Dynamic expression of CEACAM7 in precursor lesions of gastric carcinoma and its prognostic value in combination with CEA

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The significance of carcinoembryonic antigen-related cell adhesion molecule 7 (CEACAM7) expression in gastric carcinoma and precancerous lesions and its correlation with CEA expression has rarely been previously investigated.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>CEACAM7 and CEA expression was detected by immunohistochemistry in consecutive sections of 345 subjects with gastric carcinoma and precancerous lesions. Laser confocal analysis was performed to determine CEACAM7 and CEA localization. Correlation between CEACAM7 and CEA expression with clinicopathological parameters was statistically analyzed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>CEACAM7 expression correlated with pathologic grading (P = 0.006), Lauren's classification (P = 0.023), and CEA expression (Spearman R = 0.605, P < 0.001) in gastric carcinoma. CEACAM7 co-localized with CEA predominantly in the cytoplasmic membrane of cancerous cells. CEA expression was correlated with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.031). CEACAM7 and CEA expression increased progressively from precursor lesions to gastric carcinomas. A combination of CEACAM7 and CEA expression was determined to be an independent predictor for patients with gastric carcinoma by multivariate analysis (P = 0.001).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>CEACAM7 expression correlates with tumor differentiation and CEA expression in gastric carcinoma. CEACAM7 and CEA expression may synergistically promote gastric carcinogenesis. Combined CEACAM7 and CEA expression analysis can be a useful postoperative predictor for patients with gastric carcinoma.</p

Roles of sulfate-reducing bacteria in sustaining the diversity and stability of marine bacterial community

Microbes play central roles in ocean food webs and global biogeochemical processes. Yet, the information available regarding the highly diverse bacterial communities in these systems is not comprehensive. Here we investigated the diversity, assembly process, and species coexistence frequency of bacterial communities in seawater and sediment across ∼600 km of the eastern Chinese marginal seas using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Our analyses showed that compared with seawater, bacterial communities in sediment possessed higher diversity and experienced tight phylogenetic distribution. Neutral model analysis showed that the relative contribution of stochastic processes to the assembly process of bacterial communities in sediment was lower than that in seawater. Functional prediction results showed that sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) were enriched in the core bacterial sub-communities. The bacterial diversities of both sediment and seawater were positively associated with the relative abundance of SRB. Co-occurrence analysis showed that bacteria in seawater exhibited a more complex interaction network and closer co-occurrence relationships than those in sediment. The SRB of seawater were centrally located in the network and played an essential role in sustaining the complex network. In addition, further analysis indicated that the SRB of seawater helped maintain the high stability of the bacterial network. Overall, this study provided further comprehensive information regarding the characteristics of bacterial communities in the ocean, and provides new insights into keystone taxa and their roles in sustaining microbial diversity and stability in ocean

Multiplexed CRISPR/Cas9 Targeting of Genes Implicated in Retinal Regeneration and Degeneration

Thousands of genes have been implicated in retinal regeneration, but only a few have been shown to impact the regenerative capacity of Müller glia—an adult retinal stem cell with untapped therapeutic potential. Similarly, among nearly 300 genetic loci associated with human retinal disease, the majority remain untested in animal models. To address the large-scale nature of these problems, we are applying CRISPR/Cas9-based genome modification strategies in zebrafish to target over 300 genes implicated in retinal regeneration or degeneration. Our intent is to enable large-scale reverse genetic screens by applying a multiplexed gene disruption strategy that markedly increases the efficiency of the screening process. To facilitate large-scale phenotyping, we incorporate an automated reporter quantification-based assay to identify cellular degeneration and regeneration-deficient phenotypes in transgenic fish. Multiplexed gene targeting strategies can address mismatches in scale between “big data” bioinformatics and wet lab experimental capacities, a critical shortfall limiting comprehensive functional analyses of factors implicated in ever-expanding multiomics datasets. This report details the progress we have made to date with a multiplexed CRISPR/Cas9-based gene targeting strategy and discusses how the methodologies applied can further our understanding of the genes that predispose to retinal degenerative disease and which control the regenerative capacity of retinal Müller glia cells

Baichuan 2: Open Large-scale Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance on a variety of natural language tasks based on just a few examples of natural language instructions, reducing the need for extensive feature engineering. However, most powerful LLMs are closed-source or limited in their capability for languages other than English. In this technical report, we present Baichuan 2, a series of large-scale multilingual language models containing 7 billion and 13 billion parameters, trained from scratch, on 2.6 trillion tokens. Baichuan 2 matches or outperforms other open-source models of similar size on public benchmarks like MMLU, CMMLU, GSM8K, and HumanEval. Furthermore, Baichuan 2 excels in vertical domains such as medicine and law. We will release all pre-training model checkpoints to benefit the research community in better understanding the training dynamics of Baichuan 2.Comment: Baichuan 2 technical report. Github: https://github.com/baichuan-inc/Baichuan

The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Bolbitis multipinna (Dryopteridaceae)

Bolbitis multipinna is an endemic fern found in Yunnan, China. In the case of the chloroplast genome, Illumina Hiseq X-Ten was used, and it revealed a conserved quadripartite structure of 152,437 bp, including a large single-copy (LSC) region of 82,618 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 21,403 bp, and a pair of inverted repeat regions of 24,208 bp (IRa and IRb). The chloroplast genome of B. multipinna contains 132 genes, including 89 protein-coding genes, 35 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA genes. By using the maximum-likelihood method and the Bayesian analysis on the chloroplast genomes of 15 species ferns, the phylogenetic analysis revealed that B. multipinna is closely related to B. heteroclita

Fabrication of photocurable PDMS fiber for dielectric elastomer linear actuator

Dielectric elastomers (DEs) exhibit high obtainable actuation speeds, large strains and high work densities, showing great potential for actuator applications such as flat screen loud speakers, lightweight morphing structures and prosthetics.[1] To date, varying configurations for dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) have been studied, including planar, tube, roll, extender, diaphragm, and bender.[2] Tube DEA consists of a thinwalled cylindrical tube of a dielectric elastomer, having two compliant electrodes on the internal and external lateral surfaces. By applying a voltage between the compliant electrodes, the interposed tube wall is squeezed, causing an axial elongation. Tube DEAs are potential candidates for the realisation of “artificial muscles” owing to their linear (along a line) actuation capabilities.[3] Electroactive fiber actuators include bundles of tube DEAs, which produce a very strong actuation force as a result of the accumulation of individual force generated by each tube DEA. Even if a fraction of the fibers in a bundle fail, the electroactive fiber actuator will in most cases continue to operate. Furthermore, because electroactive fibers have small thickness sometimes on the order of a few micrometers, actuation voltages less than 100 V can be used.[4] In this work, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) fiber is prepared by means of wet spinning method using photocurable thiol-ene reaction between the carbon-based sulfhydryl (R-SH) group and alkene (C=C) group in the thiol-ene-based PDMS resins to form an alkyl sulfide. The developed PDMS fiber shows improved mechanical properties compared to the planar film. The resulting fiber DEA exhibits larger and more lineardeformation when working in multiple cyclic actuation tests. This work provides wider avenues for creating active soft matter with complex architectures to enable fast programmable actuation for a myriad of applications including soft actuators and robots