Search

New lanthanide coordination polymers (Ln-CPs), {[Ln(DPBA)(phen) 2 ]·2H 2 O} n (Ln = Eu 1 , Tb 2 , Gd 3), based on a ternary system containing 2-(3′,4′-dicarboxyphenoxy)-benzoic acid (H 3 DPBA) and 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) were hydrothermally prepared. The Ln-CPs exhibit a 1D structure with [LnO 4 N 4 ] polyhedra and DPBA ligands, which can be extended to a 3D supramolecular network by water clusters and π-stacking. The coordination polymers have remarkable thermal stability up to 340 °C and solvent stability (in various solvents containing water in the 3–12 pH range). 1 , 2 , 3 show bright red, green, and blue emissions, respectively. Notably, 1 exhibits a very high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of 86%, which is among the best values for Ln-CPs. Energy transfer analysis is performed for Ln-CPs by DFT/TD-DFT calculations, solid-state phosphorescence (77 K) and UV–vis absorption spectra of Gd-CP. Favorable photostability of 1 is observed through a UV aging experiment, which shows that the PLQY of 1 maintained 55% of its initial value after 150 h Ultraviolet A (UVA) irradiation, which makes it potentially useful as a light conversion material. In addition, the Gd 0.993 Eu 0.0017 Tb 0.0053 -CP codoped system shows white emission with a high PLQY of 35.09%, which is among the highly ranked as compared with reported white light emissions based on Ln-CPs. This highly luminescent Eu-CP can also be used as a sensitive fluorescence sensor for antibiotic detection in aqueous solution. Eu-CP and its isomorphic Tb/Gd-CPs were constructed from H 3 DPBA and phen ligands. Eu-CP has excellent photoluminescence quantum yield, remarkable thermal and solvent stabilities, and favorable photostability under UV irradiation. A highly efficient white lighting material was prepared through a Ln(III) ion doping strategy. Also, Eu-CP has high sensitivity for antibiotics detection in aqueous solution. [Display omitted] • 1D highly luminescent and stable Ln-CPs with DPBA and phen ligands were constructed. Eu-CP exhibits high PLQY (86%). • Eu-CP has remarkable thermally and solvent stabilities, and favorable photostability. • Doped Gd:Eu/Tb-CP shows efficient white light emission with high PLQY (35.09%). • Eu-CP can selectively detect MNZ, ONZ and RNZ in aqueous solution with high sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arabidopsis cyclic nucleotide-gated channels (CNGC) 2 and 4 are shown to negatively regulate disease resistance and heat tolerance and to positively regulate plant growth. Whether or not their functions in these processes are interdependent is largely unknown. Here, using the mutation of phytoalexin deficient 4 (PAD4) to inhibit the enhanced defense response and programmed cell death (PCD), we assessed the contribution of the altered defense response to the heat tolerance and plant growth in the cngc2 and cngc4 single and double mutants. The pad4 mutation reverted the enhanced disease resistance of the cngc2 and cngc4 mutants at the normal temperature (22 °C) but not at the elevated temperature (28 °C). The pad4 mutation slightly alleviated the dwarfism of the cngc2 and cngc4 mutants at 22 °C but not at 28 °C, indicating a small contribution from the defense response to plant growth regulation. The pad4 mutation also reduced the enhanced heat tolerance in the cngc mutants, suggesting an involvement of PCD in heat tolerance. In addition, a higher heat tolerance was correlated with more opened stomata under heat treatment among the wild type and mutants of the PAD4, CNGC2 and CNGC4 genes. In sum, this study suggests that the regulation of heat tolerance and plant growth by CNGC2 and CNGC4 is almost independent of their regulation of disease resistance. It also reveals a PAD4-dependent role of CNGC2 and CNGC4 in stomatal aperture regulation and heat tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (h-BMSCs) have the potential to differentiate into dopaminergic neuron-like cells to treat Parkinson's disease. The Notch signaling pathway has been implicated in the regulation of cell fate decisions such as differentiation of BMSCs. This study investigated changes in the expression of Notch-related genes in the differentiation of BMSCs in vitro into dopaminergic (DA) neuron-like cells. BMSCs transfected with empty lentiviral vectors served as the control group and those transfected with NTN and Lmx1α recombinant lentiviral vectors served as the experimental group. After induction and culture of NTN and Lmx1α-transfected h-BMSCs for 21 days, the cells exhibited features of dopaminergic neuron-like cells, which were observed by transmission and scanning electron microscopy and verified by immunofluorescence of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and dopamine transporter (DAT). These induced cells could secrete dopamine and had basic action potentials. Expression of the neural stem cell (NSC) markers, including octamer-binding protein (Oct4), paired box gene 6 (Pax6), and sex determining region Y-box 1 (SOX1), increased on day 14 of induction and decreased on day 21 of induction during differentiation. The human Notch signaling pathway PCR array showed a differential expression of Notch-related genes during the differentiation of h-BMSCs into DA neuron-like cells in vitro relative to that in the control group. In conclusion, h-BMSCs overexpressing NTN and Lmx1α can successfully be induced to differentiate into dopaminergic neuron-like cells with a neuronal phenotype exhibiting fundamental biological functions in vitro, and NTN and Lmx1α may affect the expression of Notch-related genes during differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from different tissues have variant biological characteristics, which may induce different performances in the treatment of diseases. At present, it is difficult to know which type of MSC is most suitable for acute liver failure (ALF), and there is no parallel study to compare MSCs from different tissues of the same donor. Methods: In this study, we derived MSCs from three different perinatal tissues of the same donor: cord lining (CL), cord–placenta junction (CPJ) and fetal placenta (FP), respectively, for compared gene expression profiles by transcriptome sequencing, and ability of proliferation and immune regulation in vitro. In addition, the therapeutic effects (e.g., survival rate, histological evaluation, biochemical analysis) of CL-MSCs, FP-MSCs and CPJ-MSCs on ALF mouse model were compared. Results: The transcriptome analysis showed that FP-MSCs have significantly high expression of chemokines compared to CPJ-MSCs and CL-MSCs, similar to the q-PCR result. Of note, we found that CPJ-MSCs and FP-MSCs could improve the survival rate of mice with ALF induced by carbon tetrachloride, but CL-MSCs had no difference with Sham group. Moreover, we also found that biomarkers of ALF (e.g., MDA, SOD and GSH-px) significantly improved post-CPJ-MSCs and FP-MSCs treatment, but not CL-MSCs and Sham group. However, CL-MSCs treatment leads to inflammatory reaction in the early stage (day 3) of ALF treatment but not found with other groups. Conclusions: It is important to select the MSCs derived from different tissues with variant performance for therapeutic purpose, and the CPJ-MSCs and FP-MSCs cells can significantly improve the syndrome of ALF which is highly recommended for a potential therapeutic options for ALF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accumulating evidence has indicated that a group of novel molecules, known as transfer RNA (tRNA)-derived fragments (tRFs) and tRNA halves (tiRNAs), which are derived from tRNAs, serve an essential role in numerous types of human disease, in particular solid tumors. However, to the best of our knowledge, the underlying mechanisms of the effect of tRFs and tiRNAs in lung adenocarcinoma have not been reported. The present study aimed to determine the differential expression levels of tRFs and tiRNAs in lung adenocarcinoma and adjacent tissues using a NextSeq system, and further investigated their potential target genes via bioinformatics analysis. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes signaling pathway and Gene Ontology functional term enrichment analyses were performed to investigate the function of these target genes in the occurrence and development of lung adenocarcinoma. In patients with lung adenocarcinoma, 338 types of tRFs and tiRNAs were detected via sequencing, 284 of which were not previously reported in the tRF database. Compared with the adjacent tissues, 17 types of tRFs and tiRNAs comprising 34 subtypes were found to be abnormally expressed in lung adenocarcinoma tissues, 20 of which were upregulated and 14 downregulated. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR verification revealed that the expression levels of tiRNA-Lys-CTT-002, tRF-Val-CAC-010 and tRF-Val-CAC-011 were significantly upregulated, while those of tRF-Ser-TGA-005 were downregulated in lung adenocarcinoma tissues. Bioinformatics analysis identified that tRF-Ser-TGA-005 participated in the 'cellular response to transforming growth factor β stimulus' and tRF-Val-CAC-010 and tRF-Val-CAC-011 participated in the 'Hedgehog signaling pathway'. In conclusion, the results of the present study suggested that tRFs and tiRNAs may be closely associated with the pathogenesis and development of lung adenocarcinoma, providing a novel insight for further studies into lung adenocarcinoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plants are vulnerable to heat stress, especially during reproductive development. The heat shock response (HSR) in the cytosol and nucleus, as well as the unfolded protein response (UPR) in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), are two mechanisms that enable plants to survive heat stress. Excessive heat or ER stresses lead to cell death when the UPR cannot repair stress damage, but the means by which cell survival or death is determined remains unclear. In this study, we used a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify that a cluster of five Immune-associated nucleotide-binding protein (IAN) genes (IAN2 to IAN6) is responsible for variation in heat tolerance at the reproductive stage in Arabidopsis thaliana. These IAN genes have both unique and overlapping functions in the negative regulation of heat tolerance, and their loss of function singly or in combination confers increased heat tolerance, measured by a lower number of barren siliques and a higher seedling survival rate under heat. The loss of rice IAN1 gene function also leads to enhanced heat tolerance, suggesting a conserved function of plant IANs. Transcriptome analysis revealed enhanced expression of HSR and UPR genes, as well as reduced cell death, under heat and ER stress in the mutant of IAN6 , a major effect member in Arabidopsis. Furthermore, the IAN proteins were found to promote cell death induced by heat stress, ER stress, and cell death-inducing molecules. Thus, the Arabidopsis IAN genes repress heat tolerance, probably through the HSR and UPR and by enhancing the cell death pathway. The IAN2 to IAN6 proteins are partially localized to the ER, suggesting a direct role in the UPR and UPR-mediated cell death. In addition, a natural IAN6 variant from more heat-tolerant Arabidopsis accessions confers greater heat tolerance and induces less cell death compared with the natural variant from less heat-tolerant accessions. The heat-tolerant IAN6 variant is associated with a higher maximum temperature of the warmest month at its collection sites compared with the heat-sensitive variant. Taken together, these results reveal an important role of Arabidopsis IAN2 to IAN6 genes in the regulation of the HSR, UPR, and cell death, and suggest that their natural variations have adaptive functions in heat tolerance. Arabidopsis IAN (Immune-Nucleotide-binding) genes in a cluster are identified as negative regulators of heat tolerance and contributors to natural variations of fertility under heat. Arabidopsis and rice IAN genes have conserved function in heat tolerance repression through promoting cell death and inhibiting unfolded protein response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

microRNAs (miRNAs), a kind of small noncoding RNAs, are considered able to regulate expression of genes and mediate RNA silencing. miR‐129‐5p was shown to be a cancer‐related miRNA. However, the influence of miR‐129‐5p in rectal adenocarcinoma (READ) development remains to be determined. Based on the TCGA data, downregulation of miR‐129‐5p in READ samples was observed. Manual restoration of the miR‐129‐5p in SW1463 and SW480 cell lines significantly inhibited invasion, migration, and proliferation of READ cell lines, while the apoptosis ability was enhanced. Meanwhile, we found E2F7 acted as a potential target of miR‐129‐5p and was upregulated in READ samples. E2F7 upregulation reversed the repression of miR‐129‐5p on READ development. Finally, in vivo experiments showed that inhibition of tumor growth in nude mice was achieved through upregulating miR‐129‐5p. Overall, our findings suggest increasing of miR‐129‐5p leads to the suppression of READ progression through regulating the expression of E2F7, which may provide novel insights into the treatment of READ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]