This study aimed to explore the effects of lncRNA ANRIL on vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and angiogenesis in diabetes mellitus (DM) combined with cerebral infarction (CI) through NF-κB ...signaling pathway.
Adult male Wistar rats were randomly divided into control group and DM + CI group, and the DM + CI group were subdivided into Vector, shANRIL, PDTC, pcDNA-ANRIL, and pcDNA-ANRIL + PDTC groups. VEGF and FMS-like tyrosine kinase (FLT-1) expressions were measured by immunohistochemistry and endothelium dependent microvessel density (MVD) was detected by differentiation 31 (CD31) and para-amiuosalicylic acid (PAS) double staining. The qRT-PCR was applied to measure mRNA expressions of VEGF, FLT-1, Kinase insert domain protein receptor (FLK-1) and NF-κB, and Western blotting was conducted to detected expressions of VEGF, NF-κB and p-IκB/IκB.
Compared with the control group, protein expressions of VEGF, NF-κB, p-IκB/IκB, expression of ANRIL, and mRNA expressions of VEGF, FLT-1 and NF-κB were increased in the DM + CI group. Compared with the Vector group, protein expressions of VEGF, NF-κB, p-IκB/IκB, expression of ANRIL, mRNA expressions of VEGF, FLT-1 and NF-κB, and endothelium dependent MVD were increased in the pcDNA-ANRIL group, while decreased in the shANRIL group and PDTC group. Compared with the pcDNA-ANRIL group, protein expressions of VEGF, NF-κB, p-IκB/IκB, expression of ANRIL, mRNA expressions of VEGF, FLT-1 and NF-κB, and endothelium dependent MVD were decreased in the pcDNA-ANRIL + PDTC group.
Overexpressed lncRNA ANRIL upregulates VEGF and promotes angiogenesis by activating NF-κB signaling pathway in DM + CI rats. .
To improve the performance of named entity recognition in the lack of well-annotated entity data, a transfer learning-based Chinese named entity recognition model is proposed in this paper. The ...specific tasks are as follows: (1) first/, a data transfer method based on entity features is proposed. By calculating the similarity of feature distribution between low resource data and high resource data, the most representative entity features are selected for feature transfer mapping, and the distance of entity distribution between the two domains is calculated to make up the gap between the data of the two domains then model is trained by high resource data. (2) Then, an entity boundary detection method is proposed. This method utilizes the BiLSTM+CRF as the main structure and integrates character boundary information to assist the attention network to improve the model’s ability to recognize entity boundaries. (3) Finally, multiple named entity recognition methods are selected as baseline methods for comparison, and experiments are conducted on several datasets. The results show that the model proposed in this paper improves the accuracy of named entity recognition by 1%, the recall rate by 2%, and the
F
1 value by 2% on average in the field with low-resource.
Transcription factor nuclear factor of activated T cells c4 (NFATc4) is the best-characterized target for the development of cardiac hypertrophy. Aberrant microRNA-29 (miR-29) expression is involved ...in the development of cardiac fibrosis and congestive heart failure. However, whether miR-29 regulates hypertrophic processes is still not clear. In this study, we investigated the potential functions of miR-29a-3p in endothelin-1 (ET-1)-induced cardiomyocyte hypertrophy. We showed that miR-29a-3p was down-regulated in ET-1-treated H9c2 cardiomyocytes. Overexpression of miR-29a-3p significantly reduced ET-1-induced hypertrophic responses in H9c2 cardiomyocytes, which was accompanied by a decrease in NFATc4 expression. miR-29a-3p targeted directly to the 3′-UTR of NFATc4 mRNA and silenced NFATc4 expression. Our results indicate that miR-29a-3p inhibits ET-1-induced cardiomyocyte hypertrophy via inhibiting NFATc4 expression.
•ET-1 down-regulates miR-29a-3p expression.•Overexpression of miR-29a-3p inhibits ET-1-induced hypertrophic responses.•MiR-29a-3p inhibits NFATc4 expression.•MiR-29a-3p targets 3′-UTR of NFATc4 mRNA.
Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) possess the potential to differentiate into endothelial cells (EC). DNA methylation plays an important role in cell differentiation during development. However, ...the role of the DNA methyltransferases Dnmt1 and Dnmt3a in specific arterial differentiation of hMSCs is not clear. Here, we show that the CpG islands in the promoter regions of the EC specification and arterial marker genes were highly methylated in hMSCs based on bisulfite genomic sequencing. Treatment with the DNMT inhibitor 5-aza-dc induced the reactivation of EC specification and arterial marker genes by promoting demethylation of these genes as well as stimulating tube-like structure formation. The hMSCs with stable knockdown of Dnmt1/Dnmt3a were highly angiogenic and expressed several arterial specific transcription factors and marker genes. A Matrigel plug assay confirmed that Dnmt1/Dnmt3a stable knockdown hMSCs enhanced blood vessel formation compared with WT MSCs. We also identified that the transcription factor E2F1 could upregulate the transcription of arterial marker genes by binding to the promoters of arterial genes, suggesting its critical role for arterial specification. Moreover, miRNA gain/loss-of-function analyses revealed that miR152 and miR30a were involved in endothelial differentiation of hMSCs by targeting Dnmt1 and Dnmt3a, respectively. Taken together, these data suggest that Dnmt1 and Dnmt3a are critical regulators for epigenetic silencing of EC marker genes and that E2F1 plays an important role in promoting arterial cell determination. Stem Cells 2016;34:1273-1283.
Machine learning-based software defect prediction (SDP) approaches have been commonly proposed to help to deliver high-quality software. Unfortunately, all the previous research conducted without ...effective feature reduction suffers from high-dimensional data, leading to unsatisfactory prediction performance measures. Moreover, without proper feature reduction, the interpretability and generalization ability of machine learning models in SDP may be compromised, hindering their practical utility in diverse software development environments. In this paper, an SDP approach using deep Q-learning network (DQN)-based feature extraction is proposed to eliminate irrelevant, redundant, and noisy features and improve the classification performance. In the data preprocessing phase, the undersampling method of BalanceCascade is applied to divide the original datasets. As the first step of feature extraction, the weight ranking of all the metric elements is calculated according to the expected cross-entropy. Then, the relation matrix is constructed by applying random matrix theory. After that, the reward principle is defined for computing the Q value of Q-learning based on weight ranking, relation matrix, and the number of errors, according to which a convolutional neural network model is trained on datasets until the sequences of metric pairs are generated for all datasets acting as the revised feature set. Various experiments have been conducted on 11 NASA and 11 PROMISE repository datasets. Sensitive analysis experiments show that binary classification algorithms based on SDP approaches using the DQN-based feature extraction outperform those without using it. We also conducted experiments to compare our approach with four state-of-the-art approaches on common datasets, which show that our approach is superior to these methods in precision, F-measure, area under receiver operating characteristics curve, and Matthews correlation coefficient values.
Background
Robot‐assisted puncture has gradually attracted more attention and practical clinical application. The lesion positioning and the needle positioning are the basis to ensure the accuracy of ...puncture and the key techniques in insertion operation.
Methods
A lesion positioning method is established which is realized only by the robot‐CT system without using external positioning system, and an omnidirectional needle positioning method is also developed and realized by using VRCM, in order to make the puncture needle always keep pointing to the lesion point. A CT‐guided surgical robotic system used for minimally invasive percutaneous lung is designed and the physical prototype is manufactured, to perform in‐vitro experiments, thereby to validate the effectiveness of the lesion positioning method and the feasibility of omnidirectional needle positioning method.
Results
The accuracy of established lesion positioning method based on three non‐collinear markers is within 3 mm, which is similar to that of the least squares method based on the five non‐coplanar markers, but the positioning efficiency can be improved by about 40%, and the non‐collinearity of markers is easier to be satisfied than non‐coplanarity in practical applications. The average calculation error of the established positioning method is 0.997 mm. Moreover, the omnidirectional positioning of the puncture needle under the designed surgical robot is feasible.
Conclusions
The designed surgical robot has good control accuracy and it can satisfy the requirements for use. The established lesion positioning method can provide a good precision basis for robot‐assisted puncture surgery. The suitable insertion point and insertion posture can be determined by the developed omnidirectional needle positioning method. This study can provide theoretical reference for further study of path planning or autonomous positioning.
Heterotrimeric G proteins have been shown to transmit ultraviolet B (UV-B) signals in mammalian cells, but whether they also transmit UV-B signals in plant cells is not clear. In this paper, we ...report that 0.5 W m⁻² UV-B induces stomatal closure in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) by eliciting a cascade of intraceflular signaling events including Gα protein, hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), and nitric oxide (NO). UV-B triggered a significant increase in H₂O₂ or NO levels associated with stomatal closure in the wild type, but these effects were abolished in the single and double mutants of AtrbohD and AtrbohF or in the Nia1 mutants, respectively. Furthermore, we found that UV-B-mediated H₂O₂ and NO generation are regulated by GPA1, the Gα-subunit of heterotrimeric G proteins. UV-B-dependent H₂O₂ and NO accumulation were nullified in gpa1 knockout mutants but enhanced by overexpression of a constitutively active form of GPA1 (cGα). In addition, exogenously applied H₂O₂ or NO rescued the defect in UV-B-mediated stomatal closure in gpa1 mutants, whereas cGα AtrbohD/AtrbohF and cGα nia1 constructs exhibited a similar response to AtrbohD/AtrbohF and Nia1, respectively. Finally, we demonstrated that Gα activation of NO production depends on H₂O₂. The mutants of AtrbohD and AtrbohF had impaired NO generation in response to UV-B, but UV-B-induced H₂O₂ accumulation was not impaired in Nia1. Moreover, exogenously applied NO rescued the defect in UV-B-mediated stomatal closure in the mutants of AtrbohD and AtrbohF. These findings establish a signaling pathway leading to UV-B-induced stomatal closure that involves GPA1-dependent activation of H₂O₂ production and subsequent Nia1-dependent NO accumulation.
Background. Early screening for syphilis among pregnant women and the effective treatment of maternal syphilis is fundamental to prevent congenital syphilis (CS). Methods. We obtained data from the ...Shenzhen Program for Prevention of CS (SPPCS) and estimated incidence rates of CS among infants born to syphilis-seropositive women treated with different regimens or untreated for maternal syphilis. Results. A total of 4746 matched cases of syphilis-seropositive mothers and their infants were included for analyses, and 162 infants were diagnosed with CS, providing an overall incidence of 3.41% (95% confidence interval CI, 2.91%–3.98%). Among infants born to syphilis-seropositive women who had syphilis and were adequately treated before pregnancy, the incidence was 0.22% (95% CI, .05%–.66%). There were 159 cases of CS occurring in 3519 infants born to women who were syphilis-seropositive during their pregnancies, for an incidence of 4.52% (95% CI, 3.84%–5.28%). The incidence of CS was 1.82%–11.90% lower among infants born to the women treated with early benzathine penicillin G (BPG) compared with those treated with late BPG (adjusted odds ratio aOR, 8.06 95% CI, 2.93–22.21; P < .001), other antibiotics (aOR, 7.71 95% CI, .86–69.28; P = .068), or those untreated (aOR, 68.28 95% CI, 29.64–157.28; P < .001). The incidence rates were 0.22% (95% CI, .06%–.80%) and 0.59% (95% CI, .35%–1.02%) in infants born to women treated with 2 courses and 1 course of BPG, respectively, corresponding to a risk difference of 0.37% (aOR, 1.74; 95% CI, .37–8.26). Conclusions. Treatment of syphilis-seropositive pregnant women with 1 course of intramuscular BPG before 28 gestational weeks is critical for prevention of CS.
Although it is well acknowledged that persistent infection with high-risk human papillomavirus types in genital sites plays a crucial role in the development of squamous cell cervical carcinoma, ...there is no unanimous consensus on the association between non-HPV sexually transmitted infections and abnormal cervical cytology.
In the present study, we evaluated cervical cytology status, sexually transmitted infections and bacterial vaginosis status, and collected social-demographic information among recruited participants to explore the association of STIs and bacterial vaginosis with abnormal cervical cytology.
9,090 women's specimens were successfully tested, with a total of 8,733 (96.1%) women had normal cytology and 357 (3.9%) women exhibited abnormal cytology. The prevalence of HPV, Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and bacterial vaginosis was significantly higher in the ≥ASC-US group than the NILM group (P<0.05). Women with Neisseria gonorrhoeae infection (AOR = 5.30, 95% CIs = 1.30-21.51, P = 0.020) or bacterial vaginosis (AOR = 1.94, 95% CIs = 1.08-3.47, P = 0.026) exhibited an increased risk of abnormal cervical cytology after adjusted for carcinogenic HPV-positive status.
Our results demonstrated that Neisseria gonorrhoeae infection in genital sites and/or bacterial vaginosis may independently increase the risk for cervical cytology abnormalities after adjusted for carcinogenic HPV-positive status. Besides, these results improved our understanding of the etiology of abnormal cervical cytology and may be useful for the management of women with ASC-US cytology.
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