Characteristics of Growth and Metabolism of Thermoascus aurantiacus QH-1 Derived Hongxinqu

To explore the growth metabolic characteristics of Thermoascus aurantiacus, the optimal growth conditions, ethanol tolerance, growth curve, saccharifying power and liquefaction power of Thermoascus aurantiacus QH-1 were analyzed. The results showed that Thermoascus aurantiacus QH-1 grew rapidly and had pigment in PDA, MEA and SDA mediums with rich in nutrients, and colonies growing on synthetic medium and G25N medium grew slowly and almost no pigment. The optimal growth conditions of T.aurantiacus QH-1 strain was as follows: Temperature 45 ℃, pH4.0, inoculum concentration 3%, liquied loading volume 160 mL. The lowest and highest growth temperatures of Th. aurantiacus QH-1 were 26 and 60 ℃, respectively. Among the raw materials for brewing Daqu, sorghum rice was the best for its growth, and the concentration of 6% ethanol had no effect on the grwoth of T.aurantiacus QH-1. T.aurantiacus QH-1 grew slowly with lower saccharifying power in the early stage, and the growth rate accelerated with the higher saccharifying power at 6~8 days in solid state medium of barley and pea. The growth curve of T.aurantiacus QH-1 was similar to its change curve of saccharifying power. However, its liquefying power was detected on day 10. The results provided necessary information for the further development and utilization of T.aurantiacus QH-1

A Novel Reassortant Avian H7N6 Influenza Virus Is Transmissible in Guinea Pigs via Respiratory Droplets

Since 2013, H7N9 and H5N6 avian influenza viruses (AIVs) have caused sporadic human infections and deaths and continued to circulate in the poultry industry. Since 2014, H7N6 viruses which might be reassortants of H7N9 and H5N6 viruses, have been isolated in China. However, the biological properties of H7N6 viruses are unknown. Here, we characterize the receptor binding preference, pathogenicity and transmissibility of a H7N6 virus A/chicken/Hubei/00095/2017(H7N6) (abbreviated HB95), and a closely related H7N9 virus, A/chicken/Hubei/00093/2017(H7N9) (abbreviated HB93), which were isolated from poultry in Hubei Province, China, in 2017. Phylogenetic analyses demonstrated that the hemagglutinin (HA) gene of HB95 is closely related to those of HB93 and human-origin H7N9 viruses, and that the neuraminidase (NA) gene of HB95 shared the highest nucleotide similarity with those of H5N6 viruses. HB95 and HB93 had binding affinity for human-like α2, 6-linked sialic acid receptors and were virulent in mice without prior adaptation. In addition, in guinea pig model, HB93 was transmissible by direct contact, but HB95 was transmissible via respiratory droplets. These results revealed the potential threat to public health posed by H7N6 influenza viruses and emphasized the need for continued surveillance of the circulation of this subtype in poultry

A genetic study and meta-analysis of the genetic predisposition of prostate cancer in a Chinese population.

Prostate cancer predisposition has been extensively investigated in European populations, but there have been few studies of other ethnic groups. To investigate prostate cancer susceptibility in the under-investigated Chinese population, we performed single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array analysis on a cohort of Chinese cases and controls and then meta-analysis with data from the existing Chinese prostate cancer genome-wide association study (GWAS). Genotyping 211,155 SNPs in 495 cases and 640 controls of Chinese ancestry identified several new suggestive Chinese prostate cancer predisposition loci. However, none of them reached genome-wide significance level either by meta-analysis or replication study. The meta-analysis with the Chinese GWAS data revealed that four 8q24 loci are the main contributors to Chinese prostate cancer risk and the risk alleles from three of them exist at much higher frequencies in Chinese than European populations. We also found that several predisposition loci reported in Western populations have different effect on Chinese men. Therefore, this first extensive single-nucleotide polymorphism study of Chinese prostate cancer in comparison with European population indicates that four loci on 8q24 contribute to a great risk of prostate cancer in a considerable large proportion of Chinese men. Based on those four loci, the top 10% of the population have six- or two-fold prostate cancer risk compared with men of the bottom 10% or median risk respectively, which may facilitate the design of prostate cancer genetic risk screening and prevention in Chinese men. These findings also provide additional insights into the etiology and pathogenesis of prostate cancer.This work was conducted on behalf of the CHIPGECS and The PRACTICAL consortia (see Supplementary Consortia). We acknowledge the contribution of doctors, nurses and postgraduate research students at the CHIPGENCS sample collecting centers. We thank Orchid and Rosetrees for funding support. This work was also supported by National Natural Science foundation of China for funding support to H Zhang (Grant No: 30671793 and 81072377), N Feng (Grant No: 81272831), X Zhang (Grant No: 30572139, 30872924 and 81072095), S Zhao (Grant No: 81072092 and 81328017), Y Yu (Grant No: 81172448) and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University from Department of Education of China (NCET-08-0223) and the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program 2012AA021101) to X Zhang.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Impact Journals via http://dx.doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.725

Synthesis of imines from amines in aliphatic alcohols on Pd/ZrO2 catalyst under ambient conditions

Synthesis of imines from amines and aliphatic alcohols (C1–C6) in the presence of base on supported palladium nanoparticles has been achieved for the first time. The catalytic system shows high activity and selectivity in open air at room temperature. As an example of the isostructural Ln3Sb3Co2O14 (Ln: La, Pr, Nd, Sm—Ho) series with an ordered pyrochlore structure, the La variant is prepared by a citrate complex method employing stoichiometric amounts of La(NO3)3, Co(NO3)2, and Sb tartrate together with citric acid with a metal/citrate molar ratio of 1:

One-pot synthesis of imines from benzyl alcohol and amines on Au/ZrO2 catalyst

Imines were synthesized from benzyl alcohol and amines by using catalysts of gold nanoparticles supported on ZrO2 (Au/ZrO2). The effects of reaction time, temperature, gold loadings and base were investigated. High yields were\ud achieved under moderate conditions (60 °C) in the presence of KOCH3. For instance, the yield of N-benzylidenebenzylamine produced from benzyl alcohol and\ud benzylamine on 3 wt% Au/ZrO2 is 87 %. The synthesis of imine involves two reaction steps: selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde and the coupling\ud reaction of amines with benzaldehyde. In the first step, the base promotes the selective oxidation. The reactions of benzyl alcohol with three different amines, aniline, n-butylamine and benzylamine, were conducted to produce corresponding imines. The results show that the amine with stronger nucleophilicity has better ability to react with benzaldehyde in the second step, resulting in higher yield of the corresponding imine. We proposed a tentative mechanism for the synthesis process

Spatial Structure of a Potential Ecological Network in Nanping, China, Based on Ecosystem Service Functions

The increasing scale of urbanization and human activities has resulted in the fragmentation of natural habitats, leading to the reduction of ecological landscape connectivity and biodiversity. Taking Nanping as the study area, the core areas with good connectivity were extracted as ecological sources using a morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) and landscape connectivity index. Then the ecosystem service functions of the ecological sources were evaluated based on the InVEST model. Finally, we extracted the potential ecological corridor based on the land type, elevation and ecosystem service functions. The results showed that the ecological source with higher landscape connectivity is distributed in the north and there are clear landscape connectivity faults in the northern and southern regions. Moreover, the areas with high habitat quality, soil retention and water production are mainly distributed in the northern ecological source areas. The 15 potential ecological corridors extracted were distributed unevenly. Among them, the important ecological corridors formed a triangle network, while the general ecological corridors were concentrated in the northwest. Therefore, it is suggested that the important core patches in the north be protected, and the effective connection between the north and south be improved. These results can provide a scientific basis for ecological construction and hierarchical management of the ecological networks

Automatic Epileptic Seizure Detection in EEG Signals Using Multi-Domain Feature Extraction and Nonlinear Analysis

Epileptic seizure detection is commonly implemented by expert clinicians with visual observation of electroencephalography (EEG) signals, which tends to be time consuming and sensitive to bias. The epileptic detection in most previous research suffers from low power and unsuitability for processing large datasets. Therefore, a computerized epileptic seizure detection method is highly required to eradicate the aforementioned problems, expedite epilepsy research and aid medical professionals. In this work, we propose an automatic epilepsy diagnosis framework based on the combination of multi-domain feature extraction and nonlinear analysis of EEG signals. Firstly, EEG signals are pre-processed by using the wavelet threshold method to remove the artifacts. We then extract representative features in the time domain, frequency domain, time-frequency domain and nonlinear analysis features based on the information theory. These features are further extracted in five frequency sub-bands based on the clinical interest, and the dimension of the original feature space is then reduced by using both a principal component analysis and an analysis of variance. Furthermore, the optimal combination of the extracted features is identified and evaluated via different classifiers for the epileptic seizure detection of EEG signals. Finally, the performance of the proposed method is investigated by using a public EEG database at the University Hospital Bonn, Germany. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed epileptic seizure detection method can achieve a high average accuracy of 99.25%, indicating a powerful method in the detection and classification of epileptic seizures. The proposed seizure detection scheme is thus hoped to eliminate the burden of expert clinicians when they are processing a large number of data by visual observation and to speed-up the epilepsy diagnosis

Co-delivery of paclitaxel and anti-VEGF siRNA by tripeptide lipid nanoparticle to enhance the anti-tumor activity for lung cancer therapy

The combination of chemotherapeutic drug paclitaxel (PTX) and VEGF siRNA could inhibit cancer development with synergistic efficacy. However, efficient and safe delivery systems with high encapsulation efficiency of PTX and a long-time release of drugs are urgently needed. In this study, novel nanoparticles (PTX/siRNA/FALS) were constructed by using tripeptide lipid (L), sucrose laurate (S), and folate-PEG2000-DSPE (FA) to co-deliver PTX and siRNA. The cancer cell targeting nanoparticle carrier (PTX/siRNA/FALS) showed anticipated PTX encapsulation efficiency, siRNA retardation ability, improved cell uptake and sustained and controlled drug release. It led to significant anti-tumor activity in vitro and in vivo by efficient inhibition of VEGF expression and induction of cancer cell apoptosis. Importantly, the biocompatibility of the carriers and low dosage of PTX required for effective therapy greatly reduced the toxicity to mice. The targeting nanoparticles show potential as an effective co-delivery platform for RNAi and chemotherapy drugs, aiming to improve the efficacy of cancer therapy