Risk Factors for Cervical Cancer in Rural Areas of Wuhan China: a Matched Case-control Study

Zhang, Bin,Zhou, Ai-Fen,Zhu, Chang-Cai,Zhang, Ling,Xiang, Bing,Chen, Zhong,Hu, Rong-Hua,Zhang, Ya-Qi,Qiu, Lin,Zhang, Yi-Ming,Xiong, Chao-Du,Du, Yu-Kai,Shi, Yu-Qin Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2013 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.14 No.12

Cervical cancer is a serious public health problem in developing countries. We investigated possible risk factors for cervical cancer in rural areas of Wuhan China using a matched case-control study with 33 women diagnosed with cervical cancer and 132 healthy women selected from the same area as matched controls. A questionnaire, which included questions about general demography conditions, environmental and genetic factors, the first sexual intercourse, first marriage age, age at first pregnancy, pregnancy first child's age, female personal health history, social psychological factors, dietary habits, smoking and alcohol status and other living habits was presented to all participants. At the same time, HPV infection of every participant was examined in laboratory testing. Results showed HPV infection (P<0.000, OR=23.4) and pregnancy first child's age (P<0.000, OR=13.1) to be risk factors for cervical cancer. Menopause (P=0.003, OR=0.073) was a protective factor against cervical cancer. However, there was no indication of associations of environmental (drinking water, insecticide, disinfectant) genetic (cancer family history), or life-style factors (smoking status, alcohol status, physical training, sleep quality), including dietary habits (intake of fruit and vegetable, meat, fried food, bean products and pickled food) or social psychological factors with cervical cancer. The results suggest that the risk of cervical cancer in Chinese rural women may be associated with HPV infection, menopause and the pregnancy first child's age.

Enhancement of transglutaminase production in Streptomyces mobaraensis DSM 40587 by non-nutritional stress conditions: Effects of heat shock, alcohols, and salt treatments

Lili Zhang,Lanwei Zhang,Huaxi Yi,Ming Du,Yingchun Zhang,Xue Han,Zhen Feng,Jingyan Li,Yuehua Jiao,Yanhe Zhang,Chunfeng Guo 한국화학공학회 2012 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.29 No.7

Stress-mediated bioprocess is a strategy designed to enhance biological target productivity. In this study,an attempt was made to enhance transglutaminase (TGase) production by Streptomyces mobaraensis by using different stress conditions including heat shock, alcohols and salt stress. Results showed that the effects of stress on TGase production depended on the type applied. For heat shock, TGase production (1.32 U/ml) was recorded maximum in the culture treated at 48 h post inoculation in water bath at 60 oC for 1 min. For alcohols treatment, the maximum activity of TGase (1.77 and 1.75 U/ml) was obtained when 3% methanol was added into the medium at 0 or 24 h of fermentation. However, a 3.5-fold increased production of TGase (3.8 U/ml) was observed in the medium supplemented with 0.2mol/l MgCl2 compared with the basic medium at the beginning of fermentation. In conclusion, TGase production from S. mobaraensis was improved by heat shock, methanol and salt stress treatments, MgCl2 stress was the most effective.

Research on air diversion channel of air-cooled gasoline engine cylinder head and simulation of fluid- solid coupling heat transfer

Du B. C.,Tang G. Z.,Zhang L.,Zhong L.,Deng T.,Yi Y. L. 대한기계학회 2017 JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Vol.31 No.11

In view of the problem that local temperature of the original cylinder head is on the high side, an innovative cooling air diversion channel is proposed. The cooling air diversion channel introduces cool air into the cylinder head to forcedly cool the cylinder head. Furthermore, the multiple guide plates are set to reasonably distribute cold air in the air diversion channel. In addition, appropriately increase the length of the fins to cooling the whole cylinder head. The fluid-solid coupling three-dimensional simulation technology is adopted to analyze the impact of the new air diversion channel on the heat dissipation of cylinder head. Finally, the optimal scheme is defined to fabricate the prototype. Simulations results show that the above improvements make the temperature in the high temperature region effectively decrease, and the cooling performance of whole cylinder head is enhanced. In the optimal improvement scheme, the highest temperature of cylinder head decrease by 23 K. Furthermore, the prototype was fabricated according to the optimal scheme. The experimental results show that the temperature of the improved cylinder head decreased effectively, and the highest temperature decreased by 20.4 K. The simulation results are in agreement with the experimental results, and the maximum error is less than 5 percent.

Robot Subgoal-guided Navigation in Dynamic Crowded Environments with Hierarchical Deep Reinforcement Learning

Tianle Zhang,Zhen Liu,Zhiqiang Pu,Jianqiang Yi,Yanyan Liang,Du Zhang 제어·로봇·시스템학회 2023 International Journal of Control, Automation, and Vol.21 No.7

Although deep reinforcement learning has recently achieved some successes in robot navigation, there are still unsolved problems. Particularly, a robot guided by a distant ultimate goal is easy to get stuck in danger or encounter collisions in dynamic crowded environments due to the lack of long-term perspectives. In this paper, a novel subgoal-guided approach based on two-level hierarchical deep reinforcement learning with spatial-temporal graph attention networks (ST-GANets), called SG-HDRL, is proposed for a robot navigating in a dynamic crowded environment with autonomous obstacles, e.g., crowd. Specifically, the high-level policy, that models the spatialtemporal relation between the robot and the obstacles using the obstacles’ trajectories by the designed high-level ST-GANet, generates intermediate subgoals from a longer-term perspective over higher temporal scales. The subgoals give a favorable and collision-free direction to avoid encountering danger or collisions while approaching the ultimate goal. The low-level policy, that similarly implements the designed low-level ST-GANet to implicitly predict the obstacles’ motions, takes the subgoals as short-term guidance through an intrinsic reward incentive to generate primitive actions for the robot. Simulation results demonstrate that SG-HDRL using ST-GANets has better performances compared with state-of-the-art baselines. Furthermore, the proposed SG-HDRL is deployed to an experimental platform based on omnidirectional cars, and experiment results validate the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed SG-HDRL.

Lactobacillus plantarum CQPC02-Fermented Soybean Milk Improves Loperamide-Induced Constipation in Mice

Ruokun Yi,Peng Peng,Jing Zhang,Muying Du,Lingxia Lan,Yu Qian,Jie Zhou,Xin Zhao 한국식품영양과학회 2019 Journal of medicinal food Vol.22 No.12

This study determined the ameliorative effects of the novel microorganism, Lactobacillus plantarum CQPC02 (LP-CQPC02), fermented in soybean milk, on loperamide-induced constipation in Kunming mice. High-performance liquid chromatography revealed that LP-CQPC02-fermented soybean milk (LP-CQPC02-FSM) had six types of soybean isoflavones, whereas Lactobacillus bulgaricus-fermented soybean milk (LB-FSM) and unfermented soybean milk (U-FSM) only had five types of soybean isoflavones. LP-CQPC02-FSM also contained more total and active soybean isoflavones than LB-FSM and U-FSM. Results from mouse experiments showed that the defecation factors (quantity, fecal weight and water content, gastrointestinal transit ability, and time to first black stool) in the LP-CQPC02-FSM-treated mice were better than those in the LB-FSM- and U-FSM-treated mice. The serum and small intestinal tissue experiments showed that soybean milk increased the motilin, gastrin, endothelin, acetylcholinesterase, substance P, vasoactive intestinal peptide, and glutathione levels and decreased the somatostatin, myeloperoxidase, nitric oxide, and malondialdehyde levels compared with the constipated mice in the control group. The LP-CQPC02-FSM also showed better effects than those of LB-FSM and U-FSM. Further results showed that LP-CQPC02-FSM upregulated cuprozinc-superoxide dismutase (Cu/Zn-SOD), manganese superoxide dismutase (Mn-SOD), catalase (CAT), c-Kit, stem cell factor (SCF), glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS), endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), and aquaporin-9 (AQP9) and downregulated the expression levels of transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 (TRPV1), inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), and aquaporin-3 (AQP3) in the constipated mice. LP-CQPC02-FSM increased the Bacteroides and Akkermansia abundances and decreased the Firmicutes abundance in the feces of the constipated mice and decreased the Firmicutes/Bacteroides ratio. This study confirmed that LP-CQPC02-FSM partially reversed constipation in mice.

Expression and Purification of Soluble Recombinant Human Endostatin in Escherichia coli

Cuihong Du,Xiaoping Yi,Yuanxing Zhang 한국생물공학회 2010 Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering Vol.15 No.2

Endostatin, a 20 kDa C-terminal fragment of collagen XVIII, is a specific inhibitor of endothelial cell proliferation and angiogenesis. In the present study, we produced soluble and biologically active recombinant human endostatin (rhEndostatin) in Escherichia coli by expressing via fusion with solubility-promoting peptides and optimizing the expression conditions. The rhEndostatin was expressed via fusion with glutathione S-transferase (GST) and NusA protein, respectively. It revealed that NusA protein enhanced the production of soluble rhEndostatin; but GST didn’t. By optimizing the expression conditions, the production of soluble NusA-rhEndostatin fusion protein was about 50% of total cellular proteins and about 90% of the products appeared in the cellular supernatant fraction. The soluble NusA-rhEndostatin fusion protein was purified by one-step hydrophobic interaction chromatography and NusA was removed by thrombin. Then rhEndostatin was purified by affinity chromatography and gel filtration chromatography. As a result, a simple and economical purification procedure for rhEndostatin isolation was obtained. The biological activity of the rhEndostatin was demonstrated in vitro using a human vascular endothelial cells (HuVECs) proliferation assay. Our study provides a feasible and convenient approach to produce soluble and biologically active rhEndostatin.

20 (S)-ginsenoside Rh2 inhibits colorectal cancer cell growth by suppressing the Axl signaling pathway in vitro and in vivo

Haibo Zhang,Junkoo Yi,휘앙하이,Si Jun Park,권욱봉,김은경,So-Young Jang,Si-Yong Kim,최성균,Du-Hak Yoon,Sung-Hyun Kim,Kangdong Liu,Zigang Dong,Zae Young Ryoo,Myoung Ok Kim 고려인삼학회 2022 Journal of Ginseng Research Vol.46 No.3

Colorectal cancer (CRC) has a high morbidity and mortality worldwide. 20 (S)-ginsenosideRh2 (G-Rh2) is a natural compound extracted from ginseng, which exhibits anticancer effects in manycancer types. In this study, we demonstrated the effect and underlying molecular mechanism of G-Rh2 inCRC cells in vitro and in vivo. Methods: Cell proliferation, migration, invasion, apoptosis, cell cycle, and western blot assays wereperformed to evaluate the effect of G-Rh2 on CRC cells. In vitro pull-down assay was used to verify theinteraction between G-Rh2 and Axl. Transfection and infection experiments were used to explore thefunction of Axl in CRC cells. CRC xenograft models were used to further investigate the effect of Axlknockdown and G-Rh2 on tumor growth in vivo. Results: G-Rh2 significantly inhibited proliferation, migration, and invasion, and induced apoptosis andG0/G1 phase cell cycle arrest in CRC cell lines. G-Rh2 directly binds to Axl and inhibits the Axl signalingpathway in CRC cells. Knockdown of Axl suppressed the growth, migration and invasion ability of CRCcells in vitro and xenograft tumor growth in vivo, whereas overexpression of Axl promoted the growth,migration, and invasion ability of CRC cells. Moreover, G-Rh2 significantly suppressed CRC xenografttumor growth by inhibiting Axl signaling with no obvious toxicity to nude mice. Conclusion: Our results indicate that G-Rh2 exerts anticancer activity in vitro and in vivo by suppressingthe Axl signaling pathway. G-Rh2 is a promising candidate for CRC prevention and treatment.

Heterologous expression of two Physcomitrella patens group 3 late embryogenesis abundant protein (LEA3) genes confers salinity tolerance in arabidopsis

Jing Du,Lei Wang,Xiaochen Zhang,Xuan Xiao,Fang Wang,Pingliang Lin,Fang Bao,Yong Hu,Yi-Kun He 한국식물학회 2016 Journal of Plant Biology Vol.59 No.2

Salinity stress is a major limiting factor in agriculture and adversely affecting the whole plant. As a halophyte, the moss Physcomitrella patens, has been suggested to be an ideal model plant to study salinity tolerance and adaption. Two abiotic stress-responsive Group 3 Late Embryogenesis Abundant protein genes had been identified in P. patens and named as PpLEA3-1 and PpLEA3-2, respectively. Functions of these two genes were analyzed by heterologous expressions in Arabidopsis, driven either by their native P. patens promoters or by the 35S CaMV constitutive promoter. Phenotype analysis revealed that pLEA3::LEA3, pLEA3::LEA3::GFP and 35S::LEA3::GFP transgenic lines had stronger salinity resistance than that in the wild type and empty-vector control. Further analysis showed that the contents of proline and soluble sugar were increased and the malondialdehyde (MDA) were repressed in these transgenic plants after exposure to salinity stress. Our observations indicate that these two Group 3 PpLEA genes played a role in the adaption to salinity stress.

Isolation and Applied Potential of Lactic Acid Bacteria from Chinese Traditional Fermented Food in Specific Ecological Localities

Huaxi Yi,Lanwei Zhang,Xue Han,Ming Du,Yingchun Zhang,Jingyan Li,Kai Sun,Yawen Hou 한국식품과학회 2011 Food Science and Biotechnology Vol.20 No.6

The isolation and screening of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) from natural sources have been one of the powerful means to obtain strains for the food industry. A total of 275 indigenous isolates were obtained from 43samples of traditional fermented foods in specific ecological niches throughout the northwestern China, and among which 13 strains of LAB were selected for their potential in food preservation and production. Among the 13 isolates, Lactobacillus (10) was dominant over Lactococcus (3). The distribution of the isolates was as follows: Lactobacillus paracasei ssp. paracasei (J23, M10,M20, M22), Lactobacillus rhamnosus (J20, M18),Lactococcus lactis ssp. lactis (X20, Q7), Lactobacillus casei (Q1, Q12), Lactobacillus plantarum (J11),Lactococcus lactis ssp. cremoris (X8), Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus (Q5). All 13 isolates produced bacteriocin with a broad inhibitory spectrum against selected Gram-positive as well as Gram-negative pathogenic and spoilage species. Biochemical analysis revealed that they possessed high acidification and coagulation activity. Several strains possessed the high activity of 2 or 3technological characteristics, related to novel starters and food preservatives.

Prognostic Value of Serum Epstein–Barr Virus Antibodies and Their Correlation with TNM Classification in Patients with Locoregionally Advanced Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Wan-Ru Zhang,Yu-Yun Du,Chun-Yan Guo,Han-Xing Zhou,Jie-Yi Lin,Xiao-Han Meng,Hao-Yuan Mo,Dong-Hua Luo 대한암학회 2021 Cancer Research and Treatment Vol.53 No.4

Purpose This study assessed the correlation between Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) biomarkers and the eighth American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system and the prognostic values of IgG antibodies against replication and transcription activator (Rta-IgG), IgA antibodies against Epstein-Barr nuclear antigen 1, and BamH1 Z transactivator (Zta-IgA) in locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients. Materials and Methods Serum EBV antibody levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 435 newly diagnosed stage III-IVA NPC patients administered intensity-modulated radiation therapy±chemotherapy. The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS). Results Rta-IgG and Zta-IgA levels were positively correlated with the N category and clinical stage. Patients with high Rta-IgG levels (> 29.07 U/mL) showed a significantly inferior prognosis as indicated by PFS (77% vs. 89.8%, p=0.004), distant metastasis–free survival (DMFS) (88.3% vs. 95.8%, p=0.021), and local recurrence-free survival (LRFS) (91.2% vs. 98.3%, p=0.009). High Rta-IgG levels were also significantly associated with inferior PFS and LRFS in multivariable analyses. In the low-level EBV DNA group (≤ 1,500 copies/mL), patients with high Rta-IgG levels had significantly inferior PFS and DMFS (both p < 0.05). However, in the high-level EBV DNA group, Rta-IgG levels were not significantly associated with PFS, DMFS, and LRFS. In the advanced T category (T3-4) subgroup, high Rta-IgG levels were also significantly associated with inferior PFS, DMFS, and LRFS (both p < 0.05). Conclusion Rta-IgG and Zta-IgA levels were strongly correlated with the TNM classification. Rta-IgG level was a negative prognostic factor in locoregionally advanced NPC patients, especially those with advanced T category or low EBV DNA level.