CD4+CD62L+ Central Memory T Cells Can Be Converted to Foxp3+ T Cells

The peripheral Foxp3+ Treg pool consists of naturally arising Treg (nTreg) and adaptive Treg cells (iTreg). It is well known that naive CD4+ T cells can be readily converted to Foxp3+ iTreg in vitro, and memory CD4+ T cells are resistant to conversion. In this study, we investigated the induction of Foxp3+ T cells from various CD4+ T-cell subsets in human peripheral blood. Though naive CD4+ T cells were readily converted to Foxp3+ T cells with TGF-β and IL-2 treatment in vitro, such Foxp3+ T cells did not express the memory marker CD45RO as do Foxp3+ T cells induced in the peripheral blood of Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) patients. Interestingly, a subset of human memory CD4+ T cells, defined as CD62L+ central memory T cells, could be induced by TGF-β to differentiate into Foxp3+ T cells. It is well known that Foxp3+ T cells derived from human CD4+CD25- T cells in vitro are lack suppressive functions. Our data about the suppressive functions of CD4+CD62L+ central memory T cell-derived Foxp3+ T cells support this conception, and an epigenetic analysis of these cells showed a similar methylation pattern in the FOXP3 Treg-specific demethylated region as the naive CD4+ T cell-derived Foxp3+ T cells. But further research showed that mouse CD4+ central memory T cells also could be induced to differentiate into Foxp3+ T cells, such Foxp3+ T cells could suppress the proliferation of effector T cells. Thus, our study identified CD4+CD62L+ central memory T cells as a novel potential source of iTreg

1-(1,3-Benzothia­zol-2-yl)-3-phenyl-2-pyrazoline

In the title compound, C16H13N3S, the pyrazoline ring forms dihedral angles of 6.89 (14) and 4.96 (11)° with the benzene ring and the benzothia­zole group, respectively. In the crystal, weak C—H⋯N inter­actions link the mol­ecules into chains extending along the b-axis direction

Protective effects of cysteine analogues on acute myocardial ischemia: novel modulators of endogenous H2S production

The current study was designed to evaluate the pharmacologic effects of three novel cysteine-containing compounds: S-propyl-l-cysteine (SPC), S-allyl-l-cysteine (SAC), and S-propargyl-l-cysteine (SPRC) on H(2)S production and antioxidant defenses in an acute myocardial infarction (MI) rat model. The enzymatic activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GPx), as well as glutathione redox status and malonaldehyde (MDA) content, also were determined. All three compounds were found to preserve SOD and GPx activities and also tissue GSH levels while reducing the formation of the lipid peroxidation product MDA in ventricular tissues. With immunfluorescence assays, we observed the expression of CSE and Mn-SOD. The morphologic changes of the cardiac cells are seen with both light and electron microscopy. The corresponding pathologic alterations were characterized mainly as loss of adherence between cardiac myocytes and swollen or ruptured mitochondria at the ultrastructural level. Propargylglycine, a selective inhibitor of CSE, abolished the protective effects of each compound used in the current model. Our study provides novel evidence that SPC, SAC, and SPRC have cardioprotective effects in MI by reducing the deleterious effects of oxidative stress by modulating the endogenous levels of H(2)S and preserving the activities of antioxidant defensive enzymes like SOD

Hepatitis B virus infection and replication in a new cell culture system established by fusing HepG2 cells with primary human hepatocytes

BackgroundHepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is strictly species and tissue specific, therefore none of the cell models established previously can reproduce the natural infection process of HBV in vitro. The aim of this study was to establish a new cell line that is susceptible to HBV and can support the replication of HBV.MethodsA hybrid cell line was established by fusing primary human hepatocytes with HepG2 cells. The hybrid cells were incubated with HBV-positive serum for 12 hours. HBV DNA was detected by quantitative fluorescence polymerase chain reaction (QF-PCR). HBsAg (surface antigen) and HBeAg (extracellular form of core antigen) were observed by electrochemiluminescence (ECL). HBcAg (core antigen) was detected by the indirect immunofluorescence technique. HBV covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) was analyzed by Southern blot hybridization and quantified using real-time PCR.ResultsA new cell line was established and named HepCHLine-7. The extracellular HBV DNA was observed from Day 2 and the levels ranged from 9.80 (± 0.32) × 102 copies/mL to 3.12 (± 0.03) × 104 copies/mL. Intracellular HBV DNA was detected at Day 2 after infection and the levels ranged from 7.92 (± 1.08) × 103 copies/mL to 5.63 (± 0.11) × 105 copies/mL. HBsAg in the culture medium was detected from Day 4 to Day 20. HBeAg secretion was positive from Day 5 to Day 20. HBcAg constantly showed positive signals in approximately 20% (± 0.82%) of hybrid cells. Intracellular HBV cccDNA could be detected as early as 2 days postinfection and the highest level was 15.76 (± 0.26) copies/cell.ConclusionHepCHLine-7 cells were susceptible to HBV and supported the replication of HBV. They are therefore suitable for studying the complete life cycle of HBV

On Estimation of Fully Entangled Fraction

We study the fully entangled fraction (FEF) of arbitrary mixed states. New upper bounds of FEF are derived. These upper bounds make complements on the estimation of the value of FEF. For weakly mixed quantum states, an upper bound is shown to be very tight to the exact value of FEF.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Detecting and removing visual distractors for video aesthetic enhancement

Personal videos often contain visual distractors, which are objects that are accidentally captured that can distract viewers from focusing on the main subjects. We propose a method to automatically detect and localize these distractors through learning from a manually labeled dataset. To achieve spatially and temporally coherent detection, we propose extracting features at the Temporal-Superpixel (TSP) level using a traditional SVM-based learning framework. We also experiment with end-to-end learning using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), which achieves slightly higher performance than other methods. The classification result is further refined in a post-processing step based on graph-cut optimization. Experimental results show that our method achieves an accuracy of 81% and a recall of 86%. We demonstrate several ways of removing the detected distractors to improve the video quality, including video hole filling; video frame replacement; and camera path re-planning. The user study results show that our method can significantly improve the aesthetic quality of videos

Dynamic changes and convergence of China’s regional green productivity:A dynamic spatial econometric analysis

Low-carbon economic development is at the heart of the post-pandemic green recovery scheme worldwide. It requires economic recovery without compromising on the environment, implying a critical role that green productivity plays in achieving the carbon neutrality goal. Green productivity measures the quality of economic growth with consideration for energy consumption and environmental pollution. This study employs the slacks-based measure directional distance function (SBM-DDF) approach and the Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) index to calculate green productivity and its components of 30 provinces in China between 2001 and 2018. Using a spatial panel data model, we empirically analyzed the conditional β-convergence of China's green productivity. We found that overall, since 2001, China's green productivity has demonstrated a continuous upward trend. When taking into account spatial factors, China's green productivity demonstrates a significant conditional β-convergence. In terms of regional effects, the results indicate that the green productivity of the eastern and western regions demonstrates club convergence, implying a more balanced green economic development. Moreover, the convergence rate of China's green productivity increases with the addition of environmental regulation variable, and so the corresponding convergence time decreases. It indicates that environmental regulations help to facilitate the convergence of China's green productivity, narrowing the gap between the regional green economic development. The findings provide guideline for achieving a low-carbon development and carbon neutrality from a regional green productivity perspective

Holographic Storage of Biphoton Entanglement

Coherent and reversible storage of multi-photon entanglement with a multimode quantum memory is essential for scalable all-optical quantum information processing. Although single photon has been successfully stored in different quantum systems, storage of multi-photon entanglement remains challenging because of the critical requirement for coherent control of photonic entanglement source, multimode quantum memory, and quantum interface between them. Here we demonstrate a coherent and reversible storage of biphoton Bell-type entanglement with a holographic multimode atomic-ensemble-based quantum memory. The retrieved biphoton entanglement violates Bell's inequality for 1 microsecond storage time and a memory-process fidelity of 98% is demonstrated by quantum state tomography.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. Let

Hybridized surface plasmon polaritons at an interface between a metal and a uniaxial crystal

The surface plasmonpolariton (SPP) at an interface between a metal and a uniaxial crystal is studied. A new class of hybridized SPP found in this work is quite different from the traditional SPP at the interface between a metal and an isotropic dielectric. In contrast to the two evanescent fields for the traditional SPP, the hybridized SPP involves four evanescent fields: transverse-electric-like and transverse-magnetic-like waves in the metal, and ordinary-light-like and extraordinary-light-like waves in the uniaxial crystal. The necessary conditions and the regimes for the existence of the hybridized SPP are presented. Some potential applications are also discussed.This work is supported in part by NSFC under Grant No. 10325417, by the State Key Program for Basic Research of China under Grant No. 2006CB921805, and by the 111 Project under Grant No. B07026