Differential expression of six genes and correlation with fatness traits in a unique broiler population

AbstractPrevious results from genome wide association studies (GWASs) in chickens divergently selected for abdominal fat content of Northeast Agricultural University (NEAUHLF) showed that many single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variants were associated with abdominal fat content. Of them, six top significant SNPs at the genome level were located within SRD5A3, SGCZ, DLC1, GBE1, GALNT9 and DNAJB6 genes. Here, expression levels of these six candidate genes were investigated in abdominal fat and liver tissue between fat and lean broilers from the 14th generation population of NEAUHLF. The results showed that expression levels of SRD5A3, SGCZ and DNAJB6 in the abdominal fat and SRD5A3, DLC1, GALNT9, DNAJB6 and GBE1 in the liver tissue differed significantly between the fat and lean birds, and were correlated with abdominal fat traits. The findings will provide important references for further function investigation of the six candidate genes involved in abdominal fat deposition in chickens

A Novel Regulator of Preadipocyte Differentiation, Transcription Factor TCF21, Functions Partially Through Promoting LPL Expression

The transcription factor TCF21 has been previously shown to be specifically expressed in white preadipocytes in mice. However, the exact biological function of TCF21 in the context of adipogenesis remains unknown. In the current study, we used chicken lines selected based on their abdominal fat content, and observed a significant decrease in TCF21 mRNA and protein levels in the abdominal fat of lean broilers relative to fat broilers. Moreover, TCF21 expression increased throughout preadipocyte differentiation in vitro. We also found that TCF21 knockdown and over-expression attenuated and promoted preadipocyte differentiation, respectively, as evidenced by appropriate changes in lipid droplet accumulation and altered expressions of C/EBPa, LPL, and A-FABP. Additional chromatin immunoprecipitation analyses and luciferase assays demonstrated that TCF21 promotes the transcription of LPL by directly binding to the E-box motif in the LPL promoter. Together, these results show that TCF21 is a novel regulator of preadipocyte differentiation, in part by directly promoting LPL expression

MM-VID: Advancing Video Understanding with GPT-4V(ision)

We present MM-VID, an integrated system that harnesses the capabilities of GPT-4V, combined with specialized tools in vision, audio, and speech, to facilitate advanced video understanding. MM-VID is designed to address the challenges posed by long-form videos and intricate tasks such as reasoning within hour-long content and grasping storylines spanning multiple episodes. MM-VID uses a video-to-script generation with GPT-4V to transcribe multimodal elements into a long textual script. The generated script details character movements, actions, expressions, and dialogues, paving the way for large language models (LLMs) to achieve video understanding. This enables advanced capabilities, including audio description, character identification, and multimodal high-level comprehension. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of MM-VID in handling distinct video genres with various video lengths. Additionally, we showcase its potential when applied to interactive environments, such as video games and graphic user interfaces.Comment: Project page at https://multimodal-vid.github.io

Psychometric assessment of HIV/STI sexual risk scale among MSM: A Rasch model approach

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Little research has assessed the degree of severity and ordering of different types of sexual behaviors for HIV/STI infection in a measurement scale. The purpose of this study was to apply the Rasch model on psychometric assessment of an HIV/STI sexual risk scale among men who have sex with men (MSM).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study using respondent driven sampling was conducted among 351 MSM in Shenzhen, China. The Rasch model was used to examine the psychometric properties of an HIV/STI sexual risk scale including nine types of sexual behaviors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The Rasch analysis of the nine items met the unidimensionality and local independence assumption. Although the person reliability was low at 0.35, the item reliability was high at 0.99. The fit statistics provided acceptable infit and outfit values. Item difficulty invariance analysis showed that the item estimates of the risk behavior items were invariant (within error).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The findings suggest that the Rasch model can be utilized for measuring the level of sexual risk for HIV/STI infection as a single latent construct and for establishing the relative degree of severity of each type of sexual behavior in HIV/STI transmission and acquisition among MSM. The measurement scale provides a useful measurement tool to inform, design and evaluate behavioral interventions for HIV/STI infection among MSM.</p

Context Sensitive Stemming for Web Search

Traditionally, stemming has been applied to Information Retrieval tasks by transforming words in documents to the their root form before indexing, and applying a similar transformation to query terms. Although it increases recall, this naive strategy does not work well for Web Search since it lowers precision and requires a significant amount of additional computation. In this paper, we propose a context sensitive stemming method that addresses these two issues. Two unique properties make our approach feasible for Web Search. First, based on statistical language modeling, we perform context sensitive analysis on the query side. We accurately predict which of its morphological variants is useful to expand a query term with before submitting the query to the search engine. This dramatically reduces the number of bad expansions, which in turn reduces the cost of additional computation and improves the precision at the same time. Second, our approach performs a context sensitive document matching for those expanded variants. This conservative strategy serves as a safeguard against spurious stemming, and it turns out to be very important for improving precision. Using word pluralization handling as an example of our stemming approach, our experiments on a major Web search engine show that stemming only 29 % of the query traffic, we can improve relevance as measured by average Discounted Cumulative Gain (DCG5) by 6.1 % on these queries and 1.8 % over all query traffic

Effect of IGFBP2 Overexpression on the Expression of Fatty Acid Synthesis Genes in Primary Cultured Chicken Hepatocytes

The effects of insulin-like growth factor binding protein 2 (IGFBP2) on the expression of fatty acid synthesis regulators and triglyceride production were investigated in primary cultured chicken hepatocytes. The full-length chicken IGFBP2 coding region was synthesized by overlap extension PCR and cloned into the pcDNA3.1 vector. An in situ digestion method was used to prepare the chicken hepatocytes. Primary chicken hepatocytes were maintained in monolayer culture. Real-time PCR was used to detect changes in the expression of IGFBP2, PPARG, IGF1, IGF1R, APOAI, and LFABP, after the overexpression of IGFBP2 in chicken hepatocytes. Triglyceride production and glucose content were also evaluated using triglyceride and glucose analysis methods. The expression level of IGFBP2 increased after transfection of the IGFBP2-containing vector. The expression levels of PPARG, IGF1, and IGF1R also increased in cultured chicken hepatocytes after the overexpression of IGFBP2, whereas the expression of LFABP and APOAI decreased. Triglyceride production in primary cultured chicken hepatocytes increased after the overexpression of IGFBP2. These results suggest that IGFBP2 is involved in lipogenesis, increasing both the expression of fatty acid synthesis regulators, and triglyceride production in primary cultured chicken hepatocytes

A Fast-Response AIE-Active Ratiometric Fluorescent Probe for the Detection of Carboxylesterase

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is associated with a high mortality rate worldwide. The therapeutic outcomes can be significantly improved if diagnosis and treatment are initiated earlier in the disease process. Recently, the carboxylesterase (CaE) activity/level in human plasma was reported to be a novel serological biomarker candidate for HCC. In this article, we fabricated a new fluorescent probe with AIE characteristics for the rapid detection of CaE with a more reliable ratiometric response mode. The TCFISE probe showed high sensitivity (LOD: 93.0 μU/mL) and selectivity toward CaE. Furthermore, the good pH stability, superior resistance against photobleaching, and low cytotoxicity highlight the high potential of the TCFISE probe for application in the monitoring of CaE activity in complex biological samples and in live cells, tissues, and animals

Differential expression of six genes and correlation with fatness traits in a unique broiler population

Previous results from genome wide association studies (GWASs) in chickens divergently selected for abdominal fat content of Northeast Agricultural University (NEAUHLF) showed that many single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variants were associated with abdominal fat content. Of them, six top significant SNPs at the genome level were located within SRD5A3, SGCZ, DLC1, GBE1, GALNT9 and DNAJB6 genes. Here, expression levels of these six candidate genes were investigated in abdominal fat and liver tissue between fat and lean broilers from the 14th generation population of NEAUHLF. The results showed that expression levels of SRD5A3, SGCZ and DNAJB6 in the abdominal fat and SRD5A3, DLC1, GALNT9, DNAJB6 and GBE1 in the liver tissue differed significantly between the fat and lean birds, and were correlated with abdominal fat traits. The findings will provide important references for further function investigation of the six candidate genes involved in abdominal fat deposition in chickens

Sinomenine Hydrochloride Inhibits Human Glioblastoma Cell Growth through Reactive Oxygen Species Generation and Autophagy-Lysosome Pathway Activation: An In Vitro and In Vivo Study

Glioblastoma is the most common malignant primary brain tumor, and it is one of the causes of cancer fatality in both adult and pediatric populations. Patients with glioblastoma require chemotherapy after surgical resection and radiotherapy. Therefore, chemotherapy constitutes a viable approach for the eradication of glioblastoma cells. In this study, the anti-tumor activity of sinomenine hydrochloride (SH) was evaluated in U87 and SF767 cells in vitro and in vivo. The results showed that SH potently inhibited U87 and SF767 cell viability and did not cause caspase-dependent cell death, as demonstrated by the absence of significant early apoptosis and caspase-3 cleavage. Instead, SH activated an autophagy-mediated cell death pathway, as indicated by the accumulated microtubule-associated protein light chain 3B (LC3B)-II, triggered autophagic flux and enhanced cell viability after pretreatment with autophagy inhibitors. SH-mediated autophagy in the two cell lines was implicated in reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, protein kinase B (Akt)-mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway suppression and c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase (JNK) pathway activation. The ROS antioxidant N-acetylcysteine (NAC), the Akt-specific activator insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and the JNK-specific inhibitor SP600125 attenuated SH-induced autophagy. Moreover, ROS activated autophagy via the Akt-mTOR and JNK pathways. Additionally, SH treatment may promote lysosome biogenesis through activating transcription factor EB (TFEB). The in vivo study found that SH effectively suppressed glioblastoma growth without exhibiting significant toxicity. In conclusion, our findings reveal a novel mechanism of action of SH in cancer cells via the induction of autophagy through ROS generation and autophagy-lysosome pathway activation; these findings also supply a new potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of human glioblastoma