Antibodies from women urogenitally infected with C. trachomatis predominantly recognized the plasmid protein pgp3 in a conformation-dependent manner

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>C. trachomatis </it>organisms carry a cryptic plasmid that encodes 8 open reading frames designated as pORF1 to 8. It is not clear whether all 8 pORFs are expressed during <it>C. trachomatis </it>infection in humans and information on the functionality of the plasmid proteins is also very limited.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>When antibodies from women urogenitally infected with <it>C. trachomatis </it>were reacted with the plasmid proteins, all 8 pORFs were positively recognized by one or more human antibody samples with the recognition of pORF5 protein (known as pgp3) by most antibodies and with the highest titers. The antibody recognition of the pORFs was blocked by <it>C. trachomatis</it>-infected HeLa but not normal HeLa cell lysates. The pgp3 fusion protein-purified human IgG detected the endogenous pgp3 in the cytosol of <it>C. trachomatis</it>-infected cells with an intracellular distribution pattern similar to that of CPAF, a chlamydial genome-encoded protease factor. However, the human antibodies no longer recognized pgp3 but maintained recognition of CPAF when both antigens were linearized or heat-denatured. The pgp3 conformation is likely maintained by the C-terminal 75% amino acid sequence since further deletion blocked the binding by the human antibodies and two conformation-dependent mouse monoclonal antibodies.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The plasmid-encoded 8 proteins are both expressed and immunogenic with pgp3 as the most immunodominant antigen during chlamydial infection in humans. More importantly, the human anti-pgp3 antibodies are highly conformation-dependent. These observations have provided important information for further understanding the function of the plasmid-encoded proteins and exploring the utility of pgp3 in chlamydial diagnosis and vaccination.</p

Attributed Multi-order Graph Convolutional Network for Heterogeneous Graphs

Heterogeneous graph neural networks aim to discover discriminative node embeddings and relations from multi-relational networks.One challenge of heterogeneous graph learning is the design of learnable meta-paths, which significantly influences the quality of learned embeddings.Thus, in this paper, we propose an Attributed Multi-Order Graph Convolutional Network (AMOGCN), which automatically studies meta-paths containing multi-hop neighbors from an adaptive aggregation of multi-order adjacency matrices. The proposed model first builds different orders of adjacency matrices from manually designed node connections. After that, an intact multi-order adjacency matrix is attached from the automatic fusion of various orders of adjacency matrices. This process is supervised by the node semantic information, which is extracted from the node homophily evaluated by attributes. Eventually, we utilize a one-layer simplifying graph convolutional network with the learned multi-order adjacency matrix, which is equivalent to the cross-hop node information propagation with multi-layer graph neural networks. Substantial experiments reveal that AMOGCN gains superior semi-supervised classification performance compared with state-of-the-art competitors

Communication security of autonomous ground vehicles based on networked control systems: The optimized LMI approach

The paper presents a study of networked control systems (NCSs) that are subjected to periodic denial-of-service (DoS) attacks of varying intensity. The use of appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals (LKFs) help to reduce the constraints of the basic conditions and lower the conservatism of the criteria. An optimization problem with constraints is formulated to select the trigger threshold, which is solved using the gradient descent algorithm (GDA) to improve resource utilization. An intelligent secure event-triggered controller (ISETC) is designed to ensure the safe operation of the system under DoS attacks. The approach is validated through experiments with an autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) system based on the Simulink platform. The proposed method offers the potential for developing effective defense mechanisms against DoS attacks in NCSs

Coherent population transfer between uncoupled or weakly coupled states in ladder-type superconducting qutrits

Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage offers significant advantages for coherent population transfer between uncoupled or weakly coupled states and has the potential of realizing efficient quantum gate, qubit entanglement and quantum information transfer. Here we report on the realization of the process in the superconducting Xmon and phase qutrits—two ladder-type three-level systems in which the ground state population is coherently transferred to the second excited state via the dark state subspace. We demonstrate that the population transfer efficiency is no less than 96% and 67% for the two devices, which agree well with the numerical simulation of the master equation. Population transfer via stimulated Raman adiabatic passage is significantly more robust against variations of the experimental parameters compared with that via the conventional resonant π pulse method. Our work opens up a new venue for exploring the process for quantum information processing using the superconducting artificial atoms.This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant Nos. 2011CBA00106, 2014CB921202, and 2015CB921104) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 91321208, 11222437, and 11161130519). S. Han acknowledges support by the US NSF (PHY-1314861)

Cell transcriptomic atlas of the non-human primate Macaca fascicularis.

Studying tissue composition and function in non-human primates (NHPs) is crucial to understand the nature of our own species. Here we present a large-scale cell transcriptomic atlas that encompasses over 1 million cells from 45 tissues of the adult NHP Macaca fascicularis. This dataset provides a vast annotated resource to study a species phylogenetically close to humans. To demonstrate the utility of the atlas, we have reconstructed the cell-cell interaction networks that drive Wnt signalling across the body, mapped the distribution of receptors and co-receptors for viruses causing human infectious diseases, and intersected our data with human genetic disease orthologues to establish potential clinical associations. Our M. fascicularis cell atlas constitutes an essential reference for future studies in humans and NHPs.We thank W. Liu and L. Xu from the Huazhen Laboratory Animal Breeding Centre for helping in the collection of monkey tissues, D. Zhu and H. Li from the Bioland Laboratory (Guangzhou Regenerative Medicine and Health Guangdong Laboratory) for technical help, G. Guo and H. Sun from Zhejiang University for providing HCL and MCA gene expression data matrices, G. Dong and C. Liu from BGI Research, and X. Zhang, P. Li and C. Qi from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health for experimental advice or providing reagents. This work was supported by the Shenzhen Basic Research Project for Excellent Young Scholars (RCYX20200714114644191), Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Single-Cell Omics (ZDSYS20190902093613831), Shenzhen Bay Laboratory (SZBL2019062801012) and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Genome Read and Write (2017B030301011). In addition, L.L. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31900466), Y. Hou was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2018A030313379) and M.A.E. was supported by a Changbai Mountain Scholar award (419020201252), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA16030502), a Chinese Academy of Sciences–Japan Society for the Promotion of Science joint research project (GJHZ2093), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (92068106, U20A2015) and the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2021B1515120075). M.L. was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFC2600200).S

Spin(7) Spin⁡(7)\operatorname{Spin}(7)-structure equation and the vector elliptic Liouville equation

Abstract The mapping between Belavin–Polyakov (BP) equation for the evolution of a unit tangent vector T∈S2 $T\in \mathbb{S}^{2}$ of a space curve in R3 $\mathbb{R}^{3}$ and the elliptic Liouville equation has been shown by Balakrishnan (see Phys. Lett. A 204:243–246, 1995). In the present work, this result is effectively extended by mapping the BP equation for the unit tangent T∈S6 $T\in \mathbb{S}^{6}$ of a space curve in R7 $\mathbb{R}^{7}$ to the vector elliptic Liouville equation. To show this correspondence, Spin(7) $\operatorname{Spin}(7)$-frame field on the curve is used

Advances of Zero-dimensional Carbon Nanomaterial-based Targeting Drug Delivery System for Tumor Therapy(Review)

Purposes Zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterial-based targeting drug delivery system has shown broad application prospects in the field of tumor therapy since the complex is constructed by using carbon nanomaterials with good stability and biocompatibility as drug carries and carries drugs, genes, and targeting components. Methods In this review, the structure of zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterial as drug carriers, the construction of targeting drug delivery systems, and their applications in chemotherapy, gene therapy, and integration of diagnosis and treatment are reviewed. First, the structure of zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterial is classified. Second, the construction strategies of carbon nanomaterial-based targeting drug delivery system are summarized from two aspects: targeting modification and drug loading. Finally, the application advances of zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterial-based targeting drug delivery system is reviewed, and the current problems they face in tumor treatment are presented. Conclusions This work provides some theoretical support and practical experience for the extensive application of zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterial-based targeting drug delivery systems in the biomedical field

Media 3: Dynamic imaging through turbid media based on digital holography

Originally published in JOSA A on 01 March 2014 (josaa-31-3-480