Abstract:Plant microRNAs (miRNA) are 21-24 nt endogenous small non-coding RNAs. They play key roles in plant development, adaptation to stresses and flexible environments through regulating the expression of their target genes post-transcriptionally. Besides, miRNAs are critical for regulating agronomic traits of important economic crops such as rice, maize and soybean, and have great potential in improving crop traits. This review focuses on research progresses of miRNAs involved in regulating important crop agronomic traits (including plant architecture, flowering, seeds development, stresses resistance, etc.) and their regulatory mechanisms. We also summarized the major research methods and strategies for taking advantage of miRNAs to improve crop traits and discussed the future prospects and problems for the application of miRNAs in crop traits improvement.

Abstract:Circular RNA (circRNA) is a type of covalently closed non-coding RNA that may regulate gene expression in eukaryotes. The recent application of high-throughput RNA sequencing and bioinformatics approaches has revealed a large number of circRNAs in human cells. Emerging evidence indicates that many circRNAs have tissue and timing specificity and are linked to physiological development and various diseases. circRNAs have also been shown to be enriched and stable in extracellular fluid, indicating the potential of circRNAs as cancer biomarkers. Gastric cancer is one of the most common human cancers，and its the third most common cancer-related cause of death worldwide. Despite many advances in the diagnosis and treatment of this disease, the prognosis of patients with GC remains poor, with a 5-year overall survival of less than 30% in most countries. Therefore, the discovery of new molecular mechanisms and therapeutic targets that may control the severity of GC and present a predictive value for prognosis is of great importance. CircRNA has been increasingly studied in gastric cancer in recent years and plays an important role in the development, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of gastric cancer. Here, we summarize the current knowledge about circRNAs, including their production mechanisms and general characteristics, biological functions, and their research progress in gastric cancer and problems in the research.

Abstract:The application of magnetic nanoparticles in the biomedical field has widely utilized in recent years especially in magnetic-mediated hyperthermia for cancer treatment because of their unique magnetic properties, that is, the hysteresis loss induces heat under an alternating magnetic field. So far, the magnetic-mediated hyperthermia as a kind of effective means for the treatment of cancer, has entered the third phase of clinical trial. Therefore, in view of the magnetic nanoparticles itself, it has great significance to optimize size, morphology, composition and surface modification to improve their magnetic hyperthermia performance. So it can reduce the concentration of magnetic nanoparticles in clinical practice and minimize the side effects in tumor treatment. This review described in detail that how to optimize the modulation of magnetic nanoparticles to improve magnetic hyperthermia performances.

Abstract:Caloric restriction (CR) refers to a 20%－40% reduction in caloric intake without reducing essential nutrient intake. CR can alleviate the cardiovascular aging process under physiological and pathological conditions by mainly mechanisms including oxidative stress, inflammation, programmed death and telomerewhich are mediated by sundry molecules as well as regulating the risk factors of cardiovascular aging in human and other animals. This paper systematically elaborates the research progress of CR and cardiovascular aging and explore the solution to prevent cardiovascular aging in humans.

Abstract:Recent breakthroughs in molecular labeling and light microscopy enable the imaging of brain-wide neuronal population at cellular level. However, the development of neuronal reconstruction tools lags far behind massive datasets generation, which fails to meet the data analysis requirement at the current stage. In this sense, we first sought reasons for backwardness in current reconstruction tools and we summarized the features and introduced latest developments in these semi-automatic and fully automatic tools. Based on the summarized features, we further listed the challenges in developing reconstruction tools with high throughput and accuracy. In the end, we aired our views on the future development and application prospect of tools in neuron reconstruction.

Abstract:As part of the self-protection mechanism that individuals use to deal with internal and external risk factors, fear plays an important role in the survival of organisms. However, excessive fear is not only detrimental to the survival of the individual, but also easy to cause mental illness such as post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, which seriously affects the quality of life. Clinically, exposure therapy based on behavioral findings is often used to treat fear-related diseases, but these symptoms often recur when the patient break away from the treatment environment. Therefore, the investigation of the information processing in the neural circuits related to fear memory is essential for understanding the occurrence and development of these diseases and establishing new treatments. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the brain regions associated with the extinction of fear memory mainly include the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. In the process of fear extinction, these three brain regions show specific patterns of neural oscillations, and their activities are also synchronized, which constitute the neural basis for the successful extinction of fear memory. In the future, non-invasive brain stimulation based on oscillatory entrainment can be used to intervene the neural circuit and promote the extinction of fear memory and avoid the recurrence of fear, which provides new insights into the treatment of clinical fear-related disorders.

Abstract:Specific visual processing abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia are well documented and involve high-level and low-level stages in the visual pathway. It is indicated that a portion of patients with schizophrenia may undergo visual processing anomalies that affect either early or late visual information processing or both. These sensory information processing disorders are considered to be associated with advanced cognitive dysfunction and their mechanisms are of great importance to the elucidation of several neuropathophysiological mechanisms underlying schizophrenia. Surround suppression is a well-known visual phenomenon, which refers to the inhibition of surround stimuli to center ones, physiologically or perceptually. In this paper, we reviewed the advances in schizophrenia studies on visual surround suppression in behavioral and neural levels. Extensive research on surround suppression in patients with schizophrenia revealed abnormal surround suppression in patients with schizophrenia. However, the results are not consistent, and the neural mechanisms underlying the impaired surround suppression have yet to be identified. Therefore, a systematic and comprehensive investigation combined with multiple neuroscientific technologies is required to further understand the mechanisms underlying these deficits.

Abstract:With the help of the oocyte cryoproservation, the assisted reproductive technology and the embryo engineering technology have tremendous development potential. However, the high concentration of cryoprotectants(CPAs) in cryopreservation will cause osmotic damage and toxic damage to oocytes. Unlike adding a fixed concentration of CPA in step-by-step method, the microfluidic method can achieve continuous CPA concentration change. The oocytes damage evaluation in CPA continuous loading by microfluidic method has not been reported. In this paper, the osmotic behavior of MⅡ porcine oocytes in different loading time, different loading line types and different concave loading types were simulated. Three traditional parameters ΔV (maximum volume change), AOD(accumulative osmotic damage) and J (accumulative chemical damage) were used to evaluate the damage of oocyte. A comprehensive parameter s, which based on the traditional parameters and the information entropy theory，was proposed to evaluate the damage. Oocytes loading experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of s. The results showed differences from the results of traditional damage assessment parameters, which cannot come to the unified conclusion. By analyzing the relationship between blastocyst rate and s, we found that there is a highly negative correlation between s and blastocysts rate. That indicates that the comprehensive damage assessment parameter s can be used to assess cell damage and breaks a new path for cell damage evaluation.

Abstract:Phage phi29, a double-stranded DNA virus, assembles its genome into its protein capsid to near-crystalline density by a highly efficient molecular motor. The motor contains the connector, prohead RNA and ATP hydrolytic enzyme protein gp16. Currently, no structure-function information is available regarding the C-terminal domain of gp16. Our research aims to understand its role and interaction with pRNA or DNA. This study provides a method for recombinant gp16 protein synthesis and purification by the E.coli SUMO expression system, and here we report the structural envelope of the C terminal domain of gp16 obtained through small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) technology. The gp16 C terminal domain gene was recombinantly expressed using the SUMO tag. The gp16 gene was flanked by an N-terminal 6His-SUMO tag and purified by Ni-NTA affinity chromatography. High purity target protein monomer was obtained by size exclusion chromatography. This brings the purity of the target protein to about 95%. Then the concentration of the target protein to 1.3 g/L, and the SAXS data were collected at Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) beamline BL19U. The resulting molecular envelop highly resembles the homologous protein FtsK, and the curves calculated by the CRYSOL software are highly coincident with the experimental curves. Through recombinant expression, purification and structure analysis, we obtained the solution structure of the gp16. Structural information derived from this study laid the foundation for future structural and functional research of gp16 C terminal, ultimately targeting the viral mechanisms for infection.

Abstract:Recently, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Commission (EC) approved ONPATTRO? (Patisiran) lipid complex injection, an RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutic developed by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., for the treatment of the polyneuropathy of hereditary transthyretin-mediated (hATTR) amyloidosis in adults. ONPATTRO is the first approved RNAi therapeutics all over the world, indicating the whole development processes have been well established. It also means a novel form of drug molecule comes to beside from bench, following the small molecules and monoclonal antibodies. Based on this milestone achievement, the basic information of the drug and indication, the mechanism and properties of RNAi therapeutics, its complicated development history, as well as the latest advances of delivery and modification technologies, were thoroughly reviewed and discussed in this paper, which provides a rough picture for ONPATTRO and RNAi therapy.