Graphene Oxide-Gallic Acid Nanodelivery System for Cancer Therapy

Despite the technological advancement in the biomedical science, cancer remains a life-threatening disease. In this study, we designed an anticancer nanodelivery system using graphene oxide (GO) as nanocarrier for an active anticancer agent gallic acid (GA). The successful formation nanocomposite (GOGA) was characterized using XRD, FTIR, HRTEM, Raman, and UV/Vis spectroscopy. The release study shows that the release of GA from the designed anticancer nanocomposite (GOGA) occurs in a sustained manner in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution at pH 7.4. In in vitro biological studies, normal fibroblast (3T3) and liver cancer cells (HepG2) were treated with different concentrations of GO, GOGA, and GA for 72 h. The GOGA nanocomposite showed the inhibitory effect to cancer cell growth without affecting normal cell growth. The results of this research are highly encouraging to go further for in vivo studies

Identification and Typing of Human Enterovirus: A Genomic Barcode Approach

Identification and typing of human enterovirus (HEVs) are important to pathogen detection and therapy. Previous phylogeny-based typing methods are mainly based on multiple sequence alignments of specific genes in the HEVs, but the results are not stable with respect to different choices of genes. Here we report a novel method for identification and typing of HEVs based on information derived from their whole genomes. Specifically, we calculate the k-mer based barcode image for each genome, HEV or other human viruses, for a fixed k, 1<k<7, where a genome barcode is defined in terms of the k-mer frequency distribution across the whole genome for all combinations of k-mers. A phylogenetic tree is constructed using a barcode-based distance and a neighbor-joining method among a set of 443 representative non-HEV human viruses and 395 HEV sequences. The tree shows a clear separation of the HEV viruses from all the non-HEV viruses with 100% accuracy and a separation of the HEVs into four distinct clads with 93.4% consistency with a multiple sequence alignment-based phylogeny. Our detailed analyses of the HEVs having different typing results by the two methods indicate that our results are in better agreement with known information about the HEVs

Search for Dark Matter and Supersymmetry with a Compressed Mass Spectrum in the Vector Boson Fusion Topology in Proton-Proton Collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Global Transcriptome Profiling of the Pine Shoot Beetle, Tomicus yunnanensis (Coleoptera: Scolytinae)

Background: The pine shoot beetle Tomicus yunnanensis (Coleoptera: Scolytinae) is an economically important pest of Pinus yunnanensis in southwestern China. Developed resistance to insecticides due to chemical pesticides being used for a long time is a factor involved in its serious damage, which poses a challenge for management. In addition, highly efficient adaptation to divergent environmental ecologies results in this pest posing great potential threat to pine forests. However, the molecular mechanisms remain unknown as only limited nucleotide sequence data for this species is available. Methodology/Principal Findings: In this study, we applied next generation sequencing (Illumina sequencing) to sequence the adult transcriptome of T. yunnanensis. A total of 51,822,230 reads were obtained. They were assembled into 140,702 scaffolds, and 60,031 unigenes. The unigenes were further functionally annotated with gene descriptions, Gene Ontology (GO), Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COG), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genome (KEGG). In total, 80,932 unigenes were classified into GO, 13,599 unigenes were assigned to COG, and 33,875 unigenes were found in KO categories. A biochemical pathway database containing 219 predicted pathways was also created based on the annotations. In depth analysis of the data revealed a large number of genes related to insecticides resistance and heat shock protein genes associated with environmental stress. Conclusions/Significance: The results facilitate the investigations of molecular resistance mechanisms to insecticides an

Causative agent distribution and antibiotic therapy assessment among adult patients with community acquired pneumonia in Chinese urban population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Knowledge of predominant microbial patterns in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) constitutes the basis for initial decisions about empirical antimicrobial treatment, so a prospective study was performed during 2003–2004 among CAP of adult Chinese urban populations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Qualified patients were enrolled and screened for bacterial, atypical, and viral pathogens by sputum and/or blood culturing, and by antibody seroconversion test. Antibiotic treatment and patient outcome were also assessed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Non-viral pathogens were found in 324/610 (53.1%) patients among whom <it>M. pneumoniae </it>was the most prevalent (126/610, 20.7%). Atypical pathogens were identified in 62/195 (31.8%) patients carrying bacterial pathogens. Respiratory viruses were identified in 35 (19%) of 184 randomly selected patients with adenovirus being the most common (16/184, 8.7%). The nonsusceptibility of <it>S. pneumoniae </it>to penicillin and azithromycin was 22.2% (Resistance (R): 3.2%, Intermediate (I): 19.0%) and 79.4% (R: 79.4%, I: 0%), respectively. Of patients (312) from whom causative pathogens were identified and antibiotic treatments were recorded, clinical cure rate with β-lactam antibiotics alone and with combination of a β-lactam plus a macrolide or with fluoroquinolones was 63.7% (79/124) and 67%(126/188), respectively. For patients having mixed <it>M. pneumoniae </it>and/or <it>C. pneumoniae </it>infections, a better cure rate was observed with regimens that are active against atypical pathogens (e.g. a β-lactam plus a macrolide, or a fluoroquinolone) than with β-lactam alone (75.8% vs. 42.9%, <it>p </it>= 0.045).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In Chinese adult CAP patients, <it>M. pneumoniae </it>was the most prevalent with mixed infections containing atypical pathogens being frequently observed. With <it>S. pneumoniae</it>, the prevalence of macrolide resistance was high and penicillin resistance low compared with data reported in other regions.</p

Profile of MicroRNAs following Rat Sciatic Nerve Injury by Deep Sequencing: Implication for Mechanisms of Nerve Regeneration

Unlike the central nervous system, peripheral nerves can regenerate when damaged. MicroRNA (miRNA) is a novel class of small, non-coding RNA that regulates gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. Here, we report regular alterations of miRNA expression following rat sciatic nerve injury using deep sequencing. We harvested dorsal root ganglia tissues and the proximal stumps of the nerve, and identified 201 and 225 known miRNAs with significant expression variance at five time points in these tissues after sciatic nerve transaction, respectively. Subsequently, hierarchical clustering, miRNA expression pattern and co-expression network were performed. We screened out specific miRNAs and further obtained the intersection genes through target analysis software (Targetscan and miRanda). Moreover, GO and KEGG enrichment analyses of these intersection genes were performed. The bioinformatics analysis indicated that the potential targets for these miRNAs were involved in nerve regeneration, including neurogenesis, neuron differentiation, vesicle-mediated transport, homophilic cell adhesion and negative regulation of programmed cell death that were known to play important roles in regulating nerve repair. Finally, we combined differentially expressed mRNA with the predicted targets for selecting inverse miRNA-target pairs. Our results show that the abnormal expression of miRNA may contribute to illustrate the molecular mechanisms of nerve regeneration and that miRNAs are potential targets for therapeutic interventions and may enhance intrinsic regenerative ability

Comparative Genomics of Cell Envelope Components in Mycobacteria

Mycobacterial cell envelope components have been a major focus of research due to their unique features that confer intrinsic resistance to antibiotics and chemicals apart from serving as a low-permeability barrier. The complex lipids secreted by Mycobacteria are known to evoke/repress host-immune response and thus contribute to its pathogenicity. This study focuses on the comparative genomics of the biosynthetic machinery of cell wall components across 21-mycobacterial genomes available in GenBank release 179.0. An insight into survival in varied environments could be attributed to its variation in the biosynthetic machinery. Gene-specific motifs like ‘DLLAQPTPAW’ of ufaA1 gene, novel functional linkages such as involvement of Rv0227c in mycolate biosynthesis; Rv2613c in LAM biosynthesis and Rv1209 in arabinogalactan peptidoglycan biosynthesis were detected in this study. These predictions correlate well with the available mutant and coexpression data from TBDB. It also helped to arrive at a minimal functional gene set for these biosynthetic pathways that complements findings using TraSH

A nanocomposite ultraviolet photodetector based on interfacial trap-controlled charge injection

Ultraviolet photodetectors have applications in fields such as medicine, communications and defence1, and are typically made from single-crystalline silicon, silicon carbide or gallium nitride p–n junction photodiodes. However, such inorganic photodetectors are unsuitable for certain applications because of their high cost and low responsivity (<0.2 A W−1)2. Solution-processed photodetectors based on organic materials and/or nanomaterials could be significantly cheaper to manufacture, but their performance so far has been limited2,3,4,5,6,7. Here, we show that a solution-processed ultraviolet photodetector with a nanocomposite active layer composed of ZnO nanoparticles blended with semiconducting polymers can significantly outperform inorganic photodetectors. As a result of interfacial trap-controlled charge injection, the photodetector transitions from a photodiode with a rectifying Schottky contact in the dark, to a photoconductor with an ohmic contact under illumination, and therefore combines the low dark current of a photodiode and the high responsivity of a photoconductor (∼721–1,001 A W−1). Under a bias of <10 V, our device provides a detectivity of 3.4 × 1015 Jones at 360 nm at room temperature, which is two to three orders of magnitude higher than that of existing inorganic semiconductor ultraviolet photodetectors