Nutrigenomics reveals potential genetic underpinning of diverse taste preference of Chinese men

Zhouhai Zhu,Junpu Mei,Silong Sun,Sheming Lu,Meng Li,Ying Guan,Ying Chen,Yuqiong Xu,Tao Zhang,Fengxue Shi,Xuemei Li,Mingming Miao,Shancen Zhao,Qian Gao,Qili Mi,Ping Tang,Jianhua Yao 한국유전학회 2021 Genes & Genomics Vol.43 No.6

Background Taste preference varies geographically in China. However, studies on Chinese people’s taste preference in different regions of China are limited, and are lack of research on the mechanism of diferences in taste preference, especially in genetics. Objective This study aims to investigate the characteristics of taste preference of Chinese men, and estimate whether diverse taste preference in Chinese have genetic underpinning. Methods We conducted a questionnaire survey on taste preferences on 1076 males from 10 regions of China, and collected another 1427 males from the same regions which genotyped by microarray. We compared the correlation between diferent taste preference, and evaluated the correlation between the mutation frequency of inhouse database and diferent taste preference. The putative taste-preference-related genes were further utilized to estimate the candidate relationship on gene and gene network in diferent taste preference. Results There was a correlation between diferent taste preferences in Chinese men. We found 31 SNPs associated with 6 kind of taste preferences. These SNPs located within or nearby 36 genes, and the tastes associated with 4 of these genes (TRPV1, AGT, ASIC2 and GLP1R) are consistent with the previous studies. Moreover, in diferent tastes which were suggested to be associated with each other, some putative related genes were the same or in the same gene network, such as pathways related with blood pressure, response to stimulus and nervous system. Conclusions This study indicates that the diverse taste preference of Chinese men may have genetic underpinning.

AN AUTOMATIC VIDEO ANALYTICS APPROACH TO EXAMINE THE EFFECTS OF VIDEO CONTENT FEATURES ON AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

Jingjie Zhu,Mingming Cheng,Ying Wang,Jie Tan 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2023 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2023 No.07

While there is an increasing number of studies highlighting the power of videos in influencing audience attitudes and behavior, academic research in tourism is largely behind due to the methodological challenges of analyzing unstructured video data. This study adopts an automatic video analytics approach to examine the relationship between content features of pro-environmental videos and audience engagement in tourism. Artificial intelligence was used to extract video content features by detecting scenes and shots as well as labels (e.g., trees). Our findings suggest that there exists an inverted U-shape relationship between video informativeness and audience engagement. This study makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions to extant tourism literature by theoretically explaining and empirically testing how video content features influence audience engagement in pro-environmental video communications in tourism.

An Optimized Method of Translating SQL to More Efficient Map-reduce Tasks

Jin Cao,Honglin Han,Mingming Zhao,Sijing Ye,Dehai Zhu,Lin Li 보안공학연구지원센터 2015 International Journal of Grid and Distributed Comp Vol.8 No.4

The Feasibility of Using Biomarkers Derived from Circulating Tumor DNA Sequencing as Predictive Classifiers in Patients with Small-Cell Lung Cancer

Yu Feng,Yutao Liu,Mingming Yuan,Guilan Dong,Hongxia Zhang,Tongmei Zhang,Lianpeng Chang,Xuefeng Xia,Lifeng Li,Haohua Zhu,Puyuan Xing,Hongyu Wang,Yuankai Shi,Zhijie Wang,Xingsheng Hu 대한암학회 2022 Cancer Research and Treatment Vol.54 No.3

Purpose To investigate the feasibility of biomarkers based on dynamic circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) to classify small cell lung cancer (SCLC) into different subtypes. Materials and Methods Tumor and longitudinal plasma ctDNA samples were analyzed by next-generation sequencing of 1,021 genes. PyClone was used to infer the molecular tumor burden index (mTBI). Pre-treatment tumor tissues [T1] and serial plasma samples were collected (pre-treatment [B1], after two [B2], six [B3] cycles of chemotherapy and at progression [B4]). Results Overall concordance between T1 and B1 sequencing (n=30) was 66.5%, and 89.5% in the gene of <i>RB1</i>. A classification method was designed according to the changes of <i>RB1</i> mutation, named as subtype Ⅰ (both positive at B1 and B2), subtype Ⅱ (positive at B1 but negative at B2), and subtype Ⅲ (both negative at B1 and B2). The median progressive-free survival for subtype Ⅰ patients (4.5 months [95%CI: 2.6-5.8]) was inferior to subtype Ⅱ (not reached, p<0.0001) and subtype Ⅲ (10.8 months [95%CI: 6.0-14.4], p=0.002). The median overall survival for subtype Ⅰ patients (16.3 months [95%CI: 5.3-22.9]) was inferior to subtype Ⅱ (not reached, p=0.01) and subtype Ⅲ (not reached, p=0.02). Patients with a mTBI dropped to zero at B2 had longer median overall survival (not reached vs. 19.5 months, p=0.01). The changes of mTBI from B4 to B1 were sensitive to predict new metastases, with a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 85.7%. Conclusion Monitoring ctDNA based <i>RB1</i> mutation and mTBI provided a feasible tool to predict the prognosis of SCLC.

Status of serum vitamin B₁₂ and folate in patients with inflammatory bowel disease in China

( Shaozhong Huang ),( Jiayi Ma ),( Mingming Zhu ),( Zhihua Ran ) 대한장연구학회 2017 Intestinal Research Vol.15 No.1

Background/Aims: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) primarily involves the intestinal tract and can affect vitamin absorption. This study was designed to assess the prevalence of vitamin B₁₂ and folate deficiencies in patients with IBD, and to identify the risk factors associated with abnormal serum vitamin B₁₂ and folate levels. Methods: We evaluated the medical records of 195 patients with Crohn`s disease (CD) and 62 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), and selected 118 healthy subjects for the control group. Results: There were more CD patients with vitamin B₁₂ deficiency than UC patients (14.9% vs. 3.2%, P =0.014) and controls (14.9% vs. 4.2%, P =0.003). The prevalence of folate deficiency was higher in CD patients than in controls (13.3% vs. 3.4%, P =0.004). There were no significant differences in the serum vitamin B₁₂ and folate statuses of the UC and control groups. Patients with prior ileal or ileocolic resection showed a higher prevalence of abnormal vitamin B₁₂ levels than those without prior resection (n=6/16, n=23/179; P =0.018). A disease duration within 5 years was a risk factor of abnormal folate levels in CD patients. Conclusions: This study showed that vitamin B₁₂ and folate deficiencies were more common in patients with CD than in UC patients and controls. Prior ileal or ileocolonic resection was a risk factor of serum vitamin B₁₂ abnormalities, and a disease duration within 5 years was a risk factor of low serum folate levels in CD patients. (Intest Res 2017;15:103-108)

Tumor-suppressive miRNA-135a inhibits breast cancer cell proliferation by targeting ELK1 and ELK3 oncogenes

Akhlaq Ahmad,Weijie Zhang,Mingming Wu,Sheng Tan,Tao Zhu 한국유전학회 2018 Genes & Genomics Vol.40 No.3

Breast cancer is the most common malignant disease amongst women. miRNAs are small, non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression, thus have the potential to play an important role during cancer development. Emerging evidence shows that miR-135a is down-regulated in breast cancer cells, but the functional roles of miR-135a in breast cancer cells remains unexplored. For this purpose, we investigated the expression of miR-135a in breast cancer cells and explored its functional role during breast cancer progression. In vitro study showed that miR-135a may be a novel tumor suppressor. Further studies showed that transcription factors ELK1 and ELK3 are direct target genes of miR-135a that modulates the suppressive function of miR- 135a in breast cancer cells. Induced expression of miR-135a significantly downregulated the expression of ELK1 and ELK3 both at mRNA and protein levels. Furthermore, the effect of miR-135a in MCF-7 and T47D cells was investigated by the overexpression of miR-135a mimics. In vitro, induced expression of miR-135a in breast cancer cells inhibited cell Proliferation and clongenicity. Moreover, a luciferase activity assay revealed that miR-135a could directly target the 3′-untranslated region (3′ UTRS) of ELK1 and ELK3 oncogenes. In addition, rescue experiment demonstrated that the promoted cell growth by transcription factors ELK1 and ELK3 was attenuated by the over-expression of miR-135a. Our study demonstrates that miR-135a regulates cell proliferation in breast cancer by targeting ELK1 and ELK3 oncogenes, and suggests that miR-135a potentially can act as a tumor suppressor.

The Cholesky rank-one update/downdate algorithm for static reanalysis with modifications of support constraints

Haifeng Liu,Jihua Zhu,Mingming Li 국제구조공학회 2017 Structural Engineering and Mechanics, An Int'l Jou Vol.62 No.3

Structural reanalysis is frequently utilized to reduce the computational cost so that the process of design or optimization can be accelerated. The supports can be regarded as the design variables and may be modified in various types of structural optimization problems. The location, number, and type of supports can make a great impact on the performance of the structure. This paper presents a unified method for structural static reanalysis with imposition or relaxation of some support constraints. The information from the initial analysis has been fully utilized and the computational time can be significantly reduced. Numerical examples are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Capture of CO2 from coal using chemical-looping combustion: Process simulation

Ming Luo,Shuzhong Wang,Jiabin Zhu,Longfei Wang,Mingming Lv 한국화학공학회 2015 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.32 No.3

Coal direct chemical-looping combustion (CLC) and coal gasification CLC processes are the two basicapproaches for the application of the CLC technology with coal. Two different combined cycles with the overall thermalinput of 1,000MW (LHV) were proposed and simulated, respectively, with NiO/NiAl2O4 as an oxygen carrierusing the ASPEN software. The oxygen carrier circulation ratio in two CLC processes was calculated, and the influenceof the CLC process parameters on the system performance such as air reactor temperature and the turbine inletsupplementary firing temperature was investigated. Results found were that the circulation ratio of the oxygen carrierin the coal gasification CLC process is smaller than that in the coal direct CLC process. In the coal direct CLCcombined system, the system efficiency is 49.59% with the CO2 capture efficiency of almost 100%, assuming the airreactor temperature at 1,200 oC and the fuel reactor temperature at 900 oC. As a comparison, the system efficiency ofcoal gasification CLC combined system is 40.53% with the CO2 capture efficiency of 85.2% when the turbine inlet temperatureis at 1,350 oC. Increasing the supplementary firing rate or decreasing the air reactor temperature can increasethe system efficiency, but these will reduce the CO2 capture efficiency.

Complete genome sequence and pathogenic genes analysis of Pectobacterium atroseptica JG10-08

Dai Zhang,Yuan Zhou,Dongmei Zhao,Zhihui Yang,Mingming Zhu,Jiehua Zhu 한국유전학회 2017 Genes & Genomics Vol.39 No.9

Pectobacterium atroseptica is known as a rod-shaped gram-negative bacterial pathogen associated with the blackleg of potato. P. atroseptica has been widely identified as the predominant agent causing tuber rot in temperate regions, a disease that leads to severe economic losses to potato industry. In this study, we provide the complete genome sequence of P. atroseptica JG10-08, which revealed that P. atroseptica strain JG10-08 carries a single 5,004,926 bp chromosome with 51.15% G+C content and harbors 4252 predicted coding genes. Phylogenetic analysis based on the genome sequences showed a close evolutionary relationship between P. atroseptica and Pectobacterium wasabiae. We discovered total 168 genes were potentially related to pathogenesis including 9 strainspecific genes encoding toxins on the genome of JG10-08. Further comparison with other species in Pectobacterium revealed a better understanding of pathogenic factors, especially secretion systems in P. atroseptica JG10-08. Collectively, the results of this research provide a solid foundation for discovering the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of P. atroseptica and offer the information to develop more effective strategies against blackleg of potatoes.

FLOURY ENDOSPERM12 Encoding Alanine Aminotransferase 1 Regulates Carbon and Nitrogen Metabolism in Rice

Mingsheng Zhong,Xi Liu,Feng Liu,Yulong Ren,Yunlong Wang,Jianping Zhu,Xuan Teng,Erchao Duan,Fan Wang,Huan Zhang,Mingming Wu,Yuanyuan Hao,Xiaopin Zhu,Ruonan Jing,Xiuping Guo,Ling Jiang,Yihua Wang,Jianmi 한국식물학회 2019 Journal of Plant Biology Vol.62 No.1

Starch is a major storage substance in cerealgrains, and starch biosynthesis is a complex process. In orderto elucidate regulation of the starch biosynthesis pathway, wescreened a series of rice (Oryza sativa L.) endospermmutants. In this study, we identified a floury white-coreendosperm mutant named floury endosperm12 (flo12). Theflo12 mutant exhibited loosely packed starch granules and alower thousand kernel weight compared to wild type. Semithinsections revealed that compound starch grains (SG) inflo12 interior endosperm cells were developed abnormally. Furthermore, amylose content was decreased, while totalprotein content was significantly increased in flo12 grains. Map-based cloning showed that FLO12 encodes rice alanineaminotransferase 1 (OsAlaAT1). OsAlaAT1 is highly expressedin developing endosperm. Subcellular localization showedthat OsAlaAT1 is localized in the cytosol. Moreover, theexpression of most starch synthesis-related genes wasdecreased, while most of the storage protein coding geneshad elevated expression levels in the flo12 mutant. Inaddition, overexpression of the OsAlaAT1 gene increasedgrain weight. In brief, we demonstrated that OsAlaAT1regulates carbon and nitrogen metabolism, which provides anew insight for the improvement of rice quality and yield.