The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global health emergency. Various omics results have been reported for COVID-19, but the molecular hallmarks of COVID-19, especially in those ...patients without comorbidities, have not been fully investigated. Here we collect blood samples from 231 COVID-19 patients, prefiltered to exclude those with selected comorbidities, yet with symptoms ranging from asymptomatic to critically ill. Using integrative analysis of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and lipidomic profiles, we report a trans-omics landscape for COVID-19. Our analyses find neutrophils heterogeneity between asymptomatic and critically ill patients. Meanwhile, neutrophils over-activation, arginine depletion and tryptophan metabolites accumulation correlate with T cell dysfunction in critical patients. Our multi-omics data and characterization of peripheral blood from COVID-19 patients may thus help provide clues regarding pathophysiology of and potential therapeutic strategies for COVID-19.
Breast milk is tailored for optimal growth in all infants; however, in some infants, it is related to a unique phenomenon referred to as breast milk jaundice (BMJ). BMJ is a type of prolonged ...unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia that is often late onset in otherwise healthy-appearing newborns, and its occurrence might be related to breast milk itself. This review aims to systematically evaluate evidence regarding breast milk composition and the development of BMJ in healthy neonates. PubMed, Scopus and Embase were searched up to 13 February 2023 with key search terms, including neonates, hyperbilirubinemia, and breastfeeding. A total of 678 unique studies were identified and 12 were ultimately included in the systematic review with narrative synthesis. These included studies covered both nutritional compositions (e.g., fats and proteins) and bioactive factors (e.g., enzymes and growth factors) of breast milk and formally assessed the difference in the concentration (or presence) of various endogenous components of breast milk collected from mothers of BMJ infants and healthy infants. The results were inconsistent and inconclusive for most of the substances of interest, and there was only a single study available (e.g., total energy and mineral content, bile salts and cytokines); conflicting or even contradictory results arose when there were two or more studies on the subject matter (e.g., fats and free fatty acids contents and epidermal growth factor). The etiology of BMJ is likely multifactorial, and no single constituent of breast milk could explain all the BMJ cases observed. Further well-designed studies are warranted to investigate the complex interaction between maternal physiology, the breast milk system and infant physiology before this field could be progressed to uncover the etiology of BMJ.
Drawing on sentiment analysis, this study explores public opinions on the higher education expansion policy that was specifically implemented by China’s government to navigate graduate employment ...difficulties against the impact of COVID-19. The results indicated that the overall degree of acceptance of the expansion plan was highly positive, but some people expressed negative opinions and concerns about over-education and deferral of employment pressure. The results also suggested that the government is expected to deal with the balance between higher education expansion and graduate employment difficulties by prioritizing domestic graduate employment rather than opening up permanent resident applications for foreigners, allocating a regionally balanced expansion quota, covering social science disciplines, and creating more employment opportunities. The findings provide important suggestions for policymakers to improve policy practice and offer a referable sample for other countries in their management of graduate employment issues influenced by COVID-19.
Grounded on the social exchange theory (SET), social cognitive theory (SCT), and self-determination theory (SDT), this study aims to explore the mediating role of self-efficacy (SE) and work ...engagement (WE) on the effect of social support (SS) on job satisfaction (JS) among Chinese ethnic minority kindergarten teachers (KTs). The results show that: (1) SS has a directly significant effect on JS; (2) WE mediates the relationship between SS and JS; and (3) SE mediates the relationship between SS and WE. Although the mediation of SE on the relationship between SS and JS is not found, the posited multiple mediations of SE and WE on the relationship between SS and JS are totally accepted. The results reveal that SS mainland Chinese ethnic minority KTs received can not only have a direct effect on JS but also have an indirect impact through the one-path mediating role of WE and the chain mediating role of SE and WE. The results suggest that governments, supervisors, and sponsors should work together to provide ethnic minority KTs with more prioritized SS from both cultural psychology and financial material and opportunities for facilitating professional knowledge and skills in order to enhance their SE, inspire their WE, and eventually accumulate their JS.
Abstract
Motivation
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a commonly used tool in genetics to capture and visualize population structure. Due to technological advances in sequencing, such as the ...widely used non-invasive prenatal test, massive datasets of ultra-low coverage sequencing are being generated. These datasets are characterized by having a large amount of missing genotype information.
Results
We present EMU, a method for inferring population structure in the presence of rampant non-random missingness. We show through simulations that several commonly used PCA methods cannot handle missing data arisen from various sources, which leads to biased results as individuals are projected into the PC space based on their amount of missingness. In terms of accuracy, EMU outperforms an existing method that also accommodates missingness while being competitively fast. We further tested EMU on around 100K individuals of the Phase 1 dataset of the Chinese Millionome Project, that were shallowly sequenced to around 0.08×. From this data we are able to capture the population structure of the Han Chinese and to reproduce previous analysis in a matter of CPU hours instead of CPU years. EMU’s capability to accurately infer population structure in the presence of missingness will be of increasing importance with the rising number of large-scale genetic datasets.
Availability and implementation
EMU is written in Python and is freely available at https://github.com/rosemeis/emu.
Supplementary information
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Nectins are adhesion molecules that play a crucial role in the organization of epithelial and endothelial junctions and function as receptors for the entry of herpes simplex virus. However, the role ...of Nectin4 remains poorly understood in fish. In this study, nectin4 gene was cloned from medaka (OlNectin4). OlNectin4 was located on chromosome 18 and contained 11 exons, with a total genome length of 25754 bp, coding sequences of 1689 bp, coding 562 amino acids and a molecular weight of 65.5 kDa. OlNectin4 contained four regions, including an Immunoglobulin region, an Immunoglobulin C-2 Type region, a Transmembrane region and a Coiled coil region. OlNectin4 shared 47.18 % and 25.00 % identity to Paralichthys olivaceus and Mus musculus, respectively. In adult medaka, the transcript of nectin4 was predominantly detected in gill. During red spotted grouper nervous necrosis virus (RGNNV) infection, overexpression of OlNectin4 in GE cells significantly increased viral gene transcriptions. Meanwhile, Two mutants named OlNectin4△4 (+4 bp) and OlNectin4△7 (−7 bp) medaka were established using CRISPR-Cas9 system. Nectin4-KO medaka had higher mortality than WT after infected with RGNNV. Moreover, the expression of RGNNV RNA2 gene in different tissues of the Nectin4-KO were higher than WT medaka after challenged with RGNNV. The brain and eye of Nectin4-KO medaka which RGNNV mainly enriched, exhibited significantly higher expression of interferon signaling genes than in WT. Taken together, the OlNectin4 plays a complex role against RGNNV infection by inducing interferon responses for viral clearance.
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•The nectin4 mutants of Japanese medaka were generated by CRISPR/Cas9.•Nectin4-KO medaka demonstrated higher mortality than WT.•Overexpression of Nectin4 in GE cells significantly increased viral gene transcriptions.•The medaka Nectin4 plays a complex role against RGNNV infection by inducing interferon responses for viral clearance firstly.
This article aims to examine the employment prospects of graduates from Sino-foreign cooperative universities (SFCUs) compared with those from local Chinese universities. Drawing on the annual ...employment quality reports released by six SFCUs, the findings indicated that SFCU graduates had distinct advantages in terms of both further study and direct employment. Specifically, the overall employment rate reached 95.84%; over half of the graduates pursued further study abroad in world-class foreign universities, close to one-third continued further studies in elite domestic universities, and one-sixth were employed by transnational or local large organizations. These results suggest that SFCU graduates were equipped with distinct competitive advantages for employment, further supported by an affluent family background and the high-quality requirement for admission. Meanwhile, the findings also raise concerns about brain drain, economic flows, overeducation, reduced entrepreneurial passion, and unemployment dilemma for graduates from lesser known SFCUs.
Aims/hypothesis
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is the most common disorder in pregnancy; however, its underlying causes remain obscure. This study aimed to investigate the genetic and molecular ...risk factors contributing to GDM and glycaemic traits.
Methods
We collected non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT) sequencing data along with four glycaemic and 55 biochemical measurements from 30,699 pregnant women during a 2 year period at Shenzhen Baoan Women’s and Children’s Hospital in China. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were conducted between genotypes derived from NIPTs and GDM diagnosis, baseline glycaemic levels and glycaemic levels after glucose challenges. In total, 3317 women were diagnosed with GDM, while 19,565 served as control participants. The results were replicated using two independent cohorts. Additionally, we performed one-sample Mendelian randomisation to explore potential causal associations between the 55 biochemical measurements and risk of GDM and glycaemic levels.
Results
We identified four genetic loci significantly associated with GDM susceptibility. Among these,
MTNR1B
exhibited the highest significance (rs10830963-G, OR 95% CI 1.57 1.45, 1.70,
p
=4.42×10
–29
), although its effect on type 2 diabetes was modest. Furthermore, we found 31 genetic loci, including 14 novel loci, that were significantly associated with the four glycaemic traits. The replication rates of these associations with GDM, fasting plasma glucose levels and 0 h, 1 h and 2 h OGTT glucose levels were 4 out of 4, 6 out of 9, 10 out of 11, 5 out of 7 and 4 out of 4, respectively. Mendelian randomisation analysis suggested that a genetically regulated higher lymphocytes percentage and lower white blood cell count, neutrophil percentage and absolute neutrophil count were associated with elevated glucose levels and an increased risk of GDM.
Conclusions/interpretation
Our findings provide new insights into the genetic basis of GDM and glycaemic traits during pregnancy in an East Asian population and highlight the potential role of inflammatory pathways in the aetiology of GDM and variations in glycaemic levels.
Data availability
Summary statistics for GDM; fasting plasma glucose; 0 h, 1 h and 2h OGTT; and the 55 biomarkers are available in the GWAS Atlas (study accession no.: GVP000001,
https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gwas/browse/GVP000001)
.
Graphical Abstract
•The bit depth of the state-of-the-art liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) devices is increasing beyond the standard 8 bit.•The extra bit depth is expected to improve the image quality of the ...information display systems, in which the LCOS devices operate as an amplitude spatial light modulator (SLM).•The benefit of the extra depth, however, has not been proven when the LCOS devices operates in the phase-only mode for the beam steering applications.•The impact of the extra bit depth on the performance of the hologram optimization algorithms has not been investigated either. In this paper, we evaluated the beam steering performance of the phase-only LCOS devices operating at different bit depths.•We also demonstrated a hologram optimization technique that was less sensitive to the bit depth of the LCOS device.
The bit depth of the state-of-the-art liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) devices is increasing beyond the standard 8 bit. The extra bit depth is expected to improve the image quality of the information display systems, in which the LCOS devices operate as an amplitude spatial light modulator (SLM). The benefit of the extra depth, however, has not been proven when the LCOS devices operates in the phase-only mode for the beam steering applications. The impact of the extra bit depth on the performance of the hologram optimisation algorithms has not been investigated either. In this paper, we evaluated the beam steering performance of the phase-only LCOS devices operating at different bit depths. We also demonstrated a hologram optimisation technique that was less sensitive to the bit depth of the LCOS device.
Background: University students with a vocational pathway face greater cultural, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral challenges during the transition process than their counterparts with an ...academic route. Method: This study examined the predictive effect of bicultural identity integration, self-esteem, academic resilience, and interaction anxiousness on school belonging using a quantitative approach with 326 Chinese vocational pathway university student participants. Result: The participants had high levels of cultural adaptability, self-esteem, academic resilience, and school belonging, but they also displayed moderate interaction anxiousness. Bicultural identity integration (B = 0.24; p < 0.001), self-esteem (B = 0.35; p < 0.001), and academic resilience (B = 0.25; p < 0.001) significantly positively predicted school belonging, while interaction anxiousness (B = −0.17; p < 0.01) negatively predicted school belonging. Conclusions: Bicultural identity integration, self-esteem, academic resilience, and interaction anxiousness were crucial determinants of school belonging among Chinese university students with vocational qualifications. Effective measures should be initiated to boost their feelings of being recognized, respected, and connected to the university community.
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