Shipborne expendable all-optical fiber ocean temperature-depth profile sensor.

Traditional electrical expendable bathythermograph (XBT) is designed to fall at a known rate based on a great deal of experiments so that the depth of the temperature profile can be inferred from the time it enters the water. Unlike the traditional electrical XBT, which derives the depth from fall-rate equations, we propose an all-optical fiber (AOF) XBT (AOF-XBT) based on cascade of two fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). In the AOF-XBT, the depth data comes from one FBG, which responds in real time to the pressure acting on the diaphragm, and temperature data can be measured via the other FBG simultaneously. First, the pressure and temperature response characteristics of the AOF-XBT are analyzed based on a finite element method. Then, the temperature and pressure calibrations for the AOF-XBT is completed after they are packaged. Results show that the mean-temperature sensitivity of two sensors are 14.765 and 13.705 pm/°C in the range of 5°C-30°C, and the mean-pressure sensitivities are -2.75586 and -3.00472nm/MPa in the range of 0-0.6 MPa, respectively. At last, by comparing the results obtained from the AOF-XBT and the SBE 911plus CTD that tested in the sea area of Weihai, the trends of the temperature-depth profile from the two devices are consistent, which presents a new all-optical technique to provide full ocean temperature-depth profile observations.

Dual Effect of Tryptamine on Prostate Cancer Cell Growth Regulation: A Pilot Study.

Abnormal tryptophan metabolism is linked to cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, and tryptophan metabolites have been reported as potential prostate cancer (PCa) biomarkers. However, little is known about the bioactivities of tryptophan metabolites on PCa cell growth. In this study, MTT and transwell assays were used to study the cytotoxicities of 13 major tryptophan metabolites on PCa and normal prostate epithelial cell lines. Ultraperformance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS) was used to analyze metabolic changes in cells treated with tryptamine. Flow cytometry, confocal imaging, and Western blot were used to test the apoptosis induced by tryptamine. It was shown that tryptamine had obvious inhibitory effects on PCa cell lines PC-3 and LNCaP, stronger than those on the normal prostate cell line RWPE-1. Tryptamine was further shown to induce apoptosis and inhibit PC-3 cell migration. Metabolic changes including amino acid metabolism related to cell proliferation and metastasis were found in PC-3 cells treated with tryptamine. Furthermore, a PC-3 xenograft mouse model was used to study the effect of tryptamine in vivo. The intratumoral injection of tryptamine was demonstrated to significantly reduce the tumor growth and tumor sizes in vivo; however, intraperitoneal treatment resulted in increased tumor growth. Such dual effects in vivo advanced our understanding of the bioactivity of tryptamine in regulating prostate tumor development, in addition to its major role as a neuromodulator.

Study on endogenous inhibitors against PD-L1: cAMP as a potential candidate.

The discovery of new anti-cancer drugs targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway has been a research hotspot in recent years. In this study, biological affinity ultrafiltration (BAU), UPLC-HRMS, molecular dynamic (MD) simulations and molecular docking methods were applied to search for endogenous active compounds that can inhibit the binding of PD-L1 to PD-1. We screened dozens of potential cancer related endogenous compounds. Surprisingly, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) was found to have a direct inhibitory effect on the PD-1/PD-L1 binding with an in vitro IC50 value of about 36.4 ± 9.3 µM determined by homogeneous time-resolved fluorescence (HTRF) assay. cAMP could recover the proliferation of Jurkat T cells co-cultured with DU-145 cells and may suppress PD-L1 expression of DU-145 cells. cAMP was demonstrated to bind and induce PD-L1 dimerization by FRET assay, and also predicted by MD simulations and molecular docking. The finding of cAMP as a potential inhibitor directly targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 interaction could advance our understanding of the activity of endogenous compounds regulating PD-L1.