Characterization and antitumor activity of camptothecin from endophytic fungus Fusarium solani isolated from Camptotheca acuminate

Background: Camptothecin (CPT) is a potent drug against cancers, originally from plants. The endophytic fungi could produce the secondary metabolite same as the host and is used as medicine.Objectives: The aim of this paper was to investigate an endophytic fungal CPT with anti-neoplastic activity.Methods: Endophytic fungi were isolated from Camptotheca acuminata in China. CPT from strain S-019 was characterized by TLC, HPLC and EI-MS analysis. Anti-tumor activity of fungal CPT was detected by MTT and fluorescent dye methods using Vero and PC-3 cells.Results: A total of 94 endophytic fungi strains were isolated from tissues of C. acuminata and 16 fungi strains displayed cytotoxic activity on Vero or PC3 cells. Of which, the fungal strain S-019, classified as Fusarium solani, displayed impressive cytotoxic activity on cancer cells and was found to produce CPT by analysis of TLC, HPLC and EI-MS methods. Bioassay studies confirmed that the fungi CPT had potent cytotoxicity on Vero cells and induced apoptosis of Vero cells.Conclusion: The endophytic fungi from camptotheca trees are a reliable source for natural anticancer compounds. The endophytic fungi could produce CPT same as plant. The fungal CPT exhibited effective activity at inhibiting cell growth and inducing apoptosis on Vero cells.Keywords: Endophytic fungi, camptothecin, anti-tumor, Camptotheca acuminat

The world’s earliest Aral-Sea type disaster: the decline of the Loulan Kingdom in the Tarim Basin

The presented data are accessible in the PANGAEA database, https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.871173.Remnants of cities and farmlands in China’s hyperarid Tarim Basin indicate that environmental conditions were significantly wetter two millennia ago in a region which is barren desert today. Historical documents and age data of organic remains show that the Loulan Kingdom flourished during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) but was abandoned between its end and 645 CE. Previous archaeological, geomorphological and geological studies suggest that deteriorating climate conditions led to the abandonment of the ancient desert cities. Based on analyses of lake sediments from Lop Nur in the eastern Tarim Basin and a review of published records, we show that the Loulan Kingdom decline resulted from a man-made environmental disaster comparable to the recent Aral Sea crisis rather than from changing climate. Lop Nur and other lakes within the Han Dynasty realm experienced rapidly declining water levels or even desiccation whilst lakes in adjacent regions recorded rising levels and relatively wet conditions during the time of the Loulan Kingdom decline. Water withdrawal for irrigation farming in the middle reaches of rivers likely caused water shortage downstream and eventually the widespread deterioration of desert oases a long time before man initiated the Aral Sea disaster in the 1960s.Funding was provided by China’s NSF projects (40830420, 41471003), the State key project (2003BA612A-06–15) of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the German Research Foundation (DFG grant Mi 730/16-1). We thank two anonymous reviewers who provided very constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.Peer Reviewe

Stability Analysis of Retarded Differential Inclusions

Retarded differential inclusions have drawn more and more attention, due to the development of feedback control systems with delays and dynamical systems determined by retarded differential equations with a discontinuous right-hand side. The purpose of this paper is to establish a result on the stability and asymptotical stability for retarded differential inclusions. Comparing with the previous results, the main result obtained in this paper allows Lyapunov functions to be nonsmooth. Moreover, to deal with the asymptotical stability, it is not required that Lyapunov functions should have an infinitesimal upper limit, but this condition is needed in most of the previous results. To demonstrate applicability, we use the main result in the analysis of asymptotical stability of a class of neural networks with discontinuous activations and delays

Multi-Granularity Archaeological Dating of Chinese Bronze Dings Based on a Knowledge-Guided Relation Graph

The archaeological dating of bronze dings has played a critical role in the study of ancient Chinese history. Current archaeology depends on trained experts to carry out bronze dating, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. For such dating, in this study, we propose a learning-based approach to integrate advanced deep learning techniques and archaeological knowledge. To achieve this, we first collect a large-scale image dataset of bronze dings, which contains richer attribute information than other existing fine-grained datasets. Second, we introduce a multihead classifier and a knowledge-guided relation graph to mine the relationship between attributes and the ding era. Third, we conduct comparison experiments with various existing methods, the results of which show that our dating method achieves a state-of-the-art performance. We hope that our data and applied networks will enrich fine-grained classification research relevant to other interdisciplinary areas of expertise. The dataset and source code used are included in our supplementary materials, and will be open after submission owing to the anonymity policy. Source codes and data are available at: https://github.com/zhourixin/bronze-Ding.Comment: CVPR2023 accepte

Risk identification and evaluation of customer collaboration in product development

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify risk factors that caused by customer collaboration in new product development systematically, and propose an approach to judge which risk factors are critical and catch substantial attention. Design/methodology/approach: This study identifies risk factors according to the results of study retrieval, experts’ evaluation and consultation, and case studies of enterprises in china. On this basis, an improved rough number approach is put forward to evaluate the importance of risk factors. Findings: Firstly, classify risk factors into three aspects. Then, present a risk factor set, which include thirty-seven risk factors. At last, determine which risk factors are critical by using an improved rough number approach. Originality/value: Considering there are few researches studying comprehensive risk factors of customer collaboration and assessing them, this paper explores a risk factor set of customer collaboration in product development stage, and proposes a novel approach, which can help to solve the problem of subjective, vague and lack of prior information of evaluation, to evaluate risk factors.Peer Reviewe

Hiiren TSH-reseptorigeenin pistemutaatio : geenikonstruktin rakentaminen

TSH-reseptorigeenin mutaatiot, jotka saavat aikaan reseptorin muuttumisen konstitutiivisesti aktiiviseksi eli aktiiviseksi ilman tyreotropiinihormonia, ovat merkittävin molekyylitason syy kilpirauhasen liikatoiminnan eli hypertyreoosin taustalla. Opinnäytetyö on osa laajempaa tutkimusta, jonka tavoitteena on selvittää hypertyreoosin etiologiaa ja patogeneesia, joka ei johdu autoimmuniteetistä. Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena oli rakentaa geenitekniikan avulla geenikonstrukti, jossa TSH-reseptorigeeniin on tehty pistemutaatio, joka johtaa reseptorissa D633H mutaatioon. D633H-mutaatio valittiin siksi, että se on tunnistettu potilailla, joilla on toksinen kilpirauhaskyhmy. D633H-mutaatiossa asparagiinihappo (D) on vaihtunut histidiiniksi (H). Tässä opinnäytetyössä tutkimustehtävää ei saatu valmiiksi, koska käytännön suorituksen aikana kohdattiin monia ongelmia.The TSH receptor gene mutations that cause constitutively active mutations of the receptor are the major molecular causes of nonautoimmune hyperthyroidism. This thesis is a part of a larger study aiming to determine the aetiology and pathogenesis of hyperthyroidism, which is not caused by autoimmunity. The purpose of this thesis was to create through genetic engineering a gene construct where a point mutation leads to D633H mutation in the TSH receptor gene. The D633H mutation was chosen because it has been identified in patients with toxic thyroid nodules (TTNs). In D633H mutation aspartic acid (D) has changed to histidine (H). The research could not be completed thoroughly in this thesis, since many problems were encountered during the practical work that hindered the actual research process

AI Mobile Application for Archaeological Dating of Bronze Dings

We develop an AI application for archaeological dating of bronze Dings. A classification model is employed to predict the period of the input Ding, and a detection model is used to show the feature parts for making a decision of archaeological dating. To train the two deep learning models, we collected a large number of Ding images from published materials, and annotated the period and the feature parts on each image by archaeological experts. Furthermore, we design a user system and deploy our pre-trained models based on the platform of WeChat Mini Program for ease of use. Only need a smartphone installed WeChat APP, users can easily know the result of intelligent archaeological dating, the feature parts, and other reference artifacts, by taking a photo of a bronze Ding. To use our application, please scan this QR code by WeChat