Promoter Analysis of Bombyx mori Nucleopolyhedrovirus Ubiquitin Gene

Xu’ai Lin,Yin Chen,Yongzhu Yi,Jie Yan,Zhifang Zhang 한국미생물학회 2008 The journal of microbiology Vol.46 No.4

The aim of this study was to analyze the characteristics of Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) ubiquitin gene promoter and the effects of conserved motifs, such as TAAG, TATA, and CAAT, along with baculovirus enhancer homologous region 3 (hr3), on promoter activity. Ubiquitin gene of BmNPV was expressed during the late phase of virus infection. In the presence of viral factors, significant reduction of promoter activity was observed by deletion of -382 to -124 bp upstream of ATG. The fragment between -187 and -383 bp upstream of ATG, including distal TAAG, CAAT motif, and TATA box, could also drive expression of the reporter gene. The mutation of cis-elements TATA boxes and TAAG motifs significantly decreased the promoter’s activity, while CAAT mutations enhanced promoter activity by 2- or 3-fold, as compared with the native promoter. In the presence of BmNPV, hr3, both located downstream of the reporter gene of the same vector, and separate vector, could significantly enhance transcription activity of ubiquitin promoter as compared to the control. We concluded that BmNPV ubiquitin gene might be regulated by dual sets of promoter elements, where TAAG and TATA box may positively regulate the expression of ubiquitin, while CAAT motif functions as a negative regulator. Viral factor(s) play an important role in the co-activation of hr3 and promoter.

Phosphorylation of DYNLT1 at Serine 82 Regulates Microtubule Stability and Mitochondrial Permeabilization in Hypoxia

Xue Xu,Yue-sheng Huang,Qiong Zhang,Jiong-yu Hu,Dong-xia Zhang2,Xu-pin Jiang,jie-zhi Jia,Jing-ci Zhu 한국분자세포생물학회 2013 Molecules and cells Vol.36 No.4

Hypoxia-induced microtubule disruption and mitochondrial permeability transition (mPT) are crucial events leading to fatal cell damage and recent studies showed that microtubules (MTs) are involved in the modulation of mitochondrial function. Dynein light chain Tctex-type 1 (DYNLT1) is thought to be associated with MTs and mitochondria. Previously we demonstrated that DYNLT1 knockdown aggravates hypoxia-induced mitochondrial permeabilization, which indicates a role of DYNLT1 in hypoxic cytoprotection. But the underlying regulatory mechanism of DYNLT1 remains illusive. Here we aimed to investigate the phosphorylation alteration of DYNLT1 at serine 82 (S82) in hypoxia (1% O2). We therefore constructed recombinant adenoviruses to generate S82E and S82A mutants, used to transfect H9c2 and HeLa cell lines. Development of hypoxia-induced mPT (MMP examining, Cyt c release and mPT pore opening assay), hypoxic energy metabolism (cellular viability and ATP quantification), and stability of MTs were examined. Our results showed that phosph-S82 (S82-P) expression was increased in early hypoxia; S82E mutation (phosphomimic) aggravated mitochondrial damage, ele-vated the free tubulin in cytoplasm and decreased the cellular viability; S82A mutation (dephosphomimic) seemed to diminish the hypoxia-induced injury. These data suggest that DYNLT1 phosphorylation at S82 is involved in MTs and mitochondria regulation, and their interaction and cooperation contribute to the cellular hypoxic tolerance. Thus, we provide new insights into a DYNLT1 mechanism in stabilizing MTs and mitochondria, and propose a potential therapeutic target for hypoxia cytoprotective studies.

Elevated Serum Ferritin Levels in Patients with Hematologic Malignancies

Zhang, Xue-Zhong,Su, Ai-Ling,Hu, Ming-Qiu,Zhang, Xiu-Qun,Xu, Yan-Li Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.15

Purpose: To retrospectively analyze variability and clinical significance of serum ferritin levels in Chinese patients with hematologic malignancies. Materials and Methods: Serum ferritin were measured by radioimmunoassay, using a kit produced by the Beijing Institute of Atomic Energy. Patients with hematologic malignancies, and treated in the Department of Hematology in Nanjing First Hospital and fulfilled study criteria were recruited. Results: Of 473 patients with hematologic malignancies, 262 patients were diagnosed with acute leukemia, 131 with lymphoma and 80 with multiple myeloma. Serum ferritin levels of newly diagnosed and recurrent patients were significantly higher than those entering complete remission stage or in the control group (p<0.001). Conclusions: Serum ferritin lever in patients with hematologic malignancies at early stage and recurrent stage are significantly increased, so that detection and surveillance of changes of serum ferritin could be helpful in assessing conditions and prognosis of this patient cohort.

PRDX6 regulates the H2O2 and blue light-induced APRE-19 cell apoptosis via down-regulating and interacting with RARA

Xu Zha,Guojiu Wu,Hong Zhang,Yanni Yang,Yuanping Zhang,Linkun Ma 한국통합생물학회 2019 Animal cells and systems Vol.23 No.4

Hereditary retinal disease (HRD) is the primary retinal degeneration that leads to severe visual impairments and refractory blindness, and the therapy of HRD was most important in ophthalmology. The apoptosis of retinal cells plays important roles in HRD progression. Therefore, in this study, we explore the mechanism of H2O2 and blue light-induced apoptosis of ARPE-19 cells. Co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) is employed to test the interactions between proteins, and western blotting is used to detect the protein levels. Apoptosis is analyzed by Flow cytometry. Our results found that PRDX6 could interact with RARA in ARPE-19 cells, and H2O2 and blue light could significantly reduce the RARA protein expression, and also could inhibit the interaction between PRDX6 and RARA. Using a rescue experiment, we further elucidated that H2O2 and blue light reduced the RARA expression via down-regulating PRDX6. And H2O2 and blue light induced the ARPE-19 cell apoptosis via decreasing the expression of PRDX6. Our results suggested that the interaction between PRDX6 and RARA played important roles in the apoptosis of ARPE-19 cells.

Research on Ground Temperature Restoration Characteristics of Large-Scale Ground Source Heat Pump System

Zhang, Xu,Liu, Jun,Gao, Jun,Li, Kuishan The Society of Air-Conditioning and Refrigerating 2008 International Journal Of Air-Conditioning and Refr Vol.16 No.4

Ground temperature restoration characteristics are the crucial factors to evaluate whether a ground source heat pump system can keep long time steady operation. They are mainly dependent on soil thermal properties, layout of pile group, operation/shutoff ratio, cooling/heating load, thermal imbalance ratio and so on. On the one hand, several types of vertical pile foundation heat exchangers are intercompared to determine the most efficient one by performance test and numerical method. On the other hand, according to the layout of pile group of a practical engineering and running conditions of a GSHP system in Shanghai, the temperature distribution during a period of five years is numerically studied. The numerical results are analyzed and are used to provide some guidance for the design of large-scale GSHP system.

Influence of substrate bias on microstructure and morphology of ZrN thin films deposited by arc ion plating

ZHANG, Min,HU, Xiao-gang,YANG, Xiao-xu,XU, Fei-fei,KIM, Kwang-Ho,SHAO, Zhi-gang Elsevier 2012 Transactions of Nonferrous Metals Society of China Vol.22 No.suppl1

Asymmetric Information Supply Chain Models with Credit Option

Xu Zhang,Panlop Zeephongsekul 대한산업공학회 2013 Industrial Engineeering & Management Systems Vol.12 No.3

Credit option is a policy that has been studied by many researchers in the area of supply chain management. This policy has been applied in practice to improve the profits of supply chain members. Usually, a credit option policy is proposed by the seller, and often under a symmetric information environment where members have complete information on each others’ operations. In this paper, we investigate two scenarios: firstly, the seller offers a credit option to the buyer, and secondly, the buyer attempts to stretch the length of the credit period offered by the seller. The proposed model in both scenarios will be investigated under an asymmetric information structure where some information are private and are only known to the individual who has knowledge of this information. The interactions between buyer and seller will be modeled by non-cooperative Stackelberg games where the buyer and seller take turn as leader and follower. Among some of the numerical results obtained, the seller and buyer’s profits obtained from symmetric information games are larger than those obtained from an asymmetric information game in both scenarios. Furthermore, both buyer and seller’s profit in the second scenario are better than in the first scenario.

Nonradiative energy transfer between colloidal quantum dot-phosphors and nanopillar nitride LEDs.

Zhang, Fan,Liu, Jie,You, Guanjun,Zhang, Chunfeng,Mohney, Suzanne E,Park, Min Joo,Kwak, Joon Seop,Wang, Yongqiang,Koleske, Daniel D,Xu, Jian Optical Society of America 2012 Optics express Vol.20 No.2

<P>We present in this communication our study of the nonradiative energy transfer between colloidal quantum dot (QD) phosphors and nitride nanopillar light emitting diodes (LEDs). An epitaxial p-i-n InGaN/GaN multiple quantum-well (QW) heterostructure was patterned and dry-etched to form dense arrays of nanopillars using a novel etch mask consisting of self-assembled In3Sn clusters. Colloidal QD phosphors have been deposited into the gaps between the nanopillars, leading to sidewall coupling between the QDs and InGaN QW emitters. In this approach, close QW-QD contact and a low-resistance design of the LED contact layer were achieved simultaneously. Strong non-radiative energy transfer was observed from the InGaN QW to the colloidal QD phosphors, which led to a 263% enhancement in effective internal quantum efficiency for the QDs incorporated in the nanopillar LEDs, as compared to those deposited over planar LED structures. Time-resolved photoluminescence was used to characterize the energy transfer process between the QW and QDs. The measured rate of non-radiative QD-QW energy-transfer agrees well with the value calculated from the quantum efficiency data for the QDs in the nanopillar LED.</P>

Determination of Survival of Gastric Cancer Patients With Distant Lymph Node Metastasis Using Prealbumin Level and Prothrombin Time: Contour Plots Based on Random Survival Forest Algorithm on High-Dimensionality Clinical and Laboratory Datasets

Zhang, Cheng,Xie, Minmin,Zhang, Yi,Zhang, Xiaopeng,Feng, Chong,Wu, Zhijun,Feng, Ying,Yang, Yahui,Xu, Hui,Ma, Tai The Korean Gastric Cancer Association 2022 Journal of gastric cancer Vol.22 No.2

Purpose: This study aimed to identify prognostic factors for patients with distant lymph node-involved gastric cancer (GC) using a machine learning algorithm, a method that offers considerable advantages and new prospects for high-dimensional biomedical data exploration. Materials and Methods: This study employed 79 features of clinical pathology, laboratory tests, and therapeutic details from 289 GC patients whose distant lymphadenopathy was presented as the first episode of recurrence or metastasis. Outcomes were measured as any-cause death events and survival months after distant lymph node metastasis. A prediction model was built based on possible outcome predictors using a random survival forest algorithm and confirmed by 5×5 nested cross-validation. The effects of single variables were interpreted using partial dependence plots. A contour plot was used to visually represent survival prediction based on 2 predictive features. Results: The median survival time of patients with GC with distant nodal metastasis was 9.2 months. The optimal model incorporated the prealbumin level and the prothrombin time (PT), and yielded a prediction error of 0.353. The inclusion of other variables resulted in poorer model performance. Patients with higher serum prealbumin levels or shorter PTs had a significantly better prognosis. The predicted one-year survival rate was stratified and illustrated as a contour plot based on the combined effect the prealbumin level and the PT. Conclusions: Machine learning is useful for identifying the important determinants of cancer survival using high-dimensional datasets. The prealbumin level and the PT on distant lymph node metastasis are the 2 most crucial factors in predicting the subsequent survival time of advanced GC.

Differences in the biological properties of mesenchymal stromal cells from traumatic temporomandibular joint fibrous and bony ankylosis: a comparative study

Zhang Pei-Pei,Liang Su-Xia,Wang Hua-Lun,Yang Kun,Nie Shao-Chen,Zhang Tong-Mei,Tian Yuan-Yuan,Xu Zhao-Yuan,Chen Wei,Yan Ying-Bin 한국통합생물학회 2021 Animal cells and systems Vol.25 No.5

The aim of this study was to compare the functional characteristics of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) from a sheep model of traumatic temporomandibular joint (TMJ) fibrous and bony ankylosis. A sheep model of bilateral TMJ trauma-induced fibrous ankylosis on one side and bony ankylosis on the contralateral side was used. MSCs from fibrous ankylosed callus (FAMSCs) or bony ankylosed callus (BA-MSCs) at weeks 1, 2, 4, and 8 after surgery were isolated and cultured. MSCs derived from the bone marrow of the mandibular condyle (BM-MSCs) were used as controls. The MSCs from the different sources were characterized morphologically, phenotypically, and functionally. Adherence and trilineage differentiation potential were presented in the ovine MSCs. These cell populations highly positively expressed MSC-associated specific markers, namely CD29, CD44, and CD166, but lacked CD31 and CD45 expressions. The BA-MSCs had higher clonogenic and proliferative potentials than the FA-MSCs. The BA-MSCs also showed higher osteogenic and chondrogenic potentials, but lower adipogenic capacity than the FA-MSCs. In addition, the BA-MSCs demonstrated higher chondrogenic, but lower osteogenic capacity than the BM-MSCs. Our study suggests that inhibition of the osteogenic and chondrogenic differentiations of MSCs might be a promising strategy for preventing bony ankylosis in the future.