Search

With the cutting-edge advancements in computer vision, facial expression recognition (FER) is an active research area due to its broad practical applications. It has been utilized in various fields, including education, advertising and marketing, entertainment and gaming, health, and transportation. The facial expression recognition-based systems are rapidly evolving due to new challenges, and significant research studies have been conducted on both basic and compound facial expressions of emotions; however, measuring emotions is challenging. Fueled by the recent advancements and challenges to the FER systems, in this article, we have discussed the basics of FER and architectural elements, FER applications and use-cases, FER-based global leading companies, interconnection between FER, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud computing, summarize open challenges in-depth to FER technologies, and future directions through utilizing Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta Analyses Method (PRISMA). In the end, the conclusion and future thoughts are discussed. By overcoming the identified challenges and future directions in this research study, researchers will revolutionize the discipline of facial expression recognition in the future., Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests., (©2024 Ullah et al.)

In autonomous driving and Intelligent transportation systems, pedestrian detection is vital in reducing traffic accidents. However, detecting small-scale and occluded pedestrians is challenging due to the ineffective utilization of the low-feature content of small-scale objects. The main reasons behind this are the stochastic nature of weight initialization and the greedy nature of nonmaximum suppression. To overcome the aforesaid issues, this work proposes a multifocus feature extractor module by fusing feature maps extracted from the Gaussian and Xavier mapping function to enhance the effective receptive field. We also employ a focused attention feature selection on a higher layer feature map of the single shot detector (SSD) region proposal module to blend with its low-layer feature to tackle the vanishing of the feature detail due to convolution and pooling operation. In addition, this work proposes a decaying nonmaximum suppression function considering score and Intersection Over Union (IOU) parameters to tackle high miss rates caused by greedy nonmaximum suppression used by SSD. Extensive experiments have been conducted on the Caltech pedestrian dataset with the original annotations and the improved annotations. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, particularly for small and occluded pedestrians., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Addis Abebe Assefa et al.)

Previous studies have shown that perennial Chan training leads to improvements in brain functioning. However, few studies have investigated the effects of short-term Huatou Chan training. The current study explored the effects of a three-day Huatou Chan training on physical and emotional health, as well as brain state. Seventy healthy subjects were recruited and divided into two groups: the Huatou Chan group and the Control group. The Huatou Chan group received a 3-day Huatou Chan training, while the Control group waited for three days. Both groups completed a 6 min Brain State Index recording, the SCL-90, the brief profile of mood state, the meaning in life questionnaire, and the Index of Well-being, prior to and after the training or waiting period. Results showed that short-term Huatou Chan training had significant benefits on some aspects such as physical and emotional health (obsessive-compulsive, depression, hostility, and psychoticism), negative emotions (tension-anxiety, depression-dejection, anger-hostility, fatigue-inertia, and confusion-bewilderment), well-being, and attitude towards life. In addition, short-term Chan training can significantly improve brain state, as shown by the index of depression, anxiety, alerting and intelligence. This is the first study to provide direct evidence for the benefits of short-term intensive Huatou Chan training on physical and mental health., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Rationale: ApoC2 is an important activator for lipoprotein lipase-mediated hydrolysis of triglyceride-rich plasma lipoproteins. ApoC2-deficient patients display severe hypertriglyceridemia (sHTG) and recurrent acute pancreatitis. However, due to embryonic lethality in ApoC2 deleted mouse extensive understanding of ApoC2 function is limited in mammalian species., Objective: We sought to generate an animal model with ApoC2 deficiency in a rodent with some human-like features and then study the precise effects of ApoC2 on lipid and glucose homeostasis., Methods and Results: Using CRISPR/Cas9, we deleted Apoc2 gene from golden Syrian hamster and the homozygous (-/-) pups can be born in matured term but exhibited neonatal lethality. By continuous iv administration of normal hamster serum the ApoC2 -/- pups could survive till weaning and displayed severe HTG in adulthood on chow diet. A single iv injection of AAV-hApoC2 at birth can also rescue the neonatal death of ApoC2 -/- pups. Adult ApoC2 -/- hamsters exhibited a unique phenotype of sHTG with hypoglycemia, hypoinsulinemia and spontaneous atherosclerosis. The sHTG in ApoC2 -/- adult hamsters could not be corrected by various lipid-lowering medications, but partially ameliorated by medium chain triglyceride diet and completely corrected by AAV-hApoC2., Conclusions: Our study provides a novel ApoC2-deleted mammalian model with severe hypertriglyceridemia that was fully characterized and highlights a potential therapeutic approach for the treatment of ApoC2 deficient patients., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Apolipoprotein C2 (ApoC2) is a key activator of lipoprotein lipase for plasma triglyceride metabolism. ApoC2-deficient patients present with severe hypertriglyceridemia and recurrent acute pancreatitis, for whom the only effective treatment is the infusion of normal plasma containing ApoC2. However, since ApoC2 has a fast catabolic rate, a repeated infusion is required, which limits its clinical use. To explore a safe and efficient approach for ApoC2 deficiency, we herein established an adeno-associated virus expressing human ApoC2 (AAV-hApoC2) to evaluate the efficacy and safety of gene therapy in ApoC2-deficient hypertriglyceridemic hamsters. Administration of AAV-hApoC2 via jugular or orbital vein in adult and neonatal ApoC2-deficient hamsters, respectively, could prevent the neonatal death and effectively improve severe hypertriglyceridemia of ApoC2-deficient hamsters without side effects in a long-term manner. Our novel findings in the present study demonstrate that AAV-hApoC2-mediated gene therapy will be a promising therapeutic approach for clinical patients with severe hypertriglyceridemia caused by ApoC2 deficiency., (© 2020 The Author(s).)

Glaucoma is characterized by retinal ganglion cell (RGC) death and axonal loss. Therefore, neuroprotection is important in treating glaucoma. In this study, we explored whether exoenzyme C3 transferase (C3)-based gene therapy could protect retinas in an ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury rat model. Self-complementary adeno-associated virus 2 (scAAV2) vectors encoding either C3 protein (scAAV2-C3) or enhanced green fluorescence protein (scAAV2-EGFP) were intravitreally delivered into both eyes of rats, and I/R models (acute ocular hypertension) were made in one eye of each rat at day 7 after the injection. The rats were divided into six groups: scAAV2-C3, scAAV2-C3 with I/R, scAAV2-EGFP, scAAV2-EGFP with I/R, blank control, and blank control with I/R. TUNEL (terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase-mediated deoxyuridine triphosphate nick end labeling), immunohistochemistry of cleaved caspase-3, NeuN and Brn-3a, and H&E staining were used to detect apoptotic cells and other changes in the retina. The results showed that scAAV2-C3 significantly reduced the number of apoptotic RGCs and decreased cell loss in the ganglion cell layer after I/R injury, and the I/R-injured retinas treated with scAAV2-C3 were the thickest in all I/R groups. These results suggest that scAAV2-mediated C3 gene therapy is able to protect the rat retina from I/R injury and has potential in the treatment of glaucoma in the future., (© 2020 The Author(s).)

Background/aims: Recent studies indicate that therapies targeting the vasculature can significantly sensitize tumors to radiation. Ultrasound-stimulated microbubbles (USMBs) are regarded as a promising radiosensitizer. In this study, we investigated the effect of USMBs on the sensitivity of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) to radiation., Methods: Human NPC (CNE-2) cells and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were exposed to radiation (0, 2, and 8 Gy) alone or in combination with USMBs. Cell viability and apoptosis were measured with the MTT assay and flow cytometry, respectively. The angiogenic activity of HUVECs was detected using matrigel tubule formation. The in vitro effects induced by these treatments were confirmed in vivo with xenograft models of CNE-2 cells in nude mice by examining vascular integrity using color Doppler flow imaging and cell survival using immunohistochemistry. Additionally, the in vivo and in vitro expressions of angiotensin II (ANG II) and its receptor (AT1R) were detected by immunohistochemistry and western blotting, respectively. With CNE-2 cells and HUVECs transfected with control, ANG II, or AT1R, perindopril (an inhibitor of angiotensin-converting enzyme) and candesartan (an inhibitor of AT1R) were used to verify the role of ANG II and AT1R in the radiosensitivity of tumor and endothelial cells by USMBs, by determining cell viability and apoptosis and angiogenic activity., Results: In the NPC xenografts, USMBs slightly reduced blood flow and CD34 expression, increased tumor cell death and ANG II and AT1R expression, and significantly enhanced the effects of radiation. With CNE-2 cells and HUVECs, the USMBs further enhanced the inhibition of tumor cell viability and endothelial tubule formation and further enhanced the increase in ANG II and AT1R due to radiation. Furthermore, perindopril and candesartan significantly enhanced the inhibitory effect of radiation and USMBs on tumor cell growth and angiogenesis in vitro., Conclusions: We have demonstrated for the first time that USMB exposure can significantly enhance the destructive effect on NPC of radiation, and this effect might be further increased by ANG II and AT1R inhibition. Our findings suggest that USMBs can be used as a promising sensitizer of radiotherapy to treat NPC, and the clinical effect might be increased by ANG II and AT1R inhibition., (© 2018 The Author(s). Published by S. Karger AG, Basel.)

Inverted terminal repeats (ITRs) of the adeno-associated virus (AAV) are essential for rescue, replication, packaging, and integration of the viral genome. While ITR mutations have been identified in previous reports, we designed a new truncated ITR lacking the B-B' and C-C' regions named as ITRΔBC and investigated its effects on viral genome replication, packaging, and expression of recombinant AAV (rAAV). The packaging ability was compared between ITRΔBC rAAV and wild-type (wt) ITR rAAV. Our results showed the productivity of ITRΔBC rAAV was reduced 4-fold, which is consistent with the 8-fold decrease in the replication of viral genomic DNA of ITRΔBC rAAV compared with wt ITR rAAV. Surprisingly, transgene expression was significantly higher for ITRΔBC rAAV. A preliminary exploration of the underlying mechanisms was carried out by inhibiting and degrading the ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) protein and the Mre11 complex (MRN), respectively, since the rAAV expression was inhibited by the ATM and/or MRN through cis interaction or binding with wt ITRs. We demonstrated that the inhibitory effects were weakened on ITRΔBC rAAV expression. This study suggests deletion in ITR can affect the transgene expression of AAV, which provides a new way to improve the AAV expression through ITRs modification.

In recent years, Hepatitis B virus (HBV) persistent infection mouse model with recombinant adeno-associated virus 8 carrying 1.3 copies of HBV genome (rAAV8-1.3HBV) is concerned. We studied and compared the efficacy among HBV persistent infection mice models by other serotypes except AAV8. First, we prepared and purified five viruses: rAAV1-1.3HBV, rAAV2-1.3HBV, rAAV5-1.3HBV, rAAV8-1.3HBV and rAAV9-1.3HBV. Then we injected each virus into 3 C57BL/6J mice with the dose of lx 1011 vg (Viral genome, vg) per mouse. We detected HBsAg and HBeAg in sera by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) at different time points post injection. We killed mice 8 weeks post injection and took blood and livers for assay. We detected copies of HBV DNA by real-time quantitative PCR in sera and livers. Meantime, we detected HBcAg in the livers of mice by immunohistochemistry and further performed pathology analysis of these livers. The five groups of mice, HBeAg and HBsAg expression sustained 8 weeks in serological detection and HBV DNA was both detected in sera and livers at the time of 8 weeks post injection. HBeAg, HBsAg, HBV DNA copies expression levels in descending order were AAV8>AAV9>AAV1>AAV5>AAV2. HBcAg expression was detected in livers as well. Varied degrees of liver damage were shown in five groups of mice. This study provides more alternative AAV vector species to establish a persistent infection with hepatitis B model.

Recently, researchers seeking to understand, modify, and create beneficial traits in organisms have looked for evolutionarily conserved patterns of protein interactions. Their conservation likely means that the proteins of these conserved functional modules are important to the trait's expression. In this paper, we formulate the problem of identifying these conserved patterns as a graph optimization problem, and develop a fast heuristic algorithm for this problem. We compare the performance of our network alignment algorithm to that of the MaWISh algorithm [Koyutürk M, Kim Y, Topkara U, Subramaniam S, Szpankowski W, Grama A, Pairwise alignment of protein interaction networks, J Comput Biol13(2):182-199, 2006.], which bases its search algorithm on a related decision problem formulation. We find that our algorithm discovers conserved modules with a larger number of proteins in an order of magnitude less time. The protein sets found by our algorithm correspond to known conserved functional modules at comparable precision and recall rates as those produced by the MaWISh algorithm.

Objective: Intratumoral administration of adenoviral vector encoding herpes simplex virus (HSV) thymidine kinase (TK) gene (Ad-TK) followed by systemic ganciclovir (GCV) is an effective approach in treating experimental hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, hepatotoxicity due to unwanted vector spread and suicide gene expression limited the application of this therapy. miR-122 is an abundant, liver-specific microRNA whose expression is decreased in human primary HCC and HCC-derived cell lines. These different expression profiles provide an opportunity to induce tumor-specific gene expression by miR-122 regulation., Methods: By inserting miR-122 target sequences (miR-122T) in the 3' untranslated region (UTR) of TK gene, we constructed adenovirus (Ad) vectors expressing miR-122-regulated TK (Ad-TK-122T) and report genes. After intratumoral administration of Ad vectors into an orthotopic miR-122-deficient HCC mouse model, we observed the miR-122-regulated transgene expression and assessed the antitumor activity and safety of Ad-TK-122T., Results: Insertion of miR-122T specifically down-regulated transgene expression in vitro and selectively protected the miR-122-positive cells from killing by TK/GCV treatment. Insertion of miR-122T led to significant reduction of tansgene expression in the liver without inhibition of its expression in tumors in vivo, resulting in an 11-fold improvement of tumor-specific transgene expression. Intratumoral injection of Ad vectors mediated TK/GCV system led to a vector dosage-dependent regression of tumor. The insertion of miR-122T does not influence the antitumor effects of suicide gene therapy. Whereas mice administrated with Ad-TK showed severe lethal hepatotoxicity at the effective therapeutic dose, no liver damage was found in Ad-TK-122T group., Conclusions: miR-122-regulated TK expression achieved effective anti-tumor effects and increased the safety of intratumoral delivery of adenovirus-mediated TK/GCV gene therapy for miR-122-deficient HCC.

Activities of 58 miRNAs for BHK21, HEK293, and Vero cell lines were screened using the high-throughput miRNA activity profiling method. miR-206 activity was found specifically high in BHK21. Considering miR-206 was recognized as a muscle-specific miRNA, we further detected the expression and activity level of miR-206 in BHK21 cells, with myoblast cells C2C12 as positive control and HEK293 cells as negative control. Then, we induced BHK21 by culturing with medium containing 2% horse serum (HS) and tested expression level of slow skeletal myosin heavy chain (MHC), activity and expression levels of miR-206, and expression level of Connexin43 (Cx43) which was reported negatively regulated by miR-206. Results demonstrated that activity and expression levels of miR-206 were both higher in BHK21 cells than in C2C12 cells. After induction of HS, MHC expression level was increased in BHK21 cells. The activity and expression levels of miR-206 were further enhanced. The Cx43 expression level was decreased. These results suggested that BHK21 had the characters of myoblast cells. In conclusion, we firstly discovered that miR-206 activity was specifically high in BHK21 cells, suggesting that BHK21 cells were derived from interstitial cells other than parenchyma cells of kidney from miRNA point of view. Our study also indicated that BHK21 cells were able to be used as models in vitro for research of miR-206 function.

We evaluated the anti-HBV effects of nucleotide analogues, Entecavir (ETV) and Lamivudine (LAM) targeting mouse model of HBV persistent infection with recombinant adeno-associated virus 8 carrying 1.3 copies of HBV genome (rAAV8-1.3HBV). Ninety percent (27 of 30 mice) of rAAVS-treated mice were chosen as mouse model. Four groups were orally administrated with different doses of ETV (1 mg/(kgd) or 0.1 mg/(kgd)) and LAM (500 mg/(kgd) or 100 mg/(kgd)) once a day for 10 days. The other two groups were set as normal saline treated and untreated control. We detected the levels of HBV DNA, HBeAg and HBsAg in sera at different time. Results indicate that HBV DNA level decreased significantly (P < 0.05) in drug-treated groups compared with normal saline group after drug administration. Fifteen days after the drug withdrawal, HBV DNA level rebounded back obviously (P < 0.05) in groups with low doses of ETV and LAM. However, there was no apparent change of HBeAg and HBsAg in the whole process among all groups. These results showed that our model could reflect the anti-viral effect of nucleotide analogues. This model can be a useful and convenient tool for anti-HBV drug discovery.

There is a lack of methods for high-throughput functional microRNA (miRNA) profiling. In this chapter, we describe a recombinant adeno-associated virus-based miRNA sensor array (miRNA Asensor array), which is able to profile functional miRNAs in cultured cells. The preparation of an miRNA Asensor array and its usage are discussed.

A number of tools for the alignment of protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks have laid the foundation for PPI network analysis. Most of alignment tools focus on finding conserved interaction regions across the PPI networks through either local or global mapping of similar sequences. Researchers are still trying to improve the speed, scalability, and accuracy of network alignment. In view of this, we introduce a connected-components based fast algorithm, HopeMap, for network alignment. Observing that the size of true orthologs across species is small comparing to the total number of proteins in all species, we take a different approach based on a precompiled list of homologs identified by KO terms. Applying this approach to S. cerevisiae (yeast) and D. melanogaster (fly), E. coli K12 and S. typhimurium, E. coli K12 and C. crescenttus, we analyze all clusters identified in the alignment. The results are evaluated through up-to-date known gene annotations, gene ontology (GO), and KEGG ortholog groups (KO). Comparing to existing tools, our approach is fast with linear computational cost, highly accurate in terms of KO and GO terms specificity and sensitivity, and can be extended to multiple alignments easily.

To establish an orthotopic transplant mouse model of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) labeled with secretary luciferase and to study its response to anti-tumor treatment with interferon-beta gene therapy. We labeled the murine hepatoma Hepal-6 cells with secretary Gaussia princeps luciferase (Gluc), and then injected Gluc labeled Hepal-6 cells intrasplenically in C57BL/6 mice. We monitored blood Glue to evaluate the tumor development and anti-tumor effects of hydrodynamic injection with interferon-beta expressing plasmid. We successfully established the orthotopic mouse model of HCC by intrasplenic injection of Glue labeled Hepal-6 cells. The Glue blood assay could reflect the amount of cancer cells in vivo, tumor progression, as well as anti-tumor effect of interferon-beta gene therapy. In conclusion, Gluc labeled orthotopic transplant mouse model of HCC can ex vivo real-time monitor the tumor development and tumor response to treatments.

Background: microRNAs (miRNAs) are small and non-coding RNAs which play critical roles in physiological and pathological processes. A number of methods have been established to detect and quantify miRNA expression. However, method for high-throughput miRNA function detection is still lacking., Principal Findings: We describe an adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector-based microRNA (miRNA) sensor (Asensor) array for high-throughput functional miRNA profiling. Each Asensor contains a Gaussia luciferase (Gluc) and a firefly luciferase (Fluc) expression cassette to sense functional miRNA and to serve as an internal control respectively. Using this array, we acquired functional profiles of 115 miRNAs for 12 cell lines and found "functional miRNA signatures" for several specific cell lines. The activities of specific miRNAs including the let-7 family, miR-17-92 cluster, miR-221, and miR-222 in HEK 293 cells were compared with their expression levels determined by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (QRT-PCR). We also demonstrate two other practical applications of the array, including a comparison of the miRNA activity between HEK293 and HEK293T cells and the ability to monitor miRNA activity changes in K562 cells treated with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA)., Conclusions/significance: Our approach has potential applications in the identification of cell types, the characterization of biological and pathological processes, and the evaluation of responses to interventions.

Technology for monitoring in vivo microRNA (miRNA) activity is extremely important for elucidating miRNA biology. However, in vivo studies of miRNA have been hampered by the lack of a convenient approach to reliably reflect real-time functional changes in miRNAs. Sensors for miRNA were developed by adding miRNA target sequences to the 3'-untranslated region of Gaussia princeps luciferase (Gluc) mRNA. These sensors were then evaluated in vitro and in vivo by measuring Gluc activity in cell supernatants and in peripheral blood. Sensors driven by the CMV promoter were effective for monitoring miR-122 in living cells, but not for the long-term monitoring of miR-122 or miR-142 in mouse liver because of CMV-promoter silencing. Replacing the CMV promoter with a CAG promoter rendered these sensors effective for the long-term monitoring of relevant liver miRNA activities. We subsequently used the CAG-promoter-based sensor for the long-term monitoring of endogenous liver miR-122, miR142 and miR-34a activities, as well as for exogenous miR-34a activity. Our study demonstrates that real-time in vivo activities of miRNAs can be continuously and conveniently detected in mouse liver using the sensors that we have developed.

Background: Influenza A virus can infect a wide variety of animal species including humans, pigs, birds and other species. Viral ribonucleoprotein (vRNP) was involved in genome replication, transcription and host adaptation. Currently, firefly luciferase (Fluc) reporter system was used in vRNP functional assay. However, its limitation for the testing by virus infection resulted in an increased need for rapid, sensitive, and biosafe techniques. Here, an influenza A virus UTR-driven gene reporter for vRNP assay based on secreted Gaussia luciferase (Gluc) activity was evaluated., Results: By measuring Gluc levels in supernatants, reporter gene activity could be detected and quantitated after either reconstitution of influenza A virus polymerase complex or viral infection of 293T and A549 cells, respectively. As compared with Fluc reporter, Gluc-based reporter was heat-tolerant (65°C for 30 min) and produced 50-fold higher bioluminescent activity at 24 h posttransfection. Signals generated by Gluc reporter gene could be detected as early as 6 h post-infection and accumulated with time. Testing by viral infection, stronger signals were detected by Gluc reporter at a MOI of 0.001 than that of 1 and the effects of PB2-627K/E or amantadine on influenza vRNP activity were elucidated more effectively by the Gluc reporter system., Conclusions: This approach provided a rapid, sensitive, and biosafe assay of influenza vRNP function, particularly for the highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses.

Background: The development of a convenient high-throughput gene transduction approach is critical for biological screening. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors are broadly used in gene therapy studies, yet their applications in in vitro high-throughput gene transduction are limited., Principal Findings: We established an AAV reverse infection (RI)-based method in which cells were transduced by quantified recombinant AAVs (rAAVs) pre-coated onto 96-well plates. The number of pre-coated rAAV particles and number of cells loaded per well, as well as the temperature stability of the rAAVs on the plates, were evaluated. As the first application of this method, six serotypes or hybrid serotypes of rAAVs (AAV1, AAV2, AAV5/5, AAV8, AAV25 m, AAV28 m) were compared for their transduction efficiencies using various cell lines, including BHK21, HEK293, BEAS-2BS, HeLaS3, Huh7, Hepa1-6, and A549. AAV2 and AAV1 displayed high transduction efficiency; thus, they were deemed to be suitable candidate vectors for the RI-based array. We next evaluated the impact of sodium butyrate (NaB) treatment on rAAV vector-mediated reporter gene expression and found it was significantly enhanced, suggesting that our system reflected the biological response of target cells to specific treatments., Conclusions/significance: Our study provides a novel method for establishing a highly efficient gene transduction array that may be developed into a platform for cell biological assays.

We developed a method for monitoring of miRNA activity in live cells by a secreted luciferase gene based plasmid sensor named as Gsensor. Firstly, we constructed pAAV2neo-Gluc-MCS-polyA as "empty Gsensor", which contained multiple cloning sites (MCS) for miRNA target inserted. To detect miR142-3p activity, miR142-3p Gsensor and miR142-3p Gsensor-3 were constructed by inserting one or three complementary miR142-3p targets into pAAV2neo-Gluc-MCS-ployA. Subsequently, miR142-3p Gsensor and miR142-3p Gsensor-3 were respectively transfected into U937 cells and Gluc activity was assayed in the supernatant 48 h post transfection. Results showed that both of them effectively indicated miR142-3p activity of inhibiting Gluc expression compared with empty Gsensor. Simultaneously, miR142-3p Gsensor also demonstrated the inhibition of miR142-3p activity by Anti-miR142 when they were cotransfected into U937 cells. This implied one copy of miRNA target in Gsensor was sensitive enough for investigation of miRNA activity. We further analyzed factors affecting Gsensor function including time and dose, and found that miR142-3p activity sensed by miR142-3p Gsensor rose within 48 h post transfection and approached stable thereafter. Transfected dose varying among 0.001-0.05 pg/cell had little effect on its function. Using miR142-3p Gsensor, we further detected miR142-3p activity in HEK293, U937, K562, SP2/0 and P815 cells. Results suggested that miR142-3p activity was high in U937, K562, SP2/0 and P815 cells and almost negative in HEK293. miR142-3p activity was positively correlated with its relative copies in HEK293, U937 and K562 detected by QRT-PCR. In conclusion, Gsensor proved to be an effective tool for monitoring of miRNA activity in live cells, and provide a new method for monitoring miRNA activity in vitro.

We developed a scalable AAV5/5 vector packaging system by using replication competent recombinant herpes simplex type 1 virus as helper virus. The fragment containing rep and cap genes of AAV5 was inserted into the non-necessary gene (UL2) of HSV1 genome, resulting in the helper virus rHSV1-rep5cap5. An AAV5/5 vector pAAV5neo carrying two AAV5 ITRs was constructed by inserting a neo gene expression cassette into the plasmid backbone of pAV5CMV-GFP. pAAV5neo-EGFP was constructed by inserting EGFP gene into pAAV5neo. BHK21 cell was transfected with pAAV5neo-EGFP and cultured in the presence of G418. EGFP expression positive monoclonal cells were picked up, and one that produced rAAV5/5-EGFP with the highest efficiency under the help of rHSV1-rep5cap5 was chosen as the production cell line named as C020. rAAV5/5-EGFP was produced by infecting C020 cells with rHSV1-rep5cap5, and crudely purified by our previous method of 'chloroform treatment-PEG8000/NaCl precipitation- chloroform extract'. rAAV5/5-EGFP preparation with high purity was obtained by ultrafiltration with molecular weight cut-off value of 100 kDa. SDS-PAGE stained with Coomassie brilliant blue R250 showed clearly specific pattern of three bands of AAV capsid proteins. rAAV5/5-EGFP was also assayed using negative stain transmission electron microscopy and the majority of the virus particles were found solid. About 30% green fluorescent cells could be seen after infecting HEK293 cells with rAAV5/5-EGFP 24 h at 1 x 10(5) vg/cell. In conclusion, we have established an efficient AAV5/5 vector production system and could produce recombinant AAV5/5 virus in large amounts for gene therapy research.

We chose Gaussia luciferase (Gluc), a secreted luciferase gene as reporter to real-time detect and dynamically monitor hydrodynamic injection gene expression. First, we constructed an expression vector pAAV2neo-Gluc. Then Huh7 and HepG2 cells were transfected with pAAV2neo-Gluc and the activity of Gluc in the supernatant and cell lysates were assayed. Results showed that the Gluc activity in the supernatant was about 100 higher than that in cell lysates, indicating the expressed Gluc existing mainly as a secreted form as reported. Live bioluminescence imaging of mice hydrodynamic injected pAAV2neo-Gluc showed whole body distribution, while the pAAV2neo-Fluc primarily located in the liver. Then we injected different doses of pAAV2neo-Gluc into mice by tail-vein hydrodynamic injection, took minor amount of blood from mice tails at different time points and measured the luciferase activity to investigate dynamic changes of Gluc expression and secretion in vivo. The results suggested that the time courses of Gluc expression were highly consistent among each dose groups. The luciferase activity in blood could be detected as early as 2 h after injection, reached the peak at about 10 h and gradually decreased from then on. The expression level of Glue was positively correlated with the dose of injected plasmid DNA. To further detect the assay sensitivity of the ex vivo Gluc measurement method, we investigated three additional groups of mice injected with lower doses of 0.001 microg, 0.01 microg and 0.1 microg pAAV2neo-Gluc respectively. Results revealed that activity of Gluc in blood could be detected even at dose as low as 0.001 microg DNA, suggesting the assay sensitivity was extremely high. In conclusion, a real-time ex vivo detection method of dynamically monitoring of gene expression in vivo by hydrodynamic injection can be a valuable means for the study of gene expression regulation in vivo.

A number of tools for the alignment of protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks have laid the foundation for PPI network analysis. They typically find conserved interaction patterns by various local or global search algorithms, and then validate the results using genome annotation. The improvement of the speed, scalability and accuracy of network alignment is still the target of ongoing research. In view of this, we introduce a connected-components based algorithm, called HopeMap for pairwise network alignment with the focus on fast identification of maximal conserved patterns across species. Observing that the number of true homologs across species is relatively small compared to the total number of proteins in all species, we start with highly homologous groups across species, find maximal conserved interaction patterns globally with a generic scoring system, and validate the results across multiple known functional annotations. The results are evaluated in terms of statistical enrichment of gene ontology (GO) terms and KEGG ortholog groups (KO) within conserved interaction patters. HopeMap is fast, with linear computational cost, accurate in terms of KO groups and GO terms specificity and sensitivity, and extensible to multiple network alignment.

In order to establish the chemical biological technology for production of valuable secondary metabolites, a novel family of unnatural elicitors derived from the plant activator benzo-1,2,3-thiadiazole-7-carboxylic acid were designed and synthesized. New synthetic elicitors that showed powerful eliciting activities upon taxoid biosynthesis by Taxus chinensis suspension cells were obtained. For example, benzo-1,2,3-thiadiazole-7-carboxylic acid 2-(2-hydroxybenzoxyl)ethyl ester was more effective and resulted in nearly 40% increase in taxuyunnanine C content and production in comparison with methyl jasmonate, which was previously reported as the most powerful chemical elicitor for taxoid biosynthesis. The novel class of elicitors was found to induce plant defense responses, including promotion of H(2)O(2) levels originating from oxidative burst and activation of phenylalanine ammonia lyase. Interestingly the plant defense responses induced corresponded well to the superior stimulating activity in T. chinensis cell cultures. The work indicates that the newly synthesized benzothiadiazoles can act as a new family of elicitors for taxoid biosynthesis in plant cells.

To develop more effective abiotic elicitors for cell suspension cultures of T. chinensis to meet the needs for paclitaxel as anti-tumor drug, some fluoro- or hydroxyl-containing groups are introduced to the ester moiety of jasmonic acid by the esterification or acylation with bis(trichloromethyl) carbonate and corresponding alcohol. Some of them are found to be novel and effective elicitors, which can enhance the production of taxuyunnanine C (Tc) up to 60% more than that by methyl jasmonate (MJA) in T. chinensis cell cultures.