Involvement of microRNAs in physiological and pathological processes in the lung

To date, at least 900 different microRNA (miRNA) genes have been discovered in the human genome. These short, single-stranded RNA molecules originate from larger precursor molecules that fold to produce hairpin structures, which are subsequently processed by ribonucleases Drosha/Pasha and Dicer to form mature miRNAs. MiRNAs play role in the posttranscriptional regulation of about one third of human genes, mainly via degradation of target mRNAs. Whereas the target mRNAs are often involved in the regulation of diverse physiological processes ranging from developmental timing to apoptosis, miRNAs have a strong potential to regulate fundamental biological processes also in the lung compartment. However, the knowledge of the role of miRNAs in physiological and pathological conditions in the lung is still limited. This review, therefore, summarizes current knowledge of the mechanism, function of miRNAs and their contribution to lung development and homeostasis. Besides the involvement of miRNAs in pulmonary physiological conditions, there is evidence that abnormal miRNA expression may lead to pathological processes and development of various pulmonary diseases. Next, the review describes current state-of-art on the miRNA expression profiles in smoking-related diseases including lung cancerogenesis, in immune system mediated pulmonary diseases and fibrotic processes in the lung. From the current research it is evident that miRNAs may play role in the posttranscriptional regulation of key genes in human pulmonary diseases. Further studies are, therefore, necessary to explore miRNA expression profiles and their association with target mRNAs in human pulmonary diseases

Structural Correspondence Learning for Cross-Lingual Sentiment Classification with One-to-Many Mappings

Structural correspondence learning (SCL) is an effective method for cross-lingual sentiment classification. This approach uses unlabeled documents along with a word translation oracle to automatically induce task specific, cross-lingual correspondences. It transfers knowledge through identifying important features, i.e., pivot features. For simplicity, however, it assumes that the word translation oracle maps each pivot feature in source language to exactly only one word in target language. This one-to-one mapping between words in different languages is too strict. Also the context is not considered at all. In this paper, we propose a cross-lingual SCL based on distributed representation of words; it can learn meaningful one-to-many mappings for pivot words using large amounts of monolingual data and a small dictionary. We conduct experiments on NLP&CC 2013 cross-lingual sentiment analysis dataset, employing English as source language, and Chinese as target language. Our method does not rely on the parallel corpora and the experimental results show that our approach is more competitive than the state-of-the-art methods in cross-lingual sentiment classification

Pharmacokinetic performance of the nitrendipine intravenous submicron emulsion in rats

AbstractTo compare pharmacokinetic behaviors of nitrendipine submicron emulsion with nitrendipine solution following intravenous administration in rats. The plasma concentrations were analyzed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry detection (UPLC–MS/MS) through a new validated method. The pharmacokinetic parameters of the nitrendipine submicron emulsion and nitrendipine solution were as follows: AUC0–t 900.76 ± 186.59 versus 687.08 ± 66.24 ng h/ml, Cmax 854.54 ± 159.48 versus 610.59 ± 235.99 ng/ml, t1/2 2.37 ± 1.99 versus 2.80 ± 2.69 h. The relative bioavailability of nitrendipine submicron emulsion to nitrendipine solution was 131.4 ± 11.3%. The developed methods could meet the requirements of bioanalysis. Compared to the solution injection, intravenous submicron emulsion presents higher systematic exposure which can help to improve the therapeutic efficacy

Geographic Knowledge Graph Attribute Normalization: Improving the Accuracy by Fusing Optimal Granularity Clustering and Co-Occurrence Analysis

Expansion of the entity attribute information of geographic knowledge graphs is essentially the fusion of the Internet’s encyclopedic knowledge. However, it lacks structured attribute information, and synonymy and polysemy always exist. These reduce the quality of the knowledge graph and cause incomplete and inaccurate semantic retrieval. Therefore, we normalize the attributes of a geographic knowledge graph based on optimal granularity clustering and co-occurrence analysis, and use structure and the semantic relation of the entity attributes to identify synonymy and correlation between attributes. Specifically: (1) We design a classification system for geographic attributes, that is, using a community discovery algorithm to classify the attribute names. The optimal clustering granularity is identified by the marker target detection algorithm. (2) We complete the fine-grained identification of attribute relations by analyzing co-occurrence relations of the attributes and rule inference. (3) Finally, the performance of the system is verified by manual discrimination using the case of “landscape, forest, field, lake and grass”. The results show the following: (1) The average precision of spatial relations was 0.974 and the average recall was 0.937; the average precision of data relations was 0.977 and the average recall was 0.998. (2) The average F1 for similarity results is 0.473; the average F1 for co-occurrence analysis results is 0.735; the average F1 for rule-based modification results is 0.934; the results show that the accuracy is greater than 90%. Compared to traditional methods only focusing on similarity, the accuracy of synonymous attribute recognition improves the system and we are capable of identifying near-sense attributes. Integration of our system and attribute normalization can greatly improve both the processing efficiency and accuracy

Synergistic anticancer activity of cisplatin combined with tannic acid enhances apoptosis in lung cancer through the PERK-ATF4 pathway

Abstract Background Cisplatin (CDDP) is a common anticancer drug whose side effects limit its clinical applications. Tannins (TA) are plant-derived polyphenols that inhibit tumor growth in different types of cancer. Here, we evaluated the anticancer effect of TA combined with CDDP on lung cancer cell lines (GLC-82 and H1299) and investigated the underlying molecular mechanism of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-induced apoptosis. Methods Cell lines were treated with CDDP, TA, and CDDP + TA, and the effect of the combination was assessed using MTT assay and observed under light and fluorescence microscopes. Cell apoptosis was detected by flow cytometry, and the levels of ERS apoptosis pathway related genes were valuated by qRT-PCR and western blotting. The effects of the drug combination on the tumors of nude mice injected with H1299 cells were investigated, and the expression of key factors in the ER stress apoptotic pathway was investigated. Results The combination of CDDP and TA significantly inhibited lung cancer cell viability indicating a synergistic antitumoral effect. The mRNA and protein expression levels of key ER stress factors in the CDDP + TA group were considerably higher than those in the CDDP and TA groups, the tumor volume in tumor-bearing mice was the smallest, and the number of apoptotic cells and the protein expression levels of the key ER stress in the combination group were considerably higher. Conclusions The combination of TA and CDDP may produce synergistic antitumoral effects mediated by the PERK-ATF4-CHOP apoptotic axis, suggesting a novel adjuvant treatment for lung cancer

Genetic analysis of activin/inhibin β subunits in zebrafish development and reproduction.

Activin and inhibin are both dimeric proteins sharing the same β subunits that belong to the TGF-β superfamily. They are well known for stimulating and inhibiting pituitary FSH secretion, respectively, in mammals. In addition, activin also acts as a mesoderm-inducing factor in frogs. However, their functions in development and reproduction of other species are poorly defined. In this study, we disrupted all three activin/inhibin β subunits (βAa, inhbaa; βAb, inhbab; and βB, inhbb) in zebrafish using CRISPR/Cas9. The loss of βAa/b but not βB led to a high mortality rate in the post-hatching stage. Surprisingly, the expression of fshb but not lhb in the pituitary increased in the female βA mutant together with aromatase (cyp19a1a) in the ovary. The single mutant of βAa/b showed normal folliculogenesis in young females; however, their double mutant (inhbaa-/-;inhbab-/-) showed delayed follicle activation, granulosa cell hypertrophy, stromal cell accumulation and tissue fibrosis. The ovary of inhbaa-/- deteriorated progressively after 180 dpf with reduced fecundity and the folliculogenesis ceased completely around 540 dpf. In addition, tumor- or cyst-like tissues started to appear in the inhbaa-/- ovary after about one year. In contrast to females, activin βAa/b mutant males showed normal spermatogenesis and fertility. As for activin βB subunit, the inhbb-/- mutant exhibited normal folliculogenesis, spermatogenesis and fertility in both sexes; however, the fecundity of mutant females decreased dramatically at 270 dpf with accumulation of early follicles. In summary, the activin-inhibin system plays an indispensable role in fish reproduction, in particular folliculogenesis and ovarian homeostasis

Comparison of the effects of nicotinic acid and nicotinamide degradation on plasma betaine and choline levels

Aim: The present study was to compare the effects of nicotinic acid and nicotinamide on the plasma methyl donors, choline and betaine. Methods: Thirty adult subjects were randomly divided into three groups of equal size, and orally received purified water (C group), nicotinic acid (300 mg, NA group) or nicotinamide (300 mg, NM group). Plasma nicotinamide, N 1-methylnicotinamide, homocysteine, betaine and choline levels before and 1.5-h and 3-h post-dosing, plasma normetanephrine and metanephrine concentrations at 3-h post-dosing, and the urinary excretion of N 1-methyl-2-pyridone-5-carboxamide during the test period were examined. Results: The level of 3-h plasma nicotinamide, N 1-methylnicotinamide, homocysteine, the urinary excretion of N 1-methyl-2-pyridone-5-carboxamide and pulse pressure (PP) in the NM group was 221%, 3972%, 61%, 1728% and 21.2% higher than that of the control group (P < 0.01, except homocysteine and PP P < 0.05), while the 3-h plasma betaine, normetanephrine and metanephrine level in the NM group was 24.4%, 9.4% and 11.7% lower (P < 0.05, except betaine P < 0.01), without significant difference in choline levels. Similar but less pronounced changes were observed in the NA group, with a lower level of 3-h plasma N 1-methylnicotinamide (1.90 ± 0.20 μmol/l vs. 3.62 ± 0.27 μmol/l, P < 0.01) and homocysteine (12.85 ± 1.39 μmol/l vs. 18.08 ± 1.02 μmol/l, P < 0.05) but a higher level of betaine (27.44 ± 0.71 μmol/l vs. 23.52 ± 0.61 μmol/l, P < 0.05) than that of the NM group. Conclusion: The degradation of nicotinamide consumes more betaine than that of nicotinic acid at identical doses. This difference should be taken into consideration in niacin fortification. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd and European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism

Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework 67-Derived Ce-Doped CoP@N-Doped Carbon Hollow Polyhedron as High-Performance Anodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework 67 (ZIF-67) and its derivates have attracted extensive interest for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Here, Cerium-doped cobalt phosphide@nitrogen-doped carbon (Ce-doped CoP@NC) with hollow polyhedron structure materials were successfully synthesized via ionic-exchange with Co and Ce ions using the ZIF-67 as a template followed with a facile low-temperature phosphorization treatment. Benefitting from the well-designed hollow polyhedron, steady carbon network, and Ce-doping structural merits, the as-synthesized Ce-doped CoP@NC electrode demonstrated superior performance as the anode in LIBs: a superior cyclability (400 mA h g−1 after 500 cycles) and outstanding rate-capability (590 mA h g−1, reverted to 100 mA g−1 ). These features not only produced more lithium-active sites for LIBs anode and a shorter Li-ion diffusion pathway to expedite the charge transfer, but also the better tolerance against volume variation of CoP during the repeated lithiation/delithiation process and greater electronic conductivity prop-erties. These results provide a methodology for the design of well-organized ZIFs and rare earth element-doped transition metal phosphate with a hollow polyhedron structure