Molecular characterization and functional analysis of a protease-related protein in Chang-Liver cells

( Cong Rui Wang ),( Hui Yong Zhang ),( Hui Gen Feng ),( Bao Sheng Yang ),( Jogenananda Pramanik ),( Zhi Kun Guo ),( Jun Tang Lin ) 생화학분자생물학회 (구 한국생화학분자생물학회) 2010 BMB Reports Vol.43 No.5

In this study, the cDNA library of Chang-liver cells was immunoscreened using common ADAMs antibody to obtain ADAM related genes. We found one positive clone that was confirmed as a new gene by Blast, which is an uncharacterized helical and coil protein and processes protease activity, and named protease-related protein 1 (ARP1). The submitted GenBank accession number is AY078070. Molecular characterizations of ARP1 were analyzed with appropriate bioinformatics software. To analyse its expression and function, ARP1 was subcloned into glutathione S-transferase fusion plasmid pGEX-2T and expressed by E. coli system. The in vitro expression product of ARP1 was recognized by common ADAMs antibody with western blot. Interestingly, ARP1 cleaves gelatine at pH9.5, which suggests it is an alkaline protease. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR result indicates that ARP1 mRNA is strongly transcribed in the liver and the treated Chang-liver cells. [BMB reports 2010; 43(5): 375-381]

Functional response of Wolbachia-infected and uninfected Trichogramma dendrolimi Matsumura (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) to Asian corn borer, Ostrinia furnacalis Guenée (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) eggs

Hui Dong,Quanquan Liu,Lina Xie,Bin Cong,Huan Wang 한국응용곤충학회 2017 Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology Vol.20 No.3

Trichogramma dendrolimi Matsumura (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) are haplo-diploid egg parasitoid wasps widely used as biological control agents against the Asian corn borer, Ostrinia furnacalis Guenée (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae). Two reproductive modes have been found in this species. Typically, female wasps produce haploid male offspring from unfertilized eggs and diploid female offspring from fertilized eggs (bisexual). However, they can also produce only diploid females when they are infected with Wolbachia, though the eggs are unfertilized (thelytokokous). To investigate the potential of a thelytokous Wolbachia-infected (TdW+) and a bisexual uninfected (Td) T. dendrolimi strain as inundative biocontrol agents, the functional responses of both strains toward their natural enemy (Asian corn borer) were evaluated at three constant temperatures (20, 25 and 30 °C). The results revealed two types of functional response for both strains: type II and III. TdW+strain displayed type II at 30 °C (high temperature) and III at 20 °C (low temperature) and 25 °C, while Td strain displayed type II at 20 °C and III at 25 °C and 30 °C. The comparison of functional response between two strains indicated TdW+ and Td strain had no significant difference at 20 °C. However, the estimated host handling time of the TdW+ strain was significantly shorter than that of the Td strain at 25 °C, and TdW+ strain had significantly higher instantaneous search rate and shorter handling time than Td strain at 30 °C. Shorter host handling time and higher instantaneous search rate in thelytokous Wolbachia-infected T. dendrolimi showed that this strain might be more effective for controlling Asian corn borer.

Outd7b facilitates T cell activation and inflammatory responses by regulating Zap70 ubiquitination

( Hongbo Hu ),( Hui Wang ),( Yichuan Xiao ),( Jin Jin ),( Jae Hoon Chang ),( Qiang Zou ),( Xiaopin Xie ),( Xuhong Cheng ),( Shao Cong Sun ) 영남대학교 약품개발연구소 2016 영남대학교 약품개발연구소 연구업적집 Vol.26 No.-

Signal transduction from the T ceII receptor (TCR) is crucial for T cell-mediated immune responses and, when deregulated, also contributes to the development of autoimmunity. How TCR signaling is regulated is incompletely understood. In this study, we demonstrate a ubiquitin-dependent mechanism in which the deubiquitinase Otud7b has a crucial role in facilitatinq TCR sig­naling. Upon TCR ligation, Olud7b is rapidly recruited to the tyrosine kinase Zap70, a central mediator of TCR-proximal sig­naling. Otud7b deficiency attenuates the activation of Zap70 and its downstream pathways and impairs T cell activation and differentiation, rendering mice refractory to T cell-mediated autoimmune and inflammatory responses. Olud7b facilitated Zap70 activation by deubiquitinating Zap70, thus preventing the association of Zap70 with the negative-regulatory phospha­tases SIs1 and Sts2. These findings establish Otud7b as a positive requlator of TCR-proximal signaling and T cell activation. highlighting the importance of deubiquitination in regulaling Zap70 function.

A common evolutionary pathway for maintaining quorum sensing in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Bai-min Lai,Hui-cong Yan,Mei-zhen Wang,Na Li,Dongsheng Shen 한국미생물학회 2018 The journal of microbiology Vol.56 No.2

In the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the synthesis and secretion of extracellular protease is a typical cooperative behavior regulated by quorum sensing. However, this type of cooperative behavior is easily exploited by other individuals who do not synthesize public goods, which is known as the “tragedy of the commons”. Here P. aeruginosa was inoculated into casein media with different nitrogen salts added. In casein broth, protease (a type of public good) is necessary for bacterial growth. After 30 days of sequential transfer, some groups propagated stably and avoided “tragedy of the commons”. The evolved cooperators who continued to synthesize protease were isolated from these stable groups. By comparing the characteristics of quorum sensing in these cooperators, an identical evolutionary pattern was found. A variety of cooperative behaviors regulated by quorum sensing, such as the synthesis and secretion of protease and signals, were significantly reduced during the process of evolution. Such reductions improved the efficiency of cooperation, helping to prevent cheating. In addition, the production of pyocyanin, which is regulated by the RhlIR system, increased during the process of evolution, possibly due to its role in stabilizing the cooperation. This study contributes towards our understanding of the evolution of quorum sensing of P. aeruginosa.

Sex-related Differences in DNA Copy Number Alterations in Hepatitis B Virus-Associated Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Zhu, Zhong-Zheng,Wang, Dong,Cong, Wen-Ming,Jiang, Hongmei,Yu, Yue,Wen, Bing-Ji,Dong, Hui,Zhang, Xiao,Liu, Shu-Fang,Wang, Ai-Zhong,Zhu, Guanshan,Hou, Lifang Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2012 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.13 No.1

Background: Males have a higher prevalence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) than females in general, but the reasons for the sex disparity are still obscure. DNA copy number alteration (CNA) is a major feature of solid tumors including HCC, but whether CNA plays a role in sex-related differences in HCC development has never been evaluated. Methods: High-resolution array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) was used to examine 17 female and 46 male HCC patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in Shanghai, China. Two-tailed Fisher's exact or ${\chi}^2$ tests was used to compare CNAs between females and males. Results: The overall frequencies and patterns of CNAs in female and male cases were similar. However, female HCC tumors presented more copy number gains compared to those in males on 1q21.3-q22 (76.5% vs. 37.0%, P = 0.009), 11q11 (35.3% vs. 0.0%, P = 0.0002) and 19q13.31-q13.32 (23.5% vs. 0.0%, P = 0.004), and loss on 16p11.2 (35.3% vs. 6.5%, P = 0.009). Relative to females, male cases had greater copy number loss on 11q11 (63.0% vs. 17.6%, P = 0.002). Further analyses showed that 11q11 gain correlated with 19q13.31-q13.32 gain (P = 0.042), 11q11 loss (P = 0.011) and 16p11.2 loss (P = 0.033), while 1q21.3-q22 gain correlated with 19q13.31-q13.32 gain (P = 0.046). Conclusions: These findings suggest that CNAs may play a role in sex-related differences in HBVassociated HCC development.

Adaptive Robust Control based on RBF Neural Networks for Duct Cleaning Robot

Bu Dexu,Yu Hongshan,Sun Wei,Wang Cong,Zhang Hui 제어·로봇·시스템학회 2015 International Journal of Control, Automation, and Vol.13 No.2

In this paper, a control strategy for duct cleaning robot in the presence of uncertainties and various disturbances is proposed which combines the advantages of neural network technique and advanced adaptive robust theory. First of all, the configuration of the duct cleaning robot is introduced and the dynamic model is obtained based on the practical duct cleaning robot. Second, the RBF neural network is used to identify the unstructured and dynamic uncertainties due to its strong ability to ap-proximate any nonlinear function to arbitrary accuracy. Using the learning ability of neural network, the designed controller can coordinately control the mobile plant and cleaning arm of duct cleaning ro-bot with different dynamics efficiently. The neural network weights are only tuned on-line without te-dious and lengthy off-line learning. Then, an adaptive robust control scheme based on RBF neural network is proposed, which ensures that the trajectories are accurately tracked even in the presence of external disturbances and uncertainties. Finally, based on the Lyapunov stability theory, the stability of the whole closed-loop control system, and the uniformly ultimately boundedness of the tracking errors are all strictly guaranteed. Moreover, simulation and experiment results are given to demonstrate that the proposed control approach can guarantee the whole system converges to desired manifold with well performance.

Efficient Visual Place Recognition by Adaptive CNN Landmark Matching

( Yutian Chen ),( Wenyan Gan ),( Yi Zhu ),( Hui Tian ),( Cong Wang ),( Wenfeng Ma ),( Yunbo Li ),( Dong Wang ),( Jixian He ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2021 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.15 No.11

Visual place recognition (VPR) is a fundamental yet challenging task of mobile robot navigation and localization. The existing VPR methods are usually based on some pairwise similarity of image descriptors, so they are sensitive to visual appearance change and also computationally expensive. This paper proposes a simple yet effective four-step method that achieves adaptive convolutional neural network (CNN) landmark matching for VPR. First, based on the features extracted from existing CNN models, the regions with higher significance scores are selected as landmarks. Then, according to the coordinate positions of potential landmarks, landmark matching is improved by removing mismatched landmark pairs. Finally, considering the significance scores obtained in the first step, robust image retrieval is performed based on adaptive landmark matching, and it gives more weight to the landmark matching pairs with higher significance scores. To verify the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method, evaluations are conducted on standard benchmark datasets. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method reduces the feature representation space of place images by more than 75% with negligible loss in recognition precision. Also, it achieves a fast matching speed in similarity calculation, satisfying the real-time requirement.

Spraying Calcium on Fruit Surface Is Not an Effective Way to Prevent Litchi Fruit Cracking

Xu-Ming Huang,Wei-Liang Zhong,Hui-Cong Wang,Wei-Qun Yuan,Jie-Mei Lu,J. C. Li,H. B. Huang 한국원예학회 2006 한국원예학회 기타간행물 Vol.- No.-

MicroRNA-146a Enhances Helicobacter pylori Induced Cell Apoptosis in Human Gastric Cancer Epithelial Cells

Wu, Kai,Yang, Liu,Li, Cong,Zhu, Chao-Hui,Wang, Xin,Yao, Yi,Jia, Yu-Jie Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.14

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection induces apoptosis in gastric epithelial cells, and this occurrence may link to gastric carcinogenesis. However, the regulatory mechanism of H. pylori-induced apoptosis is not clear. MicroRNA-146a has been implicated as a key regulator of the immune system. This report describes our discovery of molecular mechanisms of microRNA-146a regulation of apoptosis in human gastric cancer cells. We found that overexpression of microRNA-146a by transfecting microRNA-146a mimics could significantly enhance apoptosis, and this upregulation was triggered by COX-2 inhibition. Furthermore, we found that microRNA-146a density was positively correlated with apoptosis rates in H. pylori-positive gastric cancer tissues and intratumoral microRNA-146a density was negatively correlated with lymph node metastasis among H. pylori-positive gastric cancer patients. Understanding the important roles of microRNA-146a in regulating cell apoptosis in H. pylori infected human gastric cancer cells will contribute to the development of microRNA targeted therapy in the future.

Association between Pax8-PPARγ1 Rearrangement and Follicular Thyroid Cancer: a Meta-Analysis

Li, Hang-Yu,Xie, Zhi-Hao,Xu, Cong-Hui,Pu, Mei-Ling,Chen, Zi-Yan,Yu, Miao,Wang, Heng-Shu,Zhou, Chen-Ming,Pu, Chao-Yu,Liu, Wei Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2016 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.17 No.9

Background: Pax8 and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma 1 gene (Pax8-$PPAR{\gamma}1$) are important factors in tumors. Several studies have suggested that follicular thyroid cancer may arise from Pax8- $PPAR{\gamma}1$ rearrangement. In order to have a better understanding of the association between Pax8-$PPAR{\gamma}1$ rearrangement and follicular thyroid cancer, we conducted the presenmt meta-analysis. Materials and Methods: The information was extracted from PubMed, EMBASE and Web of Science. Statistic analysis was performed with Stata12.0 software. Odds ratios (ORs) were calculated using a fixed-effects model. We also performed heterogeneity and publication bias analyses. Results: Nine studies including 198 follicular thyroid cancer patients and 268 controls were considered eligible. The frequency of Pax8-$PPAR{\gamma}1$ rearrangement was significantly higher in the follicular thyroid cancer group than in the control group, with a pooled OR of 6.63 (95%CI=3.50-12.7). In addition, through subgroup analysis, the OR between Pax8-$PPAR{\gamma}1$ rearrangement and follicular thyroid cancer was 6.04 (95%CI = 3.18-11.5) when using benign tumor tissues as controls. The OR for the method subgroup was 9.99 (95% CI =4.86-20.5) in the RT-PCR. Conclusions: The final results demonstrated that Pax8-$PPAR{\gamma}1$ rearrangement has significant association with follicular thyroid cancer.