Abstract:Parkinson disease (PD) is a complex neurodegenerative disorder of the central nervous system（CNS）, the core pathological hallmark of which is the progressive loss of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta. At present, the main treatments of PD include drugs and surgery. However, the drugs lack enough neuroprotective activity, etiological treatment, and are not available in the later period,and the risk of surgery is high. Recently, cellular reprogramming technologies have made breakthrough developments. Induced pluripotent stem cells(iPSCs), induced dopamine neurons(iDNs) and induced neural stem cells(iNSCs) which are generated through reprogramming can be applied to treatment of PD. Transplantation of dopaminergic neurons differentiated from iPSCs, iDNs and iNSCs to specific brain regions can replace the lost neurons or restore the functional integrity of neurons, thus providing an effective treatment for PD. This article introduces mechanisms of cellular reprogramming, and summarizes advantages, disadvantages and efficacy of iPSCs, iDNs and iNSCs in the treatment of PD. It also explains current challenges and discusses the possible solutions.

Abstract:Sactipeptides represent an emerging class of ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides with diverse bioactivities. The common hallmark of sactipeptides is intramolecular thioether bond that crosslinks the sulfur atom of a cysteine and an α-carbon of an acceptor amino acid. This review summarizes recent achievements in many aspects of sactipeptides, including discovery, activity, biosynthesis, and mode of action, with a particular focus on the common enzymology of radical SAM chemistry leading to the unusual S-to-Cα thioether linkages.

Abstract:The CC chemokines is the largest and most widely studied group of chemokines,which play a critical role in inflammatory leukocyte locomotion ,trafficking and adhesion. The chemokine cc subfamily are involed in the pathogenesis of myocardial infarction. Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and its receptor CC Chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) ,as most-study chemokine,play an important role in post-infarction inflammation, proliferation and scar formation, thus affecting ventricular remodeling after myocardial infarction.In recent years, other members of the CC chemokines have been gradually revealed to be involved in the development of myocardial infarction. This article reviews the role of CC chemokines in various stages of myocardial infarction, especially the effects on ventricular remodeling after myocardial infarction, in order to provide direction for future experimental research and novel strategies in the treatment of patients with myocardial infarction disease.

Abstract:The investigation into neural basis of speech processing, including distributed hierarchical organization, neural mechanisms, and functional connectivity of brain, stands in the central of neurolinguistic research. In line with the sequence of speech processing, it can be subdivided into three processing stages: spectrotemporal analysis of primary acoustic signals, phonemic processing, and lexical-semantic processing. Despite underlying neural mechanisms of these stages have been investigated extensively and intensively, it appears that there are still inconsistencies and controversies between different model theories/hypotheses. Consequently, it is crucial to sort out and summarize them. The present review takes the three speech processing stages of the brain as the main line and reviews the research status of neurological mechanism under each stage, covers cortical mapping, neural oscillations, and event-related potential characteristics. Of note, this review focuses more on observations based on the electrophysiological approaches. We aiming to synthesize the latest findings of this field and provide new insights for understanding how speech signals are represented and processed in the human brain.

Abstract:Male pattern baldness is the most common type of progressive hair loss, which has a considerable negative impact on personal image and mental health. Recently, several large sized genome-wide association studies (GWASs) in European and American populations have reported a large number of MPB-associated genetic susceptibility sites, but the genetic effects of these loci in East Asian populations remain unclear. This study was based on a sample of 684 Eurasian males in China, and conducted a population heterogeneity analysis on 624 MPB-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) found in a large GWAS consisting of 205,327 European males in the UK Biobank. Polygenic risk scores (PRS) were used to build predictive models, and the relationship between the number of predictive factors and the predictive performance of the model was investigated. A total of 467 SNPs passed quality control, among which 6.9% showed nominally significant association with MPB (P <0.05). Linear and logistic models established by including the effects of age, body mass index (BMI), and 25 SNPs demonstrated fairly accurate prediction accuracy (R_² = 28.9%, AUC = 0.82). Age had the greatest impact on the model performance (R_² = 22.9%, AUC = 0.77), and the AUC reached the maximum when BMI and 68 SNPs were added cumulatively (about 0.89). This study indicates that MPB has strong genetic heterogeneity in European and East Asian populations. Selecting a subset of SNPs can achieve prediction accuracy close to that of the complete set. The prediction model constructed here may help understand the genetic mechanism, early diagnosis and prevention of MPB in East Asian populations.

Abstract:The hepatitis B virus x (HBx) protein has been implicated in the pathogenesis of HBV-associated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The mechanisms of HBx involved in epigenetic changes during hepatocarcinogenesis are still obscure. We report here that microRNA-200c (miR-200c) was downregulated in HBV-expressing HCC cells and it targeted DNMT3A directly.. In addition, an inverse correlation between miR-200c and DNA methyltransferase 3A (DNMT3A) was founded in HBV-induced HCC tissues. HBV-induced downregulation of miR-200c upregulated DNMT3A expression, and then resulted in promoter hypermethylation of tumor-related genes in HCC. Our data supplied an epigenetic insight into HBV-induced HCC and identified a potential miRNA-based targeted approach for treating HBV-related HCC.

Abstract:For micro-brain connectomic research, volume electron microscopy is a main method in which it plays an important role for the application of automated tape-collecting ultramicrotome (ATUM) system and array imaging with scanning electron microscopy together. ATUM system enables collecting a large amount of serial sections to be imaged with SEM to form a huge dataset. With regard to the nature of non-vacuum sectioning and sample reserving, we modified and improved the sample preparation process including resin recipe, HRP labelling and post-staining method in order to obtain dataset of high quality for connectomic research.

Abstract:In this paper, we propose an automatic retinal segmentation method to evaluate the projection area of macular edema (ME) on specific layers of the retina in optical coherence tomography (OCT) images. Ten retinal layer boundaries are segmented using an optimized Shortest-Path Faster Algorithm based on weight matrices first, which effectively reduces the algorithm's sensitivity to vascular shadows. However, the presence of ME will result in an inaccurate segmentation of the edema area. Therefore, we use the intensity threshold method to extract the edematous area in each OCT image, set the values in this area to zero, and ensure that the obtained segmented boundary can automatically cross rather than bypass the edematous area. We use the minimum projection method to calculate the projected area of ME at different layers. To test our method, we used data collected from Topcon's OCT machine. The measured macular area resolution in the axial and B-scan directions was 11.7 microns and 46.8 microns, respectively. The mean absolute and standard deviation difference values of the retinal layer boundary segmentations were 4.5±3.2 microns compared to manual segmentation. The proposed method, thus, provides an automatic, noninvasive, and quantitative tool for the evaluation of edema.