MicroRNA-612 regulates the proliferation and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition of human colon cancer cells via G protein-coupled receptor 132 (GPR132)

Purpose: To investigate the effect of microRNA-612 (miR-612) on human colon cancer cells, and the mechanism involved. Methods: Expressions of miR-612 and GPR132 were determined by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR)el , while cell viability was evaluated using cell counting kit-8 (CCK8) and colony formation assays. Dual luciferase assay was used to determine the interaction between miR-612 and GPR132, while cell migration and invasion were measured by Transwell assay. Results: The expression levels of miR-612 in colon cancer tissues and cell lines were significantly down-regulated (p < 0.05). Overexpression of miR-612 in colon cancer cells led to significant inhibition of their proliferation and colony formation. Transwell assays revealed that miR-612 overexpression markedly stopped the migration, invasion and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. Conclusion: These results indicate that miR-612 exerts anti-cancer effect by suppressing the expression of GPR132 at the translational level. The in vitro tumor suppressive activity of miR-612 against colon cancer reveals its potential for the management of colon cancer

Nonlinearity in the Dark: Broadband Terahertz Generation with Extremely High Efficiency

Plasmonic metamaterials and metasurfaces offer new opportunities in developing high performance terahertz emitters and detectors beyond the limitations of conventional nonlinear materials. However, simple meta-atoms for second-order nonlinear applications encounter fundamental trade-offs in the necessary symmetry breaking and local-field enhancement due to radiation damping that is inherent to the operating resonant mode and cannot be controlled separately. Here we present a novel concept that eliminates this restriction obstructing the improvement of terahertz generation efficiency in nonlinear metasurfaces based on metallic nanoresonators. This is achieved by combining a resonant dark-state metasurface, which locally drives nonlinear nanoresonators in the near field, with a specific spatial symmetry that enables destructive interference of the radiating linear moments of the nanoresonators, and perfect absorption via simultaneous electric and magnetic critical coupling of the pump radiation to the dark mode. Our proposal allows eliminating linear radiation damping, while maintaining constructive interference and effective radiation of the nonlinear components. We numerically demonstrate a giant second-order nonlinear susceptibility around Hundred-Billionth m/V, a one order improvement compared with the previously reported split-ring-resonator metasurface, and correspondingly, a 2 orders of magnitude enhanced terahertz energy extraction should be expected with our configuration under the same conditions. Our study offers a paradigm of high efficiency tunable nonlinear metadevices and paves the way to revolutionary terahertz technologies and optoelectronic nanocircuitry.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Ferromagnetism in 2p Light Element-Doped II-oxide and III-nitride Semiconductors

II-oxide and III-nitride semiconductors doped by nonmagnetic 2p light elements are investigated as potential dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS). Based on our first-principle calculations, nitrogen doped ZnO, carbon doped ZnO, and carbon doped AlN are predicted to be ferromagnetic. The ferromagnetism of such DMS materials can be attributed to a p-d exchange-like p-p coupling interaction which is derived from the similar symmetry and wave function between the impurity (p-like t_2) and valence (p) states. We also propose a co-doping mechanism, using beryllium and nitrogen as dopants in ZnO, to enhance the ferromagnetic coupling and to increase the solubility and activity

High-Order Symplectic FDTD Scheme for Solving a Time-Dependent Schrodinger Equation

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