Diversity of eukaryotic plankton of aquaculture ponds with Carassius auratus gibelio, using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis

PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) were used to explore the relationship between eukaryotic plankton community succession and environmental factors in two aquaculture pond models with gibel carp Carassius auratus gibelio. The main culture species of pond 1 were gibel carp and grass carp, and the combined density was 46224 fingerling/ha (gibel carp/grass carp/silver carp/bighead carp, 17:4:6:1). The main culture species of pond 2 was gibel carp, and the combined density was 37551 fingerling/ha (gibel carp/silver carp/bighead carp, 52:1:1). Water samples were collected monthly. The results showed that the annual average concentrations of TP and PO_4-P in pond 1 were significantly higher than pond 2 (p>0.05). The concentration of chlorophyll a (chl a) has no significantly difference between pond 1 and pond 2. DGGE profiles of 18S rRNA gene fragments from the two ponds revealed that the diversity of eukaryotic plankton assemblages was highly variable. 91 bands and 71 bands were detected in pond 1 and pond 2, respectively. The average Shannon–Wiener index of pond 1 was significantly higher than pond 2. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) revealed that temperature played a key role in the structure of the eukaryotic plankton community in both ponds, but the nutrient concentration did not affect it. Our results suggest that DGGE method is a cost-effective way to gain insight into seasonal dynamics of eukaryotic plankton communities in culture ponds, and the increase in the number of filter-feeding silver carp and bighead carp could increase the diversity of the eukaryotic plankton community

Observation of Weyl nodes in TaAs

In 1929, H. Weyl proposed that the massless solution of Dirac equation represents a pair of new type particles, the so-called Weyl fermions [1]. However the existence of them in particle physics remains elusive for more than eight decades. Recently, significant advances in both topological insulators and topological semimetals have provided an alternative way to realize Weyl fermions in condensed matter as an emergent phenomenon: when two non-degenerate bands in the three-dimensional momentum space cross in the vicinity of Fermi energy (called as Weyl nodes), the low energy excitation behaves exactly the same as Weyl fermions. Here, by performing soft x-ray angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements which mainly probe bulk band structure, we directly observe the long-sought-after Weyl nodes for the first time in TaAs, whose projected locations on the (001) surface match well to the Fermi arcs, providing undisputable experimental evidence of existence of Weyl fermion quasiparticles in TaAs.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, see also related papers on TaAs arXiv:1501.00060, arXiv:1502.0468

Solving 0-1 Knapsack Problem by Greedy Degree and Expectation Efficiency

It is well known that 0-1 knapsack problem (KP01) plays an important role in both computing theory and real life application. Due to its NP-hardness, lots of impressive research work has been performed on many variants of the problem. Inspired by region partition of items, an effective hybrid algorithm based on greedy degree and expectation efficiency (GDEE) is presented in this paper. In the proposed algorithm, initially determinate items region, candidate items region and unknown items region are generated to direct the selection of items. A greedy degree model inspired by greedy strategy is devised to select some items as initially determinate region. Dynamic expectation efficiency strategy is designed and used to select some other items as candidate region, and the remaining items are regarded as unknown region. To obtain the final items to which the best profit corresponds, static expectation efficiency strategy is proposed whilst the parallel computing method is adopted to update the objective function value. Extensive numerical investigations based on a large number of instances are conducted. The proposed GDEE algorithm is evaluated against chemical reaction optimization algorithm and modified discrete shuffled frog leaping algorithm. The comparative results show that GDEE is much more effective in solving KP01 than other algorithms and that it is a promising tool for solving combinatorial optimization problems such as resource allocation and production scheduling

Promotion of cellular growth and motility is independent of enzymatic activity of fibroblast activation Protein-a.

BACKGROUND: Fibroblast activation protein-alpha (FAPα) is a type-II integral membrane serine protease and is expressed in most stromal fibroblasts. Recent studies showed that FAPα is also expressed in certain cancer cells but its role is still uncertain. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed the non-enzymatic activity of FAPα in breast cancer cells by introducing an enzymatic mutant FAPα (FAPS624A), in which the serine catalytic triad was destroyed. FAPα overexpression and knockdown cells were generated as controls. RESULTS: Cellular growth and motility were markedly increased in MCF-7 cells overexpressing FAPα and enzymatic-mutant FAPS624A. This is consistent with observations in FAPα-silenced BT549 cells. Western blotting showed activation of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (AKT) and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) 2/9 in both wild-type FAPα-overexpressing and enzymatic-mutant FAPS624A-overexpressing cells. CONCLUSION: Promotion of cellular growth and motility is independent of the enzymatic activity of FAPα in breast cancer cells. The PI3K/AKT and MMP2/9 signaling pathways might be involved in such regulation

HMGB1: a novel protein that induced platelets active and aggregation via Toll-like receptor-4, NF-kappaB and cGMP dependent mechanisms

BACKGROUND: Thrombotic diseases are a group of prevalent and life-threatening diseases. Selective inhibition of pathological thrombosis holds the key to treat variety of thrombotic diseases. The pathological thrombosis can be induced by either tissue necrosis and deregulated inflammation. HMGB1, as an important proinflammatory cytokine and a late mediator, also involves on thrombosis disease. However, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. METHODS: Immunofluorescence, ELISA assay, Platelet Aggregation, Thromboelastogram (TEG) analyzes. Flow cytometric analysis and Western blot analysis were used to investigated the role of HMGB1 in platelet aggregation and obtained following observations. RESULTS: By doing so, we obtained the following observations: i) Highly purified HMGB1 recombinant protein induces platelet aggregation and secretion in a dose-dependent manner in the presence of serum. ii) Low concentration of extracellular HMGB1 could synergistically promote subthreshold concentration of collagen or thrombin induced platelet aggregation. iii) Extracellular HMGB1 promoted platelet aggregation in a platelet-expressed GPIIb/IIIa-dependent manner. iv) We proposed that extracellular HMGB1 seems to promote the phosphorylation of GPIIb/IIIa and subsequent platelet aggregation via TLR4/NF-kappaB and cGMP pathway. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we provide evidence for the hypothesis that HMGB1 interact with platelet might play an important role in the haemostasis and thrombotic diseases. Our research might be provide an interesting avenue for the treatment of thrombotic diseases in the future