Utilizing Thiocholesterol As A Hydrophobic Probe To Characterize Lipid Phase Behaviour

Lipid seperti sfingomielin, gliserofosfolipik dan kolesterol merupakan komponen utama yang membentuk serta mengekalkan kestabilan dan dinamik membran plasma eukariotik Lipids, such as sphingomyelins, glycero-phospholipids and cholesterol, represent the primary component of the cellular plasma membrane and provide the necessary stability and dynamics to support protein functio

Simultaneous Adsorption and Photocatalytic Degradation of Malachite Green Using Electrospun P(3HB)-TiO2 Nanocomposite Fibers and Films

This paper demonstrated the applicability of electrospun P(3HB) film as a dye adsorbent agent.Malachite green (MG) was used as the model dye in this study. Interestingly, the electrospun P(3HB) film exhibited excellent dye adsorption capacity whereby 78% of dye was adsorbed from a 30 μMsolution ofMG. The film was further improvised by incorporating titanium dioxide photocatalysts to form a dual dye treatment system employing adsorption and photocatalytic degradation techniques. The resultant electrospun P(3HB)-50wt% TiO2 was capable of completely decolorizingMGin 45 min under solar irradiation, which corresponded to 58.7% COD removal. The fully decolorizedMG solution also proved to be nontoxic against A. aegypti mosquito larvae. The reapplicability of this film was possible as it induced a decolorization rate of 98% or more at every usage for ten consequent usages. EDX analysis suggested that there were no significant changes in the concentration of titanium (Ti) in the film before and after ten times of usage. The concentration of Ti in cast P(3HB)-50wt%TiO2 film was found to decrease significantly during the repeated usage. The electrospun P(3HB)-50wt%TiO2 film has high potency as an efficient and inexpensive yet simple method for the dye effluent decolorization, degradation, and detoxification

The Influence of Electrospinning Parameters and Drug Loading on Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) Nanofibers for Drug Delivery

The impact of polymer concentration and drug loading on nanofiber morphology and diameter were investigated during electrospinning of polyhydroxyalkanoate nanofibrous films. Low molecular weight poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-4-hydroxybutyrate) [P(3HB-co-95 mol% 4HB)] required a 5-fold higher solution concentration than high molecular weight poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) [P(3HB)] to produce bead-free nanofibers. Loading the films with paclitaxel increased the initial polymer solution viscosity allowing larger diameter nanofibers to form. Furthermore, paclitaxel added at 1% (w/w) into 8 % (w/v) P(3HB-co-95 mol% 4HB) solution eliminated the formation of beads seen in solutions without the drug, at the same initial polymer solution concentration. In preliminary drug release studies, nanofiber mats consisting of large-diameter nanofibers with high drug loading released paclitaxel at a faster rate due to larger pore sizes. This was a consequence of the random packing of larger diameter nanofibers. However, the release pattern of nanofibers with low drug loading was much more consistent and controlled. Lastly, we have shown the potential applications of P(3HB-co-4HB) drug loaded nanofibers in the development of biocompatible drug eluting stents by directly coating a metal stent with a homogeneous layer of electrospun polymer

Overexpression of Heat Shock Cognate Protein 71 kDa and Pyruvate Dehydrogenase in the Brain Tissue at the Early Stage of High Fat Diet Consumption

High-fat diet (HFD) increases the risk of obese, while obesity increases the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and non-communicable diseases. Therefore, it will be interesting to evaluate the changes in metabolic parameters and brain profile upon the early consumption of HFD. In this study, a total of 12 Sprague-Dawley male rats were divided into two groups (n = 6), each group was fed with normal diet and HFD (39% of total calories from fats), respectively, for 6 weeks consecutively. The body weight, blood glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride values were measured.  Furthermore, the brain and visceral adipose tissues were harvested at the end of the experiment. Protein was extracted from the brain tissue, and the protein extracts were separated by using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and analyzed by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometric analysis (LC/MS/MS). In terms of food calorie, the rats fed with HFD consumed more energy than the rats fed with normal diet. Nevertheless, the blood triglyceride and cholesterol, and the visceral adipose tissue of both the HFD and normal diet fed rats were indifferent. At the molecular level, overexpression of stress proteins, namely heat shock cognate protein 71 kDa (Hsc70)  and pyruvate dehydrogenase were detected in brain tissue of HFD group. These results suggest that HFD intake causing significant change in brain proteins profile at the early phase of its consumption when no clear metabolic changes were observed. This showed that the brain was affected by HFD

Momordica charantia suppresses inflammation and glycolysis in lipopolysaccharide-activated RAW264.7 macrophages

Macrophage activation is a key event that triggers inflammatory response. The activation is accompanied by metabolic shift such as upregulated glucose metabolism. There are accumulating evidences showing the anti-inflammatory activity of Momordica charantia. However, the effects of M. charantia on inflammatory response and glucose metabolism in activated macrophages have not been fully established. The present study aimed to examine the effect of M. charantia in modulating lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation and perturbed glucose metabolism in RAW264.7 murine macrophages. The results showed that LPS-induced NF-?B (p65) nuclear translocation was inhibited by M. charantia treatment. In addition, M. charantia was found to reduce the expression of inflammatory genes including IL6, TNF-a, IL1ß, COX2, iNOS, and IL10 in LPS-treated macrophages. Furthermore, the data showed that M. charantia reduced the expression of GLUT1 and HK2 genes and lactate production (-28%), resulting in suppression of glycolysis. Notably, its effect on GLUT1 gene expression was found to be independent of LPS-induced inflammation. A further experiment also indicated that the bioactivities of M. charantia may be attributed to its key bioactive compound, charantin. Taken together, the study provided supporting evidences showing the potential of M. charantia for the treatment of inflammatory disorders

Ranking Enhanced Dialogue Generation

How to effectively utilize the dialogue history is a crucial problem in multi-turn dialogue generation. Previous works usually employ various neural network architectures (e.g., recurrent neural networks, attention mechanisms, and hierarchical structures) to model the history. However, a recent empirical study by Sankar et al. has shown that these architectures lack the ability of understanding and modeling the dynamics of the dialogue history. For example, the widely used architectures are insensitive to perturbations of the dialogue history, such as words shuffling, utterances missing, and utterances reordering. To tackle this problem, we propose a Ranking Enhanced Dialogue generation framework in this paper. Despite the traditional representation encoder and response generation modules, an additional ranking module is introduced to model the ranking relation between the former utterance and consecutive utterances. Specifically, the former utterance and consecutive utterances are treated as query and corresponding documents, and both local and global ranking losses are designed in the learning process. In this way, the dynamics in the dialogue history can be explicitly captured. To evaluate our proposed models, we conduct extensive experiments on three public datasets, i.e., bAbI, PersonaChat, and JDC. Experimental results show that our models produce better responses in terms of both quantitative measures and human judgments, as compared with the state-of-the-art dialogue generation models. Furthermore, we give some detailed experimental analysis to show where and how the improvements come from.Comment: Accepted at CIKM 202

Quantum key distribution without alternative measurements and rotations

A quantum key distribution protocol based on entanglement swapping is proposed. Through choosing particles by twos from the sequence and performing Bell measurements, two communicators can detect eavesdropping and obtain the secure key. Because the two particles measured together are selected out randomly, we need neither alternative measurements nor rotations of the Bell states to obtain security.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, a modified version of quant-ph/0412014, add a security proof and delete the identification par

Neonatal outcome in 29 pregnant women with COVID-19 : A retrospective study in Wuhan, China

Funding: YTW: National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1002804), http://www.most.gov.cn; YTW: National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC1000203), http://www.most.gov.cn. CL: COVID-19 Prevention and Control Program of International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2020-COVID-19-04), https://www.ipmch.com.cn. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Data Availability: All the research data are available at the ResMen Manager of Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (www.medresman.org), and the registration number is ChiCTR2000031954 (http://www.medresman.org.cn/pub/cn/proj/projectshshow.aspx?proj=1810).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hypermethylation of the TGF-β target, ABCA1 is associated with poor prognosis in ovarian cancer patients

Background The dysregulation of transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling plays a crucial role in ovarian carcinogenesis and in maintaining cancer stem cell properties. Classified as a member of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) family, ABCA1 was previously identified by methylated DNA immunoprecipitation microarray (mDIP-Chip) to be methylated in ovarian cancer cell lines, A2780 and CP70. By microarray, it was also found to be upregulated in immortalized ovarian surface epithelial (IOSE) cells following TGF-β treatment. Thus, we hypothesized that ABCA1 may be involved in ovarian cancer and its initiation. Results We first compared the expression level of ABCA1 in IOSE cells and a panel of ovarian cancer cell lines and found that ABCA1 was expressed in HeyC2, SKOV3, MCP3, and MCP2 ovarian cancer cell lines but downregulated in A2780 and CP70 ovarian cancer cell lines. The reduced expression of ABCA1 in A2780 and CP70 cells was associated with promoter hypermethylation, as demonstrated by bisulfite pyro-sequencing. We also found that knockdown of ABCA1 increased the cholesterol level and promoted cell growth in vitro and in vivo. Further analysis of ABCA1 methylation in 76 ovarian cancer patient samples demonstrated that patients with higher ABCA1 methylation are associated with high stage (P = 0.0131) and grade (P = 0.0137). Kaplan-Meier analysis also found that patients with higher levels of methylation of ABCA1 have shorter overall survival (P = 0.019). Furthermore, tissue microarray using 55 ovarian cancer patient samples revealed that patients with a lower level of ABCA1 expression are associated with shorter progress-free survival (P = 0.038). Conclusions ABCA1 may be a tumor suppressor and is hypermethylated in a subset of ovarian cancer patients. Hypermethylation of ABCA1 is associated with poor prognosis in these patients

Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus: Epidemiology, Pathogenesis and Implications for Honey Bee Health

Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) is a widespread RNA virus of honey bees that has been linked with colony losses. Here we describe the transmission, prevalence, and genetic traits of this virus, along with host transcriptional responses to infections. Further, we present RNAi-based strategies for limiting an important mechanism used by IAPV to subvert host defenses. Our study shows that IAPV is established as a persistent infection in honey bee populations, likely enabled by both horizontal and vertical transmission pathways. The phenotypic differences in pathology among different strains of IAPV found globally may be due to high levels of standing genetic variation. Microarray profiles of host responses to IAPV infection revealed that mitochondrial function is the most significantly affected biological process, suggesting that viral infection causes significant disturbance in energy-related host processes. The expression of genes involved in immune pathways in adult bees indicates that IAPV infection triggers active immune responses. The evidence that silencing an IAPV-encoded putative suppressor of RNAi reduces IAPV replication suggests a functional assignment for a particular genomic region of IAPV and closely related viruses from the Family Dicistroviridae, and indicates a novel therapeutic strategy for limiting multiple honey bee viruses simultaneously and reducing colony losses due to viral diseases. We believe that the knowledge and insights gained from this study will provide a new platform for continuing studies of the IAPV–host interactions and have positive implications for disease management that will lead to mitigation of escalating honey bee colony losses worldwide