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γ-Tocotrienol (γ-T3) is a major subtype of vitamin E, mainly extracted from palm trees, barley, walnuts, and other plants. γ-T3 has effects on anti-inflammation, anti-oxidation, and potential chemoprevention against malignancies. It is still uncompleted to understand the effect of γ-T3 on the inhibitory mechanism of cancer. This study aimed to investigate whether γ-T3 enhanced autophagy in gastric cancer and the underlying molecular mechanism. The results showed that γ-T3 (0-90 µmol/L) inhibited the proliferation of gastric cancer MKN45 cells and AGS cells, and arrested the cell cycle at the G0/G1 phase in a dose-dependent manner. Autophagy was increased in MKN45 cells treated with γ-T3 (0-45 µmol/L), especially at a dose of 30 µmol/L for 24 h. These effects were reversed by 3-methyladenine pretreatment. Furthermore, γ-T3 (30 µmol/L) also significantly downregulated the expression of pGSK-3ß (ser9) and ß-catenin protein in MKN45 cells, and γ-T3 (20 mg/kg b.w.) effectively decreased the growth of MKN45 cell xenografts in BABL/c mice. GSK-3ß inhibitor-CHIR-99021 reversed the negative regulation of GSK-3ß/ß-Catenin signaling and autophagy. Our findings indicated that γ-T3 enhances autophagy in gastric cancer cells mediated by GSK-3ß/ß-Catenin signaling, which provides new insights into the role of γ-T3 enhancing autophagy in gastric cancer.
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Mulching practices have been used to improve peach growth and production across the globe. However, the impact of mulching on the physiochemical properties and soil characteristics of orchards remains largely unknown. This study aimed to decipher the impacts of various mulching patterns on the soil environment and the quality of Prunus persica fruit in "Zijinhuangcui". Three treatments were set up, which included black ground fabric mulch (BF) and two living grass mulch treatments (HV: hairy vetch and RG: ryegrass). The results showed that different mulching treatments have different effects on soil, plant growth, and fruit quality. Living grass mulch treatments, especially the HV treatment, significantly improved soil nutrients by enhancing nitrogen-related indicators. Of note, the BF treatment had higher total phosphorus and available phosphorus contents than the HV and RG treatments. The HV treatment had the highest relative abundance of Proteobacteria (33.49%), which is associated with symbiotic nitrogen fixation, followed by RG (25.62%), and BF (22.38%) at the young fruit stage. Similarly, the abundance of Terrimonas, which has a unique nitrogen fixation system at the genus level, was significantly higher in the living grass mulch (HV, 1.30-3.13% and RG, 2.27-4.24%) than in the BF treatment. Living grass mulch also promoted tree growth, increased fruit sugar content, sugar-related components, and sugar-acid ratio, and reduced the acid content. Collectively, the findings of this study show that living grass mulch can promote tree growth and improve fruit quality by improving soil fertility, bacterial diversity, and richness.
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In recent years, extreme weather events have become increasingly frequent, and low winter temperatures have had a significant impact on peach cultivation. The selection of cold-resistant peach varieties is an effective solution to mitigate freezing damage. To comprehensively and accurately evaluate the cold resistance of peaches and screen for high cold resistance among Gansu local resources, nine different types of peach were selected as test resources to assess physiological, biochemical, and anatomical indices. Subsequently, 28 peach germplasms were evaluated using relevant indices. The semi-lethal temperature (LT50) was calculated by fitting the change curve of the electrolyte leakage index (ELI) with the Logistic equation; this can be used as an important index for identifying and evaluating the cold resistance of peach trees. The LT50 values ranged from -28.22 °C to -17.22 °C among the 28 tested resources; Dingjiaba Liguang Tao exhibited the lowest LT50 value at -28.22 °C, indicating its high level of cold resistance. The LT50 was positively correlated with the ELI and malondialdehyde (MDA) content with correlation coefficients of 0.894 and 0.863, respectively, while it was negatively correlated with the soluble sugar (SS), soluble protein (SP), and free proline (Pro) contents with correlation coefficients of -0.894, -0.721, and -0.863, respectively. The thicknesses of the xylem, cork layer, cork layer ratio (CLR) and thickness/cortex thickness (X/C) showed negative correlations (-0.694, -0.741, -0.822, -0.814, respectively). Finally, the membership function method was used to evaluate cold resistance based on the ELI, MDA, Pro, SP, SS, CLR, and xylem thickness/cortex thickness (X/C) indices. The average membership degree among all tested resources ranged from 0.17 to 0.61. Dingjiaba Liguang Tao emerged prominently in terms of high-cold-resistance (HR) membership value (0.61).
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The optic disc(OD) and the optic cup(OC) segmentation is an key step in fundus medical image analysis. Previously, FCN-based methods have been proposed for medical image segmentation tasks. However, the consecutive convolution and pooling operations usually hinder dense prediction tasks which require detailed spatial information, such as image segmentation. In this paper, we propose a network called Recurrent Fully Convolution Network(RFC-Net) for automatic joint segmentation of the OD and the OC, which can captures more high-level information and subtle edge information. The RFC-Net can minimize the loss of spatial information. It is mainly composed of multi-scale input layer, recurrent fully convolutional network, multiple output layer and polar transformation. In RFC-Net, the multi-scale input layer constructs an image pyramid. We propose four recurrent units, which are respectively applied to RFC-Net. Recurrent convolution layer effectively ensures feature representation for OD and OC segmentation tasks through feature accumulation. For each multiple output image, the multiple output cross entropy loss function is applied. To better balance the cup ratio of the segmented image, the polar transformation is used to transform the fundus image from the cartesian coordinate system to the polar coordinate system. We evaluate the effectiveness and generalization of the proposed method on the DRISHTI-GS1 dataset. Compared with the original FCN method and other state-of-the-art methods, the proposed method achieves better segmentation performance.
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Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Disco Óptico/diagnóstico por imagem , Imagem Óptica/métodos , Algoritmos , Bases de Dados Genéticas , Olho/diagnóstico por imagem , Olho/embriologia , Fundo de Olho , Glaucoma , Humanos , Menisco , Redes Neurais de ComputaçãoRESUMO
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1155/2020/6439407.].
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Retinal vessel segmentation has high value for the research on the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy, hypertension, and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Most methods based on deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) do not have large receptive fields or rich spatial information and cannot capture global context information of the larger areas. Therefore, it is difficult to identify the lesion area, and the segmentation efficiency is poor. This paper presents a butterfly fully convolutional neural network (BFCN). First, in view of the low contrast between blood vessels and the background in retinal blood vessel images, this paper uses automatic color enhancement (ACE) technology to increase the contrast between blood vessels and the background. Second, using the multiscale information extraction (MSIE) module in the backbone network can capture the global contextual information in a larger area to reduce the loss of feature information. At the same time, using the transfer layer (T_Layer) can not only alleviate gradient vanishing problem and repair the information loss in the downsampling process but also obtain rich spatial information. Finally, for the first time in the paper, the segmentation image is postprocessed, and the Laplacian sharpening method is used to improve the accuracy of vessel segmentation. The method mentioned in this paper has been verified by the DRIVE, STARE, and CHASE datasets, with the accuracy of 0.9627, 0.9735, and 0.9688, respectively.
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TSPAN12, a member of the tetraspanin family, has been highly connected with the pathogenesis of cancer. Its biological function, however, especially in ovarian cancer (OC), has not been well elucidated. In this study, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset analysis revealed that upregulation of TSPAN12 gene expression was significantly correlated with patient survival, suggesting that TSPAN12 might be a potential prognostic marker for OC. Further exploration showed that TSPAN12 overexpression accelerated proliferation and colony formation of OVCAR3 and SKOV3 OC cells. Knockdown of TSPAN12 expression in A2780 and SKOV3 cells decreased both proliferation and colony formation. Western blot analysis showed that several cyclins and cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK) (e.g., Cyclin A2, Cyclin D1, Cyclin E2, CDK2, and CDK4) were significantly involved in the regulation of cell cycle downstream of TSPAN12. Moreover, TSPAN12 accelerated mitotic progression by controlling cell cycle. Thus, our data demonstrated that TSPAN12 could be a novel molecular target for the treatment of OC.
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Pontos de Checagem do Ciclo Celular , Neoplasias Ovarianas/patologia , Tetraspaninas/metabolismo , Animais , Linhagem Celular Tumoral , Proliferação de Células , Quinases Ciclina-Dependentes/metabolismo , Ciclinas/metabolismo , Feminino , Humanos , Camundongos Endogâmicos BALB C , Camundongos Nus , Prognóstico , Ensaio Tumoral de Célula-TroncoRESUMO
Sei-1 is a potential oncogene that plays an important role in promoting genomic instability. Double minute chromosomes (DMs) are hallmarks of gene amplification and contribute to tumorigenesis. Defects in the DNA double-strand break (DSB) repairing pathways can lead to gene amplification. To date, the mechanisms governing the formation of DMs induced by Sei-1 are not fully understood. We established DMs induced by Sei-1 in the NIH-3T3 cell line. RNA-sequencing was used to identify key characteristics of differentially expressed genes. Metaphase spreads were used to calculate DM numbers. Immunofluorescence was employed to detect γH2AX foci. Western blot and Akt pathway inhibition experiments were performed to reveal the role of the PI3K/Akt/BRCA1-Abraxas pathway in Sei-1-induced DMs. Luciferase reporter assay was employed to explore the regulatory mechanisms between Sei-1 and BRCA1. DM formation was associated with a deficiency in DSB repair. Based on this finding, activation of the PI3K/Akt/BRCA1-Abraxas pathway was found to increase the DM population with passage in vivo, and inhibition resulted in a reduction of DMs. Apart from this, it was shown for the first time that Sei-1 could directly regulate the expression of BRCA1. Our results suggest that the PI3K/Akt/BRCA1-Abraxas pathway is responsible for the formation of DMs induced by Sei-1.
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Proteínas de Transporte/metabolismo , Cromossomos/genética , Quebras de DNA de Cadeia Dupla , Fibroblastos/metabolismo , Proteínas Nucleares/metabolismo , Fosfatidilinositol 3-Quinases/metabolismo , Proteínas Proto-Oncogênicas c-akt/metabolismo , Transativadores/metabolismo , Ubiquitina-Proteína Ligases/metabolismo , Animais , Proteínas de Transporte/genética , Cromossomos/metabolismo , Reparo do DNA , Fibroblastos/enzimologia , Amplificação de Genes , Camundongos , Células NIH 3T3 , Proteínas Nucleares/genética , Fosfatidilinositol 3-Quinases/genética , Proteínas Proto-Oncogênicas c-akt/genética , Transativadores/genética , Fatores de Transcrição , Ubiquitina-Proteína Ligases/genéticaRESUMO
Previous studies have shown that the oncogene SEI1 is highly expressed in ovarian carcinomas, and promoting genomic instability. However, the molecular mechanism of SEI1 in promoting genomic instability remains unclear. We observed SEI1 overexpression in 30 of 46 cases of ovarian cancer compared to non-tumor tissues and the overexpression of SEI1 was positively associated with the tumor FIGO stage. Our functional studies revealed that overexpression of SEI1 could induce genomic instability and increased DNA strand breaks. In contrast, SEI1 co-localized with γH2AX and phosphorylated ATM and DNAPKcs in the nucleus. Furthermore, we found that overexpression of SEI1 induced translocation of the SEI1 protein from the cytoplasm to the nucleus; ATM and DNAPKcs were associated with the cytoplasm-to-nucleus translocation of SEI1. To further prove the correlation between the DNA damage response (DDR) and SEI1, we knocked down SEI1 expression in SEI1-transfected ovarian cancer cell lines. The expression of DDR proteins was significantly downregulated, and the number of micronuclei was significantly decreased. Together, these results define a new mechanism of SEI1 in the regulation of genomic stability and in the malignant progression of ovarian cancer.
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Biomarcadores Tumorais/metabolismo , Dano ao DNA , Reparo do DNA , Instabilidade Genômica , Proteínas Nucleares/metabolismo , Neoplasias Ovarianas/metabolismo , Transativadores/metabolismo , Transporte Ativo do Núcleo Celular , Proteínas Mutadas de Ataxia Telangiectasia/metabolismo , Biomarcadores Tumorais/genética , Proteínas de Ligação ao Cálcio/metabolismo , Linhagem Celular Tumoral , Feminino , Regulação Neoplásica da Expressão Gênica , Histonas/metabolismo , Humanos , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Estadiamento de Neoplasias , Proteínas Nucleares/genética , Neoplasias Ovarianas/genética , Neoplasias Ovarianas/patologia , Fosforilação , Interferência de RNA , Transdução de Sinais , Transativadores/genética , Fatores de Transcrição , Transfecção , Regulação para CimaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Sei-1 is an oncogene capable of inducing double minute chromosomes (DMs) formation. DMs are hallmarks of amplification and contribute to oncogenesis. However, the mechanism of Sei-1 inducing DMs formation remains unelucidated. RESULTS: DMs formation significantly increased during serial passage in vivo and gradually decreased following culture in vitro. micro nuclei (MN) was found to be responsible for the reduction. Of the DMs-carrying genes, Met was found to be markedly amplified, overexpressed and highly correlated with DMs formation. Inhibition of Met signaling decreased the number of DMs and reduced the amplification of the DMs-carrying genes. We identified a 3.57Mb DMs representing the majority population, which consists of the 1.21 Mb AMP1 from locus 6qA2 and the 2.36 Mb AMP2 from locus 6qA2-3. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We employed NIH-3T3 cell line with Sei-1 overexpression to monitor and characterize DMs in vivo and in vitro. Array comparative genome hybridization (aCGH) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) were performed to reveal amplification regions and DMs-carrying genes. Metaphase spread was prepared to count the DMs. Western blot and Met inhibition rescue experiments were performed to examine for involvement of altered Met signaling in Sei-1 induced DMs. Genomic walking and PCR were adopted to reveal DMs structure. CONCLUSIONS: Met is an important promotor of DMs formation.
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Cromossomos/ultraestrutura , Proteínas Nucleares/genética , Proteínas Proto-Oncogênicas c-met/genética , Transdução de Sinais , Transativadores/genética , Animais , Núcleo Celular , Transformação Celular Neoplásica , Aberrações Cromossômicas , Hibridização Genômica Comparativa , Amplificação de Genes , Genoma , Hibridização in Situ Fluorescente , Metáfase , Camundongos , Camundongos Endogâmicos BALB C , Camundongos Nus , Testes para Micronúcleos , Células NIH 3T3 , Oncogenes , Proteínas Proto-Oncogênicas c-mdm2/genética , Fatores de TranscriçãoRESUMO
Aiming at the seasonal drought in the dry land orchards of Longdong, Gansu Province, a sand-covering experiment was conducted with 15-year-old Nagafu No. 2 apple trees, with the soil water content, temperature, stem sap flow velocity, leaf stomatal conductance, and fruit quality measured. In the orchard covered with 5-cm-thick riversand, the increment of soil temperature in February-April was lower than 1 degrees C, while in June-July, it was 2.44 degrees C and 2.61 degrees C on sunny and cloudy days, respectively. The soil water content was over 60% of field capacity throughout the growing season. On sunny days with high soil water content (H season), the stem sap flow curve presented a wide peak. Under sand- covering, the sap flow started 0.6 h earlier, and the maximum sap flow velocity was 25.5% higher than the control. On cloudy days of H season, the maximum sap flow velocity was 165.6% higher than the control. On sunny days with low soil water content (L season), the sap flow curve had a single peak, and under sand covering, the sap flow started 0.5-1 h earlier than the control on sunny days. The maximum sap flow velocity was 794 g x h(-1). On cloudy days of L season, the sap flow started 1 h earlier, and the maximum sap flow velocity was 311.0% higher than the control. The evaporation of the control was 156.0% higher than that of sand-covering from March to July, suggesting that excessive ground water evaporation was the main reason to cause soil drought. Under sand-covering, single fruit mass was improved obviously whereas fruit firmness was reduced slightly, and soluble solids, vitamin C, total sugar, and organic acid contents were somewhat promoted.
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Agricultura/métodos , Frutas/crescimento & desenvolvimento , Malus/crescimento & desenvolvimento , Transpiração Vegetal , Água/metabolismo , Malus/metabolismo , Controle de Qualidade , Dióxido de Silício , SoloRESUMO
Based on the life-table parameters and the release effects of Amblyseius cucumeris (Oudemans) under laboratory and field conditions, the control efficiency of A. cucumeris (Oudemans) on Panonychus ulmi (Koch) was evaluated. When feeding on P. ulmi, A. cucumeris could complete its development period and lay eggs with one generation time of 9.54 d at (25 +/- 1) degrees C. The egg-laying period (24.85 d) and lifespan (38.52 d) of female A. cucumeris were longer than their preys (15.93 d and 34.79 d, respectively), but the average amount of eggs laid by female A. cucumeris was 36.70, being 43.9% less than that of P. ulmi. The net reproductive rate (R0) and intrinsic rate of natural increase (r(m)) of P. ulmi were 103.9% and 13.2% higher than those of A. cucumeris, respectively. No matter what the good-harm ratios was 1 : 30 or 1 : 150, the control efficiency of A. cucumeris after its 20-day release under laboratory condition could be over 95%, and the efficiency after 60-day release under field condition could be 91.73%, being 23.77% higher than that when sprayed with pesticide, suggesting that A. cucumeris was a good biological agent to control the population growth of P. ulmi. When the P. ulmi population density was less than 2 per leaf, releasing A. cucumeris in the orchard could effectively control the population increase of P. ulmi.
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Cucumaria/parasitologia , Malus/parasitologia , Ácaros/fisiologia , Controle Biológico de Vetores/métodos , Comportamento Predatório , Animais , Ecossistema , Feminino , Ácaros/crescimento & desenvolvimentoRESUMO
This paper studied the distribution and accumulation characteristics of mineral nitrogen in the soils of different years old apple orchards in dry plateau of eastern Gansu Province. The soil ammonium nitrogen content was increased with the increase of planting year. In the 2-3, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 22 years old apple orchards, the ammonium nitrogen content in 0-120 cm soil layer was 3.3, 5.8, 6.5, 9.1, 12.1, and 15.3 mg x kg(-1), respectively, and 0-60 cm soil layer had a higher ammonium nitrogen content than 60-120 cm soil layer. For all the apple orchards, the nitrate nitrogen content in 0-40 cm soil layer was relatively low, but increased with increasing depth. The soil nitrate nitrogen content also increased with the increase of planting year, which reached 2602.5 kg x hm(-2) in the 0-120 cm soil layer of 22 years old apple orchard. It was concluded that in the apple orchards in dry plateau of eastern Gansu Province, soil ammonium nitrogen was more accumulated in upper layers, while nitrate nitrogen was more accumulated in deeper layers.