EYA4 Promotes Cell Proliferation Through Downregulation of p27Kip1 in Glioma

Background/Aims: Accumulating evidence suggests that Eyes Absent Homologue 4 (EYA4) plays an important role in tumorigenesis and progression of various cancers. However, the role of EYA4 in glioma development is still unclear. Methods: The expression of EYA4 was examined in glioma tissues by immunohistochemistry. Cell viability and apoptosis were analyzed by CCK-8, BrdU assay, and flow cytometry. Results: We found that EYA4 was upregulated in glioma, and its expression was positively correlated with advanced tumor stage. Moreover, higher expression of EYA4 predicted a worse overall survival in patients with glioma. Forced overexpression of EYA4 enhanced glioma cell proliferation, and EYA4 suppressed the expression of p27Kip1 directly in these cells. Furthermore, Six1 was required for EYA4 to suppress the expression of p27Kip1 in glioma. Conclusion: Together, we demonstrate that EYA4 promotes cell proliferation by directly suppressing the expression of p27Kip1 in glioma

SNHG6 Promotes Tumor Growth via Repression of P21 in Colorectal Cancer

Background/Aims: SNHG6 (Small Nucleolar RNA Host Gene 6) is a novel non-coding RNA (ncRNA) and its cellular function is largely unknown. Methods: Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) cell growth assay, colony formation and flow cytometry were used to determine colorectal cancer cell proliferation, cell cycle progression and apoptosis in vitro. The xenograft tumor formation assay in nude mice was established to evaluate tumor growth in vivo. RNA immunopreciptation (RIP) analysis was performed to examine whether SNHG6 could bind to EZH2 (enhancer of zeste 2 polycomb repressive complex 2 subunit), and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay was conducted to examine whether SNHG6 could repress p21 transcription by recruiting EZH2 to the p21 promoter. Results: Here we found that SNHG6 was upregulated and its expression levels were positively correlated with advanced tumor stage in colorectal cancer. Survival analysis suggested that higher expression of SNHG6 predicted poor prognosis in patients with colorectal cancer. Functional studies indicated that SNHG6 could promote cell proliferation via a direct suppression of p21 expression in colorectal cancer cells. Moreover, SNHG6 repressed p21 transcription through recruiting EZH2 to the p21 promoter in colorectal cancer cells. Conclusion: Taken together, our study demonstrates that SNHG6 promotes tumor growth via repression of p21 in colorectal cancer, which may provide a promising target for novel anticancer therapeutics

Approximate Sparse Regularized Hyperspectral Unmixing

Sparse regression based unmixing has been recently proposed to estimate the abundance of materials present in hyperspectral image pixel. In this paper, a novel sparse unmixing optimization model based on approximate sparsity, namely, approximate sparse unmixing (ASU), is firstly proposed to perform the unmixing task for hyperspectral remote sensing imagery. And then, a variable splitting and augmented Lagrangian algorithm is introduced to tackle the optimization problem. In ASU, approximate sparsity is used as a regularizer for sparse unmixing, which is sparser than l1 regularizer and much easier to be solved than l0 regularizer. Three simulated and one real hyperspectral images were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm in comparison to l1 regularizer. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is more effective and accurate for hyperspectral unmixing than state-of-the-art l1 regularizer

Approximate Sparsity and Nonlocal Total Variation Based Compressive MR Image Reconstruction

Recent developments in compressive sensing (CS) show that it is possible to accurately reconstruct the magnetic resonance (MR) image from undersampled k-space data by solving nonsmooth convex optimization problems, which therefore significantly reduce the scanning time. In this paper, we propose a new MR image reconstruction method based on a compound regularization model associated with the nonlocal total variation (NLTV) and the wavelet approximate sparsity. Nonlocal total variation can restore periodic textures and local geometric information better than total variation. The wavelet approximate sparsity achieves more accurate sparse reconstruction than fixed wavelet l0 and l1 norm. Furthermore, a variable splitting and augmented Lagrangian algorithm is presented to solve the proposed minimization problem. Experimental results on MR image reconstruction demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms many existing MR image reconstruction methods both in quantitative and in visual quality assessment

Altered expression of glycan patterns and glycan-related genes in the medial prefrontal cortex of the valproic acid rat model of autism

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) represent a group of neurodevelopmental defects characterized by social deficits and repetitive behaviors. Alteration in Glycosylation patterns could influence the nervous system development and contribute to the molecular mechanism of ASD. Interaction of environmental factors with susceptible genes may affect expressions of glycosylation-related genes and thus result in abnormal glycosylation patterns. Here, we used an environmental factor-induced model of autism by a single intraperitoneal injection of 400 mg/kg valproic acid (VPA) to female rats at day 12.5 post-conception. Following confirmation of reduced sociability and increased self-grooming behaviors in VPA-treated offspring, we analyzed the alterations in the expression profile of glycan patterns and glycan-related genes by lectin microarrays and RNA-seq, respectively. Lectin microarrays detected 14 significantly regulated lectins in VPA rats, with an up-regulation of high-mannose with antennary and down-regulation of Siaα2-3 Gal/GalNAc. Based on the KEGG and CAZy resources, we assembled a comprehensive list of 961 glycan-related genes to focus our analysis on specific genes. Of those, transcription results revealed that there were 107 differentially expressed glycan-related genes (DEGGs) after VPA treatment. Functional analysis of DEGGs encoding anabolic enzymes revealed that the process trimming to form core structure and glycan extension from core structure primarily changed, which is consistent with the changes in glycan patterns. In addition, the DEGGs encoding glycoconjugates were mainly related to extracellular matrix and axon guidance. This study provides insights into the underlying molecular mechanism of aberrant glycosylation after prenatal VPA exposure, which may serve as potential biomarkers for the autism diagnosis

Ba6RE2Ti4O17 (RE= Nd, Sm,Gd, Dy-Yb): A family of quasi-two-dimensional triangular lattice magnets

Rare-earth-based triangular-lattice magnets provide the fertile ground to explore the exotic quantum magnetic state. Herein, we report a new family of RE-based triangular-lattice magnets Ba6RE2Ti4O17(RE= rare earth ions) crystallized into the hexagonal structure with space group of P63 mmc, where magnetic rare earth ions form an ideal triangular lattice within the ab-plane and stack in an AA -type fashion along the c-axis. The low-temperature magnetic susceptibility results reveal all the serial compounds have the dominant antiferromagnetic interactions and an absence of magnetic ordering down to 1.8 K. The magnetization and electron spin resonance results indicate distinct magnetic anisotropy for the compounds with different RE ions. Moreover, Ba6Nd2Ti4O17 single crystal is successfully grown and it exhibits strong Ising like anisotropy with magnetic easy-axis perpendicular to the triangle-lattice plane, being a candidate to explore quantum spin liquid state with dominant Ising-type interaction.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure