The effect of COVID-19 restrictions on atmospheric new particle formation in Beijing

During the COVID-19 lockdown, the dramatic reduction of anthropogenic emissions provided a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of reduced anthropogenic activity and primary emissions on atmospheric chemical processes and the consequent formation of secondary pollutants. Here, we utilize comprehensive observations to examine the response of atmospheric new particle formation (NPF) to the changes in the atmospheric chemical cocktail. We find that the main clustering process was unaffected by the drastically reduced traffic emissions, and the formation rate of 1.5 nm particles remained unaltered. However, particle survival probability was enhanced due to an increased particle growth rate (GR) during the lockdown period, explaining the enhanced NPF activity in earlier studies. For GR at 1.5-3 nm, sulfuric acid (SA) was the main contributor at high temperatures, whilst there were unaccounted contributing vapors at low temperatures. For GR at 3-7 and 7-15 nm, oxygenated organic molecules (OOMs) played a major role. Surprisingly, OOM composition and volatility were insensitive to the large change of atmospheric NOx concentration; instead the associated high particle growth rates and high OOM concentration during the lockdown period were mostly caused by the enhanced atmospheric oxidative capacity. Overall, our findings suggest a limited role of traffic emissions in NPF.Peer reviewe

Proteins Associated with Hsp110 in Drosophila

Heat shock proteins (hsps) are a group of highly conserved proteins that are well distributed in phylogeny. Drosophila melanogaster embryos are endowed with large amounts of hsp110 synthesized in the ovaries of female flies and its expression level remains constant throughout the embryogenesis which indicates the necessity for hsp110. It has been found that hsp70, hsp90 and hsp110 act as molecular chaperones that assist in protein folding and degradation of aggregated proteins. Association between hsp70 and hsp110, hsp90 and hsp110, as co-chaperone complexes have been observed in mammalian cells, but these observations have not yet been established in Drosophila. In the current study, co-immunoprecipitation with Nano Trap® beads was used to determine the association between hsp110, hsp70 and hsp90. We find that hsp110 form a complex with hsp90 in all life stages of Drosophila, however this hsp110-hsp90 complex is disrupted under heat shock conditions. This clearly shows that the chaperone cycle between these two proteins is heat dependent. The hypothesized hsp110-hsp70-hsp90 or hsp110-hsp70 complex has not been seen in this study which is different from the mammalian and yeast system. Further experiments using different approaches to the isolation of the complexes are needed to reexamine the complexes for analysis of their composition to confirm that the hsp70-hsp110 chaperone cycle occurs in Drosophila. These findings of the chaperone machinery would provide a better understanding of the function of hsp110, that whether hsp110 serves as a chaperone by itself or as a co-chaperone with other associated proteins in Drosophila

Additional file 1 of Genetic and pharmacologic p32-inhibition rescue CHCHD2-linked Parkinson’s disease phenotypes in vivo and in cell models

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Toxicity testing and validation of the p32-inhibitor. A A range of p32-inhibitor concentrations from 0 to 250 µM were tested on the Hela cells expressing CHCHD2-WT-MYC, CHCHD2-Thr61Ile-MYC and the Control cells expressing MYC alone. Note that 2.5 µM, 5 µM and 7.5 µM of p32-I are more toxic to the Hela cells expressing CHCHD2-WT-MYC as compared to the Control (n = 3, One-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post hoc test). Hence, 1 µM p32-I is chosen for cell treatment. B Representative Western blots showing effectiveness of 1 µM p32-I. Data are presented as mean ± SEM of three independent experiments. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01

Cross-ancestry genome-wide association studies of brain imaging phenotypes

Genome-wide association studies of brain imaging phenotypes are mainly performed in European populations, but other populations are severely under-represented. Here, we conducted Chinese-alone and cross-ancestry genome-wide association studies of 3,414 brain imaging phenotypes in 7,058 Chinese Han and 33,224 white British participants. We identified 38 new associations in Chinese-alone analyses and 486 additional new associations in cross-ancestry meta-analyses at P < 1.46 x 10(-11) for discovery and P < 0.05 for replication. We pooled significant autosomal associations identified by single- or cross-ancestry analyses into 6,443 independent associations, which showed uneven distribution in the genome and the phenotype subgroups. We further divided them into 44 associations with different effect sizes and 3,557 associations with similar effect sizes between ancestries. Loci of these associations were shared with 15 brain-related non-imaging traits including cognition and neuropsychiatric disorders. Our results provide a valuable catalog of genetic associations for brain imaging phenotypes in more diverse populations