Efficacy of practising Tai Chi for older people with mild dementia: Protocol for a randomised controlled study

© Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. Introduction Many studies suggest that Tai Chi exercise is a safe and appropriate mind-body exercise for older people and effectively slows down age-related cognitive decline. A set of bespoke Tai Chi exercise named 'Cognition Protecting Tai Chi' (CPT) has been created for older people with cognitive impairments by the research team of geriatricians, neurologists, rehabilitation specialists, experts of sports medicine and experienced practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine. This trial is designed to evaluate its effects on cognitive function, behaviour/moods, risk of falls and activities of daily living of the participants with mild dementia. Methods and analysis A randomised controlled study will be conducted. Eighty participants with mild dementia will be recruited and randomly allocated to an intervention group and a control group. The intervention group will practice the CPT exercise three times a week for 20 min each time under the guidance of professional therapists. The control group will continue receiving their routine treatments. The duration of this study will be 10 months. All participants will be assessed with a battery of neuropsychological and functional evaluations, which include Mini Mental State Examination, Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the WHO-University of California Los Angeles-Auditory Verbal Learning test (WHO-UCLA-AVLT), Trail Making Test (TMT), Geriatric Depression Scale, Neuropsychological Inventory and Barthel Index, at the baseline, 5 and 10 months during the study period. Fall incident will also be recorded. The primary outcome will be the WHO-UCLA-AVLT delayed recall score. The secondary outcome will be the TMT score. Ethics and dissemination This study has been approved by the ethical review committee of the Beijing Geriatric Hospital (protocol number: 2015-021). Informed consent will be obtained from all participants or their guardians. The authors intend to submit the findings of the study to peer-reviewed journals or academic conferences to be published

Molecular Cloning and Bioinformatics Analysis of araC Gene of Vibrio alginolyticus

[Objective] To clone araC gene of Vibrio alginolyticus HY9901 strain, and analyze bioinformatics. [Methods] the whole genome sequence of Vibrio alginolyticus on GenBank was used to design specific primers. According to the principle of PCR amplification sequence, the target gene araC was amplified, and then the sequence was further analyzed by bioinformatics method to establish the phylogenetic tree of araC gene and its corresponding subunit three-dimensional structure model. [Results] Sequence analysis revealed araC gene is 711 bp and encodes a putative protein of 236 amino acids. The predicted molecular mass of AraCwas 26.92 ku. Using Signal P 4.0 and TMHMM Server 2.0 software for analysis, it was predicted that the AraC protein did not contain a signal peptide or a transmembranous region. The AraC protein had two cAMP and cGMP dependent protein kinase phosphorylation site, five protein kinase C phosphorylation sites, three casein kinase II phosphorylation sites, one prenyl group binding site (CAAX box) and five microbodies C-terminal targeting signal. The predicted results of protein subcellular localization showed that AraC was located in the mitochondria, nucleus and cytoplasm. Its protein is unstable and hydrophilic. The AraC protein is a transcriptional regulatory protein which belongs to HTH_18 superfamily. According to the prediction, secondary structure: a-helix (Alpha helix) accounted for 52.12%, Random coil (31.78%), Extended strand (11.02%), b-fold (Beta turn) accounted for 5.08%. V. alginolyticus, Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio palustris were clustered together, which implies that the genetic relationship between these three species was the closest