Notes

Spatiotemporal progression with the Jehol Biota: Reactions for the North Tiongkok craton destruction in the Early Cretaceous.
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a highly virulent pathogen that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Anti-MERS-CoV antibodies play an integral role in the prevention and treatment against MERS-CoV infections. Bioactivity is a key quality attribute of therapeutic antibodies, and high accuracy and precision are required. The major methods for evaluating the antiviral effect of antiviral antibodies include neutralization assays using live viruses or pseudoviruses are highly variable. Recent studies have demonstrated that the antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) activity of antiviral antibodies is more consistent with the virus clearance effect in vivo than neutralization activity. However, no reports evaluating the ADCC activity of anti-MERS antibodies have been published to date. Here, we describe the development of a robust and reliable cell-based reporter gene assay for the determination of ADCC activity of anti-MERS antibodies using 293T/MERS cells stably expressing the spike protein of MERS-CoV (MERS-S) as target cells and the engineered Jurkat/NFAT-luc/FcγRIIIa stably expressing FcγRIIIA and NFAT reporter gene as effector cells. According to the ICH-Q2 analytical method guidelines, we carefully optimized the experimental conditions and assessed the performance of our assay. In addition, we found that the ADCC activity of afucosylated anti-MERS antibodies is higher than their fucosylated counterparts. The establishment of this ADCC determination system provides a novel method for evaluating the bioactivity of anti-MERS antibodies and improving ADCC activity through modification of N-glycosylation of the Fc segment.Rats show mutual-reward preferences, i.e., they prefer options that result in a reward for both themselves and a conspecific partner to options that result in a reward for themselves, but not for the partner. In a previous study, we have shown that lesions of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) reduced choices for mutual rewards. Here, we aimed to explore the role of 5-HT1A receptors within the BLA in mutual-reward choices. Rats received daily injections of either 50 or 25 ng of the 5-HT1A receptor agonist 8-OH-DPAT or a vehicle solution into the BLA and mutual-reward choices were measured in a rodent prosocial choice task. Compared to vehicle injections, 8-OH-DPAT significantly increased mutual-reward choices when a conspecific was present. By contrast, mutual-reward choices were significantly reduced by 8-OH-DPAT injections in the presence of a toy rat. The effect of 8-OH-DPAT injections was statistically significant during the expression, but not during learning of mutual-reward behavior, although an influence of 8-OH-DPAT injections on learning could not be excluded. There were no differences between 8-OH-DPAT-treated and vehicle-treated rats in general reward learning, behavioral flexibility, locomotion or anxiety. In this study, we have shown that repeated injections of the 5-HT1A receptor agonist 8-OH-DPAT have the potential to increase mutual-reward choices in a social setting without affecting other behavioral parameters.Obesity is a risk factor for > 13 cancer sites, although it is unknown whether there is a common mechanism across sites. Evidence suggests a role for impaired branched-chain amino acid (BCAAs; isoleucine, leucine, valine) metabolism in obesity, insulin resistance, and immunity; thus, we hypothesized circulating BCAAs may be associated with incident obesity-related cancers. We analyzed participants in the prospective Women's Health Study without a history of cancer at baseline blood collection (N = 26,711, mean age = 54.6 years [SD = 7.1]). BCAAs were quantified via NMR spectroscopy, log-transformed, and standardized. We used Cox proportional regression models adjusted for age, race, smoking, diet, alcohol, physical activity, menopausal hormone use, Body Mass Index (BMI), diabetes, and other risk factors. The endpoint was a composite of obesity-related cancers, defined per the International Agency for Research on Cancer 2016 report, over a median 24 years follow-up. Baseline BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2 compared with BMI 18.5-25.0 kg/m2 was associated with 23% greater risk of obesity-related cancers (n = 2751 events; multivariable HR 1.23, 95% CI 1.11-1.37). However, BCAAs were not associated with obesity-related cancers (multivariable HR per SD = 1.01 [0.97-1.05]). Results for individual BCAA metabolites suggested a modest association for leucine with obesity-related cancers (1.04 [1.00-1.08]), and no association for isoleucine or valine (0.99 [0.95-1.03] and 1.00 [0.96-1.04], respectively). Exploratory analyses of BCAAs with individual sites included positive associations between leucine and postmenopausal breast cancer, and isoleucine with pancreatic cancer. Total circulating BCAAs were unrelated to obesity-related cancer incidence although an association was observed for leucine with incident obesity-related cancer.This study evaluated the prognostic value of a panel of 29 oncogenes derived from the analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA data) or from the recent literature on bladder tumors on a well-characterized series of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) and non-MIBC (NMIBC) samples and tried to identify molecular prognostic markers. Mutations of HRAS, FGFR3, PIK3CA and TERT were found in 2.9%, 27.2%, 14.9% and 76.7% of tumor samples, respectively. Concerning NMIBC, on multivariate analysis, RXRA and FGFR3 levels were associated with recurrence-free survival (RFS) (p = 0.0022 and p = 0.0069) and RXRA level was associated with progression to muscle-invasive disease (p = 0.0068). We identified a 3-gene molecular signature associated with NMIBC prognosis. FGFR3 overexpression was associated with reduced response to Bacillus Calmette-Guerin treatment (p = 0.037). As regards MIBC, on multivariate analysis, ERCC2 overexpression was associated with RFS (p = 0.0011) and E2F3 and EGFR overexpression were associated with overall survival (p = 0.014 and p = 0.035). RT-PCR findings were confirmed by IHC for FGFR3. Genomic alterations in MIBC revealed in TCGA data also concern NMIBC and seem to be associated with prognosis in terms of recurrence and progression. Correcting these alterations by targeted therapies seems a promising pharmacological approach.Despite the fact that the incidence of cervical squamous cell carcinoma has decreased, there is an increase in the incidence of cervical adenocarcinoma. However, our knowledge on cervical adenocarcinoma is largely unclear. Transcriptome sequencing was conducted to compare 4 cervical adenocarcinoma tissue samples with 4 normal cervical tissue samples. mRNA, lncRNA, and miRNA signatures were identified to discriminate cervical adenocarcinoma from normal cervix. The expression of VIL1, HNF1A-AS1, MIR194-2HG, SSTR5-AS1, miR-192-5p, and miR-194-5p in adenocarcinoma were statistically significantly higher than that in normal control samples. The Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis indicated that combination of miR-192-5p, HNF1A-AS1, and VIL1 yielded a better performance (AUC = 0.911) than any single molecule -and could serve as potential biomarkers for cervical adenocarcinoma. Of note, the combination model also gave better performance than TCT test for cervical adenocarcinoma diagnosis. However, there was no correlation between miR-192-5p or HNF1A-AS1 and HPV16/18 E6 or E7. VIL1 was weakly correlated with HPV18 E7 expression. In summary, our study has identified miR-192-5p/HNF1A-AS1/VIL1 panel that accurately discriminates adenocarcinoma from normal cervix. Detection of this panel may provide considerable clinical value in the diagnosis of cervical adenocarcinoma.In recent years, most biofilm studies have focused on fundamental investigations using multispecies biofilm models developed preferentially in simulated naturally occurring low-nutrient medium than in artificial nutrient-rich medium. Because biofilm development under low-nutrient growth media is slow, natural media are often supplemented with an additional carbon source to increase the rate of biofilm formation. However, there are knowledge gaps in interpreting the effects of such supplementation on the resulting biofilm in terms of structure and microbial community composition. We investigated the effects of supplementation of a simulated freshwater medium with sodium citrate on the resulting structure, bacterial community composition, and microbial network interactions of an early-stage multispecies biofilm model. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of acquired confocal laser scanning microscopy data confirmed that sodium citrate supplementation distinctly increased biofilm biomass. Sequencing data revealed that the microbial community structure of biofilms grown in sodium citrate-supplemented conditions was characterized with increased relative abundance and dominance of Proteobacteria compared with that of biofilms grown in sodium citrate-free conditions. Our findings suggest that the supplementation of a low-nutrient medium with a carbon source in experiments involving multispecies biofilms may lead to structural and compositional biases of the microbial community, causing changes in biofilm phenotype.In this contribution, we investigate the bipartite non-classical correlations (NCCs) of a system formed by two nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) centers placed in two spatially separated single-mode nanocavities inside a planar photonic crystal (PC). The physical system is mathematically modeled by time-dependent Schrödinger equation and analytically solved. The bipartite correlations of the two N-V centers and the two-mode cavity have been analyzed by skew information, log-negativity, and Bell function quantifiers. We explore the effects of the coupling strength between the N-V-centers and the cavity fields as well as the cavity-cavity hopping constant and the decay rate on the generated correlation dynamics. Under some specific parameter values, a large amount of quantum correlations is obtained. This shows the possibility to control the dynamics of the correlations for the NV-centers and the cavity fields.Since the venous system is affected by gravity, upright computed tomography (CT) in addition to conventional supine CT has great potential for evaluating postural changes in the venous system. We evaluated the morphological differences in the head and neck vessels by performing a contrast CT study in both the supine and the sitting positions. In this study, the 20 included participants (10 men and 10 women) were healthy adults aged 30 to 55 years. The cross-sectional area of the cervical vessels, craniocervical junction veins, and intracranial vessels were obtained quantitatively. Venous sinuses and venous plexuses that were difficult to measure were evaluated qualitatively. The average change in areas from a supine to an upright posture was - 77.87 ± 15.99% (P  less then  0.0001) in the right internal jugular vein (IJV), - 69.42 ± 23.15% (P  less then  0.0001) in the left IJV, - 61.52 ± 12.81% (P  less then  0.0001) in the right external jugular vein (EJV), and - 58.91 ± 17.37% (P  less then  0.0001) in the left EJV.
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