The glycome and glycomedicine

“Life requires more than nucleic acids and proteins; sweet sugar molecules could be another life code beyond the central dogma of molecular biology.”

Development of an UAS for Earthquake Emergency Response and Its Application in Two Disastrous Earthquakes

To support humanitarian action after a disaster, we require reliable data like high-resolution satellite images for analyses aimed to define the damages of facilities and/or infrastructures. However, we cannot obtain satellite images in few days after an event. Thus, in situ surveys are preferred. Advances in unmanned aircraft system (UAS) have promoted them to become precious tools for capturing and assessing the extents and volume of damages. Safety, flexibility, low cost, and ease of operation make UAS suitable for disaster assessment. In this chapter, we developed an example of UAS for swiftly acquiring disaster information. With the selected fixed-wing UAS, we successfully performed data acquisition at specified scales. For the image analysis, we applied a photogrammetric workflow to deal with the very high resolution of the images obtained without ground control points. The results obtained from two destructive earthquakes demonstrated that the presented system plays a key role on the processes of investigating and gathering information about a disaster in the earthquake epicentral areas, like road detection, structural damage survey, secondary disaster investigation, and quick disaster assessment. It can effectively provide disaster information in hardly entered areas to salvation headquarters for rapidly developing the relief measures

Bioactivity-guided fractionation of the triglyceride-lowering component and in vivo and in vitro evaluation of hypolipidemic effects of Calyx seu Fructus Physalis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In folklore, some people take the decoction of <it>Calyx seu Fructus Physalis </it>(CSFP) for lowering blood lipids. The present study is designed to evaluate the lipid-lowering activities of CSFP, and search for its pharmacodynamical material.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>CSFP was extracted by water and 75% ethanol, respectively. The extracts of CSFP for reducing serum lipid levels were evaluated on mouse model of hyperlipidemia. The optimized extract was subjected to the bioactivity-guided fractionation in which the liquid-liquid extraction, collumn chromatography, the <it>in vivo </it>and <it>in vitro </it>models of hyperlipidemia were utilized. The structure of active component was determined by ¹³C-NMR and ¹H-NMR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The 75% ethanol extract of CSFP decreased the serum total cholesterol (TC) and triglyceride (TG) levels in mouse model of hyperlipidemia. Followed a separation process for the 75% ethanol extract of CSFP, the fraction B was proved to be an active fraction for lowering lipid <it>in vivo </it>and <it>in vitro </it>experiments, which could significantly decrease the serum TC and TG levels in mouse model of hyperlipidemia, and remarkably decrease the increase of TG in primary mouse hepatocytes induced by high glucose and the increase of TG in HepG2 cells induced by oleic acid. The fraction B2, isolated from B on bioactivity-guided fractionation, could significantly decrease TG level in HepG2 cells. One compound with the highest content in B2 was isolated and determined as luteolin-7-O-beta-D-glucopyranoside by NMR spectra. It could significantly reduce the TG level in HepG2 cells, and inhibited the accumulation of lipids by oil red O stain.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results demonstrated that the 75% ethanol extract of CSFP could improve <it>in vitro </it>and <it>in vivo </it>lipid accumulation. Luteolin-7-O-beta-D-glucopyranoside might be a leading pharmacodynamical material of CSFP for lowering lipids.</p

Predicting human microRNA precursors based on an optimized feature subset generated by GA–SVM

AbstractMicroRNAs (miRNAs) are non-coding RNAs that play important roles in post-transcriptional regulation. Identification of miRNAs is crucial to understanding their biological mechanism. Recently, machine-learning approaches have been employed to predict miRNA precursors (pre-miRNAs). However, features used are divergent and consequently induce different performance. Thus, feature selection is critical for pre-miRNA prediction. We generated an optimized feature subset including 13 features using a hybrid of genetic algorithm and support vector machine (GA–SVM). Based on SVM, the classification performance of the optimized feature subset is much higher than that of the two feature sets used in microPred and miPred by five-fold cross-validation. Finally, we constructed the classifier miR-SF to predict the most recently identified human pre-miRNAs in miRBase (version 16). Compared with microPred and miPred, miR-SF achieved much higher classification performance. Accuracies were 93.97%, 86.21% and 64.66% for miR-SF, microPred and miPred, respectively. Thus, miR-SF is effective for identifying pre-miRNAs

Efficacy and safety of triazavirin therapy for coronavirus disease 2019 : A pilot randomized controlled trial

Acknowledgements: We are deeply grateful to the front-line clinicians who participated in the study while directly fighting the epidemic. This study was supported by the Chinese Academy of Engineering Projects for COVID-19 (2020-KYGG-01-04) and Heilongjiang Province Urgent Project-6 for COVID-19. Data and safety monitoring board members of this trial included Kang Li, Yong Zhang, Songjiang Liu, and Yaohui Shi.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Impact of Variational Primary Collaterals on Cerebral Autoregulation

The influence of the anterior and posterior communicating artery (ACoA and PCoA) on dynamic cerebral autoregulation (dCA) is largely unknown. In this study, we aimed to test whether substantial differences in collateral anatomy were associated with differences in dCA in two common types of stenosis according to digital subtraction angiography (DSA): either isolated basal artery and/or bilateral vertebral arteries severe stenosis/occlusion (group 1; group 1A: with bilateral PCoAs; and group 1B: without bilateral PCoAs), or isolated unilateral internal carotid artery severe stenosis/occlusion (group 2; group 2A: without ACoA and with PCoA; group 2B: with ACoA and without PCoAs; and group 2C: without both ACoA and PCoA). The dCA was calculated by transfer function analysis (a mathematical model), and was evaluated in middle cerebral artery (MCA) and/or posterior cerebral artery (PCA). Of a total of 231 non-acute phase ischemic stroke patients who received both dCA assessment and DSA in our lab between 2014 and 2017, 51 patients met inclusion criteria based on the presence or absence of ACoA or PCoA, including 21 patients in the group 1, and 30 patients in the group 2. There were no significant differences in gender, age, and mean blood pressure between group 1A and group 1B, and among group 2A, group 2B, and group 2C. In group 1, the PCA phase difference values (autoregulatory parameter) were significantly higher in the subgroup with patent PCoAs, compared to those without. In group 2, the MCA phase difference values were higher in the subgroup with patent ACoA, compared to those without. This pilot study found that the cross-flow of the ACoA/PCoA to the affected area compensates for compromised dCA in the affected area, which suggests an important role of the ACoA/PCoA in stabilizing cerebral blood flow