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Endothelial-derived factors regulate a wide range of pathophysiological events. It has been reported previously that IL-33 promotes acute kidney injury (AKI) in mice although the underlying epigenetic mechanism is unclear. In the present study we investigated the role of BRG1, a chromatin remodeling protein, in AKI with a focus on its regulation of IL-33 expression in endothelial cells. Smarca4-flox mice were crossbred with Cdh5-Cre mice to achieve endothelial-specific deletion of BRG1. AKI was induced by unilateral renal ischemia followed by reperfusion. Compared to wild type (WT) littermates, endothelial conditional BRG1 knockout (CKO) mice were protected from ischemia-reperfusion induced AKI as evidenced by decreased plasma creatinine levels, attenuated caste and tubular necrosis, and diminished immune infiltrates. CKO mice also developed less severe renal fibrosis as indicated by expression levels of extracellular matrix proteins, picrosirius red staining of collagenous tissues, and quantification of renal hydroxylproline levels. Of interest, renal expression of IL-33 was down-regulated as result of endothelial BRG1 deficiency. In cultured endothelial cells, BRG1 directly bound to the IL-33 promoter to activate transcription. Endothelial cell-derived conditioned media promoted the synthesis of pro-fibrogenic proteins in renal tubular epithelial cells. Knockdown of either BRG1 or IL-33 in endothelial cells blunted the pro-fibrogenic response in renal tubular epithelial cells. In conclusion, we propose that BRG1 may contribute to ischemia-reperfusion induced renal injury and fibrosis by promoting IL-33 transcription in endothelial cells.

In this study, daidzein long-circulating liposomes (DLCL) were prepared using the ultrasonication and lipid film-hydration method. The optimized preparation conditions by the orthogonal design was as follows: 55 to 40 for the molar ratio of soybean phosphatidylcholine (SPC) to cholesterol, 1 to 10 for the mass ratio of daidzein to total lipid (SPC and cholesterol) (w:w), the indicated concentration of 5% DSPE-mPEG2000 (w:w), 50 °C for the hydration temperature, and 24 min for the ultrasonic time. Under these conditions, the encapsulation efficiency and drug loading of DLCL were 85.3 ± 3.6% and 8.2 ± 1.4%, respectively. The complete release times of DLCL in the medium of pH 1.2 and pH 6.9 increased by four- and twofold of that of free drugs, respectively. After rats were orally administered, a single dose of daidzein (30 mg/kg) and DLCL (containing equal dose of daidzein), respectively, and the MRT0−t (mean residence time, which is the time required for the elimination of 63.2% of drug in the body), t1/2 (the elimination half-life, which is the time required to halve the plasma drug concentration of the terminal phase), and AUC0−t (the area under the plasma drug concentration-time curve, which represents the total absorption after a single dose and reflects the drug absorption degree) of daidzein in DLCL group, increased by 1.6-, 1.8- and 2.5-fold as compared with those in the free group daidzein. Our results indicated that DLCL could not only reduce the first-pass effect of daidzein to promote its oral absorption, but also prolong its mean resident time to achieve the slow-release effect.

In this paper, we address the multiframe super resolution problem from a set of degraded, under-sampled, shifted and rotated low resolution images to obtain a high resolution image using the variational Bayesian methods. In the Bayesian framework a prior model on the high resolution image need to be specified, its aim is to summarize our knowledge of the image and to constraint the ill-posed image reconstruction problem. Appropriate prior model selection according to the super resolution scenario is a critical issue. Here we propose the one-parameter l1 prior. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is very effective and compared favorably to state-of-the-art super resolution algorithms.

A series of silica-pillared zirconium phosphate materials with ordered structure were synthesized using hexadecylamine (HDA) as expanding agent, dodecyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride (DDBAC) as template agent and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as silica source. The textural properties of the materials can be effectively controlled by adjusting the dosage of HDA, DDBAC and TEOS. Furthermore, a template-directing self-assembly mechanism was proposed based on the synthesis. In the epoxidation of methyl soyate, the prepared materials showed excellent performance with 95.9 % conversion of double bonds and 84.7 % epoxy selectivity. This result is determined by the large surface area and the ordered interlayer structure. Series silica-pillared zirconium phosphate materials with ordered structure were synthesized. The textural properties of the materials can be effectively controlled by adjusting the dosage of each reaction species. A template-directing self-assembly mechanism was proposed based on the synthesis. The materials show excellent catalytic performance on the epoxidation of methyl soyate.