Pregnancy-Specific Beta-1-Glycoprotein 1 Increases HTR-8/SVneo Cell Migration through the Orai1/Akt Signaling Pathway.

The impaired invasion ability of trophoblast cells is related to the occurrence of preeclampsia (PE). We previously found that pregnancy-specific beta-1-glycoprotein 1 (PSG1) levels were decreased in the serum of individuals with early-onset preeclampsia (EOPE). This study investigated the effect of PSG1 on Orai1-mediated store-operated calcium entry (SOCE) and the Akt signaling pathway in human trophoblast cell migration. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to determine the level of PSG1 in the serum of pregnant women with EOPE. The effects of PSG1 on trophoblast proliferation and migration were examined using cell counting kit-8 (CCK8) and wound healing experiments, respectively. The expression levels of Orai1, Akt, and phosphorylated Akt (p-Akt) were determined through Western blotting. The results confirmed that the serum PSG1 levels were lower in EOPE women than in healthy pregnant women. The PSG1 treatment upregulated the protein expression of Orai1 and p-Akt. The selective inhibitor of Orai1 (MRS1845) weakened the migration-promoting effect mediated by PSG1 via suppressing the Akt signaling pathway. Our findings revealed one of the mechanisms possibly involved in EOPE pathophysiology, which was that downregulated PSG1 may reduce the Orai1/Akt signaling pathway, thereby inhibiting trophoblast migration. PSG1 may serve as a potential target for the treatment and diagnosis of EOPE.

Optimal design of a 4 × 4 MMI thermal optical switch with trapezoidal air trenches.

Optical switches are important in signal routing and switching. In this paper, a thermal optical switch with trapezoidal air trenches is proposed. The proposed structure consists of two cascaded 4×4 multimode interference (MMI) couplers. The beam propagation method is used to optimize the dimension and analyze the characteristics. Simulation results show excess loss (EL) and insertion loss (IL) are less than 0.14 dB and 0.22 dB at the wavelength of 1550 nm, respectively. Besides, the extinction ratio (ER) is higher than 21 dB. This design has the advantages of small size, low loss, and high flexibility, which is promising for application to all-optical network routing.

Three-dimensional polymer mode (de)multiplexer with cascaded tapered couplers for on-board optical interconnects.

A three-dimensional polymer mode (de)multiplexer based on mode evolution is proposed. The proposed configuration is mainly composed of cascaded two tapered couplers where waveguides with different heights are inversely tapered to achieve mode conversions of the E11,E21, and E31 modes. The dimensional parameters and characteristics are analyzed by the beam propagation method. This mode (de)multiplexer exhibits the coupling ratio greater than 0.97, excess loss lower than 0.15 dB and extinction ratio higher than 20 dB for TE and TM polarizations over the wavelength range 1530∼1625nm (the C+L band). This design has weak wavelength dependence and polarization dependence, which is promising to be applied to broadband on-board mode multiplexing.