Chemosensory proteins (CSPs) can bind and transport odorant molecules and play important roles in insect chemoreception. In this study, we focused on the roles of a chemosensory protein (BodoCSP1) in ...perception of host plant volatiles in Bradysia odoriphaga. The expression of BodoCSP1 was significantly higher in adults than in larvae and pupae, without a significant difference between male and female adults. Recombinant protein BodoCSP1 exhibited relatively high binding affinities to 9 out of 10 tested ligands (K i < 10 μM). Behavioral assays revealed that adults of B. odoriphaga showed a significant preference for five compounds. The predicted three-dimensional (3D) structure of BodoCSP1 has the typical six α-helices that form the hydrophobic ligand-binding pocket. Molecular docking and site-directed mutagenesis combined with ligand-binding assays indicated that Val48 and Thr66 may be the key binding site in BodoCSP1 for host plant volatiles. RNAi results indicated that dsBodoCSP1-treated adults showed significant reductions in response to diallyl disulfide, dipropyl disulfide, and allyl methyl disulfide. These results indicated that BodoCSP1 plays essential functions in the perception of host plant volatiles in B. odoriphaga.
The reaction of β,β-dicyanostyrene derivatives（l） with 1,3-dibromo-5,5-dimethylhydantoin（DBDMH） was systematicly studied. The reaction could generate different products when promoted by different ...mild bases. When the reaction was promoted by NaOAc（100%, molar ratio to compound 1）, β,β-dicyanostyrene derivatives could be directly converted into corresponding α,β-dehydroamino derivatives in good to excellent yields in one-pot. When the reaction was promoted by K3PO4（80%, molar ratio to compound 1）, the corresponding α,β-dehydroamino and double-α,β-dehydroamino compounds were simultaneously obtained and the total conversion of β,β-dicyanostyrene derivatives was up to 90% or higher.
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have sparked tremendous interest owing to their prominent potential in diagnostics and therapeutics. Isolation of EVs from complex biological fluids with high purity is ...essential to the accurate analysis of EV cargo. Unfortunately, generally used isolation techniques do not offer good separation of EVs from non-EV contaminants. Hence, it is important to have a standardized method to characterise the properties of EV preparations, including size distribution, particle concentration, purity and phenotype. Employing a laboratory-built nano-flow cytometer (nFCM) that enables multiparameter analysis of single EVs as small as 40 nm, here we report a new benchmark to the quality and efficiency assessment of EVs isolated from plasma, one of the most difficult body fluids to work with. The performance of five widely used commercial isolation kits was examined and compared with the traditional differential ultracentrifugation (UC). Two to four orders of magnitude higher particle concentrations were observed for EV preparations from platelet-free plasma (PFP) by kits when compared with the EV preparation by UC, yet the purity was much lower. Meanwhile, the particle size distribution profiles of EV preparations by kits closely resembled those of PFP whereas the EV preparation by UC showed a broader size distribution at relatively large particle size. When these kits were used to isolate EVs from vesicle-depleted PFP (VD-PFP), comparable particle counts were obtained with their corresponding EV preparations from PFP, which confirmed again the isolation of a large quantity of non-vesicular contaminants. As CD9, CD63 and CD81 also exist in the plasma matrix, single-particle phenotyping of EVs offers distinct advantage in the validation of EVs compared with ensemble-averaged approaches, such as Western blot analysis. nFCM allows us to compare different isolation techniques without prejudice.
The deep population history of East Asia remains poorly understood owing to a lack of ancient DNA data and sparse sampling of present-day people
. Here we report genome-wide data from 166 East Asian ...individuals dating to between 6000 BC and AD 1000 and 46 present-day groups. Hunter-gatherers from Japan, the Amur River Basin, and people of Neolithic and Iron Age Taiwan and the Tibetan Plateau are linked by a deeply splitting lineage that probably reflects a coastal migration during the Late Pleistocene epoch. We also follow expansions during the subsequent Holocene epoch from four regions. First, hunter-gatherers from Mongolia and the Amur River Basin have ancestry shared by individuals who speak Mongolic and Tungusic languages, but do not carry ancestry characteristic of farmers from the West Liao River region (around 3000 BC), which contradicts theories that the expansion of these farmers spread the Mongolic and Tungusic proto-languages. Second, farmers from the Yellow River Basin (around 3000 BC) probably spread Sino-Tibetan languages, as their ancestry dispersed both to Tibet-where it forms approximately 84% of the gene pool in some groups-and to the Central Plain, where it has contributed around 59-84% to modern Han Chinese groups. Third, people from Taiwan from around 1300 BC to AD 800 derived approximately 75% of their ancestry from a lineage that is widespread in modern individuals who speak Austronesian, Tai-Kadai and Austroasiatic languages, and that we hypothesize derives from farmers of the Yangtze River Valley. Ancient people from Taiwan also derived about 25% of their ancestry from a northern lineage that is related to, but different from, farmers of the Yellow River Basin, which suggests an additional north-to-south expansion. Fourth, ancestry from Yamnaya Steppe pastoralists arrived in western Mongolia after around 3000 BC but was displaced by previously established lineages even while it persisted in western China, as would be expected if this ancestry was associated with the spread of proto-Tocharian Indo-European languages. Two later gene flows affected western Mongolia: migrants after around 2000 BC with Yamnaya and European farmer ancestry, and episodic influences of later groups with ancestry from Turan.
The Qiangic languages in western Sichuan (WSC) are believed to be the oldest branch of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, and therefore, all Sino-Tibetan populations might have originated in WSC. ...However, very few genetic investigations have been done on Qiangic populations and no genetic evidences for the origin of Sino-Tibetan populations have been provided. By using the informative Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers, we analyzed the genetic structure of Qiangic populations. Our results revealed a predominantly Northern Asian-specific component in Qiangic populations, especially in maternal lineages. The Qiangic populations are an admixture of the northward migrations of East Asian initial settlers with Y chromosome haplogroup D (D1-M15 and the later originated D3a-P47) in the late Paleolithic age, and the southward Di-Qiang people with dominant haplogroup O3a2c1*-M134 and O3a2c1a-M117 in the Neolithic Age.
Deep shale reservoirs with burial depths of >3500 m are now the target of gas producing intervals in the Sichuan Basin, China. Due to the in situ high temperatures and pressures, methane in deep ...shale formations is supercritical, resulting in the inapplicability of some conventional adsorption models. To determine the methane adsorption capacity of deep shale and its influencing factors, different shale lithofacies from the Dongxi area of the southeastern Sichuan Basin are investigated and compared in this work. The nanopore structure of Wufeng (WF) and Longmaxi (LMX) gas shales are characterized using gas (nitrogen and carbon dioxide) physisorption and high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Methane isothermal adsorption experiments are carried out on typical shale samples at different temperatures (from 30 to 90 °C) and pressures (up to 32 MPa). The excess adsorption data are fitted by the supercritical Dubinin–Radushkevich (SDR) model, and the dominant influencing factors of methane adsorption in deep marine shale are determined. Four shale lithofacies are recognized in the study area, including silica-rich argillaceous shale (CM-1), siliceous shale (S), clay-rich siliceous shale (S-3), and argillaceous–siliceous mixed shale (M-2). Nanoscale organic matter (OM) pores, often in irregular, angular and flat shapes, are the dominant pore types in the WF and LMX shale samples. Generally, the pore size spectrum of OM pores is shale lithofacies dependent, e.g., 10–160 nm for S shale and 10–120 nm for CM-1 shale. Compared to other shale lithofacies, S shale exhibits the highest methane adsorption capacity, followed by M-2 shale, while CM-1 shale has the smallest methane adsorption capacity. The adsorption capacity of methane for deep WF and LMX shales is positively correlated with the total organic carbon (TOC) content, micropore volume, and micropore specific surface area. Absolute methane adsorption capacity of deep shale increases with the increase of pressure, but it will decrease at a higher temperature due to the negative and predominant effect of temperature on methane adsorption. The higher TOC content and more abundant small-sized pores promote the S shale to have the strongest adsorption capacity for methane molecules; this indicates that S shale is the most beneficial shale lithofacies for gas adsorption.
Hair plays an important role in primates and is clearly subject to adaptive selection. While humans have lost most facial hair, eyebrows are a notable exception. Eyebrow thickness is heritable and ...widely believed to be subject to sexual selection. Nevertheless, few genomic studies have explored its genetic basis. Here, we performed a genome-wide scan for eyebrow thickness in 2961 Han Chinese. We identified two new loci of genome-wide significance, at 3q26.33 near SOX2 (rs1345417: P = 6.51×10(-10)) and at 5q13.2 near FOXD1 (rs12651896: P = 1.73×10(-8)). We further replicated our findings in the Uyghurs, a population from China characterized by East Asian-European admixture (N = 721), the CANDELA cohort from five Latin American countries (N = 2301), and the Rotterdam Study cohort of Dutch Europeans (N = 4411). A meta-analysis combining the full GWAS results from the three cohorts of full or partial Asian descent (Han Chinese, Uyghur and Latin Americans, N = 5983) highlighted a third signal of genome-wide significance at 2q12.3 (rs1866188: P = 5.81×10(-11)) near EDAR. We performed fine-mapping and prioritized four variants for further experimental verification. CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing provided evidence that rs1345417 and rs12651896 affect the transcriptional activity of the nearby SOX2 and FOXD1 genes, which are both involved in hair development. Finally, suitable statistical analyses revealed that none of the associated variants showed clear signals of selection in any of the populations tested. Contrary to popular speculation, we found no evidence that eyebrow thickness is subject to strong selective pressure.
We recently reported that Riccardin D (RD) was able to induce apoptosis by targeting Topo II. Here, we found that RD induced cell cycle arrest in G2/M phase in PC-3 cells, and caused remarkable DNA ...damage as evidenced by induction of γH2AX foci, micronuclei, and DNA fragmentation in Comet assay. Time kinetic and dose-dependent studies showed that ATM/Chk2 and ATR/Chk1 signaling pathways were sequentially activated in response to RD. Blockage of ATM/ATR signaling led to the attenuation of RD-induced γH2AX, and to the partial recovery of cell proliferation. Furthermore, RD exposure resulted in the inactivation of BRCA1, suppression of HR and NHEJ repair activity, and downregulation of the expressions and DNA-end binding activities of Ku70/86. Consistent with the observations, microarray data displayed that RD triggered the changes in genes responsible for cell proliferation, cell cycle, DNA damage and repair, and apoptosis. Administration of RD to xenograft mice reduced tumor growth, and coordinately caused alterations in the expression of genes involved in DNA damage and repair, along with cell apoptosis. Thus, this finding identified a novel mechanism by which RD affects DNA repair and acts as a DNA damage agent in prostate cancer.
The Qiangic languages in western Sichuan (WSC) are believed to be the oldest branch of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, and therefore, all Sino-Tibetan populations might have originated in WSC. ...However, very few genetic investigations have been done on Qiangic populations and no genetic evidences for the origin of Sino-Tibetan populations have been provided. By using the informative Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers, we analyzed the genetic structure of Qiangic populations. Our results revealed a predominantly Northern Asian-specific component in Qiangic populations, especially in maternal lineages. The Qiangic populations are an admixture of the northward migrations of East Asian initial settlers with Y chromosome haplogroup D (D1-M15 and the later originated D3a-P47) in the late Paleolithic age, and the southward Di-Qiang people with dominant haplogroup O3a2c1*-M134 and O3a2c1a-M117 in the Neolithic Age.
We recently reported that Riccardin D (RD) was able to induce apoptosis by targeting Topo II. Here, we found that RD induced cell cycle arrest in G2/M phase in PC-3 cells, and caused remarkable DNA ...damage as evidenced by induction of gamma H2AX foci, micronuclei, and DNA fragmentation in Comet assay. Time kinetic and dose-dependent studies showed that ATM/Chk2 and ATR/Chk1 signaling pathways were sequentially activated in response to RD. Blockage of ATM/ATR signaling led to the attenuation of RD-induced gamma H2AX, and to the partial recovery of cell proliferation. Furthermore, RD exposure resulted in the inactivation of BRCA1, suppression of HR and NHEJ repair activity, and downregulation of the expressions and DNA-end binding activities of Ku70/86. Consistent with the observations, microarray data displayed that RD triggered the changes in genes responsible for cell proliferation, cell cycle, DNA damage and repair, and apoptosis. Administration of RD to xenograft mice reduced tumor growth, and coordinately caused alterations in the expression of genes involved in DNA damage and repair, along with cell apoptosis. Thus, this finding identified a novel mechanism by which RD affects DNA repair and acts as a DNA damage agent in prostate cancer.
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