Lion metaphors in Chinese and English

This study intends to explore the cultural similarities and differences between the lion metaphors in Mandarin Chinese and British English. Most previous studies on animal metaphors focussed on the expressions with human beings as the target domain by collecting data either from questionnaires or dictionaries based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. This study, however, focusses on the expressions with non-humans as the target domains and is based on data collected from authoritative corpora. Three hundred and ninety-seven metaphorical expressions in Mandarin Chinese were identified from the Modern Chinese Corpus compiled by the Centre for Chinese Linguistics of Peking University (CCL Corpus) and 241 metaphorical expressions in British English were identified from the British National Corpus (BNC). After analysing the expressions from the perspective of the source domain and the target domain, the results show that first, the metaphorical expressions in Mandarin Chinese are mainly projected from the lion’s appearance to non-humans, but those in British English are mainly projected from the lion’s characteristics to non-humans. Second, the expressions are mainly mapped onto seven target domains in each language; four are the same. In addition, the dominant evaluation of the seven target domains in each language is mostly neutral. Third, ten conceptual metaphors were generalised from Mandarin Chinese and one from British English. All of these indicate the occurrence of cultural similarities as well as differences in the lion metaphors in the two languages

Aberrant regulation of FBW7 in cancer

FBW7 (F-box and WD repeat domain-containing 7) or Fbxw7 is a tumor suppressor, which promotes the ubiquitination and subsequent degradation of numerous oncoproteins including Mcl-1, Cyclin E, Notch, c- Jun, and c-Myc. In turn, FBW7 is regulated by multiple upstream factors including p53, C/EBP-δ, EBP2, Pin1, Hes-5 and Numb4 as well as by microRNAs such as miR-223, miR-27a, miR-25, and miR-129-5p. Given that the Fbw7 tumor suppressor is frequently inactivated or deleted in various human cancers, targeting FBW7 regulators is a promising anti-cancer therapeutic strategy

Application of weighted gene co-expression network and immune infiltration for explorations of key genes in the brain of elderly COVID-19 patients

IntroductionAlthough many studies have demonstrated the existing neurological symptoms in COVID-19 patients, the mechanisms are not clear until now. This study aimed to figure out the critical molecular and immune infiltration situations in the brain of elderly COVID-19 patients.MethodsGSE188847 was used for the differential analysis, WGCNA, and immune infiltration analysis. We also performed GO, KEGG, GSEA, and GSVA for the enrich analysis.Results266 DEGs, obtained from the brain samples of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients whose ages were over 70 years old, were identified. GO and KEGG analysis revealed the enrichment in synapse and neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction in COVID-19 patients. Further analysis found that asthma and immune system signal pathways were significant changes based on GSEA and GSVA. Immune infiltration analysis demonstrated the imbalance of CD8+ T cells, neutrophils, and HLA. The MEpurple module genes were the most significantly different relative to COVID-19. Finally, RPS29, S100A10, and TIMP1 were the critical genes attributed to the progress of brain damage.ConclusionRPS29, S100A10, and TIMP1 were the critical genes in the brain pathology of COVID-19 in elderly patients. Our research has revealed a new mechanism and a potential therapeutic target