Aberrant Wnt/β-catenin signaling has often been reported in different cancers, particularly colorectal cancer (CRC), and this signaling cascade is central to carcinogenesis. Approximately 80% of CRC ...cases harbor mutations in the adenomatous polyposis coli gene, and half of the remaining cases feature mutations in the β-catenin gene that affect the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. Unsurprisingly, the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway has potential value as a therapeutic target in the treatment of CRC. Several inhibitors of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway have been developed for CRC treatment, but so far no molecular therapeutic targeting this pathway has been incorporated into oncological practice. In this review, we discuss the role of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in CRC and its potential as a target of innovative therapeutic approaches for CRC.
Single-cell analysis is a valuable tool for dissecting cellular heterogeneity in complex systems
. However, a comprehensive single-cell atlas has not been achieved for humans. Here we use single-cell ...mRNA sequencing to determine the cell-type composition of all major human organs and construct a scheme for the human cell landscape (HCL). We have uncovered a single-cell hierarchy for many tissues that have not been well characterized. We established a 'single-cell HCL analysis' pipeline that helps to define human cell identity. Finally, we performed a single-cell comparative analysis of landscapes from human and mouse to identify conserved genetic networks. We found that stem and progenitor cells exhibit strong transcriptomic stochasticity, whereas differentiated cells are more distinct. Our results provide a useful resource for the study of human biology.
The evolution of the ω phase and its role in plastic deformation in a twinning-induced plasticity β Ti–12 V–2Fe–1Al alloy aged at 373–573 K have been studied in this work. The results show that ...isothermal ω forms at about 398 K and above, and the growth of isothermal ω is accompanied by a rejection of solute atoms from ω into β. The composition partitioning increases internal elastic strain energy and hydrostatic pressure resulting from the coherency of isothermal ω phase in β. Moreover, the isothermal ω phase becomes hard and even undeformable due to composition partitioning based on first-principles calculations. It is suggested that the internal elastic strain stabilizes the β phase, which suppresses {332} deformation twinning and leads to dislocation glide and stress-induced ω phase transformation in the alloy aged at low temperature. And the embrittlement of the alloy aged at high temperature is thought to arise from undeformability of isothermal ω phase.
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•Evolution of ω phase and its role in plastic deformation in aged β Ti–12 V–2Fe–1Al alloy were investigated.•Isothermal ω forms at 398 K and growth of ω is accompanied by rejecting solute-atoms from ω into β.•Composition partitioning increases internal elastic strain energy and hydrostatic pressure due to coherency of ω in β.•Internal elastic strain stabilizes β phase and changes plastic deformation mechanism of aged alloy.•Isothermal ω becomes hard and even undeformable due to composition partitioning, leading to brittle fracture of aged alloy.
Self-nonself discrimination is a common theme for all of the organisms in different evolutionary branches, which is also the most fundamental step for host immune protection. Plenty of pattern ...recognition receptors (PRRs) with great diversity have been identified from different organisms to recognize various pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) in the last two decades, depicting a complicated scene of host-pathogen interaction. However, the detailed mechanism of the complicate PAMPs-PRRs interactions at the contacting interface between pathogens and hosts is still not well understood. All of the cells are coated by glycosylation complex and thick carbohydrates layer. The different polysaccharides in extracellular matrix of pathogen-host are important for nonself recognition of most organisms. Coincidentally, massive expansion of PRRs, majority of which contain recognition domains of Ig, leucine-rich repeat (LRR), C-type lectin (CTL), C1q and scavenger receptor (SR), have been annotated and identified in invertebrates by screening the available genomic sequence. The phylum Mollusca is one of the largest groups in the animal kingdom with abundant biodiversity providing plenty of solutions about pathogen recognition and immune protection, which might offer a suitable model to figure out the common rules of immune recognition mechanism. The present review summarizes the diverse PRRs and common elements of various PAMPs, especially focusing on the structural and functional characteristics of canonical carbohydrate recognition proteins and some novel proteins functioning in molluscan immune defense system, with the objective to provide new ideas about the immune recognition mechanisms.
•Optical properties of four types of onions were measured at 633nm.•Onion skins have significantly higher absorption and scattering coefficients than flesh.•Onion skins and flesh are high-albedo ...biological materials.•The light propagation in multi-layer onion tissues was modeled by Monte Carlo simulations.
Understanding the optical properties of onion tissues is essential to applying optical methods for onion quality inspection. This study estimated the optical properties of dry skin, wet skin, and flesh of red, Vidalia sweet, white, and yellow onions at the wavelength of 633nm. The total diffuse reflectance, total transmittance, and collimated transmittance of single-layer onion tissues were measured by spectroscopic systems. Based on the measured data, the absorption coefficient μa and the reduced scattering coefficient μ′s of onion tissues were calculated using the inverse adding-doubling method. The results indicated that the dry and wet skins had significantly higher μa and μ′s than the flesh at 633nm. For both skins and flesh, the μa varied between cultivars, while the differences of the μ′s between cultivars were less profound. All types of onion tissues were high-albedo materials at 633nm. Using the calculated optical properties, Monte Carlo simulations were performed to model the light propagation in 25 different scenarios of multi-layer onion tissues for four cultivars, respectively. The results showed that the incident light at 633nm would lose 99% of its energy within 6 layers in any of the simulated scenarios, and the light penetrated more layers in the sweet onions than in the other three cultivars. This work provided fundamental understanding of the optical properties of onion tissues and the light propagation in onion bulbs at 633nm. The investigation of the onion optical properties will be extended to a broader spectrum in the future.
Although the outcome of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients has improved significantly with the recent implementation of annual screening programs, reliable prognostic biomarkers are still needed due to ...the disease heterogeneity. Increasing pieces of evidence revealed an association between immune signature and CRC prognosis. Thus, we aim to build a robust immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs) signature that can estimate prognosis for CRC. Gene expression profiles and clinical information of CRC patients were collected from six public cohorts, divided into training cohort (n = 565) and five independent validation cohorts (n = 572, 290, 90 177 and 68, respectively). Within 1534 immune genes, a 19 IRGPs signature consisting of 36 unique genes was constructed which was significantly associated with the survival. In the validation cohorts, the IRGPs signature significantly stratified patients into high- vs low-risk groups in terms of prognosis across and within subpopulations with early stages disease and was prognostic in univariate and multivariate analyses. Several biological processes, including response to bacterium, were enriched among genes in the IRGPs signature. Macrophage M2 and mast cells were significantly higher in the high-risk risk group compared with the low-risk group. The IRGPs signature achieved a higher accuracy than commercialized multigene signatures for estimation of survival. When integrated with clinical factors such as sex and stage, the composite clinical and IRGPs signature showed improved prognostic accuracy relative to IRGPs signatures alone. In short, we developed a robust IRGPs signature for estimating prognosis in CRC, including early-stage disease, providing new insights into the identification of CRC patients with a high risk of mortality.
Abstract Shadow education has burgeoned into a global phenomenon, and over the last 30 years, a substantial body of literature has emerged to explore this trend. Drawing on bibliometric data from 377 ...articles retrieved from the Web of Science (WOS), this study investigates the evolving landscape of shadow education research. It examines historical publication trends through performance analysis, intellectual sources and evolving themes using co‐citation analysis, complemented by co‐word analysis. Major authors and collaboration dynamics are discerned through co‐authorship analysis, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of collaborative networks. Additionally, the study constructs an evolution path for shadow education research published in journals, employing citation analysis supplemented by social network analysis methods. In conclusion, the study not only illuminates the historical trajectory of shadow education as a concept but also poses pertinent questions and offers recommendations for future research. Our research significantly contributes to the comprehension of how shadow education has evolved from a nascent concept into a global research discourse.
Deep learning provides a promising approach for air pollution prediction. The existing deep learning-based predicted models generally consider either the temporal correlations of air quality ...monitoring stations or the nonlinear relationship between the PM2.5 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 μm) concentrations and explanatory variables. Spatial correlation has not been effectively incorporated into prediction models, therefore exhibiting poor performance in PM2.5 prediction tasks. Additionally, determining the manner by which to expand longer-term prediction tasks is still challenging. In this paper, to allow for spatiotemporal correlations, a spatiotemporal convolutional recursive long short-term memory (CR-LSTM) neural network model is proposed for predicting the PM2.5 concentrations in long-term prediction tasks by combining a convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) neural network and a recursive strategy. Herein, the ConvLSTM network was used to capture the complex spatiotemporal correlations and to predict the future PM2.5 concentrations; the recursive strategy was used for expanding the long-term prediction tasks. The CR-LSTM model was used to realize the prediction of the future 24 h of PM2.5 concentrations for 12 air quality monitoring stations in Beijing by configuring both the appropriate time lag derived from the temporal correlations and the spatial neighborhood, including the hourly historical PM2.5 concentrations, the daily mean meteorological data, and the annual nighttime light and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The results showed that the proposed CR-LSTM model achieved better performance (coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.74; root mean square error (RMSE) = 18.96 μg/m3) than other common models, such as multiple linear regression (MLR), support vector regression (SVR), the conventional LSTM model, the LSTM extended (LSTME) model, and the temporal sliding LSTM extended (TS-LSTME) model. The proposed CR-LSTM model, implementing a combination of geographical rules, recursive strategy, and deep learning, shows improved performance in longer-term prediction tasks.
In this work, graphene quantum dots (GQDs) with an average size of 3.9 nm were synthesized using rice husk biomass as the raw material via a facile one-step one-pot hydrothermal method. The size and ...morphology of the rice husk-derived GQDs were characterized by transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The GQDs exhibit bright blue photoluminescence under 365 nm ultraviolet irradiation and can be well dispersed in water. The GQDs reach the strongest photoluminescence excitation intensity at ca. 360 nm under an emission wavelength of 466 nm, suggesting that the GQDs were oxidized with oxygenous groups attached. The quenching tests showed that the synthesized GQDs were highly and selectively sensitive toward Fe3+ ions and thus can potentially be used for Fe3+ sensing.