Recently, carbon nanotubes together with other types of conductive materials have been used to enhance the viability and function of cardiomyocytes in vitro. Here we demonstrated a paradigm to construct ECTs for cardiac repair using conductive nanomaterials. Single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were incorporated into gelatin hydrogel scaffolds to construct three-dimensional ECTs. We found that SWNTs could provide cellular microenvironment in vitro favorable for cardiac contraction and the expression of electrochemical associated proteins. Upon implantation into the infarct hearts in rats, ECTs structurally integrated with the host myocardium, with different types of cells observed to mutually invade into implants and host tissues. The functional measurements showed that SWNTs were essential to improve the performance of ECTs in inhibiting pathological deterioration of myocardium. This work suggested that conductive nanomaterials hold therapeutic potential in engineering cardiac tissues to repair myocardial infarction.

Diabetes causes a variety of end-stage organ complications, including diabetic nephropathy. Metabolomics offers an approach for characterizing biofluid metabolic changes, but studies focusing on diabetic nephropathy are limited due to the loss of tissue-specific metabolic information. A microdialysis application for the sampling of intact endogenous metabolites has been developed, utilizing two probes simultaneously inserted into the kidney tissues and jugular vein of rats with type 2 diabetes. The comprehensive and quantitative analysis of 20 diagnostic biomarkers closely realated to type 2 diabetes and its complications were performed. Results indicated that amino acid and nucleotide levels were lower in diabetic rats, revealing that the metabolic pathways of amino acid, as well as purine and pyrimidine, were disturbed. Targeted metabolomics using mass spectrometry was performed to find potential therapeutic biomarkers and related metabolic pathways of Gardenia jasminoides (G. jasminoides) for treating diabetes. Results suggested that seven biomarkers in the kidney and five biomarkers in the blood were related to G. jasminoides. In addition, the marked perturbations of pathways were regulated after treatment with G. jasminoides, including amino acid metabolism and purine metabolism. These biomarkers and metabolic pathways provided new understanding for molecular mechanisms of G. jasminoides for treating diabetes and its complications.

Fundus albipunctatus (FA) is a rare autosomal recessive form of stationary night blindness characterized by the presence of white or white-yellow dots in the perimacular area and the periphery of the retina, with or without macular involvement. In this study, we examined four Chinese families with FA. Patients were given complete ophthalmic examinations, and blood samples were collected for DNA extraction. Three genes, RDH5, RLBP1 and RPE65, were screened by direct sequencing. Mutations in RDH5 were identified in three families and mutations in RPE65 were identified in one family. This is the second reported case of FA caused by mutations in RPE65.

Mammaglobin A (MGA) is an organ specific molecular biomarker for metastatic breast cancer diagnosis. However, there are still needs to develop optimal monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to detect MGA expression in breast carcinoma by immunohistochemistry. In this study, we first generated mAbs against MGA. Then, we used epitope prediction and computer-assisted structural analysis to screen five dominant epitopes and identified mAbs against five epitopes. Further immunohistochemical analysis on 42 breast carcinoma specimens showed that MHG1152 and MGD785 had intensive staining mainly in membrane, while CHH11617, CHH995 and MJF656 had more intensive staining within the cytoplasm. MGA scoring results showed that MJF656 had the highest rate (92.8%) of positive staining among five mAbs, including higher staining intensity when compared with that of MHG1152 (p < 0.01) and CHH995 (p < 0.05) and the highest the mean percentage of cells stained among mAbs. Furthermore, we analyzed the relationship of positive staining rate by mAbs with patient clinical characteristics. The results suggest that MJF656 was able to detect MGA expression, especially in early clinical stage, low grade and lymph node metastasis-negative breast carcinoma. In conclusion, our study generated five mAbs against MGA and identified the best candidate for detection of MGA expression in breast cancer tissues.

In recent years, with the widespread use of TiO2-GO nanocomposite in industry, especially in the remediation of water environments, its toxic effects on aquatic organisms have received increasing attention. As molting is extremely important for crustaceans in their growth, in this study, we cloned the full-length cDNA sequences of two key genes related to molting, nuclear hormone receptor E75 (E75) and nuclear hormone receptor HR3 (HR3), in Macrobrachium rosenbergii, examined the gene expression profile, and investigated their toxicological effects on crustacean molting through nanomaterial exposure. The amino acid sequences for E75 and HR3 were respectively determined to encode 1138 and 363 acid residues. Sequence analysis showed that both E75 and HR3 contain a HOLI domain, with the E75 of M. rosenbergii being more closely related to the E75 of Palaemon carinicauda. These two genes were expressed at the highest levels in muscle, followed by hepatopancreas. The results showed that the expressions of E75 and HR3 in hepatopancreas and muscle tissues were significantly decreased after exposure to 0.1 mg/L of TiO2-GO composite nanoparticles (P < 0.05). This study will serve as a foundation for subsequent research into the evaluation of nanomaterial toxicity on crustacean species.

Worldwide, Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death and poses a direct health threat, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type. In this study, we demonstrated that centrosomal protein 20 (CEP20) is upregulated in NSCLC tissues and associated with cancer invasion metastasis. Notably, CEP20 depletion inhibited NSCLC cell proliferation, migration, and microtubule polymerization. Mechanistically, we discovered that CEP20 is critical in the development of NSCLC by regulating microtubule dynamics and cell adhesion-related signaling pathways. Furthermore, the knockdown or overexpression of CEP20 affects microtubule polymerization in A549 cell lines. Our research provides a promising therapeutic target for the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer, as well as a theoretical and experimental basis for clinical application.

We conducted a meta-analysis to analyse the effect of metformin on survival of pancreatic cancer patients at various stages. We performed a systematic search of PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, and Web of Science to identify all relevant studies. Summary hazard ratios (HR) of survival and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated with a fixed or random effects model according to inter-study heterogeneity. Nine retrospective cohort studies and two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were eligible. There was a significant improvement in survival (HR = 0.86, 95% CI 0.76-0.97; P < 0.05) in the metformin group compared with control. Subgroup analysis indicated that metformin improved survival in patients with resection (HR = 0.79, 95% CI 0.69-0.91; P < 0.05) and patients with locally advanced tumors (HR = 0.68, 95% CI 0.55-0.84; P < 0.05) but not in patients with metastatic tumors, even when RCT data were included (HR = 0.99, 95% CI 0.70-1.40; P > 0.05), or were excluded (HR = 0.89, 95% CI 0.61-1.31; P > 0.05). This meta-analysis indicated that the effect of metformin does correlate with tumor stage but should be prudently considered given the limited and variable studies performed to data.

In order to provide valuable guidelines for the conservation of germplasm of Lateolabrax maculatus, the genetic diversity and population structure analysis were evaluated for eight geographic populations along coastal regions of China, using 11 microsatellite DNA markers. The genetic parameters obtained showed that, eight populations can be clustered into two groups, the Northern group and the Southern group, concordant with their geographical positions. The UPGMA tree constructed according to the Nei's genetic distance along with the structure analysis and discriminant analysis of principal component also supported this result. This might be explained by the geographic separation and the divergent environmental conditions among the populations. It's worth noting that, QD (Qingdao) population from northern area was assigned to the Southern group and showed a close genetic relationship and similar genetic constitution with the southern populations. We speculated that large scales of anthropogenic transportation of wild fries from QD populations to the southern aquaculture areas in history should be the primary cause. The populations from GY (Ganyu), RD (Rudong) and BH (Binhai) had higher genetic diversity and showed limited genetic exchange with other populations, indicating better conservation of the natural resources in these regions. All populations were indicated to have experienced bottleneck events in history.

Tremendous efforts have been made to explore biomarkers for classification and grading on gliomas. The goal of this study was to identify more molecular features that are associated with clinical outcomes by comparing the genomic profiles of primary and recurrent gliomas and determine potential recurrence leading factors that are significantly enriched in relapse tumors. Hybrid capture based next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis was performed on 64 primary and 17 recurrent glioma biopsies. Copy number variation (CNV) was more frequent in recurrent tumors and CDKN2A/B loss was significantly enriched. In addition, overall mutations in cell cycle pathway are more common in relapse tumors. The patterns of gene sets, including IDH1/TERT and IDH1/TP53 exhibited significant difference between the groups. Survival analysis uncovered the worse disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) associated with altered copy number and excessive activation of CELL CYCLE pathway. High Tumor Mutation Burden (TMB) was also a biomarker with great potential for poor prognosis. The assessment of genomic characteristics in primary versus recurrent gliomas aids the discovery of potential predictive biomarkers. The prognostic value of TMB in gliomas was raised for the first time.