Preparation of blue fluorescent copper nanoclusters for sensitive and selective sensing of apigenin in pharmaceutical samples.

One-pot means was performed for the rapid preparation of copper nanoclusters (Cu NCs), which were employed as a fluorescence system for the sensitive apigenin measurement in pharmaceutical samples. Herein, CuCl2 aqueous solution was reduced to Cu NCs through ascorbic acid and the Cu NCs were protected through trypsin under 65 ℃ for 4 h. The entire preparation process was rapid, facile and environmentally friendly. The trypsin-capped Cu NCs were demonstrated through ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and fluorescence lifetime, respectively. The Cu NCs revealed blue fluorescence with emission wavelength around 465 nm under the excitation wavelength of 380 nm. The fluorescence weakening feature of Cu NCs with apigenin was observed. On this basis, a facile and sensitive turn-off fluorescent nanoprobe for the sensing of apigenin in real samples was developed. The logarithm of relative fluorescence intensity revealed a good linear relationship with apigenin contents from 0.5 µM to 300 µM with the detection limit of 0.079 µM. The Cu NCs-based fluorescent nanosensor have been employed to measure the apigenin amounts in real samples such as medical saline, bovine and human serum. The results revealed excellent potential of this Cu NCs-based fluorescent nanoprobe for the convention computation of apigenin amounts in real samples.

Gastric collision tumor with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and adenocarcinoma: A rare case report and literature review.

ABSTRACT: Gastric adenocarcinoma is a common malignant tumor of the digestive system. Primary diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) of the stomach is a common lymphoma originating from gastric submucosal lymphoid tissue, and the coexistence of DLBCL and adenocarcinoma is exceedingly rare. A 58-year-old woman came to our hospital for treatment because of a choking feeling after eating. During endoscopy, it was confirmed that multiple irregular ulcers were seen in the fundus and body of the stomach, and the surrounding mucosa was raised. The biopsy pathology showed poorly differentiated cancer, and the patient did not undergo immunohistochemical detection. A distal gastrectomy was performed. Pathological evaluation of resected specimens is as follows: gastric tubular adenocarcinoma and germinal center-type (GC)-DLBCL. No migration was found at the junction of the two tumors, forming a collision tumor. The patient received two cycles of Rituximab - Cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisone (R-CHOP) chemotherapy, and there is no recurrence at present. We report a case of primary gastric adenocarcinoma colliding with the GC-DLBCL. Clinicians and pathologists should pay attention to it to avoid missed diagnosis.

The Extended Simple View of Reading in Adult Learners of Chinese as a Second Language.

The Simple View of Reading (SVR) designates that reading comprehension is the product of decoding and listening comprehension and this conclusion has been supported by studies on school-aged native and nonnative speakers. However, it remains unknown whether SVR can be applied to adult second language (L2) learners. The current study addressed this issue by testing adult learners of Chinese as a second language with various proficiency levels and further extended the model by including word segmentation and word-meaning access, both of which are particularly crucial in reading Chinese. The results showed that listening comprehension only contributed to reading comprehension for the advanced learners, while decoding accuracy predicted reading comprehension regardless of Chinese proficiency. However, the total proportion of variance accounted for was relatively low, especially for the lower proficiency groups. Interestingly, word segmentation and word-meaning access explained a large proportion of the total variance and concomitantly decreased the apparent influence of word decoding. Taken together, these findings highlight that the individual characteristics of a given language can modulate the contributions of decoding and listening comprehension to predicting reading comprehension.

Kinesin family member 3C (KIF3C) is a novel non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) oncogene whose expression is modulated by microRNA-150-5p (miR-150-5p) and microRNA-186-3p (miR-186-3p).

This study is aimed at investigating the biological function of kinesin family member 3 C (KIF3C) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) progression and its upstream regulatory mechanism. Quantitative real-time PCR, Western blot and immunohistochemistry were adopted to examine microRNA-150-5p (miR-150-5p), microRNA-186-3p (miR-186-3p) and kinesin family member 3 C (KIF3C) expression levels. NSCLC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion were detected through cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, EdU assay, and Transwell assay. The metastasis of NSCLC cells was evaluated utilizing a pulmonary metastasis model in nude mice in vivo. The targeted relationship among KIF3C 3'UTR, miR-186-3p, and miR-150-5p were verified by dual-luciferase reporter gene assays. It was confirmed that in NSCLC tissues and cells, KIF3C expression level was increased and KIF3C overexpression promoted NSCLC cell proliferation and metastasis. Additionally, miR-150-5p and miR-186-3p directly targeted KIF3C to repress its expression. Our data suggest that KIF3C, which is negatively regulated by miR-150-5p and miR-186-3p, is an oncogenic factor in NSCLC progression.

Spermatocytic tumor: A rare case report.

BACKGROUND: Spermatocytic tumor is a rare, malignant neoplasm of the testes. Since the prognosis for this tumor type is favorable, accurate diagnosis and differentiation from other malignant testicular neoplasms (classic seminoma and lymphoma) are crucial. To add to the existing literature on the diagnosis of spermatocytic tumor, herein we report the detailed clinical and histopathologic findings for a case that we encountered. CASE SUMMARY: A 60-year-old Chinese man presented with a solid mass in the right scrotum. The mass was surgically removed and spermatocytic tumor was diagnosed. On microscopy, the tumor cells displayed an unusual arrangement in lobules, presenting a pseudo-glandular appearance. To summarize and compare the diagnostic features of this tumor and those of the differential diagnoses, we report our case findings and those mentioned in the literature for various testicular tumors. Although imaging methods can detect masses early in development, their diagnostic capabilities are limited. Biopsy, histopathology, and immunohistochemistry are necessary for confirmatory diagnosis. CONCLUSION: It is important to identify and review the key diagnostic features of spermatocytic tumor.

Ultrastructure of gap junction and Cx43 expression in gastric cancer tissues of the patients.

INTRODUCTION: Gap junctions are intercellular channels formed by connexin facilitating communication between cells by allowing transfer of ions and small signaling molecules. Connexin 43 (Cx43) is the most ubiquitous connexin in human tissues. Ample evidence suggests the role of gap junction and its connexins such as connexin 43 in human cancers including gastric cancer, which has an important place in the worldwide incidence of cancer and cancer-related deaths. Due to a number of contradictory studies and insufficient detailed examination in specific cancers, such as gastric cancer, more data on the role of gap junctions and their connexins such as Cx43 involved in gastric cancer remain necessary. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Transmission electron microscopy, Western blotting and RT-PCR were used to show the ultrastructure damage of the gap junction in the gastric carcinoma tissue as well as the expression of Cx43 protein and mRNA, respectively. RESULTS: Ultrastructure damage of the gap junction in gastric carcinoma tissue was shown while poorly differentiated tissue experienced greater damage. The expression of Cx43 protein and mRNA was higher in healthy gastric tissue than in carcinomatous gastric tissue (p < 0.05). There was higher expression of Cx43 protein and mRNA in high-medium differentiation than in poor differentiation (p < 0.05). Cx43 protein and mRNA expression is not statistically significant for different ages and sex (such as for > 56 and ≤ 56 years) (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Ultrastructural changes of gap junctions with abnormal Cx43 expression are associated with occurrence and development of gastric cancer, which provides a new research direction for gastric cancer pathogenesis and targeted therapy.

A novel model for the X-chromosome inactivation association on survival data.

The X-linked genetic association is overlooked in most of the genetic studies because of the complexity of X-chromosome inactivation process. In fact, the biological process of the gene at the same locus can vary across different subjects. Besides, the skewness of X-chromosome inactivation is inherently subject-specific (even tissue-specific within subjects) and cannot be accurately represented by a population-level parameter. To tackle this issue, a new model is proposed to incorporate the X-linked genetic association into right-censored survival data. The novel model can present that the X-linked genes on different subjects may go through different biological processes via a mixed distribution. Further, a random effect is employed to describe the uncertainty of the biological process for every subject. The proposed method can derive the probability for the escape of X-chromosome inactivation and derive the unbiased estimates of the model parameters. The Legendre-Gauss Quadrature method is used to approximate the integration over the random effect. Finite sample performance of this method is examined via extensive simulation studies. An application is illustrated with the implementation on a cancer genetic study with right-censored survival data.

miR-130a-3p inhibits invasion of breast cancer MCF-7 cells through HGF/MET pathway / 中国肿瘤生物治疗杂志

@# Objective: To explore the molecular mechanism of miR-130a-3p regulating epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) to affect the invasion and metastasis of breast cancer cells through HGF/MET pathway. Methods: A total of 22 pairs of cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues from breast cancer patients, who were admitted to Affiliated Hospital of Chengde Medical College from January 2018 to October 2018, were collected for this study; in addition, breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7, MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB453) and normal breast epithelial cells MCF10A were obtained from the Institute of Basic Sciences, Chengde Medical College. And then, the expression of miR-130a-3p in tissues and cell lines were detected by qRT-PCR. The experiment cells were divided into control group, miR-130a-3p mimics group, miR-130a-3p inhibitor group, PHA665752 (a small-molecule MET inhibitor) transfection group and PHA665752+miR-130a-3p inhibitor co-transfection group. CCK-8 assay and Transwell assay were performed to detect the proliferation, invasion and migration of MCF-7 cells, respectively. The expressions of EMT and HGF/MET signaling pathway related proteins in MCF-7 cells were detected by WB. In addition, the targeted relationship between miR-130a-3p and MET was verified by Dual luciferase reporter gene assay. Results: miR-130a-3p was down-regulated in breast cancer tissues and cell lines. Over-expression of miR130a-3p could suppress the proliferation, invasion, migration and EMT of MCF-7 cells, while knockdown of miR-130a-3p had the opposite results. The results of Dual luciferase reporter gene assay indicated that miR-130a-3p targetedly down-regulated the expression of MET, and miR-130a-3p negatively regulated the expression of HGF/MET signaling pathway. Further experiments confirmed that miR-130a-3p inhibited the proliferation, invasion, migration and EMT of MCF-7 cells by blocking HGF/MET signaling pathway. Conclusion: miR-130a-3p suppresses the EMT of MCF-7 cells via blocking HGF/MET signaling pathway, thereby repressing the invasion and metastasis of MCF-7 cells.

Cloning, tissue distribution, functional characterization and nutritional regulation of a fatty acyl Elovl5 elongase in chu's croaker Nibea coibor.

Enzymes that lengthen the carbon chain of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are key to the biosynthesis of the long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA). Here we report on the molecular cloning, tissue distribution, functional characterization and nutritional regulation of a elovl5 gene from Nibea coibor. The full-length cDNA was 1315 bp, including a 5-untranslated region (UTR) of 134 bp, a 3-UTR of 296 bp and an open reading frame of 885 bp, which specified a peptide of 294 amino acids. Bioinformatics analysis showed that the deduced peptide sequence possessed all the characteristic features of microsomal fatty acyl elongases, including the so-called histidine box (HXXHH), the canonical C-terminal endoplasmic reticulum retention signal, several predicted transmembrane regions and other highly conserved motifs. Expression of elovl5 was strongly observed in stomach, and more weakly in kidney, spleen, intestine, brain, eye, liver, gill, muscle and heart. Functional characterization revealed that the chu's croaker Elovl5 was able to elongate both C18 and C20 PUFA substrates. Nutritional study indicated that the hepatic expression of elovl5 could be up-regulated by low dietary n-3 LC-PUFA. These results may contribute to better understanding the LC-PUFA biosynthetic pathway and regulation mechanism in chu's croaker.

A unified partial likelihood approach for X-chromosome association on time-to-event outcomes.

The expression of X-chromosome undergoes three possible biological processes: X-chromosome inactivation (XCI), escape of the X-chromosome inactivation (XCI-E), and skewed X-chromosome inactivation (XCI-S). Although these expressions are included in various predesigned genetic variation chip platforms, the X-chromosome has generally been excluded from the majority of genome-wide association studies analyses; this is most likely due to the lack of a standardized method in handling X-chromosomal genotype data. To analyze the X-linked genetic association for time-to-event outcomes with the actual process unknown, we propose a unified approach of maximizing the partial likelihood over all of the potential biological processes. The proposed method can be used to infer the true biological process and derive unbiased estimates of the genetic association parameters. A partial likelihood ratio test statistic that has been proved asymptotically chi-square distributed can be used to assess the X-chromosome genetic association. Furthermore, if the X-chromosome expression pertains to the XCI-S process, we can infer the correct skewed direction and magnitude of inactivation, which can elucidate significant findings regarding the genetic mechanism. A population-level model and a more general subject-level model have been developed to model the XCI-S process. Finite sample performance of this novel method is examined via extensive simulation studies. An application is illustrated with implementation of the method on a cancer genetic study with survival outcome.

Developmental changes in the early child lexicon in Mandarin Chinese.

In this paper we report a large-scale developmental study of early productive vocabulary acquisition by 928 Chinese-speaking children aged between 1;0 and 2;6, using the Early Vocabulary Inventory for Mandarin Chinese (Hao, Shu, Xing & Li, 2008). The results show that: (i) social words, especially words for people, are the predominant type of words in Chinese-speaking children's earliest productive vocabulary; (ii) overall, Chinese-speaking children's vocabulary contains greater proportions of nouns than other word categories, especially at the earliest vocabulary stage; and (iii) verbs tend to appear earlier for Chinese-speaking children as compared with English-speaking children at the same levels of vocabulary development. In addition, our study has identified the underlying variables that influence the age of acquisition of words, specifically, the interplay between the conceptual (imageability) and linguistic properties (word frequency, word length, and grammatical category) that jointly shape the development of Mandarin-speaking children's early vocabulary.

[RP-HPLC fingerprint of milk Stellera chamaejasme].

OBJECTIVE: To establish a RP-HPLC fingerprint of milk Stellera chamaejasme. METHODS: The gradient elution mode was applied in chromatographic separation, and data were analysed by "Computer Aided Similarity Evaluation" software to compare the quality of milk Stellera chamaejasme samples from different habitats. RESULTS: Samples from different habitats were of high similarity, and analysied milk Stellera chamaejasme chromone and E15 in the atlas. CONCLUSION: The method is repeatable, and can be used in quality assessment of milk Stellera chamaejasme.

Timed picture naming norms for Mandarin Chinese.

The present study reports timed norms for 435 object pictures in Mandarin Chinese. These data include naming latency, name agreement, concept agreement, word length, and age of acquisition (AoA) based on children's naming and adult ratings, and several other adult ratings of concept familiarity, subjective word frequency, image agreement, image variability, and visual complexity. Furthermore, we examined factors that influence the naming latencies of the pictures. The results show that concept familiarity, AoA, concept agreement, name agreement, and image agreement are significant predictors of naming latencies, whereas subjective word frequency is not a reliable determinant. These results are discussed in light of picture naming data in other languages. An item-based index for the norms is provided in the Table S1.

Early vocabulary inventory for Mandarin Chinese.

Early vocabulary development is a reliable predictor of children's later language skills. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) has provided a powerful tool to assess earlyvocabulary development in English and other languages. However, there have been no published CDI norms for Mandarin Chinese. Given the importance of large-scale comparative data sets for understanding the early childhood lexicon, we have developed an early vocabulary inventory for Mandarin. In this article, we report our efforts in developing this instrument, and discuss the data collected from 884 Chinese families in Beijing over a period of 12-30 months, based on our instrument. Chinese children's receptive and expressive lexicons as assessed by our inventory match well with those reported for English on the basis of CDI. In particular, our data indicate comprehension-production differences, individual differences in early comprehension and in later production, and different lexical development profiles among infants versus toddlers. We also make the checklists and norms of our inventory available to the research community via the Internet; they may be accessed from the Psychonomic Society's Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Age-of-acquisition effects on oral reading in Chinese.

The age of acquisition (AoA) of a word has an effect on oral reading. The mapping hypothesis (Zevin & Seidenberg, 2002, 2004) assumes that AoA effects on oral reading are a consequence of arbitrary mappings between input and output in the lexical network. The Chinese writing system is characterized by mappings between orthography and phonology that are mostly arbitrary, although some regular and consistent characters are predictable. Here, we report reduced effects of written AoA on the reading of predictable characters. We argue that written AoA has an effect on oral reading in Chinese because the family resemblance between lexical items is limited, as compared with written words in alphabetic scripts.

Predictors of timed picture naming in Chinese.

We report normative data collected from Mainland Chinese speakers for 232 objects taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). These data include adult ratings of concept familiarity, age of acquisition (AoA), printed-word frequency, and word length (in syllables), as well as measures of rated visual complexity, image agreement, and name agreement. We then examined timed picture naming of these objects with native Chinese speakers in Beijing in two experiments using line drawings and colored pictures. In both experiments, the variables name agreement, rated concept familiarity, and AoA made significant independent contributions to naming latency in multiple regression analyses. We observed a correlation of r = .85 between naming latency with line drawings and colored pictures and a reduced effect of image agreement on naming when colored pictures were presented. We discuss the implications of our findings for the study of lexical processing in Chinese. Normative data for 232 Chinese nouns may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.