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Praying mantises are distributed all over the world. Though some Mantodea mitogenomes have been reported, an evolutionary genomic and phylogenetic analysis study lacks the latest taxonomic system. In the present study, four new mitogenomes were sequenced and annotated. Deroplatys truncate, D. lobate, Amorphoscelis chinensis and Macromantis sp. belong to Deroplatyidae, Amorphoscelidae and Photinaidae family, respectively. Our results indicated that the ATP8 gene may be lost in D. truncate and D. lobata mt genome, and four tRNA genes have not been found in D. truncate, D. lobata and Macromantis sp. A dN/dS pair analysis was conducted and it was found that all genes have evolved under purifying selection. Furthermore, we tested the phylogenetic relationships between the eight families of the Mantodea, including 35 species of praying Mantis. Based on the complete mitochondrial genome data, it was also suggested as sister to Deroplatyidae + Mantidae, Metallyticus sp., the only representative of Metallyticidae, is sister to the remaining mantises. Our results support the taxonomic system of Schwarz and Roy and are consistent with previous studies.

We evaluated the prognostic significance of immunologic inhibitory biomarkers in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients undergoing definitive chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Thirty patients were prospectively enrolled. Plasma levels of soluble MHC class I polypeptide-related sequence A (sMICA) and transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) were measured before and 2 weeks after CRT. The median follow-up was 32.9 months (range: 12.4–40.6 months). The pre-treatment sMICA (p < 0.001) and TGF-β1 (p < 0.001) levels were significantly increased in HNSCC patients, compared to healthy controls. In HNSCC patients, the median pre-CRT and post-CRT sMICA levels were 43.1 pg/mL and 65.3 pg/mL, respectively, while the median pre-CRT and post-CRT TGF-β1 levels were 57.7 ng/mL and 36.0 ng/mL, respectively. After CRT, 19 patients (63.3%) exhibited persistently elevated sMICA, six patients (20.0%) exhibited persistently elevated TGF-β1, and five patients (16.7%) exhibited persistently elevated sMICA and TGF-β1. Patients with persistently elevated sMICA and TGF-β1 after CRT experienced an earlier tumor progression (p = 0.030), and poor overall survival (p = 0.010). Our results suggest that HNSCC patients who exhibit persistently elevated sMICA and TGF-β1 levels after CRT are at higher risk of tumor progression or death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]