to the VPD via a partial correlation analysis in this study. We also examined the temporal variability in the partial coefficients within a ten-year moving window. The results showed that over 50% of the region displayed a negative partial correlation between the LAI, ET, and VPD, and those pixels were mainly concentrated in North America and the plains of Eastern Europe. Regions with a negative trend of partial correlation in both the LAI and ET are mostly located in the plains of Eastern Europe and the Siberian Plain of western Russia, while the positive trend is mainly in South America. The plains of Eastern Europe are becoming drier, which was proved by the interannual trend of the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and soil water content (SWC). Additionally, the LAI and ET in those areas exhibited a significant positive correlation with the SWC based on the moving window average. This study suggests that the role of the VPD on vegetation will become increasingly prominent in the context of future climate change for the forest ecosystem

Chemical Substitution-Induced and Competitive Formation of 6H and 3C Perovskite Structures in Ba_3–<i>x</i>Sr_<i>x</i>ZnSb₂O₉: The Coexistence of Two Perovskites in 0.3 ≤ <i>x</i> ≤ 1.0

6H and 3C perovskites are important prototype structures in materials science. We systemically studied the structural evolution induced by the Sr²⁺-to-Ba²⁺ substitution to the parent 6H perovskite Ba₃ZnSb₂O₉. The 6H perovskite is only stable in the narrow range of <i>x</i> ≤ 0.2, which attributes to the impressibility of [Sb₂O₉]. The preference of 90° Sb–O–Sb connection and the strong Sb⁵⁺-Sb⁵⁺ electrostatic repulsion in [Sb₂O₉] are competitive factors to stabilize or destabilize the 6H structure when chemical pressure was introduced by Sr²⁺ incorporation. Therefore, in the following, a wide two-phase region containing 1:2 ordered 6H–Ba_2.8Sr_0.2ZnSb₂O₉ and rock-salt ordered 3C–Ba₂SrZnSb₂O₉ was observed (0.3 ≤ <i>x</i> ≤ 1.0). In the final, the successive symmetry descending was established from cubic (<i>Fm</i>3̅<i>m</i>, 1.3 ≤ <i>x</i> ≤ 1.8) to tetragonal (<i>I</i>4/<i>m</i>, 2.0 ≤ <i>x</i> ≤ 2.4), and finally to monoclinic (<i>I</i>2/<i>m</i>, 2.6 ≤ <i>x</i> ≤ 3.0). Here we proved that the electronic configurations of B-site cations, with either empty, partially, or fully filled d-shell, would also affect the structure stabilization, through the orientation preference of the B–O covalent bonding. Our investigation gives a deeper understanding of the factors to the competitive formation of perovskite structures, facilitating the fine manipulation on their physical properties