AIM: To explore the expression of heparanase mRNA and point mutation in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS: Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction was used to measure the expression of ...heparanase mRNA in the primary tumor tissues and surrounding liver tissues of 33 HCC patients. T-A cloning and sequencing were used to detect whether there was any mutation in the amplified PCR products. RESULTS: The expression of heparanase mRNA waspositive in 16 primary tumor tissues of HCC, and the positive rate was 48.5%, which was significantly higher than that in the surrounding liver parenchyma (P<0.01). The positive rate for heparanase gene in high-tendency to metastatic recurrence group (71.4%, 10/14) was obviously higher than that in low-tendency to metastatic recurrence group (31.6%, 6/19) (P= 0.023). The positive rate for heparanase gene in paltients with metastatic recurrence during postoperative follow-up (78.6%, 11/14) was also significantly higher than that in those without metastatic recurrence (21.4%, 3/14) (P = 0.003). Sequence analysis of the HPA PCR products was made in 7 patients, and 2-point mutations were found in 4 patients, one of which was sense mutation, neither base insertion nor deletion was detected. The mutation rate was 57.1% (4/7). CONCLUSION- The expression rate of heparanase mRNA increases in HCC, and HPA mRNA may be one of the reliable markers for the metastatic activity gained by the liver tumor cells and could be used clinically in predicting metastatic recurrence of HCC. Point mutation may be one of the causes for enhanced heparanase mRNA expression.
Stability is one of the key issues in mixed-halide perovskite alloys which are promising in emergent optoelectronics. Previous density-functional-theory (DFT) and machine learning studies indicate ...that the formation-energy convex hulls of these materials are very shallow, and stable alloy compositions are rare. In this work, we revisit this problem using DFT with special focus on the effects of configuration and vibration entropies. Allowed by the \(20\)-atomic models for the \(\text{CsPb}(\text{I}_{1-x}^{}\text{Br}_x^{})_3^{}\) and \(\text{CsPb}(\text{Br}_{1-x}^{}\text{Cl}_x^{})_3^{}\) series, the partition functions and therewith thermodynamic state functions are calculated by traversing all possible mixed-halide configurations. We can thus evaluate the temperature- and system-dependent configuration entropy, which largely corrects the conventional approach based on the ideal solution model. Finally, temperature-composition phase diagrams that include \(\alpha\), \(\beta\), \(\gamma\) and \(\delta\) phases of both alloys are constructed based on the free energy data, for which the contribution of phonon vibrations is included.
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