ISSN 0253-2778

CN 34-1054/N

2021 Vol. 51, No. 8

Display Method:
Invited Reviews
Endothelial dysfunction and panvascular diseases
XU Suowen, GE Junbo, WENG Jianping
2021, 51(8): 577-585. doi: 10.52396/JUST-2021-0051
Abstract:
Vascular endothelial cells are the key cell type responsible for vascular health and homeostasis. Endothelial dysfunction (ED), as the core process of panvascular diseases, is caused by multi-step and multi-risk factors involving endothelial injury, hyperpermeability, vasoconstriction, inflammation, oxidative stress, leukocyte adhesion, metabolic disorder, endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EndMT), and platelet activation. ED plays an important role in cardiovascular, tumor, metabolic, pulmonary, and infectious diseases. Therefore, the assessment of endothelial function is of great importance to clinical diagnosis and therapeutics. In this review, we centered on the relationship between ED and panvascular diseases, and overviewed the research advance of ED and panvascular diseases, with an aim to understanding the novel molecular mechanism of panvascular diseases and accelerating the development of pharmaceuticals targeting ED in panvascular diseases.
Research Articles
LncRNA expression profiles of Schizosaccharomyces pombe in DNA damage inducing environments
YU Tianyi, WU Ruikun, SHAN Ge, REN Bingbing
2021, 51(8): 586-597. doi: 10.52396/JUST-2021-0074
Abstract:
LncRNAs are pervasively transcribed in eukaryotic cells and dynamically regulated in response to environmental changes. Compared to mRNAs, roles of lncRNAs in DNA damage responses are poorly understood. The lncRNA expression profiles of Schizosaccharomyces pombe under the treatment of four kinds of DNA damage generating drugs (camptothecin, hydroxyurea, methyl methanesulfonate and phleomycin) were systematically characterized by RNA-seq. Similar to mRNAs, lncRNA repertoires underwent drastic changes in response to DNA damage inducing environments. A Core DNA Damage Response lncRNA set of 161 commonly induced and 194 commonly repressed lncRNAs was identified. The differences between lncRNA and mRNA transcription profiles suggested that lncRNAs might conduct critical functions in DNA damage responses independent from their associated mRNAs. This profiling on lncRNA expressions provided data and resources for further functional studies of the fission yeast lncRNAs.
Highly perfluorocarbon loading efficiency of polymer biomimetic nanoparticle encapsulated by erythrocyte membrane to improve tumor phototherapy
SUN Xun, YU Yue
2021, 51(8): 598-608. doi: 10.52396/JUST-2021-0101
Abstract:
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an emerging treatment method that relies on oxygen. However, due to the insufficient oxygen supply to the blood vessels at the tumor site, the hypoxic microenvironment greatly inhibits the therapeutic effect of PDT. Therefore, how to alleviate the tumor hypoxia is the key issue of the development of PDT. Perfluorocarbon is a compound that can effectively carry oxygen and is one of the commonly used blood substitutes. We carry oxygen and photothermal drug Indocyanine Green (ICG) through PFC (bromide hepta-fluorooctane) nanoparticles, and coat the particles with red blood cell membranes for bionic camouflage to reduce the uptake of particles by macrophages, improve the circulation capacity of the particles and enhance the ability of the drug to accumulate in the tumor. In addition, we combine PDT to effectively alleviate the hypoxia in the tumor microenvironment, enhance the photodynamic effect, and provide new strategies for cancer therapies.
A new standard quadratic optimization approach to beam angle optimization for fixed-field intensity modulated radiation therapy
PENG Junbo, ZHU Lei
2021, 51(8): 609-617. doi: 10.52396/JUST-2021-0091
Abstract:
Beam angle optimization (BAO) largely determines the performance of the fixed-field intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), and it is usually considered as non-convex optimization and a non-deterministic polynomial(NP) hard problem. In this work, BAO is reformulated into a highly efficient framework of standard quadratic optimization.The maximum of beamlet intensities for each incident field as the surrogate variable indicates whether one radiation field has been selected. By converting the function of maximum value in the objective into a set of linear constraints, the problem is solved as standard quadratic optimization via reweighting l1-norm scheme.The performance of the proposed BAO has been verified on a digital phantom and two patients.And the conclusion is drawn: the proposed convex optimization framework is able to find an optimal set of beam angles, leading to improved dose sparing on organs-at-risk (OARs) in the fixed-field IMRT.
Effects of specific amino acids on the metabolism of Drosophila melanogaster
XU Tong, HE Li
2021, 51(8): 618-627. doi: 10.52396/JUST-2021-0116
Abstract:
To investigate the perception and effects of specific amino acids on animals, we took Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism, measured the dietary preference and uptake of 20 amino acids as well as detected the effect of different amino acids on adult motility. We found that male and female Drosophila preferentially sense and consume different amino acids, and threonine specifically affects the motility of adult females. We then fed the third instar larvae with four dietary conditions (starvation, threonine, sucrose, and threonine + sucrose) and analyzed the differentially expressed genes between groups by transcriptome profiling. Gene Ontology annotation and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis revealed that threonine affects steroid hormone and redox signaling. We further validated 8 genes by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR in both larvae and adults,and found that the biological responses of threonine may depend on developmental stages. Our findings lay a foundation for additional in-depth investigation of the sensing and metabolic regulation of specific amino acids and provide clues of its molecular mechanism at the gene expression level.
Chemistry
Influence of aliovalent doping on the structure and property of Li2MnCl4chloride solid electrolyte
DUAN Chaomin, MA Cheng
2021, 51(8): 628-636. doi: 10.52396/JUST-2021-0121
Abstract:
A series of Li2-xMn1-xGaxCl4 (x=0, 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5) materials were synthesized with the mechanochemical approach. As confirmed by X-ray powder diffraction and Rietveld refinements, Ga3+can be successfully incorporated into the octahedral sites that are partially occupied by Mn2+.The as-milled materials with relatively low crystallinity generally exhibit higher ionic conductivity than the well crystallized ones produced by annealing at 250 ℃. Among all the materials studied,the as-milled Li1.9Mn0.9Ga0.1Cl4shows the highest ionic conductivity (8.3×10-5 S·cm-1), which is two orders of magnitude higher than that of the as-milled Li2MnCl4(7.12×10-7 S·cm-1). While the unit cell volume does not vary significantly with the composition, the appropriate Li vacancy content should play an important role in the optimized ionic conductivity of Li1.9Mn0.9Ga0.1Cl4.
Development of an analysis method for determination of pectin in tobacco by solid state 13C CP/MAS NMR
NIU Fanchao, XIE Wei, HUANG Chaozhang, LAN Hongqiao, HUANG Yanjun, GAO Miao, YANG Jun
2021, 51(8): 637-646. doi: 10.52396/JUST-2021-0106
Abstract:
A quantitative analysis method was developed for determination of pectin content in tobacco samples by solid state 13C CP/MAS NMR. A 5.5 mm outer diameter of dimethyl silicone rubber tubing was designed and utilized as a reference of intensity, which was packed into a 5.5 mm inner diameter zirconia NMR rotor to construct an NMR sample tubing. The powder samples filled into the sample tubing were detected to obtain 13C CP/MAS NMR spectra. The peak of C-6 at 171 ppm was processed with spectral deconvolution to eliminate interference from overlapping peaks. The calibration curve was established with the area ratios of assigned C-6 peak to intensity reference peak and the mass of the polygalacturonic acid (PGA). This method was used to determine the pectin content in six different tobacco samples. Relative errors were between -4.94% and 3.84% compared with the results measured by the standard method. The recovery of PGA from spiked tobacco samples was ranged from 94.33% to 102.77%, the RSD (n=5) was less than 2.32%. It demonstrates that the 13C CP/MAS NMR method with a novel intensity reference possesses the properties of speediness, accuracy and simplicity, which is suitable for the quantitative analysis of pectin content in tobacco.