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Camellia oleifera is an important woody oil tree species unique to China. It is known as the world's four major woody oil crops along with olive, oil palm and coconut. It is known as the # king of oil' because of its high oil content. With the increase of people's attention to the yield of Camellia oleigera, its high yield has become the focus. In traditional breeding model, judgment is performed by phenotypic traits, but this method is single and easily affected by the environment, and can no longer meet the demand. In contrast, molecular marker breeding is not affected by the environment, and is stable and efficient and capable of accurately mapping target genes, so it has attracted much attention. In this paper, the research progress on C. oleifera germpljsm resources diversity, DNA fingerprinting construction, genetic linkage map construction and QTL mapping was summarized, and the application of SSR molecular marker technique combined with association analysis in C. oleifera breeding in recent years was discussed, in order to provide new ideas for high-yield breeding of C. oleifera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foraging food in a novel environment is essential for survival. Animals coordinate the complex motivated states and decide whether to initiate feeding or escape from unfamiliar scenes. Neurons in the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) receive multiple inputs from the hypothalamus, forebrain, and caudal brainstem that are known to regulate feeding behavior. The PVT neurons also project to the forebrain regions that are involved in reward and motivation. Notably, the PVT neurons projecting to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) are activated when an incentive stimulus is presented. Optogenetic activation of the PVT-NAc path has been shown to increase the motivation for sucroseseeking in instrumental tasks. However, how the PVT circuitry regulates the feeding behavior in a novel environment remains largely obscure. In the present study, we found that the activity of glutamatergic neurons in the anterior PVT (aPVT) projecting to the NAc dictates the novelty-suppressed feeding behavior in mice. Optogenetic activation of the aPVT-NAc projection increased the feeding time and food consumption in mice under a moderate food restriction in a novel open field where the food was placed in the central area. The exploratory and anxiety-like behaviors, however, were not altered by the aPVT-NAc activation. Our work reveals that activation of the aPVT-NAc pathway in mice generates a motivation to consume food in a novel environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weak voltage signals cannot be reliably measured using currently available logging tools when these tools are subject to high-temperature (up to 200 °C) environments for prolonged periods. In this paper, we present a digital lock-in amplifier (DLIA) capable of operating at temperatures of up to 200 °C. The DLIA contains a low-noise instrument amplifier and signal acquisition and the corresponding signal processing electronics. The high-temperature stability of the DLIA is achieved by designing system-in-package (SiP) and multi-chip module (MCM) components with low thermal resistances. An effective look-up-table (LUT) method was developed for the lock-in amplifier algorithm, to decrease the complexity of the calculations and generate less heat than the traditional way. The performance of the design was tested by determining the linearity, gain, Q value, and frequency characteristic of the DLIA between 25 and 200 °C. The maximal nonlinear error in the linearity of the DLIA working at 200 °C was about 1.736% when the equivalent input was a sine wave signal with an amplitude of between 94.8 and 1896.0 nV and a frequency of 800 kHz. The tests showed that the DLIA proposed could work effectively in high-temperature environments up to 200 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PinX1 plays positive and negative roles in the maintenance of telomerase and telomeres, as well as in tumorigenesis. The aim of the present study was to investigate the expression and clinical significance of PinX1 in colorectal carcinoma (CRC) and to determine the effect of PinX1 on CRC cell proliferation and apoptosis. A total of 86 CRC patients treated with radical resection and 5-fluorouracil-based adjuvant chemotherapy were enrolled in this study. The expression dynamics of PinX1 was detected by immunohistochemistry in the CRC patients and 25 normal colonic mucosa controls. PinX1 expression was significantly reduced in tumor tissues as compared to normal tissues, and the rate of PinX1 protein low/negative expression in CRC and normal tissues was 60% (52/86) and 24% (6/25), respectively (P=0.037). In addition, PinX1 downregulation was significantly associated with short overall survival (P=0.016) and disease-free survival (P=0.042) in CRC patients. Cox proportional hazards model further revealed that PinX1 expression was an independent factor in predicting overall survival and disease-free survival for CRC patients. Furthermore, we demonstrated that ectopic overexpression of PinX1 in CRC cells inhibited their proliferation, promoted apoptosis, repressed telomerase activity, and induced telomere shortening. These findings suggest that PinX1 may be a prognostic biomarker for CRC patients' survival and that it inhibits cell proliferation and promotes apoptosis by repressing telomerase activity and inducing telomere shortening. Targeting PinX1 may therefore provide a novel therapeutic strategy for CRC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is characterized by the reciprocal translocation t(15;17), which fuses PML with retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARa). Although PML-RARa is crucially important for pathogenesis and responsiveness to treatment, the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which PML-RARa exerts its oncogenic potential have not been fully elucidated. Recent reports have suggested that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) contribute to the precise control of gene expression and are involved in human diseases. Little is known about the role of lncRNA in APL. Methods: We analyzed NEAT1 expression in APL samples and cell lines by real-time quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR). The expression of PML-RARa was measured by Western blot. Cell differentiation was assessed by measuring the surface CD11b antigen expression by flow cytometry analysis. Results: We found that nuclear enriched abundant transcript 1 (NEAT1), a lncRNA essential for the formation of nuclear body paraspeckles, is significantly repressed in de novo APL samples compared with those of healthy donors. We further provide evidence that NEAT1 expression was repressed by PML-RARa. Furthermore, significant NEAT1 upregulation was observed during all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA)-induced NB4 cell differentiation. Finally, we demonstrate the importance of NEAT1 in myeloid differentiation. We show that reduction of NEAT1 by small interfering RNA (siRNA) blocks ATRA-induced differentiation. Conclusions: Our results indicate that reduced expression of the nuclear long noncoding RNA NEAT1 may play a role in the myeloid differentiation of APL cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the influences of signal bandwidth and phase delay on the spatial resolution of complex susceptibility based magnetic particle imaging (csMPI) are investigated by modeling the transfer function of the measurement circuit. Based on the simulation and experimental results, it is found that the signal bandwidth and the phase delay will significantly impact on the spatial resolution of csMPI. To avoid the influence of narrow signal bandwidth and phase delay of measurement circuit on csMPI, a resonance measurement circuit with  −3 dB bandwidth of 2.3 kHz (much larger than the signal bandwidth of the desired csMPI signal) and resonance frequency of 12.8 kHz is adopted to measure the weak nonlinear magnetization of the magnetic nanoparticles; a phase compensation is used when calculating the real and the imaginary components of ac magnetic susceptibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method for remote measurement of the temperatures of metal containers using magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) is described. A differential structure composed of three inductors with iron cores was used to counteract the effect of the magnetic permeabilities of metal and air on the inductance. The change in inductance caused by the change in the temperature of MNPs attached either to the surface of or within a metal container was calculated from the output voltage amplitude of an AC bridge. The temperature of the object was then calculated from the AC-temperature model for the MNPs. The temperatures of the bottom and inside of a stainless-steel pot was measured by the proposed method within an accuracy of 2 K in the temperature range from 320 K to 400 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]