Elevated expression of Dickkopf-1 increases the sensitivity of human glioma cell line SHG44 to BCNU

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Studies have shown that Dickkopf-1 (DKK-1) is involved in tumorigenesis. Recently, we found that 9 out of 12 human glioma cell lines had high level of DKK-1 protein while the other 3 had very low or non-detectable level of DKK-1. The aim of this study is to further examine the function of DKK-1 in glioma cells.</p> <p>Materials and methods</p> <p>The glioma cell line SHG₄₄was obtained from a patient with grade II-III astrocytoma. SHG₄₄cells were transfected with a human DKK-1 gene. Transfection of the empty vector pcDNA3.1 was used as negative control. Sensitivity to BCNU was measured by Annexin-V staining. Expression of bax, bcl-2 and caspase-3 of three groups was determined by immunohistochemistry.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The tranfection was confirmed by PCR, RT-PCR and Western blot. More apoptotic cell death was observed in the DKK-1 transfected cells, comparing to the non-transfected cells, or cells with empty vector. The expression of bax and caspase-3 of the SHG₄₄-DDK-1 increased, whereas the expression of bcl-2 decreased</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results indicated that DKK-1 has a pro-apoptotic function of in glioma.</p

CDDFuse: Correlation-Driven Dual-Branch Feature Decomposition for Multi-Modality Image Fusion

Multi-modality (MM) image fusion aims to render fused images that maintain the merits of different modalities, e.g., functional highlight and detailed textures. To tackle the challenge in modeling cross-modality features and decomposing desirable modality-specific and modality-shared features, we propose a novel Correlation-Driven feature Decomposition Fusion (CDDFuse) network. Firstly, CDDFuse uses Restormer blocks to extract cross-modality shallow features. We then introduce a dual-branch Transformer-CNN feature extractor with Lite Transformer (LT) blocks leveraging long-range attention to handle low-frequency global features and Invertible Neural Networks (INN) blocks focusing on extracting high-frequency local information. A correlation-driven loss is further proposed to make the low-frequency features correlated while the high-frequency features uncorrelated based on the embedded information. Then, the LT-based global fusion and INN-based local fusion layers output the fused image. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our CDDFuse achieves promising results in multiple fusion tasks, including infrared-visible image fusion and medical image fusion. We also show that CDDFuse can boost the performance in downstream infrared-visible semantic segmentation and object detection in a unified benchmark. The code is available at https://github.com/Zhaozixiang1228/MMIF-CDDFuse.Comment: Accepted by CVPR 202

Rationally Designed Sodium Chromium Vanadium Phosphate Cathodes with Multi-Electron Reaction for Fast-Charging Sodium-Ion Batteries

Sodium super-ionic conductor (NASICON)-structured phosphates are emerging as rising stars as cathodes for sodium-ion batteries. However, they usually suffer from a relatively low capacity due to the limited activated redox couples and low intrinsic electronic conductivity. Herein, a reduced graphene oxide supported NASICON Na3Cr0.5V1.5(PO4)3 cathode (VC/C-G) is designed, which displays ultrafast (up to 50 C) and ultrastable (1 000 cycles at 20 C) Na+ storage properties. The VC/C-G can reach a high energy density of ≈470 W h kg−1 at 0.2 C with a specific capacity of 176 mAh g−1 (equivalent to the theoretical value); this corresponds to a three-electron transfer reaction based on fully activated V5+/V4+, V4+/V3+, V3+/V2+ couples. In situ X-ray diffraction (XRD) results disclose a combination of solid-solution reaction and biphasic reaction mechanisms upon cycling. Density functional theory calculations reveal a narrow forbidden-band gap of 1.41 eV and a low Na+ diffusion energy barrier of 0.194 eV. Furthermore, VC/C-G shows excellent fast-charging performance by only taking ≈11 min to reach 80% state of charge. The work provides a widely applicable strategy for realizing multi-electron cathode design for high-performance SIBs

“Mn-locking” effect by anionic coordination manipulation stabilizing Mn-rich phosphate cathodes

High-voltage cathodes with high power and stable cyclability are needed for high-performance sodium-ion batteries. However, the low kinetics and inferior capacity retention from structural instability impede the development of Mn-rich phosphate cathodes. Here, we propose light-weight fluorine (F) doping strategy to decrease the energy gap to 0.22 eV from 1.52 eV and trigger a “Mn-locking” effect—to strengthen the adjacent chemical bonding around Mn as confirmed by density functional theory calculations, which ensure the optimized Mn ligand framework, suppressed Mn dissolution, improved structural stability and enhanced electronic conductivity. The combination of in situ and ex situ techniques determine that the F dopant has no influence on the Na+ storage mechanisms. As a result, an outstanding rate performance up to 40C and an improved cycling stability (1000 cycles at 20C) are achieved. This work presents an effective and widely available light-weight anion doping strategy for high-performance polyanionic cathodes

Topography of transcriptionally active chromatin in glioblastoma

Molecular profiling of the most aggressive brain tumor glioblastoma (GBM) on the basis of gene expression, DNA methylation, and genomic variations advances both cancer research and clinical diagnosis. The enhancer architectures and regulatory circuitries governing tumor-intrinsic transcriptional diversity and subtype identity are still elusive. Here, by mapping H3K27ac deposition, we analyze the active regulatory landscapes across 95 GBM biopsies, 12 normal brain tissues, and 38 cell line counterparts. Analyses of differentially regulated enhancers and super-enhancers uncovered previously unrecognized layers of intertumor heterogeneity. Integrative analysis of variant enhancer loci and transcriptome identified topographies of transcriptional enhancers and core regulatory circuitries in four molecular subtypes of primary tumors: AC1-mesenchymal, AC1-classical, AC2-proneural, and AC3-proneural. Moreover, this study reveals core oncogenic dependency on super-enhancer–driven transcriptional factors, long noncoding RNAs, and druggable targets in GBM. Through profiling of transcriptional enhancers, we provide clinically relevant insights into molecular classification, pathogenesis, and therapeutic intervention of GBM