Circular RNA Expression Profiling Identifies Prostate Cancer- Specific circRNAs in Prostate Cancer

Background/Aims: Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the main cancers that damage males’ health severely with high morbidity and mortality, but there is still no ideal molecular marker for the diagnosis and prognosis of prostate cancer. Methods: To determine whether the differentially expressed circRNAs in prostate cancer can serve as novel biomarkers for prostate cancer diagnosis, we screened differentially expressed circRNAs using SBC-ceRNA array in 4 pairs of prostate tumor and paracancerous tissues. A circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory network for the differential circRNAs and their host genes was constructed by Cytoscape3.5.1 software. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis (qRT-PCR) was performed to confirm the microarray data. Results: We found 1021 differentially expressed circRNAs in PCa tumor using SBC-ceRNA array and confirmed the expression of circ_0057558, circ_0062019 and SLC19A1 in PCa cell lines and tumor tissues through qRT-PCR analysis. We demonstrated that combination of PSA level and two differentially expressed circRNAs showed significantly increased AUC, sensitivity and specificity (0.938, 84.5% and 90.9%, respectively) than PSA alone (AUC of serum PSA was 0.854). Moreover, circ_0057558 was correlated positively with total cholesterol. The functional network of circRNA-miRNA-mRNA analysis showed that circ_0057558 and circ_0034467 regulated miR-6884, and circ_0062019 and circ_0060325 regulated miR-5008. Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that differentially expressed circRNAs (circ_0062019 and circ_0057558) and host gene SLC19A1 of circ_0062019 could be used as potential novel biomarkers for prostate cancer

Chinese Food Image Database for Eating and Appetite Studies

Modern people live in an environment with ubiquitous food cues, including food advertisements, videos, and smells. Do these food cues change people's eating behavior? Since diet plays a crucial role in maintaining health, it has been researched for decades. As convenient alternatives for real food, food images are widely used in diet research. To date, researchers from Germany, Spain, and other countries have established food photo databases; however, these food pictures are not completely suitable for Chinese studies because of the ingredients and characteristics of Chinese food. The main goal of this research is to create a library of Chinese food images and to provide as complete a data reference as possible for future studies that use food images as experimental material. After standardized processing, we selected 508 common Chinese food pictures with high familiarity and recognizability and attached detailed classifications concerning taste, macronutrients, calories, and participants' emotional responses to the pictures. Additionally, with food pictures as material, we conducted research on how people make dietary decisions in order to identify the variables that may affect a person's food choices. The effects of individual perceived healthiness and palatability, gender, BMI, family income, and levels of emotional and restricted eating were examined using eating decisions based on healthiness and palatability as dependent variables. The results showed that people with low household incomes are more likely to be influenced by food taste in their dietary decision-making process, while individuals with high household incomes are more likely to consider the healthy aspects of food. Moreover, parental BMI affects what children consume, with children who have parents with higher BMIs being more prone to overlook the healthiness value of food