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Barley leaf stripe, caused by Pyrenophora graminea, is an essential systemic seed-borne disease in barley worldwide. Barley is a major cereal crop in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, and barley production has been threatened by leaf stripe in this region, particularly in organic farming regions. Detecting the pathogen in infected barley seeds is crucial for managing barley leaf stripe. In this study, a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay was developed to detect the pathogen based on primers designed based on the sequence of the pig 14 gene (GenBank: AJ277800) of P. graminea. The optimal concentrations of MgSO4, dNTPs, and enzymes in the LAMP reaction system were established as 10.0 mM, 1.0 mM, and 8 U in a 25 μL reaction volume, respectively. The established LAMP methods for detecting P. graminea were optimally performed at 63 °C for 70 min with high reliability. The minimum detection limit was 1 × 10−2 ng·μL−1 in the 25 μL reaction system. The specificity of LAMP for P. graminea was validated with eight fungal species. All DNA extracts from P. graminea-infected barley seeds with incubation, intact, and smashed treatments were applied in LAMP and confirmed to enable the detection of the pathogen. The LAMP assay in this study could facilitate the detection of P. graminea in barley seeds onsite, provide information for seed health certificates, and help decide on seed treatment in leaf stripe management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer in the world, yet current treatment options are associated with limited success. The aim of the present study was to investigate the expression of ferritin in HNSCC and clarify whether it may serve as a biomarker for predicting HNSCC metastasis. The chemiluminescent immunoassay method was used to investigate the differences in the serum ferritin (SF) levels between patients with and without tumors, and between HNSCC with and without lymph node metastasis. The iron content and expression levels of ferritin were detected to verify the differences between tumor and normal tissues, and between HNSCC without and with lymph node metastasis. Data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) dataset was used to support the aforementioned results. No statistically significant difference in the SF level was observed between patients with and without tumors. Iron content and expression levels of ferritin heavy chain (FTH) and ferritin light chain (FTL) were higher in tumor tissues compared with normal tissues. The iron content and expression levels of SF, FTH and FTL were increased in HNSCC with metastasis compared with HNSCC without metastasis. The GEO dataset further verified the results and reported that the expression level of FTH was correlated with the prognosis of patients with HNSCC. Ferritin may not be a biomarker for the early diagnosis of HNSCC. However, an association exists between the expression level of ferritin and HNSCC cervical metastasis. SF may be a potential biomarker for predicting cervical lymph node metastasis in patients with HNSCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to cigarette smoke including secondhand smoking is the most important risk factor in the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease where incidence has substantially increased in recent decades. The mechanisms responsible for cigarette smoke-induced pulmonary inflammation remain unclear, and thus lack of effective treatment. The present study investigated the effect of calpeptin on attenuating cigarette smoke induced pulmonary inflammation and its potential mechanism and function. When BALB/c mice were exposed to cigarette smoke and received calpeptin intraperitoneally injection after 90 days, calpeptin histologically attenuated the accumulation of neutrophils (P < 0.001), eosinophils (P < 0.001), macrophages (P < 0.01), fibrinous exudation and proliferation within the interstitial and alveolar spaces. BEAS-2B cells were added with cigarette smoke extract in vitro and treated with calpeptin for 24 h in the treatment group. The markedly upregulation of μ-calpain (P < 0.01), m-calpain (P < 0.001) and IκBα (P < 0.01) in cigarette smoke-induced lungs were simultaneously decreased by calpeptin treatment (P < 0.05). The increased expression of μ-calpain, m-calpain and IκBα (P < 0.05) in cigarette smoke extract-stimulated BEAS-2B cells were also decreased by calpeptin treatment (P < 0.05). These data indicated that calpeptin attenuated cigarette smoke-induced pulmonary inflammation by suppressing the pathway of μ-calpain, m-calpain and IκBα in vivo and in vitro . Calpeptin might have a potential for prevention of the development of inflammatory pulmonary diseases and warrant further pharmaceutical investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a distal-scanning common path probe for optical coherence tomography (OCT) equipped with a hollow ultrasonic motor and a simple and specially designed beam-splitter. This novel probe proves to be able to effectively circumvent polarization and dispersion mismatch caused by fiber motion and is more robust to a variety of interfering factors during the imaging process, experimentally compared to a conventional noncommon path probe. Furthermore, our design counteracts the attenuation of backscattering with depth and the fall-off of the signal, resulting in a more balanced signal range and greater imaging depth. Spectral-domain OCT imaging of phantom and biological tissue is also demonstrated with a sensitivity of ∼ 1 0 0 dB and a lateral resolution of ∼ 3 μ m. This low-cost probe offers simplified system configuration and excellent robustness, and is therefore particularly suitable for clinical diagnosis as one-off medical apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the properties of Fourier transform, Fourier single-pixel imaging uses the illumination lights with cosine distributions to obtain the Fourier spectrum of the object, and then apply the inverse Fourier transform to reconstruct the spatial information of the object. This technique does not require detector arrays, such as charge coupled device and has proven to be insensitive to distortion, which is a great improvement over traditional photography techniques. In this manuscript, we present a detailed analysis and discussion on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of Fourier single-pixel imaging. Compared with conventional imaging whose SNR is independent of pixel number N, Fourier single-pixel imaging achieves an improved SNR which is up to N times as high as the dynamic range of detection. Furthermore, this SNR benefit is further confirmed experimentally, in cases of one dimension and two dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]