Liver fatty acid composition in mice with or without nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most frequent causes of abnormal liver function. Because fatty acids can damage biological membranes, fatty acid accumulation in the liver may be partially responsible for the functional and morphological changes that are observed in nonalcoholic liver disease. The aim of this study was to use gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to evaluate the fatty acid composition of an experimental mouse model of NAFLD induced by high-fat feed and CCl₄and to assess the association between liver fatty acid accumulation and NAFLD. C57BL/6J mice were given high-fat feed for six consecutive weeks to develop experimental NAFLD. Meanwhile, these mice were given subcutaneous injections of a 40% CCl₄-vegetable oil mixture twice per week.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A pathological examination found that NAFLD had developed in the C57BL/6J mice. High-fat feed and CCl₄led to significant increases in C14:0, C16:0, C18:0 and C20:3 (P < 0.01), and decreases in C15:0, C18:1, C18:2 and C18:3 (P < 0.01) in the mouse liver. The treatment also led to an increase in SFA and decreases in other fatty acids (UFA, PUFA and MUFA). An increase in the ratio of product/precursor n-6 (C20:4/C18:2) and n-3 ([C20:5+C22:6]/C18:3) and a decrease in the ratio of n-6/n-3 (C20:4/[C20:5+C22:6]) were also observed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These data are consistent with the hypothesis that fatty acids are deranged in mice with non-alcoholic fatty liver injury induced by high-fat feed and CCl₄, which may be involved in its pathogenesis and/or progression via an unclear mechanism.</p

Multipath trapping dynamics of nanoparticles towards an integrated waveguide with a high index contrast

Optical trapping and manipulation of nanoparticles in integrated photonics devices have recently received increasingly more attention and greatly facilitated the advances in lab-on-chip technologies. In this work, by solving motion equation numerically, we study the trapping dynamics of a nanoparticle near a high-index-contrast slot waveguide, under the influence of water flow perpendicular to the waveguide. It is shown that a nanoparticle can go along different paths before it gets trapped, strongly depending on its initial position relative to the integrated waveguide. Due to localized optical field enhancement on waveguide sidewalls, there are multiple trapping positions, with a critical area where particle trapping and transport are unstable. As the water velocity increases, the effective trapping range shrinks, but with a rate that is smaller than the increasing of water velocity. Finally, the trapping range is shown to decrease for smaller slot width that is below 100 nm, even though smaller slot width generates stronger local optical force

High strength mullite-bond SiC porous ceramics fabricated by digital light processing

Fabricating SiC ceramics via the digital light processing (DLP) technology is of great challenge due to strong light absorption and high refractive index of deep-colored SiC powders, which highly differ from those of resin, and thus significantly affect the curing performance of the photosensitive SiC slurry. In this paper, a thin silicon oxide (SiO2) layer was in-situ formed on the surface of SiC powders by pre-oxidation treatment. This method was proven to effectively improve the curing ability of SiC slurry. The SiC photosensitive slurry was fabricated with solid content of 55 vol% and viscosity of 7.77 Pa s (shear rate of 30 s-1). The curing thickness was 50 μm with exposure time of only 5 s. Then, a well-designed sintering additive was added to completely convert low-strength SiO2 into mullite reinforcement during sintering. Complexshaped mullite-bond SiC ceramics were successfully fabricated. The flexural strength of SiC ceramics sintered at 1550 °C in air reached 97.6 MPa with porosity of 39.2 vol%, as high as those prepared by spark plasma sintering (SPS) techniques.</p

Multiple machine learning methods aided virtual screening of Na(V)1.5 inhibitors

Na(v)1.5 sodium channels contribute to the generation of the rapid upstroke of the myocardial action potential and thereby play a central role in the excitability of myocardial cells. At present, the patch clamp method is the gold standard for ion channel inhibitor screening. However, this method has disadvantages such as high technical difficulty, high cost and low speed. In this study, novel machine learning models to screen chemical blockers were developed to overcome the above shortage. The data from the ChEMBL Database were employed to establish the machine learning models. Firstly, six molecular fingerprints together with five machine learning algorithms were used to develop 30 classification models to predict effective inhibitors. A validation and a test set were used to evaluate the performance of the models. Subsequently, the privileged substructures tightly associated with the inhibition of the Na(v)1.5 ion channel were extracted using the bioalerts Python package. In the validation set, the RF-Graph model performed best. Similarly, RF-Graph produced the best result in the test set in which the Prediction Accuracy (Q) was 0.9309 and Matthew's correlation coefficient was 0.8627, further indicating the model had high classification ability. The results of the privileged substructures indicated Sulfa structures and fragments with large Steric hindrance tend to block Na(v)1.5. In the unsupervised learning task of identifying sulfa drugs, MACCS and Graph fingerprints had good results. In summary, effective machine learning models have been constructed which help to screen potential inhibitors of the Na(v)1.5 ion channel and key privileged substructures with high affinity were also extracted.Peer reviewe

Information theory-based algorithm for in silico prediction of PCR products with whole genomic sequences as templates

BACKGROUND: A new algorithm for assessing similarity between primer and template has been developed based on the hypothesis that annealing of primer to template is an information transfer process. RESULTS: Primer sequence is converted to a vector of the full potential hydrogen numbers (3 for G or C, 2 for A or T), while template sequence is converted to a vector of the actual hydrogen bond numbers formed after primer annealing. The former is considered as source information and the latter destination information. An information coefficient is calculated as a measure for fidelity of this information transfer process and thus a measure of similarity between primer and potential annealing site on template. CONCLUSION: Successful prediction of PCR products from whole genomic sequences with a computer program based on the algorithm demonstrated the potential of this new algorithm in areas like in silico PCR and gene finding

Large Subcapsular Splenic Hematoma with a Large Pancreatic Pseudocyst Was Successfully Treated with Splenic Arterial Embolization and Ultrasound-Guided Percutaneous Drainage of Pancreatic Pseudocyst

Subcapsular splenic hematoma is a rare complication of pancreatitis. The management for subcapsular splenic hematoma remains controversial. We herein report a case of a large subcapsular splenic hematoma with a large pancreatic pseudocyst, which was successfully treated with splenic arterial embolization and ultrasound- (US-) guided percutaneous drainage of pancreatic pseudocyst, for the first time. A 44-year-old male suffered from recurrent abdominal pain for more than two years. He had previous 3 episodes of pancreatitis. A subcapsular splenic hematoma (16.0 × 16.0 × 7.6 cm) with pancreatic pseudocyst (13.5 × 10.0 × 8.0 cm) was shown on abdominal computed tomography (CT). He underwent splenic arterial embolization to decrease the blood supply of the spleen and then ultrasound-guided percutaneous drainage of the large pancreatic pseudocyst. After 2 weeks, the repeated CT-Abdomen showed the disappearance of pancreatic pseudocyst and multiple areas of infarction on the spleen, while the splenic subcapsular hematoma had also significantly reduced. The patient was discharged after almost a month of his hospital admission with the drainage tube attached, and about 2 weeks later the drainage tube was removed upon CT scan confirmation of decrease in the volume of the subcapsular hematoma. Patient had no abdominal symptoms at the 1.5-year follow-up