Seahorses have a circum-global distribution in tropical to temperate coastal waters. Yet, seahorses show many adaptations for a sedentary, cryptic lifestyle: they require specific habitats, such as ...seagrass, kelp or coral reefs, lack pelvic and caudal fins, and give birth to directly developed offspring without pronounced pelagic larval stage, rendering long-range dispersal by conventional means inefficient. Here we investigate seahorses' worldwide dispersal and biogeographic patterns based on a de novo genome assembly of Hippocampus erectus as well as 358 re-sequenced genomes from 21 species. Seahorses evolved in the late Oligocene and subsequent circum-global colonization routes are identified and linked to changing dynamics in ocean currents and paleo-temporal seaway openings. Furthermore, the genetic basis of the recurring "bony spines" adaptive phenotype is linked to independent substitutions in a key developmental gene. Analyses thus suggest that rafting via ocean currents compensates for poor dispersal and rapid adaptation facilitates colonizing new habitats.
Bladder cancer (BLCA) typically has a poor prognosis due to high relapse and metastasis rates. A growing body of evidence indicates that N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) ...play crucial roles in the progression of BLCA and the treatment response of patients with BLCA. Therefore, we conducted a comprehensive RNA-seq analysis of BLCA using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to establish an m6A-related lncRNA prognostic signature (m6A-RLPS) for BLCA.
Consensus clustering analysis was used to investigate clusters of BLCA patients with varying prognoses. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression were used to develop the m6A-RLPS. The ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithms were used to evaluate the immune composition.
A total of 745 m6A-related lncRNAs were identified using Pearson correlation analysis (|R| > 0.4, p < 0.001). Fifty-one prognostic m6A-related lncRNAs were screened using univariate Cox regression analysis. Through consensus clustering analysis, patients were divided into two clusters (clusters 1 and 2) with different overall survival rates and tumor stages based on the differential expression of the lncRNAs. Enrichment analysis demonstrated that terms related to tumor biological processes and immune-related activities were increased in patient cluster 2, which was more likely to exhibit low survival rates. Nine m6A-related prognostic lncRNAs were finally determined and subsequently used to construct the m6A-RLPS, which was verified to be an independent predictor of prognosis using univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses. Further, a nomogram based on age, tumor stage, and the m6A-RLPS was generated and showed high accuracy and reliability with respect to predicting the survival outcomes of BLCA patients. The prognostic signature was found to be strongly correlated to tumor-infiltrating immune cells and immune checkpoint expression.
We established a novel m6A-RLPS with a favorable prognostic value for patients with BLCA. We believe that this prognostic signature can provide new insights into the tumorigenesis of BLCA and predict the treatment response in patients with BLCA.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Vision is the most important way for an unmanned picking or plant protection robot to navigate an external environment. To achieve intelligent picking or plant protection, it is essential to obtain ...target location information. A new marker-controlled watershed (MCW-D) algorithm is proposed for object segmentation. By analyzing the shortcomings of the watershed algorithm and the characteristics of objects, the proposed MCW-D method mainly solves three problems. First, it reduces the influence of shadow and other factors on image color information. Based on histogram specification, secondary mapping is used to reduce the effects of lighting. Second, marker images are selected. All points with markers need to be located in the target object. The hue feature of long jujubes and trees is used as the marker image. Third, a mask image is acquired, which requires a clear boundary between the target and the background. An adaptive angle rotation based on an energy-driven approach is designed to find large differences between the target and the background. In a natural environment, the proposed MCW-D method respectively achieves segmentation accuracies of 94.7% and 93.2% on a jujube dataset and a tree dataset, which exceed the accuracies of widely used machine learning methods. These results promote the development of the forest and fruit economies.
Axon specification is a critical step in neuronal development, and the function of glial cells in this process is not fully understood. Here, we show that
GLR glial cells regulate axon specification ...of their nearby GABAergic RME neurons through GLR-RME gap junctions. Disruption of GLR-RME gap junctions causes misaccumulation of axonal markers in non-axonal neurites of RME neurons and converts microtubules in those neurites to form an axon-like assembly. We further uncover that GLR-RME gap junctions regulate RME axon specification through activation of the CDK-5 pathway in a calcium-dependent manner, involving a calpain
. Therefore, our study reveals the function of glia-neuron gap junctions in neuronal axon specification and shows that calcium originated from glial cells can regulate neuronal intracellular pathways through gap junctions.
Purpose:
To identify whether ferroptosis-related genes play predictive roles in bladder cancer patients and to develop a ferroptosis-related gene signature to predict overall survival outcomes.
...Materials and Methods:
We downloaded the mRNA expression files and clinical data of 256 bladder samples (188 bladder tumour and 68 nontumour samples) from the GEO database and 430 bladder samples (411 bladder tumour and 19 nontumour samples) from the TCGA database. A multigene signature based on prognostic ferroptosis-related genes was constructed by least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression analysis in the GEO cohort. The TCGA cohort was used to validate the ferroptosis-related gene signature. Next, functional enrichment analysis, including both Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes and Gene Ontology analyses, was performed to elucidate the mechanism underlying the signature. The ssGSEA scores of 16 immune cells and 13 immune-related pathway activities between the high-risk and low-risk groups were also analysed in our study.
Results:
Thirty-three (67.3%) ferroptosis-related genes were differentially expressed between bladder tumour samples and nontumour samples in the GEO cohort. The intersection of prognostic ferroptosis-related genes and differentially expressed genes identified four prognostic targets, including ALOX5, FANCD2, HMGCR and FADS2. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression successfully built a 4-gene signature: risk score value = e
sum
(each gene’s normalized expression * each gene’s coefficient). Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed in both the GEO and TCGA cohorts to test the independent prognostic value of the 4-gene risk signature. Multivariate Cox regression analysis in the GEO cohort identified age (
p
< 0.001), grade (
p
= 0.129) and risk score (
p
= 0.016) as independent prognostic predictors for overall survival. Multivariate Cox regression analysis in the TCGA cohort also identified age (
p
= 0.002), stage (
p
< 0.001) and risk score (
p
= 0.006) as independent prognostic predictors for overall survival. The type II IFN response was determined to be significantly weakened in the high-risk group in both the GEO and TCGA cohorts.
Conclusion:
We successfully built a ferroptosis-related gene signature of significant predictive value for bladder cancer. These results suggest a novel research direction for targeted therapy of bladder cancer in the future.
Gap junctions are present in both vertebrates and invertebrates from nematodes to mammals. Although the importance of gap junctions has been documented in many biological processes, the molecular ...mechanisms underlying gap junction dynamics remain unclear. Here, using the C. elegans PLM neurons as a model, we show that UNC-44/ankyrin acts upstream of UNC-33/CRMP in regulation of a potential kinesin VAB-8 to control gap junction dynamics, and loss-of-function in the UNC-44/UNC-33/VAB-8 pathway suppresses the turnover of gap junction channels. Therefore, we first show a signal pathway including ankyrin, CRMP, and kinesin in regulating gap junctions.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study was conducted to address the rock burst problem caused by serious stress concentrations in coal seams. Based on the principle of inducing agent corrosion affecting coal components to ...soften coal, different inducers were selected to study the desensitization effect of acid leaching induction on coal components. The microscopic behavior characteristics of coal under acid leaching were analyzed, and the qualitative and quantitative laws were obtained for different acid leaching times and microscopic behavior characteristics. The results show the following: (1) The mixed acid solution as an inducer has the effect of immersion, dissolution, and fracture on coal. During the reaction process, the internal pores of the coal expand, and the height of the external liquid decreases. The mixed acid solution had the best effect in terms of the removal of minerals in coal. (2) Under microscopic conditions, the internal crack width of the coal body expanded several times after mixed acid soaking; the difference in the unevenness before and after compression fracture was stable at 25–27%, and the mixed acid expanded the gap in the coal. (3) This practical study shows that the characterization changes of the mixed acid solution, injected into the borehole, combines the characteristics of the citric acid and phosphoric acid solution. The minerals around the borehole are dissolved, and the debris fuses with the solution. The liquid is viscous and forms a film on the surface of the solution. The mixed acid has a more obvious effect on the immersion and dissolution of coal.
Increasing evidence suggests the essential regulation of RNA N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modification in carcinogenesis and immune response. Nevertheless, the potential impacts of these modifications on ...the tumor microenvironment (TME) immune cell infiltration characteristics in clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) remain unclear. Utilizing a consensus clustering algorithm, we determined three m6A modification patterns and identified three m6A-related gene clusters among 569 ccRCC samples, which were associated with different biological functions and clinical outcomes. Thereafter, the m6A score was constructed using m6A-associated signature genes to accurately exploit the m6A modification patterns within individual tumors. The m6A score was further demonstrated to be noticeably related to ccRCC prognosis. In addition, the m6A score was found to be strongly correlated with tumor mutational burden (TMB), microsatellite instability, immune infiltration, immune checkpoint expression, and immunotherapy response, which was also validated in the pan-cancer analyses. Our findings thoroughly elucidated that m6A modification contributes to tumor microenvironment immune-infiltrating characteristics and prognosis in ccRCC. Assessing the m6A modification patterns of individual patients with ccRCC will offer novel insights into TME infiltration and help develop more effective treatment strategies.