MALT lymphoma: A paradigm of NF-κB dysregulation

Extranodal marginal zone lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT lymphoma) invariably arises from a background of chronic microbial infection and/or autoimmune disorder at diverse mucosal sites. The prolonged chronic infection and/or autoimmunity generate active immune and inflammatory responses that provide a setting for evolution and development of autoreactive B-cells, their expansion and eventual malignant transformation following acquisition of genetic changes. The immune responses also play a critical role in sustaining the growth and survival of the transformed cells as shown by complete regression of a high proportion of MALT lymphoma of the stomach, ocular adnexa and skin following anti-microbial treatment. B-cell receptor engagement by auto-antigen as well as T-cell help including both cognate interaction and bystander help via soluble ligands such as CD40L and BAFF are thought to underpin the immunological drive in the lymphoma development through activation of the canonical and non-canonical NF-κB pathway respectively. Similarly, the three MALT lymphoma associated chromosome translocations, namely t(1;14)(p22;q32)/$\small \textit{BCL10-IGH}$, t(14;18)(q32;q21)/$\small \textit{IGH-MALT1}$, and t(11;18)(q21;q21)/$\small \textit{BIRC3}$ ($\small \textit{API2}$)$\small \textit{-MALT1}$, are also capable of activating both canonical and non-canonical NF-κB pathways. Furthermore, $\small \textit{TNFAIP3}$ (A20) inactivation by deletion and/or mutation abolishes the auto-negative feedback to several signalling including BCR and TLR, which connect to the canonical NF-κB activation pathway. Thus, there is a considerable overlap in the molecular pathways dysregulated by immunological drive and somatic genetic changes, strongly arguing for their oncogenic cooperation in the development of MALT lymphoma.The studies described from the Professor Ming-Qing Du’s laboratory were supported by research grants from Bloodwise, U.K., Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund, the Elimination of Leukemia Fund, U.K., the Lady Tata Memorial Trust, U.K., and the Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust

A non-local vector calculus,non-local volume-constrained problems,and non-local balance laws

A vector calculus for nonlocal operators is developed, including the definition of nonlocal divergence, gradient, and curl operators and the derivation of the corresponding adjoints operators. Nonlocal analogs of several theorems and identities of the vector calculus for differential operators are also presented. Relationships between the nonlocal operators and their differential counterparts are established, first in a distributional sense and then in a weak sense by considering weighted integrals of the nonlocal adjoint operators. The nonlocal calculus gives rise to volume-constrained problems that are analogous to elliptic boundary-value problems for differential operators; this is demonstrated via some examples. Another application is posing abstract nonlocal balance laws and deriving the corresponding nonlocal field equations

Microwave photoresistance of a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas in a triangular antidot lattice

The microwave (MW) photoresistance has been measured on a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas patterned with a shallow triangular antidot lattice, where both the MW-induced resistance oscillations (MIRO) and magnetoplasmon (MP) resonance are observed superposing on sharp commensurate geometrical resonance (GR). Analysis shows that the MIRO, MP, and GR are decoupled from each other in these experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, paper accepted by PR

Sustainable leaching process of phosphates from animal bones to alleviate the world phosphate crisis

Lack of available phosphorus (P) minerals and their very localized regional distribution threatens world food production. Traditional farming methods that recycle various biological wastes and manure for localized fertilization of farmland are our role model, but come with risks such as hygiene, water toxification and passed-on diseases. Here, we present a bran-new hydrothermal process which turns animal bones of kitchen wastes into secondary P sources for fertilization, showing that this hydrothermal humification (HTH) process under 200 °C for 24 h completely disintegrates chemical structure of the biomass, while the simultaneously in-situ prepared artificial humic acid (A-HA) etches even macroscopic bones. Notably, A-HA can solubilize the insoluble P existing in animal bones partly as directly dissolved phosphorus (DP), accounting for 6.36 % of total phosphorus (TP) in the bone wastes. Characterization methods indicate that oxygen-containing functional groups (i.e., -COOH and phenolic-OH) of A-HA can help to corrode bones, causing Ca5(PO4)3(OH) to be decomposed into a large number of more active P minerals, furthermore, leading to high DP (96.79 mg/L) content and the formation of new P-based species. Pot planting experiments show that the resulting liquids were applied as a fertilizer and lead to a significant promotion of the growth of seedlings

Characterization of Zika virus endocytic pathways in human glioblastoma cells

Zika virus (ZIKV) infections can cause microcephaly and neurological disorders. However, the early infection events of ZIKV in neural cells remain to be characterized. Here, by using a combination of pharmacological and molecular approaches and the human glioblastoma cell T98G as a model, we first observed that ZIKV infection was inhibited by chloroquine and NH4Cl, indicating a requirement of low intracellular pH. We further showed that dynamin is required as the ZIKV entry was affected by the specific inhibitor dynasore, small interfering RNA (siRNA) knockdown of dynamin, or by expressing the dominant-negative K44A mutant. Moreover, the ZIKV entry was significantly inhibited by chlorpromazine, pitstop2, or siRNA knockdown of clathrin heavy chain, indicating an involvement of clathrin-mediated endocytosis. In addition, genistein treatment, siRNA knockdown of caveolin-1, or overexpression of a dominant-negative caveolin mutant impacted the ZIKV entry, with ZIKV particles being observed to colocalize with caveolin-1, implying that caveola endocytosis can also be involved. Furthermore, we found that the endocytosis of ZIKV is dependent on membrane cholesterol, microtubules, and actin cytoskeleton. Importantly, ZIKV infection was inhibited by silencing of Rab5 and Rab7, while confocal microscopy showed that ZIKV particles localized in Rab5- and Rab7-postive endosomes. These results indicated that, after internalization, ZIKV likely moves to Rab5-positive early endosome and Rab7-positive late endosomes before delivering its RNA into the cytoplasm. Taken together, our study, for the first time, described the early infection events of ZIKV in human glioblastoma cell T98G

Optimal Grid Drawings of Complete Multipartite Graphs and an Integer Variant of the Algebraic Connectivity

How to draw the vertices of a complete multipartite graph $G$ on different points of a bounded $d$-dimensional integer grid, such that the sum of squared distances between vertices of $G$ is (i) minimized or (ii) maximized? For both problems we provide a characterization of the solutions. For the particular case $d=1$, our solution for (i) also settles the minimum-2-sum problem for complete bipartite graphs; the minimum-2-sum problem was defined by Juvan and Mohar in 1992. Weighted centroidal Voronoi tessellations are the solution for (ii). Such drawings are related with Laplacian eigenvalues of graphs. This motivates us to study which properties of the algebraic connectivity of graphs carry over to the restricted setting of drawings of graphs with integer coordinates.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2018

Formation of robust and completely tunable resonant photonic band gaps

We identify different types of the photonic band gaps (PBGs) of two dimensional magnetic photonic crystals (MPCs) consisting of arrays of magnetic cylinders and study the different tunability (by an external static magnetic field) of these PBGs. One type of the band gaps comes from infinitely degenerate flat bands and is closely related to those in the study of plasmonics. In addition, such PBGs are magnetically tunable and robust against position disorder. We calcualte the transmission of the PBG's and found excellent agreement with the results of the photonic band structure calculation. Positional disorder of the lattice structure affects the different types of PBGs differently.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Evaluation of peak-picking algorithms for protein mass spectrometry

Peak picking is an early key step in MS data analysis. We compare three commonly used approaches to peak picking and discuss their merits by means of statistical analysis. Methods investigated encompass signal-to-noise ratio, continuous wavelet transform, and a correlation-based approach using a Gaussian template. Functionality of the three methods is illustrated and discussed in a practical context using a mass spectral data set created with MALDI-TOF technology. Sensitivity and specificity are investigated using a manually defined reference set of peaks. As an additional criterion, the robustness of the three methods is assessed by a perturbation analysis and illustrated using ROC curves