Association between APE1 ASP148GLU and colorectal cancer risk: A meta-analysis

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is recognized as one of the most common cancer globally. The association between CRC and apurinic endonuclease 1 (APE1) Asp148Glu polymorphism remains unclear; thus, this meta-analysis aimed to explore whether APE1 Asp148Glu polymorphism is related to CRC risk. Methods: Embase, PubMed, Cochrane library, CNKI and Wanfang databases were subject to a systematic search until April, 17, 2020 to evaluate the effect of APE1 Asp148Glu polymorphism on CRC risk. The associated strength was used to evaluate with odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) between Asp148Glu polymorphism and CRC risk. Subgroup analyses were also performed. Results: In total, 11 articles including 8,136 subjects (3,836 cases and 4,300 controls) were included. Five genetic models were analyzed, including the additive model (G vs. T), the heterozygote comparison (TG vs. TT), the homozygote comparison (GG vs. TT), the dominant model (TG+GG vs. TT), and the recessive model (GG vs. TG+TT). In these models, T refers to thymine and G refers to guanine. The APE1 Asp148Glu polymorphism in heterozygote comparison [OR (95%CI) = 1.36 (1.05, 1.75), P=0.019] and dominant model [OR (95%CI) =1.31 (1.07, 1.61), P=0.010] significantly increased CRC risk. No significant association was seen for the additive model [OR (95%CI) = 1.14 (1.00, 1.31), P=0.057], recessive model [OR (95%CI) = 0.97 (0.71, 1.31), P=0.826] or in homozygote comparison [OR (95%CI) = 1.15 (0.88, 1.52), P=0.309]. Moreover, CRC risk indicated a remarkable association with APE1 Asp148Glu polymorphism in the PCR-RFLP additive model, homozygote comparison and recessive model (PG) may be a potential risk factor for CRC

Fire resistance test of transformers filled with natural ester insulating liquid

Natural ester fluids, as a renewable, biodegradable liquid dielectric, its flash point is above 300°C, and the burning point exceeds 330°C, high flash point liquids known as ‘less flammable’ liquids. There is a possibility applying the natural ester fluid immersed transformer instead of dry type transformer in high fire resistance requirement occasion. In order to verify the fire resistance of natural ester insulating oil transformer, set forth a series of contrast test between natural ester insulating oil and mineral insulating oil, including flash point, burning point, explosion limits, metal hot surface test, and burning plate test. Through developing burning test platform of transformer to launch the burning test for 10 kV transformer of natural ester insulating oil. The results show that the transformer filled with natural ester fluid cannot burn for 30 min in the case of severe external fire, which provides a relatively abundant time for fire extinguishing and has certain fireproof performance. In addition, by improving the mechanical strength of transformer tank, install the specific pressure relief devices and using high temperature seal, bushing etc., which can improve the fire resistance of transformers filled with natural ester insulating fluids

Multi‐similarity based hyperrelation network for few‐shot segmentation

Abstract Few‐shot semantic segmentation aims at recognizing the object regions of unseen categories with only a few annotated examples as supervision. The key to few‐shot segmentation is to establish a robust semantic relationship between the support and query images and to prevent overfitting. In this paper, an effective multi‐similarity hyperrelation network (MSHNet) is proposed to tackle the few‐shot semantic segmentation problem. In MSHNet, a new generative prototype similarity (GPS) is proposed, which, together with cosine similarity, establishes a strong semantic relationship between supported images and query images. In addition, a symmetric merging block (SMB) in MSHNet is proposed to efficiently merge multi‐layer, multi‐shot, multi‐similarity features to generate hyperrelation features for semantic segmentation. Experimenting on two benchmark semantic segmentation datasets (Pascal − 5i and COCO − 20i) shows that this method achieves a mean intersection‐over‐union score of 72.3% and 56.0%, respectively, which outperforms the state‐of‐the‐art methods by 1.9% and 6.5%

Analysis of the molecular nature associated with microsatellite status in colon cancer identifies clinical implications for immunotherapy

Background Microsatellite instability in colon cancer implies favorable therapeutic outcomes after checkpoint blockade immunotherapy. However, the molecular nature of microsatellite instability is not well elucidated.Methods We examined the immune microenvironment of colon cancer using assessments of the bulk transcriptome and the single-cell transcriptome focusing on molecular nature of microsatellite stability (MSS) and microsatellite instability (MSI) in colorectal cancer from a public database. The association of the mutation pattern and microsatellite status was analyzed by a random forest algorithm in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and validated by our in-house dataset (39 tumor mutational burden (TMB)-low MSS colon cancer, 10 TMB-high MSS colon cancer, 15 MSI colon cancer). A prognostic model was constructed to predict the survival potential and stratify microsatellite status by a neural network.Results Despite the hostile CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL)/Th1 microenvironment in MSI colon cancer, a high percentage of exhausted CD8+ T cells and upregulated expression of immune checkpoints were identified in MSI colon cancer at the single-cell level, indicating the potential neutralizing effect of cytotoxic T-cell activity by exhausted T-cell status. A more homogeneous highly expressed pattern of PD1 was observed in CD8+ T cells from MSI colon cancer; however, a small subgroup of CD8+ T cells with high expression of checkpoint molecules was identified in MSS patients. A random forest algorithm predicted important mutations that were associated with MSI status in the TCGA colon cancer cohort, and our in-house cohort validated higher frequencies of BRAF, ARID1A, RNF43, and KM2B mutations in MSI colon cancer. A robust microsatellite status–related gene signature was built to predict the prognosis and differentiate between MSI and MSS tumors. A neural network using the expression profile of the microsatellite status–related gene signature was constructed. A receiver operating characteristic curve was used to evaluate the accuracy rate of neural network, reaching 100%.Conclusion Our analysis unraveled the difference in the molecular nature and genomic variance in MSI and MSS colon cancer. The microsatellite status–related gene signature is better at predicting the prognosis of patients with colon cancer and response to the combination of immune checkpoint inhibitor–based immunotherapy and anti-VEGF therapy

BAG3 and HIF-1α Coexpression Detected by Immunohistochemistry Correlated with Prognosis in Hepatocellular Carcinoma after Liver Transplantation

Objective. The objective is to determine the effects of BAG3 and HIF-1α expression on the prognosis of HCC patients after liver transplantation. Methods. Samples from 31 patients with HCC receiving liver transplantation were collected for this study. The immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression of BAG3 and HIF-1α of HCC samples. Results. According to the immunohistochemistry results, BAG3 and HIF-1α staining were significantly associated with tumor TNM stage (P=0.004, P=0.012). A significant association between high BAG3/HIF-1α levels and a shorter overall survival was detected, so as the combined BAG3 and HIF-1α analysis. Conclusion. The results suggested that the expression level of BAG3 and HIF-1α is efficient prognostic parameters in patients with HCC after liver transplantation

MicroRNA319-mediated gene regulatory network impacts leaf development and morphogenesis in poplar

MicroRNA319 (miR319) has been implicated in leaf development in a number of plant species. Here we study the roles of miR319a and its regulated network in leaf development in poplars. Over-expression of miR319a in Populus alba × Populus glandulosa caused dwarf statures, narrow leaf blades and serrated leaf margins. The vascular bundles and bundle sheaths in transgenic leaves had more layers of cells than those in the leaves of control plants, indicating enhanced lignification in these cells. Among the 93 putative targets of miR319a predicted with the psRNATarget tool, only three genes, TCP (TEOSINTE BRANCHED1, CYCLOIDEA, and PROLIFERATING CELL NUCLEAR ANTIGEN BINDING FACTOR), were differentially expressed in the leaves of MIR319a-over-expression transgenic lines. With the RNA-seq data sets from multiple MIR319a over-expression transgenic lines, we built a three-layered gene regulatory network mediated by miR319a using Top-down graphic Gaussian model (GGM) algorithm that is capable of capturing causal relationships from transcriptomic data. The results support that miR319a primarily regulates the lignin biosynthesis, leaf development and differentiation as well as photosynthesis via miR319-MEE35/TCP4, miR319-TCP2 and miR319-TCP2-1 regulatory modules

Long Non-Coding RNA HOTAIR Promotes Cell Migration and Invasion via Down-Regulation of RNA Binding Motif Protein 38 in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells

Long non-coding RNA HOTAIR exerts regulatory functions in various biological processes in cancer cells, such as proliferation, apoptosis, mobility, and invasion. We previously found that HOX transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR) is a negative prognostic factor and exhibits oncogenic activity in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In this study, we aimed to investigate the role and molecular mechanism of HOTAIR in promoting HCC cell migration and invasion. Firstly, we profiled its gene expression pattern by microarray analysis of HOTAIR loss in Bel-7402 HCC cell line. The results showed that 129 genes were significantly down-regulated, while 167 genes were significantly up-regulated (fold change >2, p < 0.05). Bioinformatics analysis indicated that RNA binding proteins were involved in this biological process. HOTAIR suppression using RNAi strategy with HepG2 and Bel-7402 cells increased the mRNA and protein expression levels of RNA binding motif protein 38 (RBM38). Moreover, the expression levels of RBM38 in HCC specimens were significantly lower than paired adjacent noncancerous tissues. In addition, knockdown of HOTAIR resulted in a decrease of cell migration and invasion, which could be specifically rescued by down-regulation of RBM38. Taken together, HOTAIR could promote migration and invasion of HCC cells by inhibiting RBM38, which indicated critical roles of HOTAIR and RBM38 in HCC progression