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Summary: How are closely related lineages, including liver, pancreas, and intestines, diversified from a common endodermal origin? Here, we apply principles learned from developmental biology to rapidly reconstitute liver progenitors from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). Mapping the formation of multiple endodermal lineages revealed how alternate endodermal fates (e.g., pancreas and intestines) are restricted during liver commitment. Human liver fate was encoded by combinations of inductive and repressive extracellular signals at different doses. However, these signaling combinations were temporally re-interpreted: cellular competence to respond to retinoid, WNT, TGF-β, and other signals sharply changed within 24 hr. Consequently, temporally dynamic manipulation of extracellular signals was imperative to suppress the production of unwanted cell fates across six consecutive developmental junctures. This efficiently generated 94.1% ± 7.35% TBX3+HNF4A+ human liver bud progenitors and 81.5% ± 3.2% FAH+ hepatocyte-like cells by days 6 and 18 of hPSC differentiation, respectively; the latter improved short-term survival in the Fah−/−Rag2−/−Il2rg−/− mouse model of liver failure.

Sin1 or MAPKAP1 is a key component of mTORC2 signaling complex which is necessary for AKT phosphorylation at the S473 and T450 sites, and also for AKT downstream signaling as well. A number of Sin1 splicing variants have been reported that can produce different Sin1 isoforms due to exon skipping or alternative transcription initiation. In this report, we characterized four Sin1 isoforms, including a novel Sin1 isoform due to alternative 3' termination of the exon 9a, termed Sin1γ. Sin1γ expression can be detected in multiple adult mouse tissues, and it encodes a C-terminal truncated protein comparing to the full length Sin1β isoform. In contrast to Sin1β, Sin1γ overexpression in Sin1 deficient mouse embryonic fibroblasts has no significant impact on mTORC2 activity or mTORC2 subunits protein level, although it still can interact with mTORC2 components. More interestingly, Sin1γ was detected in a specific cytosolic location with a distinct feature in structure, and its localization was transiently disrupted during cell cycle. Therefore, Sin1γ is a novel Sin1 isoform and may have distinct properties in cell signaling and intracellular localization from other Sin1 isoforms.

BackgroundTo assess the genetic architecture of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in patients of predominantly Chinese ancestry.MethodsWe sequenced HCM disease genes in Singaporean patients (n=224) and Singaporean controls (n=3634), compared findings with additional populations and White HCM cohorts (n=6179), and performed in vitro functional studies.ResultsSingaporean HCM patients had significantly fewer confidently interpreted HCM disease variants (pathogenic/likely pathogenic: 18%, P

Branched chain α-keto acids (BCKAs) are endogenous metabolites of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs). BCAA and BCKA are significantly elevated in pathologically stressed heart and contribute to chronic pathological remodeling and dysfunction. However, their direct impact on acute cardiac injury is unknown. Here, we demonstrated that elevated BCKAs significantly attenuated ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury and preserved post I/R function in isolated mouse hearts. BCKAs protected cardiomyocytes from oxidative stress-induced cell death in vitro. Mechanistically, BCKA protected oxidative stress induced cell death by inhibiting necrosis without affecting apoptosis or autophagy. Furthermore, BCKAs, but not BCAAs, protected mitochondria and energy production from oxidative injury. Finally, administration of BCKAs during reperfusion was sufficient to significantly attenuate cardiac I/R injury. These findings uncover an unexpected role of BCAA metabolites in cardioprotection against acute ischemia/reperfusion injury, and demonstrate the potential use of BCKA treatment to preserve ischemic tissue during reperfusion.

To combat global warming, as an energy-saving technology, membrane separation can be applied to capture CO2 from flue gas. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) with characteristics like high porosity have great potential as membrane materials for gas mixture separation. In this work, through a combination of grand canonical Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations, the permeability of three gases (CO2, N2, and O2) was calculated and estimated in 6013 computation–ready experimental MOF membranes (CoRE–MOFMs). Then, the relationship between structural descriptors and permeance performance, and the importance of available permeance area to permeance performance of gas molecules with smaller kinetic diameters were found by univariate analysis. Furthermore, comparing the prediction accuracy of seven classification machine learning algorithms, XGBoost was selected to analyze the order of importance of six structural descriptors to permeance performance, through which the conclusion of the univariate analysis was demonstrated one more time. Finally, seven promising CoRE-MOFMs were selected, and their structural characteristics were analyzed. This work provides explicit directions and powerful guidelines to experimenters to accelerate the research on membrane separation for the purification of flue gas.