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Kidney cancer is the third most common malignancy of the urinary system, of which, kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) accounts for the vast majority. Runt-related transcription factors (RUNX) are involved in multiple cellular functions. However, the diverse expression patterns and prognostic values of RUNX genes in kidney cancer remained to be elucidated. In our study, we mined the DNA methylation, transcriptional and survival data of RUNX genes in patients with different kinds of kidney cancer through Oncomine, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis, UALCAN, Kaplan–Meier Plotter, cBioPortal and LinkedOmics. We found that RUNX1 and RUNX3 were upregulated in KIRC tissues compared with those in normal tissues. The survival analysis results indicated a high transcription level of RUNX1 was associated with poor overall survival (OS) in KIRC patients. Furthermore, KIRC tumor tissues had significantly lower levels of RUNX1 promoter methylation than that in paracancerous tissues, with decreased DNA methylation of RUNX1 notably associated with poor OS in KIRC. In conclusion, our results revealed that RUNX1 may be a potential therapeutic target for treating KIRC, and RUNX1 promoter methylation level shows promise as a novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarker, which laid a foundation for further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hybrid optoplasmonic amplifier, injection-seeded by an internally-generated Raman signal and operating in the visible (563-675 nm), is proposed and evidence for amplification is presented. Comprising a gain medium tethered to a whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonator with a protein, and a plasmonic surface, the optical system described here selectively amplifies a single (or a few) Raman line(s) produced within the WGM resonator and is well-suited for routing narrowband optical power on-a-chip. Over the past five decades, optical oscillators and amplifiers have typically been based on the buildup of the field from the spontaneous emission background. Doing so limits the temporal coherence of the output, lengthens the time required for the optical field intensity to reach saturation, and often is responsible for complex, multiline spectra. In addition to the spectral control afforded by injection-locking, the effective Q of the amplifier can be specified by the bandwidth of the injected Raman signal. This characteristic contrasts with previous WGM-based lasers and amplifiers for which the Q is determined solely by the WGM resonator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel graphene-based tunable plasmonic metamaterials featuring single and multiple transparency windows are numerically studied in this paper. The designed structures consist of a graphene layer perforated with quadrupole slot structures and dolmen-like slot structures printed on a substrate. Specifically, the graphene-based quadrupole slot structure can realize a single transparency window, which is achieved without breaking the structure symmetry. Further investigations have shown that the single transparency window in the proposed quadrupole slot structure is more likely originated from the quantum effect of Autler-Townes splitting. Then, by introducing a dipole slot to the quadrupole slot structure to form the dolmen-like slot structure, an additional transmission dip could occur in the transmission spectrum, thus, a multiple-transparency-window system can be achieved (for the first time for graphene-based devices). More importantly, the transparency windows for both the quadrupole slot and the dolmen-like slot structures can be dynamically controlled over a broad frequency range by varying the Fermi energy levels of the graphene layer (through electrostatic gating). The proposed slot metamaterial structures with tunable single and multiple transparency windows could find potential applications in many areas such as multiple-wavelength slow-light devices, active plasmonic switching, and optical sensing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]