Genome-Wide Identification of Seven in Absentia E3 Ubiquitin Ligase Gene Family and Expression Profiles in Response to Different Hormones in Uncaria rhynchophylla.

SINA (Seven in absentia) E3 ubiquitin ligases are a family of RING (really interesting new gene) E3 ubiquitin ligases, and they play a crucial role in regulating plant growth and development, hormone response, and abiotic and biotic stress. However, there is little research on the SINA gene family in U. rhynchophylla. In this study, a total of 10 UrSINA genes were identified from the U. rhynchophylla genome. The results of multiple sequence alignments and chromosomal locations show that 10 UrSINA genes were unevenly located on 22 chromosomes, and each UrSINA protein contained a SINA domain at the N-terminal and RING domains at the C-terminal. Synteny analysis showed that there are no tandem duplication gene pairs and there are four segmental gene pairs in U. rhynchophylla, contributing to the expansion of the gene family. Furthermore, almost all UrSINA genes contained the same gene structure, with three exons and two introns, and there were many cis-acting elements relating to plant hormones, light responses, and biotic and abiotic stress. The results of qRT-PCR show that most UrSINA genes were expressed in stems, with the least expression in roots; meanwhile, most UrSINA genes and key enzyme genes were responsive to ABA and MeJA hormones with overlapping but different expression patterns. Co-expression analysis showed that UrSINA1 might participate in the TIA pathway under ABA treatment, and UrSINA5 and UrSINA6 might participate in the TIA pathway under MeJA treatment. The mining of UrSINA genes in the U. rhynchophylla provided novel information for understanding the SINA gene and its function in plant secondary metabolites, growth, and development.

Apple SINA11-JAZ2 module is involved in jasmonate signaling response.

The E3 ubiquitin ligase MdSINA11 targets the jasmonate ZIM domain protein MdJAZ2 for ubiquitination and degradation through the 26S proteasome pathway, thereby initiating jasmonate signaling and jasmonic acid-triggered anthocyanin biosynthesis in apple.

Characterization of RING-type ubiquitin SINA E3 ligases and their responsive expression to salt and osmotic stresses in Brassica napus.

SINA (Seven in absentia) proteins in the subtype of E3 ubiquitin ligase family play a crucial role in plant growth and development. However, their functions in response to salt and osmotic stresses in oil crops are still largely unknown. In this study, a total number of 23 BnaSINAs were identified in the rapeseed genome. Chromosome location and collinear relationship analyses revealed that they were unevenly distributed on 13 chromosomes, and have gone through 22 segmental duplication events under purifying selection. Phylogenetic and gene structural analyses indicated that they belonged to five main groups, and those in the same subgroup showed similar gene structure. All BnaSINAs were predicted to form homo- or heterodimers. Except BnaSINA7, BnaSINA11, BnaSINA17 and BnaSINA18, which lacked the N-terminal RING finger, all BnaSINAs contained a conserved C-terminal SINA domain, a typical structural feature of the RING-type E3 ligase family. Transcriptional expression analyses demonstrated that most BnaSINAs were ubiquitously expressed in roots, stems, leaves, flowers, pods and seeds, and all were responsive to salt and osmotic stresses. Further, yeast two-hybrid and Arabidopsis mutant complementation analyses demonstrated that BnaSINA4 interacted with BnaSINA17 to form heterodimer, and expression of BnaSINA17 in the Arabidopsis sina2 mutant restored its growth resistance to salt and osmotic stresses. Our findings provide an important genetic foundation for the functional elucidation of BnaSINAs and a novel gene resource for the breeding of new oil crop cultivars with improved abiotic stress resistance.

Clinical application of 3DSlicer and Sina in minimally invasive puncture drainage of elderly patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage under local anesthesia.

BACKGROUND: Decreased organ function and poor physical compensatory capacity in elderly patients diagnosed with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) can make surgical treatment procedures challenging and risky. Minimally invasive puncture drainage (MIPD) combined with urokinase infusion therapy is a safe and feasible method of treating ICH. This study aimed to compare the treatment efficacy of MIPD conducted under local anesthesia using either 3DSlicer + Sina application or computer tomography (CT)-guided stereotactic localization of hematomas in elderly patients diagnosed with ICH. METHODS: The study sample included 78 elderly patients (≥ 65 years of age) diagnosed with ICH for the first time. All patients exhibited stable vital signs and underwent surgical treatment. The study sample was randomly divided into two groups, either receiving 3DSlicer+Sina or CT-guided stereotactic assistance. The preoperative preparation time; hematoma localization accuracy rate; satisfactory hematoma puncture rate; hematoma clearance rate; postoperative rebleeding rate; Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score after 7 days; and modified Rankin scale (mRS) score 6 months after surgery were compared between the two groups. RESULTS: No significant differences in gender, age, preoperative GCS score, preoperative hematoma volume (HV), and surgical duration were observed between the two groups (all p-values > 0.05). However, the preoperative preparation time was shorter in the group receiving 3DSlicer + Sina assistance compared to that receiving CT-guided stereotactic assistance (p-value < 0.001). Both groups exhibited significant improvement in GCS scores and reduction in HV after surgery (all p-values < 0.001). The accuracy of hematoma localization and puncture was 100% in both groups. There were no significant differences in surgical duration, postoperative hematoma clearance rate, rebleeding rate, postoperative GCS and mRS scores between the two groups (all p-values > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: A combination of 3DSlicer and Sina is effective in accurately identifying hematomas in elderly patients with ICH exhibiting stable vital signs, thus simplifying MIPD surgeries conducted under local anesthesia. This procedure may also be preferred over CT-guided stereotactic localization in clinical practice due to its ease of use and accuracy in hematoma localization.

Exploring the motivations and obstacles of the public's garbage classification participation: evidence from Sina Weibo.

China has been implementing garbage classification to improve resource recycling for many years. Since garbage classification is essentially a social activity, it needs the active participation of the public. However, the phenomenon of "high practice, low effect" is widespread in most cities. Therefore, this paper uses the data from Sina Weibo to analyze the reasons for the poor garbage classification effect. First, the key factors affecting residents' willingness to participate in garbage classification are identified based on the text-mining method. Further, this paper analyzes the reasons that promote or hinder the residents' intention of garbage classification. Finally, the resident's attitude towards garbage classification is explored by the score of the text's emotional orientation, and further the reasons for the positive and negative emotional orientation are analyzed, respectively. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The proportion of residents holding negative sentiment towards garbage classification is as high as 55%. (2) Residents' positive emotions are mainly caused by the public's sense of environmental protection inspired by publicity and education, and the incentive measures taken by the government. (3) The main reasons for negative emotions are imperfect infrastructure and unreasonable garbage sorting arrangements.

Perspectives on Surrogacy in Chinese Social Media: A Content Analysis of Microblogs on Weibo.

Background: This article explores the social media discourse on transnational surrogacy and the issue of surrogacy more broadly considering recent news about the Chinese celebrity Zheng Shuang, which revealed that she had hired a surrogate mother in the United States and had later abandoned the surrogate babies. It aims to provide insight on how Chinese citizenry uses social media to express opinions on ethical and legal issues concerning surrogacy. Methods: We conducted a content analysis of microblogs from the social media platform Weibo posted within a month after the event was reported on January 17, 2021. The entire data set included 37,895 posts, which were analyzed for topic exploration using word frequency and keyword co-occurrence techniques, and a smaller sample of 1,000 posts was selected for an in-depth content analysis. Results: We established that the words "Zheng Shuang," "surrogacy," "babies," "abandoning babies," and "Zhang Heng" were most frequently used, with "law," "ethics," "justification," "legality," and "illegal" sharing high connections with these keywords. The qualitative content analysis further established that 399 microblogs (39.9%) expressed value judgements towards Zheng Shuang's surrogacy, and 61.9% (n=247) opposed her surrogacy, while only 7.0% (n=28) were supportive. The major reason (n=72) against the celebrity's surrogacy was that it was unfair and risky to surrogate children in this case. One hundred twenty-eight posts made value judgements towards surrogacy in principle, with 115 opposing surrogacy, and only two supportive posts. We also established that users with legal background had very limited presence in surrogacy discussions on Weibo, while users from healthcare professions did not engage at all in the social media debate. Conclusion: Opposition to surrogacy in Chinese social media discourse is primarily based on ethical and moral objections. The protection of surrogate children and surrogate women's rights was the major concerns expressed by social media users, suggesting that this issue would likely be at the center of a future public debate regarding the regulation of surrogacy. We found the lack of healthcare professionals' perspectives in social media discussions on Zheng's Surrogacy disconcerting and suggest their inclusion in public deliberations to ensure that the public is better educated, and substantive concerns are properly addressed.

Deep Hierarchical Ensemble Model for Suicide Detection on Imbalanced Social Media Data.

As a serious worldwide problem, suicide often causes huge and irreversible losses to families and society. Therefore, it is necessary to detect and help individuals with suicidal ideation in time. In recent years, the prosperous development of social media has provided new perspectives on suicide detection, but related research still faces some difficulties, such as data imbalance and expression implicitness. In this paper, we propose a Deep Hierarchical Ensemble model for Suicide Detection (DHE-SD) based on a hierarchical ensemble strategy, and construct a dataset based on Sina Weibo, which contains more than 550 thousand posts from 4521 users. To verify the effectiveness of the model, we also conduct experiments on a public Weibo dataset containing 7329 users' posts. The proposed model achieves the best performance on both the constructed dataset and the public dataset. In addition, in order to make the model applicable to a wider population, we use the proposed sentence-level mask mechanism to delete user posts with strong suicidal ideation. Experiments show that the proposed model can still effectively identify social media users with suicidal ideation even when the performance of the baseline models decrease significantly.

A Novel Machine Learning Framework for Comparison of Viral COVID-19-Related Sina Weibo and Twitter Posts: Workflow Development and Content Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Social media plays a critical role in health communications, especially during global health emergencies such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a lack of a universal analytical framework to extract, quantify, and compare content features in public discourse of emerging health issues on different social media platforms across a broad sociocultural spectrum. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to develop a novel and universal content feature extraction and analytical framework and contrast how content features differ with sociocultural background in discussions of the emerging COVID-19 global health crisis on major social media platforms. METHODS: We sampled the 1000 most shared viral Twitter and Sina Weibo posts regarding COVID-19, developed a comprehensive coding scheme to identify 77 potential features across six major categories (eg, clinical and epidemiological, countermeasures, politics and policy, responses), quantified feature values (0 or 1, indicating whether or not the content feature is mentioned in the post) in each viral post across social media platforms, and performed subsequent comparative analyses. Machine learning dimension reduction and clustering analysis were then applied to harness the power of social media data and provide more unbiased characterization of web-based health communications. RESULTS: There were substantially different distributions, prevalence, and associations of content features in public discourse about the COVID-19 pandemic on the two social media platforms. Weibo users were more likely to focus on the disease itself and health aspects, while Twitter users engaged more about policy, politics, and other societal issues. CONCLUSIONS: We extracted a rich set of content features from social media data to accurately characterize public discourse related to COVID-19 in different sociocultural backgrounds. In addition, this universal framework can be adopted to analyze social media discussions of other emerging health issues beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quantifying the Influence of Delay in Opinion Transmission of COVID-19 Information Propagation: Modeling Study.

BACKGROUND: In a fast-evolving public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple pieces of relevant information can be posted sequentially on a social media platform. The interval between subsequent posting times may have a different impact on the transmission and cross-propagation of the old and new information that results in a different peak value and a final size of forwarding users of the new information, depending on the content correlation and whether the new information is posted during the outbreak or quasi-steady-state phase of the old information. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to help in designing effective communication strategies to ensure information is delivered to the maximal number of users. METHODS: We developed and analyzed two classes of susceptible-forwarding-immune information propagation models with delay in transmission to describe the cross-propagation process of relevant information. A total of 28,661 retweets of typical information were posted frequently by each opinion leader related to COVID-19 with high influence (data acquisition up to February 19, 2020). The information was processed into discrete points with a frequency of 10 minutes, and the real data were fitted by the model numerical simulation. Furthermore, the influence of parameters on information dissemination and the design of a publishing strategy were analyzed. RESULTS: The current epidemic outbreak situation, epidemic prevention, and other related authoritative information cannot be timely and effectively browsed by the public. The ingenious use of information release intervals can effectively enhance the interaction between information and realize the effective diffusion of information. We parameterized our models using real data from Sina Microblog and used the parameterized models to define and evaluate mutual attractiveness indexes, and we used these indexes and parameter sensitivity analyses to inform optimal strategies for new information to be effectively propagated in the microblog. The results of the parameter analysis showed that using different attractiveness indexes as the key parameters can control the information transmission with different release intervals, so it is considered as a key link in the design of an information communication strategy. At the same time, the dynamic process of information was analyzed through index evaluation. CONCLUSIONS: Our model can carry out an accurate numerical simulation of information at different release intervals and achieve a dynamic evaluation of information transmission by constructing an indicator system so as to provide theoretical support and strategic suggestions for government decision making. This study optimizes information posting strategies to maximize communication efforts for delivering key public health messages to the public for better outcomes of public health emergency management.

COVID-19 information contact and participation analysis and dynamic prediction in the Chinese Sina-microblog.

The outbreak of a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) aroused great public opinion in the Chinese Sina-microblog. To help in designing effective communication strategies during a major public health emergency, we analyze the real data of COVID-19 information and propose a comprehensive susceptible-reading-forwarding-immune (SRFI) model to understand the patterns of key information propagation considering both public contact and participation. We develop the SRFI model, based on the public reading quantity and forwarding quantity that denote contact and participation respectively, and take into account the behavior that users may re-enter another related topic during the attention phase or the participation phase freely. Data fitting using the real data of both reading quantity and forwarding quantity obtained from Chinese Sina-microblog can parameterize the model to make an accurate prediction of the COVID-19 public opinion trend until the next major news item occurs, and the sensitivity analysis provides the basic strategies for communication.

Mining the Characteristics of COVID-19 Patients in China: Analysis of Social Media Posts.

BACKGROUND: In December 2019, pneumonia cases of unknown origin were reported in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. Identified as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the number of cases grew rapidly by human-to-human transmission in Wuhan. Social media, especially Sina Weibo (a major Chinese microblogging social media site), has become an important platform for the public to obtain information and seek help. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to analyze the characteristics of suspected or laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients who asked for help on Sina Weibo. METHODS: We conducted data mining on Sina Weibo and extracted the data of 485 patients who presented with clinical symptoms and imaging descriptions of suspected or laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19. In total, 9878 posts seeking help on Sina Weibo from February 3 to 20, 2020 were analyzed. We used a descriptive research methodology to describe the distribution and other epidemiological characteristics of patients with suspected or laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) infection. The distance between patients' home and the nearest designated hospital was calculated using the geographic information system ArcGIS. RESULTS: All patients included in this study who sought help on Sina Weibo lived in Wuhan, with a median age of 63.0 years (IQR 55.0-71.0). Fever (408/485, 84.12%) was the most common symptom. Ground-glass opacity (237/314, 75.48%) was the most common pattern on chest computed tomography; 39.67% (167/421) of families had suspected and/or laboratory-confirmed family members; 36.58% (154/421) of families had 1 or 2 suspected and/or laboratory-confirmed members; and 70.52% (232/329) of patients needed to rely on their relatives for help. The median time from illness onset to real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing was 8 days (IQR 5.0-10.0), and the median time from illness onset to online help was 10 days (IQR 6.0-12.0). Of 481 patients, 32.22% (n=155) lived more than 3 kilometers away from the nearest designated hospital. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that patients seeking help on Sina Weibo lived in Wuhan and most were elderly. Most patients had fever symptoms, and ground-glass opacities were noted in chest computed tomography. The onset of the disease was characterized by family clustering and most families lived far from the designated hospital. Therefore, we recommend the following: (1) the most stringent centralized medical observation measures should be taken to avoid transmission in family clusters; and (2) social media can help these patients get early attention during Wuhan's lockdown. These findings can help the government and the health department identify high-risk patients and accelerate emergency responses following public demands for help.

Concerns Expressed by Chinese Social Media Users During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo Microblogging Data.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global health crisis that is affecting economies and societies worldwide. During times of uncertainty and unexpected change, people have turned to social media platforms as communication tools and primary information sources. Platforms such as Twitter and Sina Weibo have allowed communities to share discussion and emotional support; they also play important roles for individuals, governments, and organizations in exchanging information and expressing opinions. However, research that studies the main concerns expressed by social media users during the pandemic is limited. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the main concerns raised and discussed by citizens on Sina Weibo, the largest social media platform in China, during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We used a web crawler tool and a set of predefined search terms (New Coronavirus Pneumonia, New Coronavirus, and COVID-19) to investigate concerns raised by Sina Weibo users. Textual information and metadata (number of likes, comments, retweets, publishing time, and publishing location) of microblog posts published between December 1, 2019, and July 32, 2020, were collected. After segmenting the words of the collected text, we used a topic modeling technique, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), to identify the most common topics posted by users. We analyzed the emotional tendencies of the topics, calculated the proportional distribution of the topics, performed user behavior analysis on the topics using data collected from the number of likes, comments, and retweets, and studied the changes in user concerns and differences in participation between citizens living in different regions of mainland China. RESULTS: Based on the 203,191 eligible microblog posts collected, we identified 17 topics and grouped them into 8 themes. These topics were pandemic statistics, domestic epidemic, epidemics in other countries worldwide, COVID-19 treatments, medical resources, economic shock, quarantine and investigation, patients' outcry for help, work and production resumption, psychological influence, joint prevention and control, material donation, epidemics in neighboring countries, vaccine development, fueling and saluting antiepidemic action, detection, and study resumption. The mean sentiment was positive for 11 topics and negative for 6 topics. The topic with the highest mean of retweets was domestic epidemic, while the topic with the highest mean of likes was quarantine and investigation. CONCLUSIONS: Concerns expressed by social media users are highly correlated with the evolution of the global pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has provided a platform for Chinese government departments and organizations to better understand public concerns and demands. Similarly, social media has provided channels to disseminate information about epidemic prevention and has influenced public attitudes and behaviors. Government departments, especially those related to health, can create appropriate policies in a timely manner through monitoring social media platforms to guide public opinion and behavior during epidemics.

Chinese Public's Attention to the COVID-19 Epidemic on Social Media: Observational Descriptive Study.

BACKGROUND: Since the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic in China in December 2019, information and discussions about COVID-19 have spread rapidly on the internet and have quickly become the focus of worldwide attention, especially on social media. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate and analyze the public's attention to events related to COVID-19 in China at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic (December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020) through the Sina Microblog hot search list. METHODS: We collected topics related to the COVID-19 epidemic on the Sina Microblog hot search list from December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020, and described the trend of public attention on COVID-19 epidemic-related topics. ROST Content Mining System version 6.0 was used to analyze the collected text for word segmentation, word frequency, and sentiment analysis. We further described the hot topic keywords and sentiment trends of public attention. We used VOSviewer to implement a visual cluster analysis of hot keywords and build a social network of public opinion content. RESULTS: The study has four main findings. First, we analyzed the changing trend of the public's attention to the COVID-19 epidemic, which can be divided into three stages. Second, the hot topic keywords of public attention at each stage were slightly different. Third, the emotional tendency of the public toward the COVID-19 epidemic-related hot topics changed from negative to neutral, with negative emotions weakening and positive emotions increasing as a whole. Fourth, we divided the COVID-19 topics with the most public concern into five categories: the situation of the new cases of COVID-19 and its impact, frontline reporting of the epidemic and the measures of prevention and control, expert interpretation and discussion on the source of infection, medical services on the frontline of the epidemic, and focus on the worldwide epidemic and the search for suspected cases. CONCLUSIONS: Our study found that social media (eg, Sina Microblog) can be used to measure public attention toward public health emergencies. During the epidemic of the novel coronavirus, a large amount of information about the COVID-19 epidemic was disseminated on Sina Microblog and received widespread public attention. We have learned about the hotspots of public concern regarding the COVID-19 epidemic. These findings can help the government and health departments better communicate with the public on health and translate public health needs into practice to create targeted measures to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19.

Phosphorylation of Arabidopsis SINA2 by CDKG1 affects its ubiquitin ligase activity.

BACKGROUND: SEVEN IN ABSENTIA (SINA) is a RING domain-containing ubiquitin ligase involved in Drosophila eye formation. SINA-like proteins in plants are involved in several signaling pathways. Of the 18 SINA-like proteins identified in Arabidopsis, SEVEN IN ABSENTIA 2 (SINA2) lacks a canonical RING domain and is thought to lack ubiquitin ligase activity. RESULTS: Our results show that SINA2 has E3 ligase activity in vitro, raising the possibility that a modified B-box domain may compensate for its lack of a RING domain. SINA2 physically interacts with the nuclear protein CYCLIN-DEPENDENT KINASE G1 (CDKG1), which acts as a positive regulator of plant responses to abiotic stress. CDKG1 is expressed in multiple tissues and its expression increased in response to abscisic acid (ABA) and osmotic stress. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants that ectopically express CDKG1 exhibit increased tolerance to ABA and osmotic stress treatments during seed germination and cotyledon development, while the loss-of-function cdkg1 mutant plants show reduced tolerance to ABA and osmotic stress treatments. Moreover, CDKG1-dependent phosphorylation of SINA2 positively affects its E3 ubiquitin ligase activity. CONCLUSIONS: Based on these results, we propose that CDKG1 modulates SINA2 ubiquitin ligase activity to regulate its effect on plant responses to ABA and osmotic stress.

Social Media Landscape of the Tertiary Referral Hospitals in China: Observational Descriptive Study.

BACKGROUND: Social media has penetrated all walks of life. Chinese health care institutions are increasingly utilizing social media to connect with their patients for better health service delivery. Current research has focused heavily on the use of social media in developed countries, with few studies exploring its usage in the context of developing countries, such as China. Tertiary hospitals in China are usually located in city centers, and they serve as medical hubs for multiple regions, with comprehensive and specialized medical care being provided. These hospitals are assumed to be the pioneers in creating official social media accounts to connect with their patients due to the fact that they appear to have more resources to support this innovative approach to communication and health care education. OBJECTIVE: The objective of our study was to examine China's best tertiary hospitals, as recognized by The National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China (NHCPRC), and to map out the landscape of current social media usage by hospitals when engaging with patients. METHODS: We examined the best 705 tertiary hospitals in China by collecting and analyzing data regarding their usage of popular Chinese social media apps Sina Weibo and WeChat. The specific data included (1) hospital characteristics (ie, time since established, number of beds, hospital type, and regions or localities) and (2) status of social media usage regarding two of the most popular local social media platforms in China (ie, time of initiation, number of followers, and number of tweets or posts). We further used a logistic regression model to test the association between hospital characteristics and social media adoption. RESULTS: Of all, 76.2% (537/705) tertiary referral hospitals have created official accounts on either Sina Weibo or WeChat, with the latter being more popular among the two. In addition, our study suggests that larger and newer hospitals with greater resources are more likely to adopt social media, while hospital type and affiliation with universities are not significant predictors of social media adoption among hospitals. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that hospitals are more inclined to use WeChat. The move by hospitals from Sina Weibo to WeChat indicates that patients are not satisfied by mere communication and that they now place more value on health service delivery. Meanwhile, utilizing social media requires comprehensive thinking from the hospital side. Once adopted, hospitals are encouraged to implement specific rules regarding social media usage. In the future, a long journey still lies ahead for hospitals in terms of operating their official social media accounts.

A Study of Users with Suicidal Ideation on Sina Weibo.

BACKGROUND: Suicide is a leading cause of death in China, and so suicide intervention on social media is an important issue in the field of public health. Sina Weibo (Weibo) is an emerging surveillance tool that may provide online assistance for users at the risk of suicide. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Keyword-based methods and supervised classifiers were employed to conduct this research. A control group was established to explore the differences between Weibo users with suicidal ideation (USI) and the general population. RESULTS: A total of 114 USI were detected from 1 million active Weibo users. By studying the negative postings of these USI, disclosure of the reasons for their bad moods was the most common theme. The emotions of USI tend to be particularly down between 05:00 pm and midnight. Use of the first-person pronoun by Weibo USI is significantly frequent. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings may help to identify individuals with suicidal ideation who are not identified by the traditional clinical approach. Consequently, detecting and helping individuals who may be at risk of committing suicide may become more efficient.

Phylogenetic analysis of the SINA/SIAH ubiquitin E3 ligase family in Metazoa.

BACKGROUND: The RAS signaling pathway is a pivotal developmental pathway that controls many fundamental biological processes including cell proliferation, differentiation, movement and apoptosis. Drosophila Seven-IN-Absentia (SINA) is a ubiquitin E3 ligase that is the most downstream signaling "gatekeeper" whose biological activity is essential for proper RAS signal transduction. Vertebrate SINA homologs (SIAHs) share a high degree of amino acid identity with that of Drosophila SINA. SINA/SIAH is the most conserved signaling component in the canonical EGFR/RAS/RAF/MAPK signal transduction pathway. RESULTS: Vertebrate SIAH1, 2, and 3 are the three orthologs to invertebrate SINA protein. SINA and SIAH1 orthologs are found in all major taxa of metazoans. These proteins have four conserved functional domains, known as RING (Really Interesting New Gene), SZF (SIAH-type zinc finger), SBS (substrate binding site) and DIMER (Dimerization). In addition to the siah1 gene, most vertebrates encode two additional siah genes (siah2 and siah3) in their genomes. Vertebrate SIAH2 has a highly divergent and extended N-terminal sequence, while its RING, SZF, SBS and DIMER domains maintain high amino acid identity/similarity to that of SIAH1. But unlike vertebrate SIAH1 and SIAH2, SIAH3 lacks a functional RING domain, suggesting that SIAH3 may be an inactive E3 ligase. The SIAH3 subtree exhibits a high degree of amino acid divergence when compared to the SIAH1 and SIAH2 subtrees. We find that SIAH1 and SIAH2 are expressed in all human epithelial cell lines examined thus far, while SIAH3 is only expressed in a limited subset of cancer cell lines. CONCLUSION: Through phylogenetic analyses of metazoan SINA and SIAH E3 ligases, we identified many invariant and divergent amino acid residues, as well as the evolutionarily conserved functional motifs in this medically relevant gene family. Our phylomedicinal study of this unique metazoan SINA/SIAH protein family has provided invaluable evolution-based support towards future effort to design logical, potent, and durable anti-SIAH-based anticancer strategies against oncogenic K-RAS-driven metastatic human cancers. Thus, this method of evolutionary study should be of interest in cancer biology.

The ubiquitin ligase SEVEN IN ABSENTIA (SINA) ubiquitinates a defense-related NAC transcription factor and is involved in defense signaling.

We recently identified a defense-related tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) NAC (NAM, ATAF1,2, CUC2) transcription factor, NAC1, that is subjected to ubiquitin-proteasome system-dependent degradation in plant cells. In this study, we identified a tomato ubiquitin ligase (termed SEVEN IN ABSENTIA3; SINA3) that ubiquitinates NAC1, promoting its degradation. We conducted coimmunoprecipitation and bimolecular fluorescence complementation to determine that SINA3 specifically interacts with the NAC1 transcription factor in the nucleus. Moreover, we found that SINA3 ubiquitinates NAC1 in vitro and promotes NAC1 degradation via polyubiquitination in vivo, indicating that SINA3 is a ubiquitin ligase that ubiquitinates NAC1, promoting its degradation. Our real-time PCR analysis indicated that, in contrast to our previous finding that NAC1 mRNA abundance increases upon Pseudomonas infection, the SINA3 mRNA abundance decreases in response to Pseudomonas infection. Moreover, using Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression, we found that overexpression of SINA3 interferes with the hypersensitive response cell death triggered by multiple plant resistance proteins. These results suggest that SINA3 ubiquitinates a defense-related NAC transcription factor for degradation and plays a negative role in defense signaling.

The tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factor (TRAF)-like family protein SEVEN IN ABSENTIA 2 (SINA2) promotes drought tolerance in an ABA-dependent manner in Arabidopsis.

Tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factor (TRAF) proteins play crucial roles in plant development and response to abiotic stress. Here, we present genetic evidence that SEVEN IN ABSENTIA 2 (SINA2), a TRAF-like family protein, is involved in abscisic acid (ABA)-related drought stress signaling in Arabidopsis. Gene expression, protein subcellular localization, protein-protein interaction, and a transient transcription dual-luciferase assay were performed. The drought tolerance of SINA2 loss-of-function mutants and SINA2-overexpressing plants was investigated. In Arabidopsis, SINA2 was significantly induced by ABA and drought treatment. The SINA2-YFP fusion protein was predominately localized in the nuclei and cytoplasm. Loss of function of SINA2 (sina2) reduced drought tolerance, whereas overexpression of SINA2 increased stomatal closure, decreased water loss, and therefore improved drought resistance in transgenic plants. Upon ABA treatment, expression of some key ABA- and stress-responsive genes decreased in the sina2 mutant, but increased in SINA2-overexpressing plants. Furthermore, SINA2 was induced in the ABA-deficient mutant by ABA, but not by drought stress. Thus, the drought response of SINA2 was ABA-dependent. ProSINA2::LUC expression in Arabidopsis protoplasts further revealed that ABA-responsive element (ABRE) binding (AREB) protein 1 (AREB1) AREB2 and ABRE-binding factor 3 (ABF3) might regulate SINA2 expression at the transcriptional level. Our results indicate that SINA2 functions as a positive molecular link between drought tolerance and ABA signaling in Arabidopsis.

Lithotectonic setting, paleoweathering, maturity, sediment recycling and paleoredox conditions of quaternary alluvium from Mayo Sina (Tchad). A geochemical approach.

The alluvial material in the two PITs of the Mayo Sina in the southern part of Chad, were subjected to a geochemical analysis in order to determine the source rock lithological composition, tectonic context, degree of weathering, type of climate at the period of weathering, and cycles of sedimentation and maturity. Plotting source lithology charts with values of La/Sc, Th/Sc, La/Co, and Cr/Th indicated that the sediments originated from a felsic source rock composition. The Enrichment of LREE/HREE and a negative chondrite Eu anomaly confirm the felsic source rock composition. A passive tectonic context for the source rock of the sediments is revealed by binary charts (SiO2 versus K2O/Na2O) in conjunction with innovative discrimination plots (DF 1 and DF 2 (Arc-Rift-Col)M1, DF (A-P)M, and DF (A-P)MT). The exceptional degree of plagioclase removal and weathering is demonstrated by the results of the Plagioclase Index of Alteration (PIX) and Chemical Index of Alteration (CIX). The proportion of SiO2/Al2O3 and the new index of compositional variation (ICVnew), which exclude iron and calcium oxides from the formula, indicate that the sediments are immature to mature. Schematic representations of K2O/Na2O ratio indicate that the sediments have undergone both primary to secondary phases of sedimentation.