Impact of Dietary Folate Deficiency on Behavioral and Genetic Outcomes

Undergraduate Basi

The Analysis of Folate-Dependent Transcription Factor Zinc Finger Protein 410

A previous study that introduced dietary folate to mice in the form of folic acid to determine if gene activity would be altered based on this biological molecule demonstrated that mice without folic acid had cognition deficits, and this phenomenon was correlated with altered gene expression in their brains. The included bioinformatic analysis revealed two main transcription factors that bind to proteins in the nucleus, and one is known as the Zinc Finger Protein 410 (Zfp410). Due to the lack of literature explaining the function of this transcription factor, this project is intended to analyze Zfp410 in detail from scratch. Zfp410 cDNA sequence was purchased along with a plasmid vector, transferred to E. coli, and used to purify the recombinant protein. The purified protein was then injected into a rabbit for antibody production, and the collected Zfp410 antibody was characterized using several molecular techniques. Within high efficiency of targeting its antigen, Zfp410 antibody was used to identify any interacting proteins of Zfp410 by co-immunoprecipitation along with silver stain and western blot. The results demonstrated several Zfp410 interacting partners which suggested transcription factor Zfp410’s role in folate-dependent genes’ regulations

Analysis of Interacting Proteins of Zinc Finger Protein 410

Undergraduate Basi

Sample Mixed-Based Data Augmentation for Domestic Audio Tagging

Audio tagging has attracted increasing attention since last decade and has various potential applications in many fields. The objective of audio tagging is to predict the labels of an audio clip. Recently deep learning methods have been applied to audio tagging and have achieved state-of-the-art performance, which provides a poor generalization ability on new data. However due to the limited size of audio tagging data such as DCASE data, the trained models tend to result in overfitting of the network. Previous data augmentation methods such as pitch shifting, time stretching and adding background noise do not show much improvement in audio tagging. In this paper, we explore the sample mixed data augmentation for the domestic audio tagging task, including mixup, SamplePairing and extrapolation. We apply a convolutional recurrent neural network (CRNN) with attention module with log-scaled mel spectrum as a baseline system. In our experiments, we achieve an state-of-the-art of equal error rate (EER) of 0.10 on DCASE 2016 task4 dataset with mixup approach, outperforming the baseline system without data augmentation.Comment: submitted to the workshop of Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events 2018 (DCASE 2018), 19-20 November 2018, Surrey, U

Same titanium glycolate precursor but different products: Successful synthesis of twinned anatase TiO2 nanocrystals with excellent solar photocatalytic hydrogen evolution capability

Exploiting a synthesis protocol to tailor TiO 2 with a unique morphology and crystal phase has received considerable interest in the energy and environmental fields. We here describe the use of a titanium glycolate precursor in a hydrothermal hydrolysis reaction to engineer TiO 2 nanocrystals with different crystal phases and structures. Anatase TiO 2 nanocrystals with twinned structures were obtained by using a lower amount of NaOH in the hydrolysis system, while brookite TiO 2 nanocrystals were formed when higher amounts of NaOH were employed. The as-synthesized different TiO 2 nanocrystals have a suitable bandgap to harvest photons and a more negative bottom level of the conduction band than the redox potential of H + /H 2 indicating their potential as hydrogen-evolution semiconductor photocatalysts. However, the TiO 2 nanotwins show promoted charge separation efficiency, and thus result in superior photocatalytic H 2 generation activity compared to the anatase and brookite TiO 2 nanocrystals. Our findings provide an effective and versatile solution for the fabrication of TiO 2 -based nanostructures with different phases and morphologies through chemical conversion of powder precursor nanoparticles, which could pave the way to the design of other functional nano-oxides with unique structures

Protective effect of midazolam against convulsion in neonatal rats via down-regulation of LC3 and Beclin-1 expression

Purpose: To investigate the effect of midazolam on growth of neurocytes in vitro and in neonatal rats. Methods: Neurocyte proliferation and activity of lactate dehydrogenase were assessed by MTT and lactate dehydrogenase assays, respectively. Western blotting was used to determine the effect of midazolam on LC3, Bax, p62 and Beclin-1 protein expressions. Results: The suppression of neurocyte proliferation byconvulsion was alleviated significantly (p < 0.05) by midazolum treatment. Exposure of convulsion model of neurocytes to midazolum suppressed LC3, Bax, p62 and Beclin-1 protein expression. Midazolum exposure of convulsion model of neurocytes suppressed LDH, caspase-3, caspase-8 and caspase-9 activities. The 3-MA (autophagy inhibitor) treatment also significantly (p < 0.05) promoted neurocyte viability after convulsion induction. In convulsion-induced neurocytes, 3-MA exposure suppressed expression of caspase-3/8/9, LC3, Bax, Beclin-1 and p62, while application of midazolum treatment to the rats with convulsion markedly decreased brain water content and neurocyte apoptosis (p < 0.05). Treatment with midazolum inhibited LC3, p62 and Beclin-1 expression in the rat model of convulsion. Conclusion: Midazolum promotes neurocyte proliferation and inhibits edema development via downregulation of autophagy. Therefore, midazolum can potentially be used for the treatment of convulsion, but further studies need to be carried out first. Keywords: Convulsion, Neurocytes, Caspase, Autophagy, Mitochondrial pathwa