The role of proteases in the invasion of SARS-CoV-2 virus into human host cells

The new coronavirus, which originally broke out in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, increase quickly around the world, causing a pandemic all over the world. The virus uses its spike protein to enter the human host cells. Protein S binds to the angiotensin-converting enzyme II (ACE2) receptor and enters the host cell. For the more successful binding, several proteases facilitate and optimize this binding, the most important of which are transmembrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2), furin, and cathepsin L proteases. After binding of protein S to the ACE2 receptor, cleavage of protein S is required for membrane fusion by protein S, which causes viral entry into host cells. This proteolytic activity may be cathepsin L-dependent and occurs with changes in pH in cell endosomes, or it may occur through serine proteases activity at the surface of the host cell membrane or within vesicles. Finally, the cell becomes infected with the virus. Several studies have tried to reduce the rate of viral infection by using inhibitors of these proteases

The Role of Levamisole and HIV-1 Nef-p24 Fusion Protein in IL-4 Gene Expression for Evaluating Humoral Immune Response

I Introduction: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is one of the most common infectious diseases in the world. It is transmitted via the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV-1). So, a HIV-1 vaccine should be effective in the prevention of virus infection and induces immune responses. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the humoral immune induction through measuring the expression of interleukin4 (IL-4) in response to levamisole, as an adjuvant, with the HIV-1 Nef-p24 fusion protein as an immunogenic sequence. Materials and Methods: In this study, 56 BalB/c female mice, aged 6 to 8 weeks were divided into 4 groups. There were 14 mice in each group. Prime and Booster injections were arranged in these groups receiving PBS, levamisole, Nef-p24, and Nef-p24 along with levamisole (Nef-p24/levamisole). All injections were performed peritoneally. Results: Real-time PCR results showed that IL-4 transcripts level increased significantly (P <0.05) in boostered groups, receiving levamisole, Nef-p24, and Nef-p24/levamisole compared to primed groups. However, the results of ELISA revealed the enhancement in IL-4 expression in levamisole primed groups in comparison to Nef-p24/levamisole boostered group. Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that the HIV-1 Nef-p24 fusion protein and levamisole could be considered as effective candidates as to increase the expression of IL-4 which may stimulate the humoral immune response

Exosomal microRNAs released from tumor cells can play a role as reliable non-invasive biomarkers in the diagnosis and prognosis of breast cancer

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death in women. Breast cancer develops from the milk-producing cells of the breast tissue. Exosomes from breast cancer cells have been linked to proliferation, metastasis, chemoresistance, and carcinogenesis, according to research. Exosomes are membrane-bound extracellular vesicles that can be secreted from cancer cells and contain a variety of contents such as nucleic acid, protein, lipid, etc. MicroRNAs, a component of exosomes, are small non-coding RNAs that dysregulate in various cancers and can function as oncogenic or suppressive RNA. MiRNAs influence cancer progression by binding to the 3' or 5' UTR (untranslated region) of their target. Because of their important role in cancer tumorigenesis, progression, and metastasis, some novel diagnostic and prognosis tools have been developed. In this study, we list some prominent exosomal microRNA, the key function of some specific exosomal miRNA, and their ability to act as a biomarker or a new therapy that they have been researching since 2020

Le degré d’influence de la verbo-tonalité lors des activités d’écoute et de lecture auprès des apprenants iraniens du français langue étrangère

Dans l’histoire des méthodologies de l’enseignement/ apprentissage des langues, nous constatons des progrès et des reculs en ce qui concerne la présence de l’oral et de l’écrit dans ce processus. La compétence de communication orale occupe aujourd’hui la première place parmi les objectifs de l’apprentissage des langues. Cela dit, l’aspect oral de la langue n’est pas une chose facile à acquérir avec toutes ses caractéristiques. Ainsi, c’est le langage écrit qui vient accompagner cet apprentissage.Et cela, dans le but de mieux comprendre les messages oraux. L’objectif principal de cette recherche, appuyé sur les principes de la méthodologie verbotonale,est d’identifier les activités d’écoute et de lecture que les publics d’apprenants trouvent efficaces lors de leur apprentissage et celles qui leur paraissent moins effectives voire inutiles. A partir du questionnaire que nous avons conçu et analysé, nous concluons que les activités d’écoute basées sur des supports audio et surtout authentiques sont les mieux accueillies, et que les activités de lecture, avec un objectif de révision suscitent une grande satisfaction. Les autres activités du questionnaire sont regroupées dans des catégories, des plus satisfaisantes aux moins utiles

Key Performance Indicators in Field Hospital Appraisal: A Systematic Review

Background: Field hospitals are health care institutions with mobile or fixed structures. Although there have been numerous models and indicators for assessing the performance of public hospitals, there is no model to evaluate the performance of field hospitals. Objectives: This study was aimed at determining key performance indicators in field hospital appraisal. Methods: In this study, we conducted a systematic review of publications in English or Persian language indexed by PubMed, Scopus, Emerald, Elsevier, Ovid, Google Scholar, Springer, ProQuest, WHO and Word Bank databases. PICO strategy was used for searching databases. Quality assessment of the publications were carried out using CASP checklist. Similarly, the preferred reporting items for PRISMA checklist were used to assess systematic reviews. The PRISMA checklist was used to guide the reporting of the systematic review. A descriptive summary with data tables was produced to summarize the literature. Following the results of our search, 592 publications were retrieved and 352 citations were excluded because of irrelevance or duplication. After excluding the duplicate and irrelevant items we screened 240 titles and abstracts. Two independent reviewers evaluated 240 potentially relevant studies, and 15 records met the criteria to be included in this review. Results: We found 13 criteria on the assessment of field hospital in the literature. We classified all the retrieved indicators according to the system approach. The results of this study showed that input indicators included 4 indicators, process indicators included 2 indicators, output indicators consisted of 4 indicators and outcome indicators involved 3 indicators. Conclusions: This study highlights the most important performance measurement indicators in field hospitals with a system approach. There was no model to assess the field hospitals; however, a systematic approach in assessment can improve the quality of services

Reproductive status of male rat offspring following exposure to methamphetamine during intrauterine life: An experimental study

Background: Methamphetamine abuse during pregnancy is associated with maternal and fetal adverse outcomes. Methamphetamine induces reproductive damage in adults; however, its effect has not been studied during pregnancy. Objective: To investigate the effects of methamphetamine exposure during pregnancy on the reproductive system. Materials and Methods: Fifteen pregnant Wistar rats were divided into 3 groups (n = 5/group), they received daily intraperitoneal injections of saline or methamphetamine (5, and 10 mg/kg) from day 10 until the end of pregnancy. One adult male offspring was selected from each dam. Subjects were euthanized, and their testis was removed. Sperm samples from cauda epididymis were analyzed for sperm concentration, morphology, and motility. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling assay was used to detect apoptotic cells. Levels of B-cell lymphoma 2 protein (Bcl-2) and Bcl-2 associated X-protein were measured using Western blot. Results: Methamphetamine significantly decreased sperm concentration (5 mg vs. saline: p = 0.001, 10 mg vs. saline: p < 0.001), normal sperm morphology (saline vs. 10 mg: p = 0.001), and motility (p: saline vs. 5 mg = 0.004, 5 mg vs. 10 mg = 0.011, saline vs. 10 mg < 0.001) in a dose-dependent manner. There was a significantly higher number of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling -positive cells and higher exposure. Moreover, Bcl-2 associated X-protein was increased, and Bcl-2 was decreased in these rats. Conclusion: The present study shows that chronic methamphetamine exposure during intrauterine period can induce apoptosis of seminiferous tubules and decrease sperm quality in adult rats. Moreover, we showed that the intrinsic apoptotic pathway is involved in this process. Further studies are required to identify the complete molecular pathway of these results. Key words: Methamphetamine, Testis, Fertility, Reproduction, Apoptosis, Intrauterine exposure

BERT-Deep CNN: State-of-the-Art for Sentiment Analysis of COVID-19 Tweets

The free flow of information has been accelerated by the rapid development of social media technology. There has been a significant social and psychological impact on the population due to the outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the current events being discussed on social media platforms. In order to safeguard societies from this pandemic, studying people's emotions on social media is crucial. As a result of their particular characteristics, sentiment analysis of texts like tweets remains challenging. Sentiment analysis is a powerful text analysis tool. It automatically detects and analyzes opinions and emotions from unstructured data. Texts from a wide range of sources are examined by a sentiment analysis tool, which extracts meaning from them, including emails, surveys, reviews, social media posts, and web articles. To evaluate sentiments, natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning techniques are used, which assign weights to entities, topics, themes, and categories in sentences or phrases. Machine learning tools learn how to detect sentiment without human intervention by examining examples of emotions in text. In a pandemic situation, analyzing social media texts to uncover sentimental trends can be very helpful in gaining a better understanding of society's needs and predicting future trends. We intend to study society's perception of the COVID-19 pandemic through social media using state-of-the-art BERT and Deep CNN models. The superiority of BERT models over other deep models in sentiment analysis is evident and can be concluded from the comparison of the various research studies mentioned in this article.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Immunological Evaluation of HIV-1 P24-Nef Harboring IFN-γas as an Adjuvant in BALB/c Mice

Introduction: Despite the improvements in antiretroviral treatments, there is no authorizedHIV vaccine; therefore, designing an effectual vaccine is essential. This study was aimed at theimmunological evaluation of HIV-1 p24-Nef adjuvanted with IFN-γin BALB/c mice with thepurpose of stimulating effective immune responses.Materials and Methods: Forty-eight female mice were used for immunization by p24-Nef.The mice were divided into six cohorts with eight mice in each group. Immunizations wereexecuted three times at three-week intervals and subcutaneously for 5μg per mouse. A coupleweeks after the last injection, humoral and cellular immune pathways were appraised in bloodserum and splenocytes respectively through applying ELISA.Results: The results showed that the applied regimen could elicit robust immune responsesin comparison with the control. In addition, the level of total antibody production which wasobserved in the group containing adjuvanted antigen of interest had a significant differencewith the control cohort (P<0.0001). Moreover, IgG2a was the uppermost isotype (Th1-biasedresponse) in the immunized group that had p24-Nef antigen with IFN-γ adjuvant. In spite ofantibody secretion, the cellular immune response was the predominant stimulated pathway.The potency of IFN-γ as an adjuvant for induction of a quantifiably extensive Th1 pathwaywas shown to be more significant given the outcomes of cytokine assay, IgGisotype, and CTLevaluation.Conclusion: The results of the current study indicated that the p24-Nef antigen is able tostimulate the humoral and cellular immune responses in immunized mice, either on its ownor when formulated with adjuvant. Thus, the high immune system stimulated by p24-Nefinjection regimen went along with IFN-γ adjuvant, offering a potential option for an efficientvaccine against HIV-1