Hearing Improvement in A/J Mice via the Mouse Nerve Growth Factor

Lixiang Gao,Ruli Ge,Gang Xie,Dandan Yao,Ping Li,Oumei Wang,Xiufang Ma,Fengchan Han 대한이비인후과학회 2017 Clinical and Experimental Otorhinolaryngology Vol.10 No.4

Objectives. To investigate the otoprotective effects of mouse nerve growth factor (mNGF) in A/J mice. Methods. The mice at postnatal day 7 (P7) were randomly separated into a mNGF treated group (mNGF group) and a distilled water (for injection) treated group (control group). The mNGF dissolved in distilled water or distilled water alone was given to the mice once every other day from P7 by intramuscular injection in the hips. The otoprotective effects of mNGF in A/J mice were observed in a time course manner. The thresholds of auditory-evoked brainstem response (ABR) were tested from the age of the 3rd to the 8th week. Sections of the inner ears were stained by hematoxylin and eosin, and spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) were observed at the age of the 3rd, the 6th, and the 8th week. Counts of whole mount outer hair cells (OHCs) in the cochleae were made at the age of 8 weeks. Expression of apoptosis related genes was determined by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting. Results. ABR thresholds of the mNGF group were significantly lower than those of the control group at the age of the 6th and the 8th week. Moreover, the mNGF preserved OHC and SGN in the mouse cochleae in this period. Further experiments showed that the expression of caspase genes (including caspase-3) was inhibited in the mouse inner ears in the mNGF group. Conclusion. The mNGF improves hearing in A/J mice by preserving SGN and OHC in the cochleae.

Involvement of Lysosome Membrane Permeabilization and Reactive Oxygen Species Production in the Necrosis Induced by Chlamydia muridarum Infection in L929 Cells

( Lixiang Chen ),( Cong Wang ),( Shun Li ),( Xin Yu ),( Xue Liu ),( Rongrong Ren ),( Wenwen Liu ),( Xiaojing Zhou ),( Xiaonan Zhang ),( Xiaohui Zhou ) 한국미생물 · 생명공학회 2016 Journal of microbiology and biotechnology Vol.26 No.4

Chlamydiae, obligate intracellular bacteria, are associated with a variety of human diseases. The chlamydial life cycle undergoes a biphasic development: replicative reticulate bodies (RBs) phase and infectious elementary bodies (EBs) phase. At the end of the chlamydial intracellular life cycle, EBs have to be released to the surrounded cells. Therefore, the interactions between Chlamydiae and cell death pathways could greatly influence the outcomes of Chlamydia infection. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we investigated host cell death after Chlamydia infection in vitro, in L929 cells, and showed that Chlamydia infection induces cell necrosis, as detected by the propidium iodide (PI)-Annexin V double-staining flow-cytometric assay and Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release assay. The production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), an important factor in induction of necrosis, was increased after Chlamydia infection, and inhibition of ROS with specific pharmacological inhibitors, diphenylene iodonium (DPI) or butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), led to significant suppression of necrosis. Interestingly, live-cell imaging revealed that Chlamydia infection induced lysosome membrane permeabilization (LMP). When an inhibitor upstream of LMP, CA-074-Me, was added to cells, the production of ROS was reduced with concomitant inhibition of necrosis. Taken together, our results indicate that Chlamydia infection elicits the production of ROS, which is dependent on LMP at least partially, followed by induction of host-cell necrosis. To our best knowledge, this is the first live-cell-imaging observation of LMP post Chlamydia infection and report on the link of LMP to ROS to necrosis during Chlamydia infection.

An Efficient and Secure Authentication Scheme with Session Key Negotiation for Timely Application of WSNs

Jiping Li,Yuanyuan Zhang,Lixiang Shen,Jing Cao,Wenwu Xie,Yizheng,Shouyin Liu 한국인터넷정보학회 2024 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.18 No.3

For Internet of Things, it is more preferred to have immediate access to environment information from sensor nodes (SNs) rather than from gateway nodes (GWNs). To fulfill the goal, mutual authentication scheme between user and SNs with session key (SK) negotiation is more suitable. However, this is a challenging task due to the constrained power, computation, communication and storage resources of SNs. Though lots of authentication schemes with SK negotiation have been designed to deal with it, they are still insufficiently secure and/or efficient, and some even have serious vulnerabilities. Therefore, we design an efficient secure authentication scheme with session key negotiation (eSAS2KN) for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) utilizing fuzzy extractor technique, hash function and bitwise exclusive-or lightweight operations. In the eSAS2KN, user and SNs are mutually authenticated with anonymity, and an SK is negotiated for their direct and instant communications subsequently. To prove the security of eSAS2KN, we give detailed informal security analysis, carry out logical verification by applying BAN logic, present formal security proof by employing Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, and implement formal security verification by using AVISPA tool. Finally, computation and communication costs comparison show the eSAS2kN is more efficient and secure for practical application.

Robust ID based mutual authentication and key agreement scheme preserving user anonymity in mobile networks

( Yanrong Lu ),( Lixiang Li ),( Haipeng Peng ),( Yixian Yang ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2016 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.10 No.3

With the swift growth of wireless technologies, an increasing number of users rely on the mobile services which can exchange information in mobile networks. Security is of key issue when a user tries to access those services in this network environment. Many authentication schemes have been presented with the purpose of authenticating entities and wishing to communicate securely. Recently, Chou et al. and Farash-Attari presented two ID authentication schemes. They both claimed that their scheme could withstand various attacks. However, we find that the two authentication schemes are vulnerable to trace attack while having a problem of clock synchronization. Additionally, we show that Farash-Attari`s scheme is still susceptible to key-compromise impersonation attack. Therefore, we present an enhanced scheme to remedy the security weaknesses which are troubled in these schemes. We also demonstrate the completeness of the enhanced scheme through the Burrow-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic. Security analysis shows that our scheme prevents the drawbacks found in the two authentication schemes while supporting better secure attributes. In addition, our scheme owns low computation overheads compared with other related schemes. As a result, our enhanced scheme seems to be more practical and suitable for resource-constrained mobile devices in mobile networks.

A Theoretical Study on the Mechanism of Decarboxylations for Hydroxymandelate Synthase

Qing-An Qiao,Qiuxian Li,Changchun Liu,Xiao Sun,Honglan Cai,Lixiang Sun,Huayang Wang 대한화학회 2017 Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society Vol.38 No.6

Hydroxymandelate synthase is one type of alpha-keto acid-dependent oxygenases and plays an important role in the biosynthesis of hydroxyphenyl-pyruvate. The ferrous and ferryl intermediates in the reaction were considered to be very important in the DNA repair process. The mechanism of hydroxymandelate synthase was investigated by a theoretical method based on B3LYP/LACVP*. The data indicated that each decarboxylation went through a process of direct dioxygen insertion. The first oxidative decarboxylation experienced only one transition state, while there were two potential pathways for the second decarboxylation process. The calculation data showed that the stepwise one was favored to the concerted one due to the lower energy barrier. The process to form the iron-superoxide was the rate-limiting step. After two consecutive decarboxylations, a proton transfer reaction was needed to obtain the target products. Two possible transition states were found out to achieve this step. The one with a six-membered ring structure was preferred because of the lower activation energy. In addition, several ferryl species with high spins were captured in the whole process, which could be supplied as requisite substrates for DNA repair reaction.

Efficient Post-Quantum Secure Network Coding Signatures in the Standard Model

( Dong Xie ),( Haipeng Peng ),( Lixiang Li ),( Yixian Yang ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2016 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.10 No.5

In contrast to traditional “store-and-forward” routing mechanisms, network coding offers an elegant solution for achieving maximum network throughput. The core idea is that intermediate network nodes linearly combine received data packets so that the destination nodes can decode original files from some authenticated packets. Although network coding has many advantages, especially in wireless sensor network and peer-to-peer network, the encoding mechanism of intermediate nodes also results in some additional security issues. For a powerful adversary who can control arbitrary number of malicious network nodes and can eavesdrop on the entire network, cryptographic signature schemes provide undeniable authentication mechanisms for network nodes. However, with the development of quantum technologies, some existing network coding signature schemes based on some traditional number-theoretic primitives vulnerable to quantum cryptanalysis. In this paper we first present an efficient network coding signature scheme in the standard model using lattice theory, which can be viewed as the most promising tool for designing post-quantum cryptographic protocols. In the security proof, we propose a new method for generating a random lattice and the corresponding trapdoor, which may be used in other cryptographic protocols. Our scheme has many advantages, such as supporting multi-source networks, low computational complexity and low communication overhead.

Study of the H2O/Al2O3 Interface and the Acting Mechanism of Water in the Working Electrolyte

Ming Jia,Qiang Li,Lixiang Li,Liang Cao,Juan Yang,Xiang-Yang Zhou,Liang Ai 대한금속·재료학회 2018 ELECTRONIC MATERIALS LETTERS Vol.14 No.5

Using a working electrolyte containing mixed solvents of ethylene glycol and N,N-dimethylformamide, this paper presentsa study of the reactions on the H2O/Al2O3 interface with sum frequency vibrational spectroscopy and the effects of differentwater content on the performance of the working electrolyte and an aluminum electrolytic capacitor and summarizes the rulesof the variations in the performance parameters of the working electrolyte and aluminum electrolytic capacitor with respect tothe water content. The results demonstrate that, when the water content is increased from 2.5 to 15%, the conductivity of theworking electrolyte increased by 930 μS/cm, and the sparking voltage decreased by 27 V. Also, the increased water contentcauses lower oxidation efficiency and lower thermal stability. The leakage current of the aluminum electrolytic capacitorafter high-temperature storage increases with an increase in the water content, and the attenuation rate of capacitor’s thelow-temperature capacitance decreases with an increase in the water content.

Dietary Supplementation with Acanthopanax senticosus Extract Modulates Gut Microflora in Weaned Piglets

Yin, Fugui,Yin, Yulong,Kong, Xiangfeng,Liu, Yulan,He, Qinghua,Li, Tiejun,Huang, Ruilin,Hou, Yongqing,Shu, Xugang,Tan, Liangxi,Chen, Lixiang,Gong, Jianhua,Kim, Sung Woo,Wu, Guoyao Asian Australasian Association of Animal Productio 2008 Animal Bioscience Vol.21 No.9

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of Acanthopanax senticosus extract (ASE) as a dietary additive on gut microflora in weaned piglets. A total of sixty pigs were weaned at 21 d of age (BW = $5.64{\pm}0.23kg$) and allocated on the basis of BW and litter to three dietary treatments in a randomized complete block design. The dietary treatments were: control group (basal diet), antibiotics group (basal diet+0.02% colistin), and ASE group (basal diet+0.1% ASE). On d 7, 14 and 28 after consuming the experimental diets, five piglets per group were sacrificed and then the contents from the jejunum, ileum and cecum were collected to determine changes in the microbial community by using a polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) technique and estimating the contents of Lactobacillus and E. coli by in vitro culturing methods. The results showed that the ASE promoted the microflora diversity in the cecum. Enumeration of bacteria in the gut contents showed that the number of Lactobacillus increased (p<0.05), while that of E. coli decreased (p<0.05) when compared with the other 2 groups as the days of age progressed post-weaning. These findings suggested that the ASE, as a substitute for dietary antimicrobial products, could improve the development of the normal gut microflora and suppress bacterial pathogens, and effectively promote a healthy intestinal environment.

Transgenic Rice Plants Overexpressing BBTI4 Confer Partial but Broad-spectrum Bacterial Blight Resistance

Zhiqian Pang,Zhuangzhi Zhou,Dedong Yin,Qiming Lv,Lixiang Wang,Xiao Xu,Jing Wang,Xiaobing Li,Xianfeng Zhao,Guanghuai Jiang,Jinping Lan,Lihuang Zhu,Songnian Hu,Guozhen Liu 한국식물학회 2013 Journal of Plant Biology Vol.56 No.6

Plant Bowman-Birk type bran trypsin inhibitors(BBTI) belong to a family of serine protease inhibitors thatinhibit trypsin activity and play roles in plant developmentand defense responses to both biotic and abiotic stresses. Inthis study, transgenic rice plants overexpressing BBTI4 (OXBBTI4)were generated. Reverse-transcription polymerasechain reaction and western blot (WB) analysis demonstratedthat the BBTI4 mRNA and protein levels were significantlyincreased in OX-BBTI4. Notably, two BBTI4 protein formswith different molecular weight (18 kD and 28 kD) wererevealed by WB analysis. In non-transgenic plants, BBTI4-28kD and BBTI4-18kD were mainly expressed in roots andleaves, respectively, while in transgenic OX-BBTI4 plants,both protein forms were expressed constitutively. Subcellularanalysis revealed that BBTI4 is localized in the cytosol. Moreover, Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) inoculationexperiments demonstrated that transgenic OX-BBTI4 riceplants conferred partial but broad-spectrum Xoo resistance. InOX-BBTI4 transgenic rice plants, the expression of OsPR3 andOsPR10a proteins was induced and gradually increased afterXoo infection, while the expression of OsPR1a, OsPR1b andOsPR-pha remained unchanged. Taken together, these resultssuggest that BBTI4 may play a role in rice resistance to Xoo,and OsPR3 and OsPR10a may be involved in the OX-BBTI4-dependent partial Xoo resistance response.

Exterior egg quality as affected by enrichment resources layout in furnished laying-hen cages

Li, Xiang,Chen, Donghua,Meng, Fanyu,Su, Yingying,Wang, Lisha,Zhang, Runxiang,Li, Jianhong,Bao, Jun Asian Australasian Association of Animal Productio 2017 Animal Bioscience Vol.30 No.10

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the effects of enrichment resources (a perch, dustbath, and nest) layout in furnished laying-hen cages (FC) on exterior quality of eggs. Methods: One hundred and sixty-eight (168) Hy-Line Brown laying hens at 16 weeks of age were randomly distributed to four treatments: small furnished cages (SFC), medium furnished cages type I (MFC-I), medium furnished cages type II (MFC-II), and medium furnished cages type III (MFC-III). Each treatment had 4 replicates or cages with 6 hens for SFC (24 birds for each SFC) and 12 hen/cage for MFC-I, -II, and -III (48 birds for each MFC-I, -II and -III). Following a 2-week acclimation, data collection started at 18 weeks of age and continued till 52 weeks of age. Dirtiness of egg surface or cracked shell as indicators of the exterior egg quality were recorded each week. Results: The results showed that the proportion of cracked or dirty eggs was significantly affected by the FC type (p<0.01) in that the highest proportion of cracked or dirty eggs was found in MFC-I and the lowest proportion of dirty eggs in SFC. The results of this showed that furnished cage types affected both dirty eggs and cracked eggs (p<0.01). The results also indicated that not nest but dustbath lead to more dirty eggs. Only MFC-I had higher dirty eggs at nest than other FC (p<0.01). The results of dirty eggs in MFC-I and MFC-II compared with SFC and MFC-III seemed suggest that a low position of dustbath led to more dirty eggs. Conclusion: SFC design affected exterior egg quality and the low position of dustbath in FC resulted in higher proportion of dirty eggs.