Thyroid Hormone Receptor and Coregulators: A Dynamic Model

The thyroid hormone receptor (TR) mediates gene transcription in response to thyroid hormone (T3) and significantly affects cell growth, development and metabolism. Although TR shuttles rapidly between the nucleus and cytoplasm, it is primarily nuclear localized at steady state. This state, according to previous research, is achieved by the balance of TR nuclear import, export and nuclear retention. The first focus of this thesis was on how nuclear receptor corepressor 1 (NCoR1) contributes to TR nuclear localization. Using transient transfection assays and fluorescence microscopy, we measured the fluorescent intensity of GFP or mCherry-tagged TR in the nucleus (N) and cytoplasm (C) of HeLa cells, and then calculated the N/C ratio as an indicator of intracellular localization patterns. We discovered that when NCoR1 is knocked down by shRNA, the amount of TR in the nucleus decreased significantly (lower N/C ratio). Inversely, when NCoR1 is over-expressed, the amount of TR in the nucleus significantly increased (higher N/C ratio). An even more dramatic cytosolic shift was observed for a TR mutant that cannot bind to NCoR1. Taken together, our results suggest that NCoR1 is a key regulator of TR nuclear retention. The second focus of this thesis was on developing a model to calculate protein-protein and protein-DNA binding rates using fluorescent recovery after photobleaching (FRAP). The model was designed to describe the fluorescent recovery curve for a linear photobleached region under a uniform laser profile. By fitting the model, we could then obtain binding rates for the complexes that interact with TR. These findings will contribute to the development of a dynamic mathematical model that aims to predict TR’s N/C ratio during the interaction with different complexes, and the effect of altered localization on transcriptional output of T3-dependent genes

Temporal Aware Mixed Attention-based Convolution and Transformer Network (MACTN) for EEG Emotion Recognition

Emotion recognition plays a crucial role in human-computer interaction, and electroencephalography (EEG) is advantageous for reflecting human emotional states. In this study, we propose MACTN, a hierarchical hybrid model for jointly modeling local and global temporal information. The model is inspired by neuroscience research on the temporal dynamics of emotions. MACTN extracts local emotional features through a convolutional neural network (CNN) and integrates sparse global emotional features through a transformer. Moreover, we employ channel attention mechanisms to identify the most task-relevant channels. Through extensive experimentation on two publicly available datasets, namely THU-EP and DEAP, our proposed method, MACTN, consistently achieves superior classification accuracy and F1 scores compared to other existing methods in most experimental settings. Furthermore, ablation studies have shown that the integration of both self-attention mechanisms and channel attention mechanisms leads to improved classification performance. Finally, an earlier version of this method, which shares the same ideas, won the Emotional BCI Competition's final championship in the 2022 World Robot Contest

Involvement of apoptotic pathways in docosahexaenoic acid-induced benefit in prostate cancer: Pathway-focused gene expression analysis using RT2 Profile PCR Array System

Apoptosis pathway-focused gene expression profiling of DU145 cells following DHA exposure. (DOCX 21 kb

A Pseudo DNA Cryptography Method

The DNA cryptography is a new and very promising direction in cryptography research. DNA can be used in cryptography for storing and transmitting the information, as well as for computation. Although in its primitive stage, DNA cryptography is shown to be very effective. Currently, several DNA computing algorithms are proposed for quite some cryptography, cryptanalysis and steganography problems, and they are very powerful in these areas. However, the use of the DNA as a means of cryptography has high tech lab requirements and computational limitations, as well as the labor intensive extrapolation means so far. These make the efficient use of DNA cryptography difficult in the security world now. Therefore, more theoretical analysis should be performed before its real applications. In this project, We do not intended to utilize real DNA to perform the cryptography process; rather, We will introduce a new cryptography method based on central dogma of molecular biology. Since this method simulates some critical processes in central dogma, it is a pseudo DNA cryptography method. The theoretical analysis and experiments show this method to be efficient in computation, storage and transmission; and it is very powerful against certain attacks. Thus, this method can be of many uses in cryptography, such as an enhancement insecurity and speed to the other cryptography methods. There are also extensions and variations to this method, which have enhanced security, effectiveness and applicability.Comment: A small work that quite some people asked abou

(2E,6E)-2,6-Bis(4-ethoxy­benzyl­idene)cyclo­hexa­none

The title compound, C24H26O3, was prepared by the condensation reaction of 4-ethoxy­benzaldehyde with cyclo­hexa­none. The mol­ecule has crystallographic mirror symmetry and exhibits a butterfly-shaped geometry, with a dihedral angle of 5.46 (1)° between the two benzene rings. Weak inter­molecular C—H⋯π inter­actions help stabilize the crystal structure

An efficient and robust exfoliated bentonite/Ag3PO4/AgBr plasmonic photocatalyst for degradation of parabens

Efficient visible-light-driven heterojunction photocatalysts have attracted broad interest owing to their promising adsorption and degradation performances in the removal of organic pollutants. In this study, a mesoporous exfoliated bentonite (EB)/Ag3PO4/AgBr (30%) photocatalyst was obtained by stripping and exfoliating bentonite as the support for loading Ag3PO4 and AgBr. The particle size ranges of Ag3PO4 and AgBr were about 10-30 nm and 5-10 nm, respectively. The exfoliated bentonite could greatly improve the dispersion and adsorption of Ag3PO4 and AgBr, and significantly enhance the stability of the material during paraben photodegradation. 0.2 g L-1 methylparaben (MPB) was completely decomposed over the EB/Ag3PO4/AgBr (30%) in 40 min under visible light irradiation. In addition, the photocatalytic activity of EB/Ag3PO4/AgBr (30%) remained at about 91% after five recycling runs manifesting that EB/Ag3PO4/AgBr (30%) possessed excellent stability. Radical quenching tests revealed that holes (h+) and hydroxyl radicals (·OH) were the major radicals. They attacked the side chain on the benzene ring of parabens, which were gradually oxidized to the intermediates, such as benzoic acid, 3-hydroxybenzoic acid, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, azelaic acid, and eventually became CO2 and H2O. The enhancement of photocatalytic activity and photo-stability could be ascribed to the stable structural characteristics, enlarged surface area, high absorption ability, and improved light absorption ability from loading Ag3PO4 onto EB. Meanwhile, the matched energy levels of Ag3PO4 and AgBr made the photoelectron-hole pairs separate and transfer effectively at the interfaces. As a result, the photocatalytic properties of EB/Ag3PO4/AgBr (30%) composites were enhanced. © 2020 The Royal Society of Chemistry

Image Retrieval Based on Fractal Dictionary Parameters

Content-based image retrieval is a branch of computer vision. It is important for efficient management of a visual database. In most cases, image retrieval is based on image compression. In this paper, we use a fractal dictionary to encode images. Based on this technique, we propose a set of statistical indices for efficient image retrieval. Experimental results on a database of 416 texture images indicate that the proposed method provides a competitive retrieval rate, compared to the existing methods