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Purpose: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is the most common head and neck cancer in Southeast Asia. Because local recurrence and distant metastasis are still the main causes of NPC treatment failure, it is urgent to identify new tumor markers and therapeutic targets for advanced NPC.Experimental Design: RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was applied to look for interchromosome translocation in NPC. PCR, FISH, and immunoprecipitation were used to examine the fusion gene expression at RNA, DNA, and protein levels in NPC biopsies. MTT assay, colony formation assay, sphere formation assay, co-immunoprecipitation, chromatin immunoprecipitation assay, and in vivo chemoresistance assay were applied to explore the function of RARS-MAD1L1 in NPC.Results: We demonstrated that RARS-MAD1L1 was present in 10.03% (35/349) primary NPC biopsies and 10.7% (9/84) in head and neck cancer (HNC) samples. RARS-MAD1L1 overexpression increased cell proliferation, colony formation, and tumorigenicity in vitro, and the silencing of endogenous RARS-MAD1L1 reduced cancer cell growth and colony formation in vitro In addition, RARS-MAD1L1 increased the side population (SP) ratio and induced chemo- and radioresistance. Furthermore RARS-MAD1L1 interacted with AIMP2, which resulted in activation of FUBP1/c-Myc pathway. The silencing of FUBP1 or the administration of a c-Myc inhibitor abrogated the cancer stem cell (CSC)-like characteristics induced by RARS-MAD1L1. The expression of c-Myc and ABCG2 was higher in RARS-MAD1L1-positive HNC samples than in negative samples.Conclusions: Our findings indicate that RARS-MAD1L1 might contribute to tumorigenesis, CSC-like properties, and therapeutic resistance, at least in part, through the FUBP1/c-Myc axis, implying that RARS-MAD1L1 might serve as an attractive target for therapeutic intervention for NPC. Clin Cancer Res; 24(3); 659-73. ©2017 AACR.

Wilson disease (WD) is an autosomal recessive inherited disease caused by abnormalities of the copper-transporting protein encoding gene ATP7B. In this study, we examined ATP7B for mutations in 114 individuals of Chinese Han population living in north China who were diagnosed as WD. Totally, we identified 36 mutations and 11 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), of which 14 mutations have never been reported previously and 5 were firstly described in Chinese. Among these, p.R778L (21.5%), p.A874V (7.5%) and p.P992L (6.1%) were the most frequent mutations. A genotype of p.L770L+p.R778L+p.P992L was the most frequent triple mutations and two pairs of mutations, p.L770L/p.R778L and p.A874V/p.I929V, were closely related. In addition, a database was established to summarize all ATP7B mutations, including those reported previously and those identified in this study. Popular algorithms were used to predict the functional effects of these mutations, and finally, by comparative genomics approaches, we predicted a group of mutation hot spots for ATP7B. Our study will broaden our knowledge about ATP7B mutations in WD patients in north China, and be helpful for clinical genetic testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitrous Oxide is a very important greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances. Due to the limited observations, there are still many uncertainties to quantitatively describe the role of nitrous oxide played in both cases. We can retrieve the methane and carbon dioxide gas using thermal infrared satellite data AIRS, but it is rarely for the nitrous oxide retrieval. Therefore, this paper retrieves nitrous oxide profiles from the AIRS data with an Optimal Estimate Method for the first time in China. The issue of the a priori and channels election is discussed. Comparison of the retrieved AIRS profiles with HIPPO profiles show the retrieved profiles are in good agreement with the smoothed HIPPO profiles, and a notable improvement in this algorithm than the eigen vector regression algorithm. For pressures between 300 and 900 hPa, we got the most accurate profiles and the relative error is only 0.1%, which is consistent with the jacobian peaks of the selected channels.

In order to get higher vertical resolution atmosphere profile information, the present paper retrieves atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles from the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) on the newly-launched Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) and future Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) with a nonlinear Newton iteration method by using the profiles retrieved via statical regression method as the first guess, and the issue of channel selection is discussed. The retrieved profiles are compared with radiosonde observations, and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) analyses show that the physical retrievals of temperature and moisture are in good agreement with the distributions from GDAS analysis fields and radiosonde observations, and have a notable improvements of the atmospheric profile retrieval accuracy as compared with the eigenvector regression algorithm. For pressures between 200 and 700 hPa the accuracy is of the order of 1 K for the temperature profile, and 20% for the relative humidity profile is consistent with the jacobian peaks of the selected channels.

With the urbanizing in China, haze days occur frequently, which have largely impacted air quality. In the present paper, based on haze physical properties, haze optical properties were calculated by Mie theory and apparent reflectance of haze in Environment Satellite 1 (HJ-1) channels was simulated by Radiative Transfer (RT) 3. Simulated results show that it is reasonable to extract the haze from apparent reflectance in the first and second channels. By Deep Blue algorithm, Haze Optical Depth (HOD) was retrieved from HJ-1 data supported by reflectance database from MODIS product. From HJ-1 data in 2009 over Beijing area, the haze days were monitored and validated by AERONET/PHOTONS Beijing site. The validation shows that the correlation coefficient of HOD is greater than 0.9, but HOD from HJ-1 is greater than that from ground-based measurements. The discussions show that the error from reflectance database is less than 0.1 and radiance resolution of HJ-1 needs to advance for haze monitoring.

Generally, aerosols over land are composed of fine and coarse aerosols, which have different optical properties. How to derive the fine mode and coarse mode aerosols from satellite observations is an important issue in the aerosol retrieving. In the present paper, information of aerosol models (including refractive index and size distribution function) was retrieved from the ground-based measurement of the AERONET/PHOTONS site in Beijing. The retrievals indicate that, aerosols over Beijing have a bi-model distribution, and the optical properties of fine and coarse aerosols are distinct. Based on the dark dense vegetation (DDV) method, optical depth of the fine, coarse and total aerosols were derived from MODIS data over Beijing area in 2007. The validation of these satellite retrievals shows that from MODIS data, the optical depth of fine and total aerosols can be retrieved well (with correlation coefficients greater than 0.8), and so can the Angstrom exponent (having a correlation coefficient of 0.517). However, relatively poor results were obtained when retrieving the optical depth of coarse aerosols.

The Ring effect is a significant limitation to the accuracy of the retrieval of trace gas constituents in atmosphere, while using satellite data with differential optical absorption spectroscopy technique. The Ring effect refers to the filling in of Fraunhofer lines, known as solar absorption lines, caused almost entirely by rotational Raman scattering. The inelastic component of the molecular scattering results in a net increase in radiance in the line because more radiation is shifted to the wavelength of an absorption line than shifted from this wavelength to other wavelengths. The rotational Raman scattering by N2 and Oz in the atmosphere is the main factor that leads to Ring effect. Basically, the Ring effect is considered as a pseudo-absorption process in retrieval of trace gas constituents in atmosphere. The solar spectrum measured by OMI/AURA is convolved with rotational Raman cross sections of N2 and O2, divided by the original solar spectrum, with a cubic polynomial subtracted off, to create differential Ring spectrum. This method has been suggested in order to obtain an effective differential Ring cross-section for the DOAS fitting process. The differential Ring spectrum could be used to improve the accuracy of the retrieval of the trace gases concentration. The results in this paper have been in basic agreement with the corresponding results calculated with RTM, and the R2 Statistic is 0. 966 3.