A pair of dopamine neurons mediate chronic stress signals to induce learning deficit in Drosophila melanogaster.

Chronic stress could induce severe cognitive impairments. Despite extensive investigations in mammalian models, the underlying mechanisms remain obscure. Here, we show that chronic stress could induce dramatic learning and memory deficits in Drosophila melanogaster The chronic stress-induced learning deficit (CSLD) is long lasting and associated with other depression-like behaviors. We demonstrated that excessive dopaminergic activity provokes susceptibility to CSLD. Remarkably, a pair of PPL1-γ1pedc dopaminergic neurons that project to the mushroom body (MB) γ1pedc compartment play a key role in regulating susceptibility to CSLD so that stress-induced PPL1-γ1pedc hyperactivity facilitates the development of CSLD. Consistently, the mushroom body output neurons (MBON) of the γ1pedc compartment, MBON-γ1pedc>α/ß neurons, are important for modulating susceptibility to CSLD. Imaging studies showed that dopaminergic activity is necessary to provoke the development of chronic stress-induced maladaptations in the MB network. Together, our data support that PPL1-γ1pedc mediates chronic stress signals to drive allostatic maladaptations in the MB network that lead to CSLD.

Noninvasive circulating tumor cell and urine cellular XPC (rs2228001, A2815C) and XRCC1 (rs25487, G1196A) polymorphism detection as an effective screening panel for genitourinary system cancers.

BACKGROUND: Valid cancer screening and treatment monitoring are critical for cancer patients. Although genitourinary system cancers have a high recurrence rate, when diagnosed, patients undergo surgery promptly. We sought to explore sensitive and noninvasive screening and postoperative recurrence monitoring methods, such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) or tumor susceptibility gene detection, to determine their appropriateness for genitourinary system cancers. METHODS: We adopted multiple detection methods. Enrichment-immunofluorescence in situ hybridization (SE-iFISH) was employed to detect CTCs from the peripheral blood of patients, and Agena Bioscience MassARRAY was used to detect single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in tumor susceptibility genes from urine cells. RESULTS: In our research, CTCs showed a 76.92% positivity rate among 26 genitourinary system cancer patients, and the number of CTCs was consistent with the stage of cancer. In monitoring for bladder cancer (BC) recurrence, CTCs were more prevalent than urine cytology (66.67% vs. 41.67%). To our surprise, urine cellular XPC (rs2228001, A2815C) and XRCC1 (rs25487, G1196A) polymorphisms were specifically found in cancer patients but not in patients with inflammation or in healthy individuals. XPC polymorphism (rs2228001, A2815C) rates were 30.77%, 40%, and 50% in bladder cancer, renal carcinoma, and prostate cancer patients, respectively, and those for XRCC1 (rs25487, G1196A) were 3.85%, 20%, and 25%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: As a common biomarker, CTCs showed remarkable performance in cancer screening and monitoring. The noninvasive panel comprising CTCs and XPC (rs2228001, A2815C) and XRCC1 (rs25487, G1196A) polymorphisms showed high sensitivity (positive rate: 92.86%) and is suitable for genitourinary system cancer screening.