Ellagic acid exerts anti‑fibrotic effects on hypertrophic scar fibroblasts via inhibition of TGF‑β1/Smad2/3 pathway

Liu Xianjun,Gao Xinxin,Li Hao,Li Zhandong,Wang Xiaoe,Zhang Li,Wang Bo,Chen Xinxin,Meng Xianglong,Yu Jiaao 한국응용생명화학회 2021 Applied Biological Chemistry (Appl Biol Chem) Vol.64 No.5

Hypertrophic scar (HS) is a kind of serious pathological scar with no currently effective treatment. HS fibroblasts (HSFs) are the main effector cells for HS formation. Ellagic acid (EA) exerts regulatory effects in some diseases, but its role in HS remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of EA on the fibrotic phenotypes of HSFs and to further investigate the downstream signaling mechanism. The cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay was used to perform cytotoxicity and proliferation assays. HSFs migration was assessed using wound healing and transwell assays. HSFs contraction was measured by a collagen lattice contraction assay and detection of α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) expression. The levels of mRNA and protein were determined by qPCR and western blotting, respectively. The results showed that EA inhibited the proliferation, migration, and contraction of HSFs and collagen expression in HSFs in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, EA not only suppressed the Smad2/3 pathway but also reversed TGF-β1- induced activation of the Smad2/3 pathway and up-regulation of the fibrotic cellular phenotypes in HSFs. These findings demonstrate that EA exerts anti-fibrotic effects on HSFs by blocking the TGF-β1/Smad2/3 pathway, which indicates that EA is a potential therapeutic candidate for treatment of HS.

Illumina-sequencing based transcriptome study of coat color phenotypes in domestic goats

Yongdong Peng,Xiaohui Liu,Liying Geng,Ruxue Ma,Lisha Li,Jingshi Li,Chuansheng Zhang,Zhengzhu Liu,Yuanfang Gong,Xianglong Li 한국유전학회 2017 Genes & Genomics Vol.39 No.8

This study performed a comprehensive expression profiling of genes expressed in the skin of goats with three different coat colors by Illumina Sequencing. A total of 91 significantly expressed genes were detected when comparing gray skin to white skin library and these included 74 up-regulated and 17 down-regulated genes in gray skin. There were 67 differentially expressed genes between brown skin and white skin libraries, 23 of which were up-regulated and 44 were down-regulated in brown skin. When we compared brown and gray libraries, 154 differentially expressed genes were found, of which 33 showed higher expression and 121 showed lower expression in brown skin. To our surprise, MC1R, MITF, TYR and KIT showed no significant difference in expression between the goats with three skin colors, whereas ASIP was detected in white skin but not in dark skins. In this study, PMEL, TRPM1, TYRP1 and DCT were significantly upregulated in brown goat skin compare with gray and white skins. PMEL showed higher expression in gray goat skin compared with white goat skin, whereas there were no significant differences in the expression of TYRP1, TRPM1 and DCT between gray and white skin samples. In addition, ELOVL3 showed higher expression in gray goat skin than in brown and white skins, whereas there was no significant differences in the expression of ELOVL3 between brown and white skin samples. These results expand our understanding of the complex molecular mechanisms of skin physiology and melanogenesis in goat and provide a foundation for future studies.

An Iterative Optimization Model for Hazardous Materials Transport with Demand Changes

Xianglong Sun,Shumin Feng,Zhenning Li 대한토목학회 2018 KSCE JOURNAL OF CIVIL ENGINEERING Vol.22 No.1

Hazardous materials transportation network optimization can help to decrease accident rates and improve transport efficiency. An iterative optimization model of the transport network is established which considers characteristics of both government and enterprises. The first aim of government is to minimize transport risk, while enterprises want transport cost to be the lowest possible, so the top-level objective of this model is to minimize transport network risk and the low-level objective is to minimize total cost. When demand is determined, the total cost obtained from low-level model is added to top-level as constraints to determine the optimal transport network. When demand changes, we introduce safety coefficient to solve this model. A small transport network is used to verify this model and algorithm, and the results show that the proposed methods are feasible and stable.

Macroporous Inverse Opal-like Mo_<i>x</i>C with Incorporated Mo Vacancies for Significantly Enhanced Hydrogen Evolution

Li, Feng,Zhao, Xianglong,Mahmood, Javeed,Okyay, Mahmut Sait,Jung, Sun-Min,Ahmad, Ishfaq,Kim, Seok-Jin,Han, Gao-Feng,Park, Noejung,Baek, Jong-Beom American Chemical Society 2017 ACS NANO Vol.11 No.7

<P>The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is one of the most important pathways for producing pure and clean hydrogen. Although platinum (Pt) is the most efficient HER electrocatalyst, its practical application is significantly hindered by high cost and scarcity. In this work, an MoxS with incorporated Mo vacancies and macroporous inverse opal-like (IOL) structure (MoxC-IOL) was synthesized and studied as a low-cost efficient HER electrocatalyst. The macroporous IOL structure was controllably fabricated using a facile-hard template strategy. As a result of the combined benefits of the Mo vacancies and structural advantages, including appropriate hydrogen binding energy, large exposed surface, robust IOL structure and fast mass/charge transport, the synthesized MoxC-IOL exhibited significantly enhanced HER electrocatalytic performance with good stability, with performance comparable or superior to Pt wire in both acidic and alkaline solutions.</P>

First principles calculation of boron diffusion in fcc-Fe

Xin Zhang,Xianglong Li,Ping Wu,Sen Chen,Shiping Zhang,Ning Chen,Xiulan Huai 한국물리학회 2018 Current Applied Physics Vol.18 No.10

The diffusion mechanism of boron in fcc-Fe was studied by first-principles calculations. The sites where B atoms tend to occupy and the diffusion behavior were calculated. Results indicated that the main mechanism of boron diffusion in fcc-Fe was the B–monovacancy complex mechanism instead of the interstitial mechanism. The diffusion coefficient D1 of the B–monovacancy complex mechanism was calculated without considering the backward jump of the B atoms. The calculated D1=1.26×10−4×exp(–2.01eV/kBT) m2·s−1 is consistent with the reported results from experiments.

A novel hybrid compound fault pattern identification method for gearbox based on NIC, MFDFA and WOASVM

Xin Zhang,Jianmin Zhao,Xinghui Zhang,Xianglong Ni,Haiping Li,Fucheng Sun 대한기계학회 2019 JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Vol.33 No.3

Gearbox compound fault pattern recognition is challenging because of its complexity and non-stationarity of the vibration signal. In this study is proposed a novel hybrid method based on narrow band interference canceller (NIC), multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) and support vector machine optimized by whale optimization algorithm (WOASVM) for compound fault pattern recognition of gearbox. Specifically, the raw signal is processed by NIC to filter the deterministic signal which interferes with the fault signal, and then the multifractal features are extracted from the residual signal via MFDFA. Finally, the compound fault pattern is identified via WOASVM. Compound fault experiments of a gearbox under fixed condition and variable condition were done to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method can effectively identify the compound faults and it outperforms other methods mentioned in this paper.

Hair follicles transcriptome profiles in Bashang long-tailed chickens with different plumage colors

Xiaohui Liu,Rongyan Zhou,Yongdong Peng,Chuansheng Zhang,Lanhui Li,Chunxiang Lu,Xianglong Li 한국유전학회 2019 Genes & Genomics Vol.41 No.11

Despite the rich variety in plumage color found in nature, genetic studies on how hair follicles affect pigmentation are often limited to animals that have black and white pigment. To test how gene expression influences plumage color, transcriptomes of chicken hair follicles with white, black, hemp, reed catkins, silvery grey, and landscape plumage colors were generated using Illumina sequencing. We generated six RNA-Seq libraries with over 25 million paired-end clean reads per library with percentage of paired-end clean reads ranging from 96.73 to 96.98%. 78% of the reads mapped to the chicken genome, and approximately 70% of the reads were mapped to exons and 6% mapped to introns. Transcriptomes of hair follicles producing hemp and land plumage were similar, but these two showed moderate differences compared with gray and reed colored plumage. The black and white follicle transcriptomes were most divergent from the other colors. We identified several candidate genes, including GPNMB, PMEL, TYRP1, GPR143, OCA2, SOX10, SLC45A2, KRT75, and TYR . All of these genes are known to induce pigment formation in mice. White feathers result from the lack of pigment formation, and our results suggest that the white chickens due to the recessive insertion mutation of TYR . The formation of black area size and color depth may be due to the expression levels of GPNMB, PMEL, TYRP1, GPR143, OCA2, SOX10, SLC45A2, KRT75, and TYR . The GO analysis of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) revealed that DEGs in our transcriptome analysis were enriched in cytoskeleton and cell structure related pathways. The black plumage transcriptome showed significant differences in melanogenesis, tyrosine metabolism, and riboflavin metabolism compared with transcriptomes of other plumage colors. The transcriptome profiles of the different chicken plumage colors provide a valuable resource to understand how gene expression influences plumage color, and will be an important resource for identifying candidate genes in breeding programs.