Ago-2-Mediated Slicer Activity Is Essential for Anti-Flaviviral Efficacy of RNAi

RNA interference can be mediated by fully complementary siRNA or partially complementary miRNA. siRNAs are widely used to suppress viral replication and the fully complementary siRNA bound Ago-2 in the RISC is known to degrade the target RNA. Although other argonaute proteins lacking slicer activity can also bind oligonucleotides with both si and miRNA structures, whether they can also contribute to antiviral effects is not entirely clear. We tested si and miRNA structured oligos for target repression in dual luciferase assays as well as for inhibition of Dengue and West Nile virus replication in ES cells expressing individual Ago proteins. In luciferase assays, both fully complementary and partially complementary oligos effectively repressed their targets in all individual Ago expressing cell lines, although the efficacy with fully complementary oligos was higher in Ago-2+ cells. However, partially complementary oligos had no effect on virus replication in any cell line, while fully complementary siRNAs were highly effective in Ago-2 expressing, but not in cells expressing other Ago proteins. This occurred irrespective of whether the target sequences were located in the coding region or 3′UTR of the virus. We conclude that Ago-2 slicer activity is essential for anti-viral efficacy of siRNAs and miRNA-mediated translational repression/transcript destabilization is too weak to suppress the abundantly expressed flaviviral proteins

Absence of integrin-mediated TGFβ1 activation in vivo recapitulates the phenotype of TGFβ1-null mice

The multifunctional cytokine transforming growth factor (TGF) β1 is secreted in a latent complex with its processed propeptide (latency-associated peptide [LAP]). TGFβ1 must be functionally released from this complex before it can engage TGFβ receptors. One mechanism of latent TGFβ1 activation involves interaction of the integrins αvβ6 and αvβ8 with an RGD sequence in LAP; other putative latent TGFβ1 activators include thrombospondin-1, oxidants, and various proteases. To assess the contribution of RGD-binding integrins to TGFβ1 activation in vivo, we created a mutation in Tgfb1 encoding a nonfunctional variant of the RGD sequence (RGE). Mice with this mutation (Tgfb1RGE/RGE) display the major features of Tgfb1−/− mice (vasculogenesis defects, multiorgan inflammation, and lack of Langerhans cells) despite production of normal levels of latent TGFβ1. These findings indicate that RGD-binding integrins are requisite latent TGFβ1 activators during development and in the immune system

Ground-based remote sensing cloud detection using dual pyramid network and encoder–decoder constraint

Many methods for ground-based remote sensing cloud detection learn representation features using the encoder–decoder structure. However, they only consider the information from single scale, which leads to incomplete feature extraction. In this article, we propose a novel deep network named dual pyramid network (DPNet) for ground-based remote sensing cloud detection, which possesses an encoder–decoder structure with dual pyramid pooling module (DPPM). Specifically, we process the feature maps of different scales in the encoder through dual pyramid pooling. Then, we fuse the outputs of the dual pyramid pooling in the same pyramid level using the attention fusion. Furthermore, we propose the encoder–decoder constraint (EDC) to relieve information loss in the process of encoding and decoding. It constrains the values and the gradients of probability maps from the encoder and the decoder to be consistent. Since the number of cloud images in the publicly available databases for ground-based remote sensing cloud detection is limited, we release the TJNU Large-scale Cloud Detection Database (TLCDD) that is the largest database in this field. We conduct a series of experiments on TLCDD, and the experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method

Integration transformer for ground-based cloud image segmentation

Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) dominate the ground-based cloud image segmentation task, but disregard the learning of long-range dependencies due to the limited size of filters. Although Transformer-based methods could overcome this limitation, they only learn long-range dependencies at a single scale, hence failing to capture multiscale information of cloud images. The multiscale information is beneficial to ground-based cloud image segmentation, because the features from small scales tend to extract detailed information, while features from large scales have the ability to learn global information. In this article, we propose a novel deep network named Integration Transformer (InTransformer), which builds long-range dependencies from different scales. To this end, we propose the hybrid multihead transformer block (HMTB) to learn multiscale long-range dependencies and hybridize CNNs and HMTB as the encoder at different scales. The proposed InTransformer hybridizes CNNs and Transformer as the encoder to extract multiscale representations, which learns both local information and long-range dependencies with different scales. Meanwhile, in order to fuse the patch tokens with different scales, we propose a mutual cross-attention module (MCAM) for the decoder of InTransformer which could adequately interact multiscale patch tokens in a bidirectional way. We have conducted a series of experiments on the large ground-based cloud detection database TJNU Large Scale Cloud Detection Database (TLCDD) and Singapore Whole sky IMaging SEGmentation Database (SWIMSEG). The experimental results show that the performance of our method outperforms other methods, proving the effectiveness of the proposed InTransformer

Morphology and Ontogenesis of a Marine Ciliate, Euplotes balteatus (Dujardin, 1841) Kahl, 1932 (Ciliophora, Euplotida) and Definition of Euplotes wilberti nov. spec.

Euplotes balteatus (Dujardin, 1841) Kahl 1932, collected from coastal waters near Qingdao, northern China, was investigated using live observation and silver staining methods. An improved diagnosis and morphometric data are provided. Euplotes balteatus can be identified by the following combination of characters: 10 frontoventral cirri, 2 widely separated marginal cirri, 2 fine caudal cirri, 8 dorsal kineties and a double-eurystomus type silverline system. Its morphogenesis, which is similar to that of several congeners, can be summarized as follows: (1) the opisthe’s oral primordium appears de novo under the pellicle whereas the old oral apparatus is retained by the proter; (2) two groups of frontoventral transverse cirral anlagen, each with five streaks, occur de novo and then develop into the frontoventral and transverse cirri separately according to the formula of “3:3:3:3:2” from left to right; (3) the anlagen for the marginal cirri occur de novo near the parental oral apparatus; (4) migratory cirri of both dividers derive from the anlagen near the paroral membrane; (5) the dorsal kinety anlagen come from dedifferentiation of the parental structures in the mid-body region; (6) caudal cirri are formed at the posterior ends of the two rightmost dorsal kineties. In the light of the present findings, it was concluded that the Antarctic population of E. balteatus reported by Song and Wilbert (2002) was misidentified. A new species, Euplotes wilberti nov. spec., is established for this population

Taxonomic Studies on Three Marine Ciliates from China, Including a New Species (Ciliophora, Cyrtophorida)

The present work investigates the living morphology and infraciliature of three marine cyrtophorid ciliates, which were isolated from Qingdao, China. Compared with its congeners, Orthotrochilia sinica spec. nov. can be distinguished by a combination of features: body slender and elliptical in outline, size about 50–60 × 20–25 μm in vivo, 18–21 somatic kineties, the length of the left perioral kinety treble the length of the right one, two ventrally located contractile vacuoles on the right side, and 25–32 nematodesmal rods. Based on current observations and the previous description, the diagnosis of Trochilioides tenuis (Deroux, 1976) Chen et al. 2011 is improved: cell size 30–40 × 20–35 μm in vivo, oval shaped in outline; consistently three right kineties, four left kineties and seven postoral kineties; a single contractile vacuole; marine habitat. A second species of Trochilioides, T. recta (Kahl, 1923) Chen et al. 2011 is re-described based on a Chinese population. Furthermore, a key to the identification of species of the genus Trochilioides whose infraciliature data are available is supplied, and Chlamydonyx trivialis (Fenchel, 1965) comb. nov. [basionym: Trochilioides trivialis Fenchel, 1965] is suggested

Morphology and SSU rRNA Gene Sequences of Three Marine Ciliates from Yellow Sea, China, Including One New Species, Uronema heteromarinum nov. spec. (Ciliophora, Scuticociliatida)

The morphology, infraciliature, and silverline system of three marine scuticociliates, Uronema marinum Dujardin, 1841, U. heteromarinum nov. spec. and Pleuronema setigerum Calkins, 1902, isolated from coastal waters off Qingdao, China, were investigated using living observation and silver impregnation methods. Due to the great confusion in the species definition of the well-known species U. marinum, we have documented a detailed discussion/comparison and believe that most of the confusion is due to the fact that at least 2 closely-related sibling morphotypes exist which are often not recognized. Based on the data available, U. marinum is strictly defined as follows: marine Uronema ca. 30 × 10 μm in size, with truncated apical frontal plate and smooth pellicle, extrusomes inconspicuous, cytostome located equatorially, 12–14 somatic kineties and one contractile vacuole pore near posterior end of kinety 2. Uronema heteromarinum nov. spec. resembles U. marinum but can be distinguished morphologically by its notched pellicle with conspicuous extrusomes and reticulate ridges, the 15–16 somatic kineties, widely separated membranelle 1 and membranelle 2, as well as the subequatorially positioned cytostome. Based on the Qingdao population, an improved diagnosis for the poorly known Pleuronema setigerum is: marine slender oval-shaped form, in vivo about 40–50 × 15–20 μm; 3–5 preoral kineties and 14–22 somatic kineties; membranelle 1 and 3 three-rowed, and posterior end of M2a ring-like. The small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene for all three organisms were sequenced and analyzed with standard methods

Morphological Studies on Five Trachelocercids from the Yellow Sea coast of China, with a Description of Tracheloraphis huangi spec. nov. (Ciliophora, Karyorelictea)

The morphology and infraciliature of five trachelocercid ciliates: Tracheloraphis huangi spec. nov., T. colubis (Kahl, 1933) comb. nov., T. phoenicopterus (Cohn, 1866) Dragesco, 1960, T. oligostriata (Raikov, 1962) Foissner and Dragesco, 1996 and Trachelocerca incaudata Kahl, 1933, isolated from the intertidal zone of a beach at Qingdao, China, were studied in live and protargol impregnated specimens. Tracheloraphis huangi spec. nov. was distinguished from its congeners mainly by its single nuclear group composed of 25–30 round macronuclei and 29–37 somatic kineties. The poorly known T. colubis is redescribed including for the first time information on its infraciliature. An improved diagnosis is also provided. In light of its infraciliature, T. colubis is transferred to Tracheloraphis from the genus Trachelocerca. Additional data on other three species is supplied based on the Qingdao populations

Molecular Signatures of the Primitive Prostate Stem Cell Niche Reveal Novel Mesenchymal-Epithelial Signaling Pathways

Signals between stem cells and stroma are important in establishing the stem cell niche. However, very little is known about the regulation of any mammalian stem cell niche as pure isolates of stem cells and their adjacent mesenchyme are not readily available. The prostate offers a unique model to study signals between stem cells and their adjacent stroma as in the embryonic prostate stem cell niche, the urogenital sinus mesenchyme is easily separated from the epithelial stem cells. Here we investigate the distinctive molecular signals of these two stem cell compartments in a mammalian system.We isolated fetal murine urogenital sinus epithelium and urogenital sinus mesenchyme and determined their differentially expressed genes. To distinguish transcripts that are shared by other developing epithelial/mesenchymal compartments from those that pertain to the prostate stem cell niche, we also determined the global gene expression of epidermis and dermis of the same embryos. Our analysis indicates that several of the key transcriptional components that are predicted to be active in the embryonic prostate stem cell niche regulate processes such as self-renewal (e.g., E2f and Ap2), lipid metabolism (e.g., Srebp1) and cell migration (e.g., Areb6 and Rreb1). Several of the enriched promoter binding motifs are shared between the prostate epithelial/mesenchymal compartments and their epidermis/dermis counterparts, indicating their likely relevance in epithelial/mesenchymal signaling in primitive cellular compartments. Based on differential gene expression we also defined ligand-receptor interactions that may be part of the molecular interplay of the embryonic prostate stem cell niche.We provide a comprehensive description of the transcriptional program of the major regulators that are likely to control the cellular interactions in the embryonic prostatic stem cell niche, many of which may be common to mammalian niches in general. This study provides a comprehensive source for further studies of mesenchymal/epithelial interactions in the prostate stem cell niche. The elucidation of pathways in the normal primitive niche may provide greater insight into mechanisms subverted during abnormal proliferative and oncogenic processes. Understanding these events may result in the development of specific targeted therapies for prostatic diseases such as benign prostatic hypertrophy and carcinomas

A Morphogenetic Description of Thigmokeronopsis stoecki Shao et al., 2008 (Ciliophora, Hypotricha) and a Comparison with Members of the Family Pseudokeronopsidae

The urostylid family Pseudokeronopsidae Borror and Wicklow, 1983 was considered to be a well-outlined taxon. Nevertheless, recent evidence, including morphological, ontogenetic, and molecular information, has consistently revealed the polyphyly of this family. In the present work, a new population of Thigmokeronopsis stoecki Shao et al., 2008 was found and its binary divisional process was described for the first time. In addition, the morphogenetic features of Thigmokeronopsis species and all the other pseudokeronopsids, for which detailed ontogenetic data are available, were rechecked and compared. This reveals that: (1) the ontogenetic process of T. stoecki corresponds well with its congeners T. jahodai and T. rubra except for the macronuclear behavior; (2) Apokeronopsis and Thigmokeronopsis share a similar ontogenetic mode despite of the differences in the number and origin of their buccal cirri; (3) most pseudokeronopsids share the same pattern in the origins of their oral primordia and fronto-ventral-transverse cirral anlagen, except for Pseudokeronopsis similis, which may not be a valid member of the family Pseudokeronopsidae