OCT1 regulates the migration of colorectal cancer cells by acting on LDHA

Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers with high morbidity and mortality. Effective treatments to improve the prognosis are still lacking. The results of online analysis tools showed that OCT1 and LDHA were highly expressed in colorectal cancer, and the high expression of OCT1 was associated with poor prognosis. Immunofluorescence demonstrated that OCT1 and LDHA co-localized in colorectal cancer cells. In colorectal cancer cells, OCT1 and LDHA were upregulated by OCT1 overexpression, but downregulated by OCT1 knockdown. OCT1 overexpression promoted cell migration. OCT1 or LDHA knockdown inhibited the migration, and the downregulation of LDHA restored the promoting effect of OCT1 overexpression. OCT1 upregulation increased the levels of HK2, GLUT1 and LDHA proteins in colorectal cancer cells. Consequently, OCT1 promoted the migration of colorectal cancer cells by upregulating LDHA

Bitter melon seed oil may reduce the adiposity through the hypothalamus mTOR signaling in mice fed a high fat diet

Bitter melon seed oil (BMSO) was found to have an advantageous effect on anti-obesity. Up to date, the mechanisms underlying this process have been extensively investigated. However, there are very few reports focusing on the roles of central nervous system (CNS) involved. In this study, Golgi-Cox staining and western blotting assays were used to examine the hypothalamic spine density and the expression levels of NMDA-2B receptor and P-S6 protein, respectively. A significant reduction concerning hypothalamic spine density was observed in HFD mice, a phenomenon that could be partially rescued by the BMSO administration. Furthermore, it was found that BMSO could also reverse the changes upon the phosphorylation levels of S6, a typical protein involved in mTOR signaling pathway, indicating that mTOR signaling potentially participated in this metabolism regulation. Besides, NMDA-2B levels were up-regulated in HFD mice, which could not be considerably influenced by BMSO. In summary, this study first proposed aberrant hypothalamic plasticity as CNS's roles in BMSO's fat-reducing effects, favoring the better recognition and treatment of the intractable hypothalamic obesity

Bitter melon seed oil may reduce the adiposity through the hypothalamus mTOR signaling in mice fed a high fat diet

Bitter melon seed oil (BMSO) was found to have an advantageous effect on anti-obesity. Up to date, the mechanisms underlying this process have been extensively investigated. However, there are very few reports focusing on the roles of central nervous system (CNS) involved. In this study, Golgi-Cox staining and western blotting assays were used to examine the hypothalamic spine density and the expression levels of NMDA-2B receptor and P-S6 protein, respectively. A significant reduction concerning hypothalamic spine density was observed in HFD mice, a phenomenon that could be partially rescued by the BMSO administration. Furthermore, it was found that BMSO could also reverse the changes upon the phosphorylation levels of S6, a typical protein involved in mTOR signaling pathway, indicating that mTOR signaling potentially participated in this metabolism regulation. Besides, NMDA-2B levels were up-regulated in HFD mice, which could not be considerably influenced by BMSO. In summary, this study first proposed aberrant hypothalamic plasticity as CNS's roles in BMSO's fat-reducing effects, favoring the better recognition and treatment of the intractable hypothalamic obesity

Control of slippage with tunable bubble mattresses

μPIV images, data files, vector fields and COMSOL files belonging to the publication E. Karatay, A.S. Haase, C.W. Visser, C. Sun, D. Lohse, P.A. Tsai, R.G.H. Lammertink, Control of slippage with tunable bubble mattresses. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 8422-8426 (2013)

Heterogeneity in function of small artery smooth muscle BKCa: involvement of the β1-subunit

Arteriolar myogenic vasoconstriction occurs when increased stretch or membrane tension leads to smooth muscle cell depolarization and opening of voltage-gated Ca2+ channels. To prevent positive feedback and excessive pressure-induced vasoconstriction, studies in cerebral artery smooth muscle have suggested that activation of large conductance, Ca2+-activated K+ channels (BKCa) provides an opposing hyperpolarizing influence reducing Ca2+ channel activity. We have hypothesized that this mechanism may not equally apply to all vascular beds. To establish the existence of such heterogeneity in vascular reactivity, studies were performed on rat vascular smooth muscle (VSM) cells from cremaster muscle arterioles and cerebral arteries. Whole cell K+ currents were determined at pipette [Ca2+] of 100 nm or 5 μm in the presence and absence of the BKCa inhibitor, iberiotoxin (IBTX; 0.1 μm). Similar outward current densities were observed for the two cell preparations at the lower pipette Ca2+ levels. At 5 μm Ca2+, cremaster VSM showed a significantly (P < 0.05) lower current density compared to cerebral VSM (34.5 ± 1.9 vs 45.5 ± 1.7 pA pF−1 at +70 mV). Studies with IBTX suggested that the differences in K+ conductance at 5 μm intracellular [Ca2+] were largely due to activity of BKCa. 17β-Oestradiol (1 μm), reported to potentiate BKCa current via the channel's β-subunit, caused a greater effect on whole cell K+ currents in cerebral vessel smooth muscle cells (SMCs) compared to those of cremaster muscle. In contrast, the α-subunit-selective BKCa opener, NS-1619 (20 μm), exerted a similar effect in both preparations. Spontaneously transient outward currents (STOCs) were more apparent (frequency and amplitude) and occurred at more negative membrane potentials in cerebral compared to cremaster SMCs. Also consistent with decreased STOC activity in cremaster SMCs was an absence of detectable Ca2+ sparks (0 of 76 cells) compared to that in cerebral SMCs (76 of 105 cells). Quantitative PCR showed decreased mRNA expression for the β1 subunit and a decrease in the β 1: α ratio in cremaster arterioles compared to cerebral vessels. Similarly, cremaster arterioles showed a decrease in total BKCa protein and the β 1: α-subunit ratio. The data support vascular heterogeneity with respect to the activity of BKCa in terms of both β-subunit regulation and interaction with SR-mediated Ca2+ signalling

An Automatic Computer-Aided Detection Scheme for Pneumoconiosis on Digital Chest Radiographs

This paper presents an automatic computer-aided detection scheme on digital chest radiographs to detect pneumoconiosis. Firstly, the lung fields are segmented from a digital chest X-ray image by using the active shape model method. Then, the lung fields are subdivided into six non-overlapping regions, according to Chinese diagnosis criteria of pneumoconiosis. The multi-scale difference filter bank is applied to the chest image to enhance the details of the small opacities, and the texture features are calculated from each region of the original and the processed images, respectively. After extracting the most relevant ones from the feature sets, support vector machine classifiers are utilized to separate the samples into the normal and the abnormal sets. Finally, the final classification is performed by the chest-based report-out and the classification probability values of six regions. Experiments are conducted on randomly selected images from our chest database. Both the training and the testing sets have 300 normal and 125 pneumoconiosis cases. In the training phase, training models and weighting factors for each region are derived. We evaluate the scheme using the full feature vectors or the selected feature vectors of the testing set. The results show that the classification performances are high. Compared with the previous methods, our fully automated scheme has a higher accuracy and a more convenient interaction. The scheme is very helpful to mass screening of pneumoconiosis in clinic