The Ubiquitin Peptidase UCHL1 Induces G0/G1 Cell Cycle Arrest and Apoptosis Through Stabilizing p53 and Is Frequently Silenced in Breast Cancer

Background: Breast cancer (BrCa) is a complex disease driven by aberrant gene alterations and environmental factors. Recent studies reveal that abnormal epigenetic gene regulation also plays an important role in its pathogenesis. Ubiquitin carboxyl- terminal esterase L1 (UCHL1) is a tumor suppressor silenced by promoter methylation in multiple cancers, but its role and alterations in breast tumorigenesis remain unclear. Methodology/Principal Findings: We found that UCHL1 was frequently downregulated or silenced in breast cancer cell lines and tumor tissues, but readily expressed in normal breast tissues and mammary epithelial cells. Promoter methylation of UCHL1 was detected in 9 of 10 breast cancer cell lines (90%) and 53 of 66 (80%) primary tumors, but rarely in normal breast tissues, which was statistically correlated with advanced clinical stage and progesterone receptor status. Pharmacologic demethylation reactivated UCHL1 expression along with concomitant promoter demethylation. Ectopic expression of UCHL1 significantly suppressed the colony formation and proliferation of breast tumor cells, through inducing G0/G1 cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Subcellular localization study showed that UCHL1 increased cytoplasmic abundance of p53. We further found that UCHL1 induced p53 accumulation and reduced MDM2 protein level, and subsequently upregulated the expression of p21, as well as cleavage of caspase3 and PARP, but not in catalytic mutant UCHL1 C90Sexpressed cells

Linkage Mapping of Stem Saccharification Digestibility in Rice

Rice is the staple food of almost half of the world population, and in excess 90% of it is grown and consumed in Asia, but the disposal of rice straw poses a problem for farmers, who often burn it in the fields, causing health and environmental problems. However, with increased focus on the development of sustainable biofuel production, rice straw has been recognized as a potential feedstock for non-food derived biofuel production. Currently, the commercial realization of rice as a biofuel feedstock is constrained by the high cost of industrial saccharification processes needed to release sugar for fermentation. This study is focused on the alteration of lignin content, and cell wall chemotypes and structures, and their effects on the saccharification potential of rice lignocellulosic biomass. A recombinant inbred lines (RILs) population derived from a cross between the lowland rice variety IR1552 and the upland rice variety Azucena with 271 molecular markers for quantitative trait SNP (QTS) analyses was used. After association analysis of 271 markers for saccharification potential, 1 locus and 4 pairs of epistatic loci were found to contribute to the enzymatic digestibility phenotype, and an inverse relationship between reducing sugar and lignin content in these recombinant inbred lines was identified. As a result of QTS analyses, several cell-wall associated candidate genes are proposed that may be useful for marker-assisted breeding and may aid breeders to produce potential high saccharification rice varieties

Generation, Annotation and Analysis of First Large-Scale Expressed Sequence Tags from Developing Fiber of Gossypium barbadense L

BACKGROUND: Cotton fiber is the world's leading natural fiber used in the manufacture of textiles. Gossypium is also the model plant in the study of polyploidization, evolution, cell elongation, cell wall development, and cellulose biosynthesis. G. barbadense L. is an ideal candidate for providing new genetic variations useful to improve fiber quality for its superior properties. However, little is known about fiber development mechanisms of G. barbadense and only a few molecular resources are available in GenBank. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In total, 10,979 high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were generated from a normalized fiber cDNA library of G. barbadense. The ESTs were clustered and assembled into 5852 unigenes, consisting of 1492 contigs and 4360 singletons. The blastx result showed 2165 unigenes with significant similarity to known genes and 2687 unigenes with significant similarity to genes of predicted proteins. Functional classification revealed that unigenes were abundant in the functions of binding, catalytic activity, and metabolic pathways of carbohydrate, amino acid, energy, and lipids. The function motif/domain-related cytoskeleton and redox homeostasis were enriched. Among the 5852 unigenes, 282 and 736 unigenes were identified as potential cell wall biosynthesis and transcription factors, respectively. Furthermore, the relationships among cotton species or between cotton and other model plant systems were analyzed. Some putative species-specific unigenes of G. barbadense were highlighted. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The ESTs generated in this study are from the first large-scale EST project for G. barbadense and significantly enhance the number of G. barbadense ESTs in public databases. This knowledge will contribute to cotton improvements by studying fiber development mechanisms of G. barbadense, establishing a breeding program using marker-assisted selection, and discovering candidate genes related to important agronomic traits of cotton through oligonucleotide array. Our work will also provide important resources for comparative genomics, polyploidization, and genome evolution among Gossypium species

A new additive 3-Isocyanatopropyltriethoxysilane to improve electrochemical performance of Li/NCM622 half-cell at high voltage

In this paper, we propose a new electrolyte additive 3-Isocyanatopropyltriethoxysilane (IPTS) to improve the cycle stability and rate performance of Ni-Rich (LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2) cathode half-cell. Density function theory calculations suggest that IPTS has higher HOMO energy than solvent, which can decompose preferentially. Moreover, we confirm the oxidative decomposition by the linear scanning cyclic voltammetry, which can achieve stable at a cutoff voltage of 2.5-4.5 Vs. (Li/Li+). The cyclic voltammetry curves at different scan rates indicate that the migration rate of lithium ions is higher in the cells with 0.5% additive than in the base electrolyte. After 150 cycles, the capacity retention rates in the base electrolyte and in the additive-containing electrolyte are 55.4% and 73.1%, respectively. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy show that the additive is involved in film formation, and the obtained CEI film is very uniform and dense, which play a key role in stabilizing the electrolyte under high voltage.</p

Size modification of Au nanoparticles induced by slow highly charged ions Ar-40(q+) irradiation

Size modification of Au nanoparticles (NPs), deposited on the Au-thick film surface and irradiated by slow highly charged ions (SHCI) 40Arq+ (3 6 q 6 12) with fixed low dose of 4.3 1011 ions/cm2 and various energy ranging from 74.64 to 290.64 keV at room temperature (293.15 K), was investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The effect of projectile kinetic energy on the modified size of NPs was explored by an appropriate choice of the fixed process parameters such as ion flux, irradiation temperature, incident angle, irradiation time, etc. The morphological changes of NPs were interpreted by models involving collisional mixing, Ostwald ripening (OR) and inverse Ostwald ripening (IOR) of spherical NPs on a substrate. A critical kinetic energy as well as a critical potential energy of the projectile in the Au NPs size modification process were observed

Structural and magnetic properties of GaN:Sm:Eu films fabricated by co-implantation method

Diluted-magnetic GaN:Sm:Eu films have been fabricated by co-implantation of Sm and Eu ions into c-plane (0001) GaN films and a subsequent annealing process. The structural, morphological and magnetic characteristics of the samples have been investigated by means of high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). The XRD and AFM analyses show that the annealing process can effectively recover the crystalline degradation caused by implantation. Compared with GaN:Sm films, more defects have been introduced into GaN:Sm:Eu films due to the Eu implantation process. According to the SQUID analysis, GaN:Sm:Eu films exhibit clear room-temperature ferromagnetism. Moreover, GaN:Sm:Eu films show a lower saturation magnetization (Ms) than GaN:Sm films

Pyrolytic and kinetic analysis of coastal plant Xanthium sibiricum

The fuel properties of coastal plant Xanthium sibiricum were investigated in thermogravimetrics. The distributed activation energy model was employed in the kinetic analysis and a simplified mathematical model that can predict the thermogravimetry curves was proposed. The results show that the initial decomposition temperature tends to increase with the heating rate. The distributed E values ranged from 169.08 to 177.43 kJ/mol, and the frequency factor values ranged from 6.59x10(8) to 1.22x10(12)/s at different conversion rates. Furthermore, the prediction made with the simplified mathematical model perfectly matched the experimental data, and the model was found to be simple and accurate for the prediction of devolatilization curves.The fuel properties of coastal plant Xanthium sibiricum were investigated in thermogravimetrics. The distributed activation energy model was employed in the kinetic analysis and a simplified mathematical model that can predict the thermogravimetry curves was proposed. The results show that the initial decomposition temperature tends to increase with the heating rate. The distributed E values ranged from 169.08 to 177.43 kJ/mol, and the frequency factor values ranged from 6.59x10(8) to 1.22x10(12)/s at different conversion rates. Furthermore, the prediction made with the simplified mathematical model perfectly matched the experimental data, and the model was found to be simple and accurate for the prediction of devolatilization curves