Sensory nerves of the brainstem are mostly composed of placode-derived neurons, neural crest-derived neurons and neural crest-derived Schwann cells. This mixed origin of cells has made it difficult ...to dissect interdependence for fiber guidance. Inner ear-derived neurons are known to connect to the brain after delayed loss of Schwann cells in ErbB2 mutants. However, the ErbB2 mutant related alterations in the ear and the brain compound interpretation of the data. We present here a new model to evaluate exclusively the effect of Schwann cell loss on inner ear innervation. Conditional deletion of the neural crest specific transcription factor, Sox10, using the rhombic lip/neural crest specific Wnt1-cre driver spares Sox10 expression in the ear. We confirm that neural crest-derived cells provide a stop signal for migrating spiral ganglion neurons. In the absence of Schwann cells, spiral ganglion neurons migrate into the center of the cochlea and even out of the ear toward the brain. Spiral ganglion neuron afferent processes reach the organ of Corti, but many afferent fibers bypass the organ of Corti to enter the lateral wall of the cochlea. In contrast to this peripheral disorganization, the central projection to cochlear nuclei is normal. Compared to ErbB2 mutants, conditional Sox10 mutants have limited cell death in spiral ganglion neurons, indicating that the absence of Schwann cells alone contributes little to the embryonic survival of neurons. These data suggest that neural crest-derived cells are dispensable for all central and some peripheral targeting of inner ear neurons. However, Schwann cells provide a stop signal for migratory spiral ganglion neurons and facilitate proper targeting of the organ of Corti by spiral ganglion afferents.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
A major current focus in the analysis of protein-protein interaction (PPI) data is how to identify essential proteins. As massive PPI data are available, this warrants the design of efficient ...computing methods for identifying essential proteins. Previous studies have achieved considerable performance. However, as a consequence of the features of high noise and structural complexity in PPIs, it is still a challenge to further upgrade the performance of the identification methods.
This paper proposes an identification method, named CTF, which identifies essential proteins based on edge features including h-quasi-cliques and uv-triangle graphs and the fusion of multiple-source information. We first design an edge-weight function, named EWCT, for computing the topological scores of proteins based on quasi-cliques and triangle graphs. Then, we generate an edge-weighted PPI network using EWCT and dynamic PPI data. Finally, we compute the essentiality of proteins by the fusion of topological scores and three scores of biological information.
We evaluated the performance of the CTF method by comparison with 16 other methods, such as MON, PeC, TEGS, and LBCC, the experiment results on three datasets of Saccharomyces cerevisiae show that CTF outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, our method indicates that the fusion of other biological information is beneficial to improve the accuracy of identification.
Celotno besedilo
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Physalis L. is a genus of herbaceous plants of the family Solanaceae, which has important medicinal, edible, and ornamental values. The morphological characteristics of Physalis species are similar, ...and it is difficult to rapidly and accurately distinguish them based only on morphological characteristics. At present, the species classification and phylogeny of Physalis are still controversial. In this study, the complete chloroplast (cp) genomes of four Physalis species (Physalis angulata, P. alkekengi var. franchetii, P. minima and P. pubescens) were sequenced, and the first comprehensive cp genome analysis of Physalis was performed, which included the previously published cp genome sequence of Physalis peruviana.
The Physalis cp genomes exhibited typical quadripartite and circular structures, and were relatively conserved in their structure and gene synteny. However, the Physalis cp genomes showed obvious variations at four regional boundaries, especially those of the inverted repeat and the large single-copy regions. The cp genomes' lengths ranged from 156,578 bp to 157,007 bp. A total of 114 different genes, 80 protein-coding genes, 30 tRNA genes, and 4 rRNA genes, were observed in four new sequenced Physalis cp genomes. Differences in repeat sequences and simple sequence repeats were detected among the Physalis cp genomes. Phylogenetic relationships among 36 species of 11 genera of Solanaceae based on their cp genomes placed Physalis in the middle and upper part of the phylogenetic tree, with a monophyletic evolution having a 100% bootstrap value.
Our results enrich the data on the cp genomes of the genus Physalis. The availability of these cp genomes will provide abundant information for further species identification, increase the taxonomic and phylogenetic resolution of Physalis, and assist in the investigation and utilization of Physalis plants.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Brain imaging technology is an important means to study brain diseases. The commonly used brain imaging technologies are fMRI and EEG. Clinical practice has shown that although fMRI is superior to ...EEG in observing the anatomical details of some diseases that are difficult to diagnose, its costs are prohibitive. In particular, more and more patients who use metal implants cannot use this technology. In contrast, EEG technology is easier to implement. Therefore, to break through the limitations of fMRI technology, we propose a brain imaging modality transfer framework, namely BMT-GAN, based on a generative adversarial network. The framework introduces a new non-adversarial loss to reduce the perception and style difference between input and output images. It also realizes the conversion from EEG modality data to fMRI modality data and provides comprehensive reference information of EEG and fMRI for radiologists. Finally, a qualitative and quantitative comparison with the existing GAN-based brain imaging modality transfer approaches demonstrates the superiority of our framework.
Most Siamese‐based trackers use classification and regression to determine the target bounding box, which can be formulated as a linear matching process of the template and search region. However, ...this only takes into account the similarity of features while ignoring the semantic object information, resulting in some cases in which the regression box with the highest classification score is not accurate. To address the lack of semantic information, an object tracking approach based on an ensemble semantic‐aware network and redetection (ESART) is proposed. Furthermore, a DarkNet53 network with transfer learning is used as our semantic‐aware model to adapt the detection task for extracting semantic information. In addition, a semantic tag redetection method to re‐evaluate the bounding box and overcome inaccurate scaling issues is proposed. Extensive experiments based on OTB2015, UAV123, UAV20L, and GOT‐10k show that our tracker is superior to other state‐of‐the‐art trackers. It is noteworthy that our semantic‐aware ensemble method can be embedded into any tracker for classification and regression task.
We innovatively propose object tracking using semantic‐aware ensemble learning for Siamese networks. We propose for the first time a semantic tag redetection method to rescore the tracker bounding boxes and replace the inaccurate bounding boxes.
Cholesterol, an abundant membrane component in both lipid rafts and caveolae of cell membrane, plays a crucial role in regulating the function and organization of various G-protein coupled receptors ...(GPCRs). However, the underlying mechanism for cholesterol-GPCR interaction is still unclear. To this end, we performed a series of microsecond molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) in the presence and absence of cholesterol molecules in the POPC bilayer. The unbiased MD simulation on the system with cholesterols reveals that cholesterol molecules can spontaneously diffuse to seven sites on the β2AR surfaces, three in the extracellular leaflet (e1–e3) and four in the intracellular leaflet (i1, i2, i4, and i5). The MD simulation identifies three cholesterol-binding sites (i2, e2, and e3) that are also observed in the crystal structures of several GPCRs. Cholesterol binding to site e1 lock Trp3137.40 into a certain conformation that may facilitate ligand–receptor binding, and cholesterol binding to site i2 provides a structural support for the reported cholesterol-mediate dimeric form of β2AR (PDB code 2RH1). In addition, both competitive and cooperative effects between cholesterols and phospholipids in binding to β2AR were observed in our MD simulations. Together, these results provide new insights into cholesterol–GPCR interactions.
There is growing scientific evidence supports a link between increased childhood adiposity and early onset of puberty in girls worldwide in recent decades. However, the data from Chinese girls remain ...ambiguous. The aims of this study were to estimate the puberty milestones and examine attainment of puberty associated with obesity and central obesity in Chinese Han schoolgirls.
The cross-sectional school-based study examined 2996 Han schoolgirls aged 9 to 19 years from 6 provinces in China. Trained clinicians assessed the girls for height, weight, waist circumference, Tanner stages of breast and pubic hair development, and menarcheal status. We classified girls as normal weight, overweight, or obese based on BMI, and as normal weight or central obese based on the waist-height ratio, then estimated and compared median age at a given Tanner stage or greater by weight class using Probit models.
The median age at menarche was 12.36 years. The median ages at breast stages(B) 2 through 5 were 10.03, 11.38, 13.39, and 15.79 years, respectively, and at pubic hair stages(PH) 2 through 5 were 11.62, 12.70, 14.38, and 16.92 years, respectively. Girls from urban areas experienced menarche, B3 and B4 stages, and PH3 through PH5 stages earlier. Girls with central obesity and overweight/obesity reached puberty earlier at almost every Tanner stage of breast and pubic hair than normal girls. Girls with obesity developed PH2 and PH3 earlier than their overweight peers. However, we did not find any significant differences between girls with overweight and obesity at all stages of breast development.
Childhood obesity, including both overweight/obesity and central obesity, is associated with earlier attainment of puberty in Chinese Han schoolgirls.
To observe the efficacy and safety of posterior sclera reinforcement over time.
This retrospective single-arm cohort study included children with high myopia who underwent the modified ...Snyder-Thompson type posterior sclera reinforcement surgery from 03/2015 to 08/2018 at Fuzhou Children's Hospital of Fujian Medical University. Axial length (AL), corneal radius of curvature (CRC), AL/CRC, refractive error, and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) were observed from 1 year before the operation to 2 years after.
Nineteen children (33 eyes) with high myopia were included. The patients were 4.9 ± 2.7 (range, 2-10) years of age (three patients were 10 years old, all others were ≤ 7 years old). AL increased from 1 year before surgery to 2 years after surgery (from 25.31 ± 1.59 to 26.76 ± 1.52, P < 0.001). The refractive error was smaller 1 year before surgery than at the other timepoints (all P < 0.05). BCVA improved over time (P < 0.001). Changes over time were also observed in horizontal CRC (hCRC), AL/hCRC, AL/vertical CRC (vCRC), and AL/CRC (all P < 0.001), but not in vCRC (P = 0.304). The increase of AL at 2 years after surgery was smaller than at 1 year before surgery and 1 year after surgery (both P < 0.001). The increase of AL/CRC at 2 years after surgery was smaller than at 1 year before surgery (0.04 ± 0.04 vs. 0.07 ± 0.04; P = 0.008).
In the short term, posterior scleral reinforcement surgery can delay the increase of AL of progressive high myopia.
Extreme pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) values have been associated with reduced fecundability and prolonged time to pregnancy in previous studies. However, the effect in fertile couples is ...unclear.
This study aimed to evaluate the association between pre-pregnancy BMI and fecundability, measured as time to pregnancy (TTP), among couples that achieved pregnancy within 1 year.
This was a retrospective cohort study of 50,927 couples wishing to conceive, enrolled in the National Free Preconception Health Examination Project (NFPHEP) in Chongqing, China, during 2012-2016. Participants' weight and height were measured by NFPHEP-trained preconception guidance physicians. TTP measured in months was used to determine subfecundity (TTP >6 months). The strength of association between BMI and TTP/subfecundity was measured with fecundability odds ratios (FOR)/odds ratios (OR) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI), calculated with Cox and logistic regression analysis. We used restricted cubic spline regression (RCS) to test the observed FOR trends.
Compared to women with normal BMI, women with pre-pregnancy overweight/obesity had longer TTP (FOR = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.94-0.99) and increased risk of subfecundity (OR = 1.08, 95% CI: 1.00-1.17). There was no association between TTP and male BMI. RCS trends varied when data were stratified by male pre-pregnancy BMI, with the greatest change detected in pre-pregnancy underweight men.
Pre-pregnancy overweight/obesity was associated with longer TTP and subfecundity among women who became pregnant within 1 year; this effect was likely mediated by their partners' pre-pregnancy BMI. These findings indicate that BMI could affect fecundability, independently of affecting the risk of sterility. Advice on weight management and maintaining healthy weight should be included in couples' preconception guidance.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Brain function networks (BFN) are widely used in the diagnosis of electroencephalography (EEG)-based major depressive disorder (MDD). Typically, a BFN is constructed by calculating the functional ...connectivity (FC) between each pair of channels. However, it ignores high-order relationships (e.g., relationships among multiple channels), making it a low-order network. To address this issue, a novel classification framework, based on matrix variate normal distribution (MVND), is proposed in this study. The framework can simultaneously generate high-and low-order BFN and has a distinct mathematical interpretation. Specifically, the entire time series is first divided into multiple epochs. For each epoch, a BFN is constructed by calculating the phase lag index (PLI) between different EEG channels. The BFNs are then used as samples, maximizing the likelihood of MVND to simultaneously estimate its low-order BFN (Lo-BFN) and high-order BFN (Ho-BFN). In addition, to solve the problem of the excessively high dimensionality of Ho-BFN, Kronecker product decomposition is used for dimensionality reduction while retaining the original high-order information. The experimental results verified the effectiveness of Ho-BFN for MDD diagnosis in 24 patients and 24 normal controls. We further investigated the selected discriminative Lo-BFN and Ho-BFN features and revealed that those extracted from different networks can provide complementary information, which is beneficial for MDD diagnosis.
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