Cell surface-specific N-glycan profiling in breast cancer

Aberrant changes in specific glycans have been shown to be associated with immunosurveillance, tumorigenesis, tumor progression and metastasis. In this study, the N-glycan profiling of membrane proteins from human breast cancer cell lines and tissues was detected using modified DNA sequencer-assisted fluorophore-assisted carbohydrate electrophoresis (DSA-FACE). The N-glycan profiles of membrane proteins were analyzed from 7 breast cancer cell lines and MCF 10A, as well as from 100 pairs of breast cancer and corresponding adjacent tissues. The results showed that, compared with the matched adjacent normal tissue samples, two biantennary N-glycans (NA2 and NA2FB) were significantly decreased (p <0.0001) in the breast cancer tissue samples, while the triantennary glycan (NA3FB) and a high-mannose glycan (M8) were dramatically increased (p = 0.001 and p <0.0001, respectively). Moreover, the alterations in these specific N-glycans occurred through the oncogenesis and progression of breast cancer. These results suggested that the modified method based on DSA-FACE is a high-throughput detection technology that is suited for analyzing cell surface N-glycans. These cell surface-specific N-glycans may be helpful in recognizing the mechanisms of tumor cell immunologic escape and could be potential targets for new breast cancer drugs

Flood mitigation by permeable pavements in Chinese sponge city construction

It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of permeable pavements on flood mitigation at different spatial scales for their effective application, for example, sponge city construction in China. This study evaluated the effectiveness of three types of permeable pavements (i.e., permeable asphalts (PA), permeable concretes (PC), and permeable interlocking concrete pavers (PICP)) on flood mitigation at a community scale in China using a hydrological model. In addition, the effects of clogging and initial water content in permeable pavements on flood mitigation performance were assessed. The results indicated that in 12 scenarios, permeable pavements reduced total surface runoff by 1–40% and peak flow by 7–43%, respectively. The hydrological performance of permeable pavements was limited by clogging and initial water content. Clogging resulted in the effectiveness on total surface runoff reduction and peak flow reduction being decreased by 62–92% and 37–65%, respectively. By increasing initial water content at the beginning of the simulation, the effectiveness of total runoff reduction and peak flow reduction decreased by 57–85% and 37–67%, respectively. Overall, among the three types of permeable pavements, PC without clogging had the best performance in terms of flood mitigation, and PICP was the least prone to being clogged. Our findings demonstrate that both the type and the maintenance of permeable pavements have significant effects on their performance in the flood mitigation

Scalable Method for Eliminating Residual ZZZZ Interaction between Superconducting Qubits

Unwanted $ZZ$ interaction is a quantum-mechanical crosstalk phenomenon which correlates qubit dynamics and is ubiquitous in superconducting qubit systems. It adversely affects the quality of quantum operations and can be detrimental in scalable quantum information processing. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a practically extensible approach for complete cancellation of residual $ZZ$ interaction between fixed-frequency transmon qubits, which are known for long coherence and simple control. We apply to the intermediate coupler that connects the qubits a weak microwave drive at a properly chosen frequency in order to noninvasively induce an ac Stark shift for $ZZ$ cancellation. We verify the cancellation performance by measuring vanishing two-qubit entangling phases and $ZZ$ correlations. In addition, we implement a randomized benchmarking experiment to extract the idling gate fidelity which shows good agreement with the coherence limit, demonstrating the effectiveness of $ZZ$ cancellation. Our method allows independent addressability of each qubit-qubit connection, and is applicable to both nontunable and tunable couplers, promising better compatibility with future large-scale quantum processors.Comment: Main text: 6 pages, 4 figures; Supplement: 7 pages, 6 figure

RIPK4 Suppresses the Invasion and Metastasis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma by Inhibiting the Phosphorylation of STAT3

Receptor interacting serine/threonine kinase 4 (RIPK4) is a member of the threonine/serine protein kinase family; it plays related functions in a variety of tumours, but its biological function has not been fully revealed. It has been reported that it is differentially expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Our research aimed to reveal the role of RIPK4 in the progression of HCC and to reveal the biological behaviour of RIPK4 in HCC. We analysed the differences in RIPK4 expression in HCC by using a publicly available data set. By using PCR, Western blotting and immunohistochemical staining methods, we detected the expression level of RIPK4 in HCC patient specimens and studied the relationship between the expression of RIPK4 and the clinicopathological features of HCC patients. The prognostic data were combined to analyse the relationship between RIPK4 and HCC patient survival and tumour recurrence. We found that the expression level of RIPK4 in nontumour tissues was significantly higher than that in tumour tissues, and the level of RIPK4 was significantly positively correlated with postoperative survival and recurrence in HCC patients. Further, our study found that RIPK4 inhibits the progression of HCC by influencing the invasion and metastasis of HCC and that overexpression of RIPK4 reduces the invasion and metastasis of HCC by inhibiting epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and the STAT3 pathway. In in vivo experiments, overexpression of RIPK4 stably inhibited HCC metastasis. To summarize, our research revealed the relationship between RIPK4 and the prognosis of patients with HCC. We discovered that RIPK4 affects the invasion and metastasis of HCC through the EMT and STAT3 pathways. Targeted inhibition of the RIPK4 gene and the STAT3 pathway may be potential therapeutic strategies for inhibiting the postoperative recurrence and metastasis of HCC

Current Regional Blockades and Suggested Solutions

At the beginning of this year, central authorities adopted a series of microeconomic measures to invigorate markets and quickly resolve the many problems arising from a soft market. In the meantime, local governments have also adopted measures to protect local industry and reinforce purchases and sales of local products. The latter led to regional blockades, which have caught on throughout the country.

Synthesis of highly substitutional nitrogen doped TiO2 via oxygen vacancy mediated strategy for ultrafast-charging lithium ion storage

Substitutional nitrogen (SN) doping is an effective approach to simultaneously enhance the ionic diffusion kinetics and increase the electronic conductivity of TiO2 being as host for lithium-ion storage. Nevertheless, achieving SN doping with high concentration in well-crystallized TiO2 nano-particles is still a great challenge. Herein, guided by density functional theory (DFT) calculations, an oxygen vacancy-mediated SN doping strategy is purposed to modify the surface structure of TiO2 nano-particles. A reduced TiO2-x amorphous layer with rich oxygen vacancy on the surface of TiO2 nano-particles brings about high doping concentration of SN (~13.8 atom %) and thus a TiO2@TiO2-x-SN core@shell heterojunction is constructed. The high doping concentration of SN in TiO2-x-SN shell of TiO2@TiO2-x-SN heterojunction favors the diffusion kinetics of Li+ due to the formation of local electric field at its heterointerface region and reduced diffusion barrier of Li+. Moreover, TiO2@TiO2-x-SN heterojunction shows a decreased band gap of 2.37 eV after increasing the doping concentration of SN, facilitating the transport of electrons. Thus, the TiO2@TiO2-x-SN electrode displays high reversible specific capacity of 362.7 mAh g(-1) at 0.1C and ultra-long cycling structural stability (with a capacity retention of 76.1% after 5000 cycles at 20C). A Li+ hybrid capacitor, assembled by activate carbon cathode and pre-lithitated TiO2@TiO2-x-SN anode, shows high energy/power densities (114.8 Wh kg(-1)/305.1 W kg(-1) and 90.2 Wh kg(-1)/5659.8 W kg(-1)). This work paves a way for developing high concentration of heteroatom doping metallic oxides and offers comprehensive understandings for the relationship between doping concentration of heteroatoms and energy storage mechanism