Elucidating glycosylation pattern of protein produced in mammalian cells

The glycosylation pathway is a highly branched network. Although only a relatively small number of enzymes are involved in the pathway, a multitude of intermediate and terminal glycans can be formed. Each intermediate glycan in the network can be the substrate of subsequent glycosylation steps. In each step, there can be multiple enzymes acting on a single glycan due to overlapping substrate specificity. These enzymes tend to compete with each other to divert the network flux toward a particular branch. Alternation of their relative ratios can result in different glycan profiles. In mammals, such enzymes are distributed in a tissue-specific manner to meet a variety of protein glycosylation requirements. How distinct expression patterns of these enzymes can affect the glycan structures of a protein is not well studied. Understanding the link between these expression patterns and the final glycan profile of a protein will be useful for glycoengineering. In this study, we develop a mathematical model that incorporates reaction rules for various Golgi-resident glycosylation enzymes. The kinetic information is obtained from in vitro enzyme kinetics research. Enzyme levels are estimated from their corresponding transcript levels in various mammalian tissues using public transcriptome data. Insights from this modeling effort will used to predict targets for glycoengineering of mammalian cells

Performance analysis with wireless power transfer constraint policies in full-duplex relaying networks

In practice, full-duplex (FD) transmission mode not only helps extend the coverage but also lengthen network lifetime. In this paper, we develop wireless power supply policies, namely separated power (SP) and harvested power (HP) to propose a flexible architecture at the relay node in FD decode-and-forward (DF) relaying networks considering time switching-based relaying protocol (TSR) to achieve optimal time used for a communication process. This transmission mode requires more processing procedure at the relay, i.e. antenna installations and radio frequency (RF) self-interference cancellation. We evaluate the optimal power constraints in case of SP and HP to achieve better power consumption efficiency at the relay node. More importantly, closed-form expressions for outage probability and throughput are provided, and we also use numerical and simulation results to compare SP with HP.Web of Science234767

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on serum vitamin D level among infants and toddlers: An interrupted time series analysis and before-and-after comparison

Background: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the implementation of social distancing and home confinement measures may elevate the risk of vitamin D deficiency particularly for infants. This study aimed to quantify changes in vitamin D level among infants and toddlers in Hong Kong after the COVID-19 outbreak. Methods: We recruited 303 infants and toddlers aged 2–24 months by stratified random sampling from 1 June 2019 to November 30, 2020. Regression models were used to estimate the effect of time on infants’ serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) level overall and by age groups before and after the outbreak. Interrupted time series (ITS) analysis was performed to examine the sustained effect of COVID-19 on their serum 25(OH)D level. Results: The ITS results showed no immediate reduction in serum 25(OH)D level among infants, but a decreasing trend was observed in the subsequent months post-outbreak at a monthly decline rate of −6.32 nmol/L. When analyzed by age group, the magnitude of post-outbreak reduction in 25(OH)D was stronger among younger infants (aged 2–6 months). Conclusion: Guidelines and recommendations should be given to pregnant women and mothers to ensure sufficient vitamin D level in their infants during the COVID-19 period

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma: presenting symptoms and duration before diagnosis

This is a retrospective analysis of 4768 patients with undifferentiated or non-keratinising carcinoma of the nasopharynx who were treated during 1 January 1976 to 31 December 1985. The mean duration of symptoms before diagnosis was 8 months (range, 1-36 months for 95% of patients). A significant association between the duration of symptoms and the presenting stage was observed (P<0.001); 58% and 39% of stage I and stage V patients, respectively, reported as having had symptoms for less than 6 months. Of the later presenters (those having had symptoms for 6 months or longer), 89% were given a full course of radical megavoltage radiotherapy, but 6% were too advanced for any irradiation attempt. Consequently, the 10-year actuarial disease-specific survival was significantly higher among the early presenters: 48% versus 42% (P<0.001). The importance of early detection is emphasised.published_or_final_versio

On the (1 − C₂) condition

In this paper, we give some results on (1 − C2)−modules and 1−continuous modules

DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF COMPACT METAMATERIAL MIMO ANTENNA FOR WLAN APPLICATIONS

A compact three-port metamaterial multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna using complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR) loaded ground have demonstrated in order to miniaturize the size and improve the antenna performance. The antenna is designed on FR4 material and simulated by HFSS software. By loading CSRRs in the ground plane, the size reduction of 77% of the individual patch antenna element is achieved, which appeared to be the major reason for the obtained the compact MIMO antenna. Furthermore, the simulated results show that the proposed MIMO antenna achieves the total gain higher than 5 dB, the isolation less than -11 dB, the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) value lower than 0.015, and the bandwidth of 100 MHz through the whole WLAN band from 2.4 GHz to 2.484 GHz, indicating promises for WLAN applications

Outcome of neoadjuvant chemoradiation in MRI staged locally advanced rectal cancer: Retrospective analysis of 123 Chinese patients

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Computational identification of ubiquitylation sites from protein sequences

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ubiquitylation plays an important role in regulating protein functions. Recently, experimental methods were developed toward effective identification of ubiquitylation sites. To efficiently explore more undiscovered ubiquitylation sites, this study aims to develop an accurate sequence-based prediction method to identify promising ubiquitylation sites.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We established an ubiquitylation dataset consisting of 157 ubiquitylation sites and 3676 putative non-ubiquitylation sites extracted from 105 proteins in the UbiProt database. This study first evaluates promising sequence-based features and classifiers for the prediction of ubiquitylation sites by assessing three kinds of features (amino acid identity, evolutionary information, and physicochemical property) and three classifiers (support vector machine, <it>k</it>-nearest neighbor, and NaïveBayes). Results show that the set of used 531 physicochemical properties and support vector machine (SVM) are the best kind of features and classifier respectively that their combination has a prediction accuracy of 72.19% using leave-one-out cross-validation.</p> <p>Consequently, an informative physicochemical property mining algorithm (IPMA) is proposed to select an informative subset of 531 physicochemical properties. A prediction system UbiPred was implemented by using an SVM with the feature set of 31 informative physicochemical properties selected by IPMA, which can improve the accuracy from 72.19% to 84.44%. To further analyze the informative physicochemical properties, a decision tree method C5.0 was used to acquire if-then rule-based knowledge of predicting ubiquitylation sites. UbiPred can screen promising ubiquitylation sites from putative non-ubiquitylation sites using prediction scores. By applying UbiPred, 23 promising ubiquitylation sites were identified from an independent dataset of 3424 putative non-ubiquitylation sites, which were also validated by using the obtained prediction rules.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We have proposed an algorithm IPMA for mining informative physicochemical properties from protein sequences to build an SVM-based prediction system UbiPred. UbiPred can predict ubiquitylation sites accompanied with a prediction score each to help biologists in identifying promising sites for experimental verification. UbiPred has been implemented as a web server and is available at <url>http://iclab.life.nctu.edu.tw/ubipred</url>.</p

Carotid Body AT4 Receptor Expression and its Upregulation in Chronic Hypoxia

Hypoxia regulates the local expression of angiotensin-generating system in the rat carotid body and the me-tabolite angiotensin IV (Ang IV) may be involved in the modulation of carotid body function. We tested the hypothesis that Ang IV-binding angiotensin AT4 receptors play a role in the adaptive change of the carotid body in hypoxia. The expression and localization of Ang IV-binding sites and AT4 receptors in the rat carotid bodies were studied with histochemistry. Specific fluorescein-labeled Ang IV binding sites and positive staining of AT4 immunoreactivity were mainly found in lobules in the carotid body. Double-labeling study showed the AT4 receptor was localized in glomus cells containing tyrosine hydroxylase, suggesting the expression in the chemosensitive cells. Intriguingly, the Ang IV-binding and AT4 immunoreactivity were more intense in the carotid body of chronically hypoxic (CH) rats (breathing 10% oxygen for 4 weeks) than the normoxic (Nx) control. Also, the protein level of AT4 receptor was doubled in the CH comparing with the Nx group, supporting an upregulation of the expression in hypoxia. To examine if Ang IV induces intracellular Ca2+ response in the carotid body, cytosolic calcium ([Ca2+]i) was measured by spectrofluorimetry in fura-2-loaded glomus cells dissociated from CH and Nx carotid bodies. Exogenous Ang IV elevated [Ca2+]i in the glomus cells and the Ang IV response was significantly greater in the CH than the Nx group. Hence, hypoxia induces an upregulation of the expression of AT4 receptors in the glomus cells of the carotid body with an increase in the Ang IV-induced [Ca2+]i elevation. This may be an additional pathway enhancing the Ang II action for the activation of chemoreflex in the hypoxic response during chronic hypoxia