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Gene therapy approaches are being deployed to treat recessive genetic disorders by restoring the expression of mutated genes. However, the feasibility of these approaches for dominantly inherited diseases--where treatment may require reduction in the expression of a toxic mutant protein resulting from a gain-of-function allele--is unclear. Here we show the efficacy of allele-specific RNAi as a potential therapy for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 2D (CMT2D), caused by dominant mutations in glycyl-tRNA synthetase (GARS). A de novo mutation in GARS was identified in a patient with a severe peripheral neuropathy, and a mouse model precisely recreating the mutation was produced. These mice developed a neuropathy by 3-4 weeks of age, validating the pathogenicity of the mutation. RNAi sequences targeting mutant GARS mRNA, but not wild- type, were optimized and then packaged into AAV9 for in vivo delivery. This almost completely prevented the neuropathy in mice treated at birth. Delaying treatment until after disease onset showed modest benefit, though this effect decreased the longer treatment was delayed. These outcomes were reproduced in a second mouse model of CMT2D using a vector specifically targeting that allele. The effects were dose dependent, and persisted for at least 1 year. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of AAV9-mediated allele-specific knockdown and provide proof of concept for gene therapy approaches for dominant neuromuscular diseases., Introduction Personalized medicine seeks to provide optimized treatments for individuals based on the molecular characteristics of their specific disease. For example, cancer treatments are customized to the genetics of the [...]

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been widely used in clinical practice. The mechanism by which PRP promotes tissue repair lies in the release of multiple growth factors upon platelet activation, which accelerates the proliferation and differentiation of repair cells and the synthesis of extracellular matrix. In recent years, as extracellular vesicles (EVs) research has increased and intensified, it has been found that EVs also play an important role in tissue repair. This article provides a comprehensive review of the role of PRP and PRP-derived extracellular vesicles (PRP-EVs) in tissue repair. It discusses the biological characteristics, extraction, identification, activation, and preservation of PRP-EVs. It also reviews their applications in orthopedics and wound repair. The article highlights the importance of PRP-EVs in modern medicine and suggests that they could be a promising natural nanocarrier. The review discusses extracellular vesicles derived from platelet-rich plasma(PRP-EVs). PRP promotes repair of the body's tissues and has been used in clinical practice for many years. Extracellular vesicles are granules released by cells that facilitate intercellular communication. Studies in recent years have revealed that PRP can also release extracellular vesicles that participate in the repair process of tissues. Here, we elaborate on PRP-EVs. Regarding PRP-EVs, current studies are limited to the animal level and have not yet been used in the clinical setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Levallois approaches are one of the best known variants of prepared-core technologies, and are an important hallmark of stone technologies developed around 300,000 years ago in Africa and west Eurasia.sup.1,2. Existing archaeological evidence suggests that the stone technology of east Asian hominins lacked a Levallois component during the late Middle Pleistocene epoch and it is not until the Late Pleistocene (around 40,000-30,000 years ago) that this technology spread into east Asia in association with a dispersal of modern humans. Here we present evidence of Levallois technology from the lithic assemblage of the Guanyindong Cave site in southwest China, dated to approximately 170,000-80,000 years ago. To our knowledge, this is the earliest evidence of Levallois technology in east Asia. Our findings thus challenge the existing model of the origin and spread of Levallois technologies in east Asia and its links to a Late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans.Levallois stone-tool technology found at the Guanyindong Cave site in southwest China was dated to approximately 170,000-80,000 years ago, which is much earlier than previously thought., Author(s): Yue Hu [sup.1] , Ben Marwick [sup.1] [sup.2] , Jia-Fu Zhang [sup.3] , Xue Rui [sup.1] , Ya-Mei Hou [sup.4] [sup.5] , Jian-Ping Yue [sup.4] [sup.5] , Wen-Rong Chen [...]

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressive and fatal disease caused by a subset of cancer stem cells (CSCs). It is estimated that there are approximately 100 000 long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in humans. However, the mechanisms by which lncRNAs affect tumor stemness remain poorly understood. In the present study, it is found that DIO3OS is a conserved lncRNA that is generally downregulated in multiple cancers, including HCC, and its low expression correlates with poor clinical outcomes in HCC. In in vitro cancer cell lines and an in vivo spontaneous HCC mouse model, DIO3OS markedly represses tumor development via its suppressive role in CSCs through downregulation of zinc finger E‐box binding homeobox 1 (ZEB1). Interestingly, DIO3OS represses ZEB1 post‐transcriptionally without affecting its mRNA levels. Subsequent experiments show that DIO3OS interacts with the NONO protein and restricts NONO‐mediated nuclear export of ZEB1 mRNA. Overall, these findings demonstrate that the DIO3OS‐NONO‐ZEB1 axis restricts HCC development and offers a valuable candidate for CSC‐targeted therapeutics for HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zero-valent copper, even cheap, is rarely used in hydrodechlorination (such as chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons), because Cu has poor catalytical dechlorination activity and complex reaction mechanisms. In this study, Cu-Fe and Cu-Ni alloys were prepared by mechanical ball-milling, and the effect of micro-environment for the chlorophenol (4-CP) dechlorination behavior of Cu was studied in order to investigate the effect of organic chlorine molecular structure on Cu dechlorination. Two reaction mechanisms were examined for low-cost copper during dechlorination. SEM-EDS and GC-MS analyses show that the structure of organic chlorine and Cu metal environment could directly affect the mechanism. In the Cu-Fe system, Cu follows the classic catalytic hydrodechlorination mechanism and the degradation product 4-CP is phenol. But in the Cu-Ni system, nickel metal does not play a catalytic hydrogenation of action, the degraded product for 4-CP by Cu-Ni alloy is cyclohexanone. Copper acts as hydrogen-metal and shows a strong reducing activity by direct electron transfer. 4-CP degradation for Zero-valent copper was up to 70%, while only 34% for Cu-Fe system. These differences concluded that the aromatic ring was a direct electron transfer for Cu. Zero-valent copper can degrade 4-CP and phenol with high chemical stability, but cannot degrade aliphatic chlorinated organics (e.g., monochloroacetic acid and dichloroacetic acid) with relatively poor chemical stability. In conclusion, dechlorination mechanism for zero-valent copper is not traditional catalytic hydrodechlorination, but the direct electron transfer reduction mechanism which is affected by target molecule structure.

Species of Cystolepiota are known as diminutive lepiotaceous fungi with a worldwide distribution. Previous studies revealed that Cystolepiota is not monophyletic and preliminary DNA sequence data from recent collections suggested that several new species exist. Based on multi-locus DNA sequence data (the nuc rDNA internal transcribed spacer region ITS1-5.8S-ITS2, ITS; the D1–D2 domains of nuc 28S rDNA, LSU; the most variable region of the second-largest subunit of RNA polymerase II, rpb2 and a portion of the translation–elongation factor 1-α. tef1), C. sect. Pulverolepiota forms a distinct clade separating from Cystolepiota. Therefore, the genus Pulverolepiota was resurrected and two combinations, P. oliveirae and P. petasiformis were proposed. With the integration of morphological characteristics, multi-locus phylogeny, and information on geography and habitat, two new species, viz. C. pseudoseminuda and C. pyramidosquamulosa, are described and C. seminuda was revealed to be a species complex containing at least three species, viz. C. seminuda, C. pseudoseminuda, and Melanophyllum eryei. In addition, C. seminuda was re-circumscribed and neo-typified based on recent collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The molecular structure of mBDFP, a far‐red fluorescent protein (FPs) derived from an allophycocyanin homolog was resolved to 2.52 Å. Its biliverdin chromophore was found to be attached to the protein in an unusual way that was never observed in natural phycobiliproteins, and only once in a sub‐population of artificial bacteriophytochrome‐derived FPs. One of the biliverdin's vinyl groups had two cysteine residues covalently bound to its two carbon atoms. This reduces the conjugation length of the biliverdin π‐electron system, which shifts the absorption and emission spectra by about 40 nm, from the near‐infrared to the far‐red region of the spectrum. By spectrally characterizing a set of mBDFP mutants, we show that such spectral shifts can be induced by modifying a single residue in either one of two critical positions in the vicinity of the binding cysteines. This changes the reactivity of biliverdin and the cysteine's thiols towards forming one, or two thioether bonds to the vinyl group. The ability to control the spectral properties of BDFP by specific point mutations opens many possibilities for rational design of far‐red and near‐infrared FPs that are of great interest to the development of fluorescence markers for bioimaging since most biological tissues are transparent in this spectral window. PDB Code(s): 6HRK; [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While facing complex surroundings, robots need to identify the same intention which is expressed in different ways. In order to solve the problem of assisting robots to get a better intention understanding, a self-tuning multimodal fusion algorithm is put forward in this paper, which is not restricted by the expressions of interacting participants and environment. The multimodal fusion algorithm can be transferred to different application platforms. Robots can own the understanding competence and adapt new tasks by changing the content of the robot knowledge base. Compared with other multimodal fusion algorithms, this paper attempts to transfer the basic structure of feed-forward neural networks on discrete sets, which has strengthened the consistency and perfect the complementary relations between multiple mode, and has realized the simultaneous operation of fusion operator's self-tuning and intention search. There are three kinds of modes selected in the paper: speech, gesture, and scene objects, where the single modal classifiers are trained separately. This method conducted a human-computer interaction experiment on the bionic robot Pepper platform, which proved that the method can effectively improve the accuracy and robustness of robots in aspects of understanding human intentions, and reduce the uncertainty about intention judgment in a single modal interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most lethal malignancies across the world. More than 80% patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage with limited treatment options. PC has the highest frequency of developing cancer cachexia (CC)–sarcopenia (SC) syndrome, but there is no optimal efficient intervention for CC or SC targeting their complicated biological and irreversible processes. As a result, identifying the clinicopathological features and patient characteristics in each advanced PC patient with CC and/or SC is urgently needed to distinguish different wasting phenotypes or body composition and thus support precision medicine and achieve optimal outcomes. We performed a retrospective cohort study of 232 advanced PC patients to determine the differential clinical characteristics of CC and SC and the overlap of CC- or SC-related factors in each patient. The impacts of CC, SC, and their relevant factors on the outcomes of PC patients were also evaluated. Pancreatic cancer (PC) has the highest frequency of developing cancer cachexia (CC)–sarcopenia (SC) syndrome, which negatively influences patients' outcome, quality of life, and tolerance/response to treatments. However, the clinical impacts of CC, SC, and their associated factors on outcomes for advanced PC has yet to be fully investigated. A total of 232 patients were enrolled in this study for the retrospective review of their clinical information and the measurement of skeletal muscle areas at the third lumber vertebra by computed tomography scan to identify CC or SC. The association and concurrent occurrence of clinicopathological features in each patient, prevalence rates, and prognosis with the CC or SC were calculated. CC and SC were observed in 83.6% (n = 194) and 49.1% (n = 114) of PC patients, respectively. Low hemoglobin levels more often occurred in CC patients than in non-CC patients (p = 0.014). Older age (p = 0.000), female gender (p = 0.024), low body mass index (BMI) values (p = 0.004), low hemoglobin levels (p = 0.036), and low albumin levels (p = 0.001) were more often found in SC patients than in non-SC patients. Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that CC was an independent poor prognostic factor of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival for all patients, the chemotherapy (C/T) subgroup, and the high BMI subgroup. Meanwhile, SC was an independent predictor of poor OS for the subgroups of C/T or high BMI but not for all patients. These findings reveal the clinical differences for CC and SC and provide useful information for predicting the prognosis of advanced PC patients and conducting personalized medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]