Differentially-Expressed Pseudogenes in HIV-1 Infection.

Not all pseudogenes are transcriptionally silent as previously thought. Pseudogene transcripts, although not translated, contribute to the non-coding RNA pool of the cell that regulates the expression of other genes. Pseudogene transcripts can also directly compete with the parent gene transcripts for mRNA stability and other cell factors, modulating their expression levels. Tissue-specific and cancer-specific differential expression of these "functional" pseudogenes has been reported. To ascertain potential pseudogene:gene interactions in HIV-1 infection, we analyzed transcriptomes from infected and uninfected T-cells and found that 21 pseudogenes are differentially expressed in HIV-1 infection. This is interesting because parent genes of one-third of these differentially-expressed pseudogenes are implicated in HIV-1 life cycle, and parent genes of half of these pseudogenes are involved in different viral infections. Our bioinformatics analysis identifies candidate pseudogene:gene interactions that may be of significance in HIV-1 infection. Experimental validation of these interactions would establish that retroviruses exploit this newly-discovered layer of host gene expression regulation for their own benefit

Establishment of persistent infection with foot-and-mouth disease virus in BHK-21 cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is able to cause persistent infection in ruminants besides acute infection and disease. Since the mechanisms of viral persistence and the determining factors are still unknown, <it>in vitro </it>systems help explore and reveal mechanisms of persistence <it>in vivo </it>by providing useful models for the study of RNA genome mutations and evolution. Ammonium chloride, a lysosomotropic agent that raises intralysosomal pH, reduces the yield of FMDV during infection of BHK-21 cells.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The persistent infection with FMDV serotype O in BHK-21 cells was selected and established readily after treatment of ammonium chloride that acts primarily on the cells. Intact virions were observed located inside the endosomes. Viral genome RNAs and specific proteins were detected in the persistent cells to validate the establishment of viral persistence. Infection of the persistent viruses could not form plaques in host cells but virulence was enhanced. Basing on analysis and comparison of cDNA sequences of resident viruses and wild type viruses, 15 amine acid mutations were found, all of which were located in nonstructural proteins rather than in structural proteins.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Therefore, persistent infection of cell cultures with FMDV is successfully established with some distinctive features. It would be worthwhile to further investigate the mechanisms of viral persistence.</p

Stable nontrivial Z2 topology in ultrathin Bi (111) films: a first-principles study

Recently, there have been intense efforts in searching for new topological insulator (TI) materials. Based on first-principles calculations, we find that all the ultrathin Bi (111) films are characterized by a nontrivial Z2 number independent of the film thickness, without the odd-even oscillation of topological triviality as commonly perceived. The stable nontrivial Z2 topology is retained by the concurrent band gap inversions at multiple time-reversal-invariant k-points and associated with the intermediate inter-bilayer coupling of the multi-bilayer Bi film. Our calculations further indicate that the presence of metallic surface states in thick Bi(111) films can be effectively removed by surface adsorption.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

RAMP: Retrieval-Augmented MOS Prediction via Confidence-based Dynamic Weighting

Automatic Mean Opinion Score (MOS) prediction is crucial to evaluate the perceptual quality of the synthetic speech. While recent approaches using pre-trained self-supervised learning (SSL) models have shown promising results, they only partly address the data scarcity issue for the feature extractor. This leaves the data scarcity issue for the decoder unresolved and leading to suboptimal performance. To address this challenge, we propose a retrieval-augmented MOS prediction method, dubbed {\bf RAMP}, to enhance the decoder's ability against the data scarcity issue. A fusing network is also proposed to dynamically adjust the retrieval scope for each instance and the fusion weights based on the predictive confidence. Experimental results show that our proposed method outperforms the existing methods in multiple scenarios.Comment: Accepted by Interspeech 2023, ora

Two Case Reports of Familial Chylomicronemia Syndrome

Familial chylomicronemia is a rare autosomal recessive disorder which is also called Hyperlipoproteinemia type I. Here we report two cases with this rare disorder that were admitted to our hospital in recent years

The two-way time synchronization system via a satellite voice channel

A newly developed two-way time synchronization system is described in this paper. The system uses one voice channel at a SCPC satellite digital communication earth station, whose bandwidth is only 45 kHz, thus saving satellite resources greatly. The system is composed of one master station and one or several, up to sixty-two, secondary stations. The master and secondary stations are equipped with the same equipment, including a set of timing equipment, a synthetic data terminal for time synchronizing, and a interface unit between the data terminal and the satellite earth station. The synthetic data terminal for time synchronization also has an IRIG-B code generator and a translator. The data terminal of master station is the key part of whole system. The system synchronization process is full automatic, which is controlled by the master station. Employing an autoscanning technique and conversational mode, the system accomplishes the following tasks: linking up liaison with each secondary station in turn, establishing a coarse time synchronization, calibrating date (years, months, days) and time of day (hours, minutes, seconds), precisely measuring the time difference between local station and the opposite station, exchanging measurement data, statistically processing the data, rejecting error terms, printing the data, calculating the clock difference and correcting the phase, thus realizing real-time synchronization from one point to multiple points. We also designed an adaptive phase circuit to eliminate the phase ambiguity of the PSK demodulator. The experiments have shown that the time synchronization accuracy is better than 2 mu S. The system has been put into regular operation

Effect of Thiazolidinedione Amide on Insulin Resistance, Creactive Protein and Endothelial Function in Young Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Purpose: To investigate the effect of thiazolidinedione amide (TZDA) treatment on high-sensitivity Creactive protein (hsCRP) levels and endothelial dysfunction in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).Methods: Twenty five women (mean age 24.7 ± 3.9 years; mean body mass index (BMI), 23.2 ± 4.0 kg/m2) with PCOS were treated with 15 μM TZDA daily for 12 months. Serum levels of testosterone, leutenizing hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), insulin and hsCRP were measured. BMI, hirsutism scores and insulin sensitivity indices were also calculated prior to and after TZDA treatment. Brachial artery responses to stimuli was used to measure arterial endothelium and smooth muscle function prior to and after the treatment.Results: TZDA treatment caused a significant (p &lt; 0.05) decrease in serum testosterone from 93.1 ± 40.3 to 54.8 ± 19.5 ng/dl and fasting insulin concentration from 11.9 ± 6.8 to 9.23 ± 5.13 U/mL. Insulin resistance index significantly (p &lt; 0.05) improved and hirsutism score decreased significantly from 11.6 ± 2.0 to 6.8 ± 2.0. BMI, waist circumference, serum total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL)- cholesterol, FSH and LH levels remained almost unchanged. Twenty-four of the women reverted to regular menstrual cycles. SHBG levels showed a significant (p &lt; 0.05) increase from 24.8 ± 9.5 to 49.1 ± 13.5 nmol/L after TZDA treatment. Serum hsCRP levels decreased (p &lt; 0.05) from 0.25 ± 0.1 to 0.09 ± 0.02 mg/dL while endothelium-dependent vascular responses significantly improved (p &lt; 0.05) following TZDA treatment (9.9 ± 3.9 vs 16.4 ± 5.1%).Conclusion: TZDA treatment improves insulin sensitivity, decreases androgen production and improves endothelial dysfunction in young women with PCOS.Keywords: Thiazolidinedione amide, Insulin sensitivity, Endothelial dysfunction, Polycystic ovary syndrom

A novel HIV-1 restriction factor that is biologically distinct from APOBEC3 cytidine deaminases in a human T cell line CEM.NKR

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Isolation of novel retroviral restriction factors will open new avenues for anti-HIV/AIDS treatment. Although HIV-1 replication is restricted by APOBEC3G/APOBEC3F, TRIM5α, and CD317, none defend HIV-1 infection under natural conditions. Previously, we demonstrated a host factor from the human T cell line CEM.NKR that potently restricted wild-type HIV-1 replication. Interestingly, this restriction resembled the APOBEC3G/APOBEC3F pattern in that viral replication was inhibited from the second round of replication cycle at a post-entry step.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, we further characterized this factor and found it distinguishable from the known anti-HIV APOBEC3 proteins. Although CEM.NKR cells expressed both APOBEC3G and APOBEC3F, their levels were at least 10 or 4-fold lower than those in H9 cells, and importantly, Vif effectively neutralized their activity. Among eight subclones isolated from CEM.NKR cells, one was relatively permissive, four were semi-permissive, and three were completely non-permissive for HIV-1 replication. When the levels of APOBEC3 expression were determined, all these clones retained similar low levels of APOBEC3DE, APOBEC3F, APOBEC3G and APOBEC3H expression, and no APOBEC3B expression was detected. Since the <it>vif </it>from SIVmac can effectively neutralize APOBEC3B and APOBEC3H, recombinant HIV-1 expressing this SIV gene were created. However, these viruses still failed to replicate in CEM.NKR cells. We also confirmed that HIV-1 restriction in CEM.NKR was not due to a loss of calnexin expression.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taken together, these results not only demonstrate that all these aforementioned anti-HIV APOBEC3 proteins do not contribute to this HIV-1 restriction, but also shed light on a novel and potent HIV-1 inhibitor in CEM.NKR cells.</p