Flow injection on-line sorption preconcentration and separation in a knotted reactor (KR) was coupled to cold vapor atomic fluorescence spectrometry for the determination of trace mercury in mineral water. Mercury was preconcentrated by on-line formation of mercury diethyldithiocarbamate complex (Hg-DDTC) and absorption of the resulting neutral complex on the inner walls of a knotted reactor. A 20%(V/V) HNO3 solution heated by electromagnetic induction heating technique was used as eluent to remove the absorbed Hg-DDTC from the KR, and then the vapor mercury generated by mixing the resulting solution and KBH4 was determined on-line by cold vapor atomic fluorescence spectrometry. The 20% HNO3 was employed as both the efficient eluent and the required acidic medium for subsequent mercury vapor generation in our work. Using 20% HNO3 instead of conventional organic solvent as eluent, the proposed method is simple, easy operational and environmentally friendly. Under the optimal experimental conditions, the sample throughput was approximatively 30/h with an enhancement factor of 35. The detection limit of mercury was 2.0 ng/L. The precision(RSD, n=11) was 2.2% at the 0.1 μg/L Hg2+ level.

Objective To investigate the expression of B-cell activating factor ( BAFF ) and its specific receptor BAFF-R in patients with B-cell non-Hodgkin′s lymphoma ( B-NHL) and to analyze the cor-relations between BAFF and the development of B-NHL.Methods RTQ-PCR and Western blot assay were used to measure the expression of BAFF and its specific receptor BAFF-R in patients with B-NHL.Fluores-cence immunocytochemical staining was used to determine the localization of BAFF and BAFF-R in Raji cells, a B-NHL cell line.The expression of BAFF in tumor tissues from patients with B-NHL of different his-tologic subtypes was measured by immunohistochemistry.WST proliferation and TUNEL assays were used to evaluate the effects of BAFF and BAFF-R on the proliferation, survival rate and apoptosis of Raji cells.Lin-ear correlations between the concentrations of lactate dehydrogenase ( LDH) and the expression of BAFF and BAFF at mRNA and protein levels in patients with B-NHL were analyzed.Results BAFF and its specific receptor BAFF-R were expressed in Raji cells and played an important role in the survival and proliferation of B-NHL cell line.The expression of BAFF in tumor cells from patients with B-NHL varied with the different histologic subtypes of B-NHL.Patients with small B-cell malignant lymphoma, large B-cell lymphoma ( LBCL) , mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma ( MALT lymphoma) and follicular lymphoma showed higher levels of BAFF, while those with mantle cell lymphoma showed lower levels of BAFF.Compared with the healthy subjects, patients with B-NHL showed significantly increased expression of BAFF at mRNA and protein levels.The levels of LDH were closely related to the expression of BAFF at mRNA and protein lev-els.Conclusion BAFF and its specific receptor BAFF-R might play an important role in the growth and survival of malignant B cells.

ObjectiveTo investigate the activation of MAPK signal pathway in multiple myeloma and the regulation of BLyS expression levels through MAPK signal pathway; preliminarily study the role of MAPK signal pathway in the up-regulation of BLyS expression levels induced by IFN-γ.MethodsActivated MAPK pathway were detected by Western blot,while the expression of BLyS were detected with RT-PCR and Western blot,and Western blot investigated the effect of MAPK pathway on BLyS expression levels induced by IFN-γ.ResultsIn addition to the expression of ERK,JNK,p38,p-JNK was also expressed in MM cell lines,the MAPK pathway inhibitor targeting JNK SP600125 can down-regulate the expression of BLyS,and its activator anisomycin can up-regulate the expression of BLyS.SP600125 restrained the proliferation and survival of MM cells.ConclusionJNK/SAPK pathway was activated in MM cells; The activated degree of JNK/SAPK pathway and the expression level of BLyS was positively correlated.JNK/SAPK pathway play an important role in the up-regulation of BLyS expression levels induced by IFN-γ.

As a potential vectored vaccine,Newcastle disease virus(NDV)has been subject to various studies for vaccine development,while relatively little research has outlined the immunomodulatory effect of the virus in antigen presentation.To elucidate the key inhibitory factor in regulating the interaction of infected dendritic cells(DCs)and T cells,DCs were pretreated with the NDV vaccine strain LaSota as an inhibitor and stimulated with lipopolysaccharide(LPS)for further detection by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA),flow cytometry,immunoblotting,and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction(qRT-PCR).The results revealed that NDV infection resulted in the inhibition of interleukin(IL)-12p40 in DCs through a p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase(MAPK)-dependent manner,thus inhibiting the synthesis of IL-12p70,leading to the reduction in T cell proliferation and the secretion of interferon-γ(IFN-γ),tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α),and IL-6 induced by DCs.Consequently,downregulated cytokines accelerated the infection and viral transmission from DCs to T cells.Furthermore,several other strains of NDV also exhibited inhibitory activity.The current study reveals that NDV can modulate the intensity of the innate?adaptive immune cell crosstalk critically toward viral invasion improvement,highlighting a novel mechanism of virus-induced immunosuppression and providing new perspectives on the improvement of NDV-vectored vaccine.

Platycodon grandiflorum (Jacq.) A. DC. is a famous medicinal plant commonly used in East Asia. Triterpene saponins isolated from P. grandiflorum are the main biologically active compounds, among which polygalacin D (PGD) has been reported to be an anti-tumor agent. However, its anti-tumor mechanism against hepatocellular carcinoma is unknown. This study aimed to explore the inhibitory effect of PGD in hepatocellular carcinoma cells and related mechanisms of action. We found that PGD exerted significant inhibitory effect on hepatocellular carcinoma cells through apoptosis and autophagy. Analysis of the expression of apoptosis-related proteins and autophagy-related proteins revealed that this phenomenon was attributed to the mitochondrial apoptosis and mitophagy pathways. Subsequently, using specific inhibitors, we found that apoptosis and autophagy had mutually reinforcing effects. In addition, further analysis of autophagy showed that PGD induced mitophagy by increasing BCL2 interacting protein 3 like (BNIP3L) levels.In vivo experiments demonstrated that PGD significantly inhibited tumor growth and increased the levels of apoptosis and autophagy in tumors. Overall, our findings showed that PGD induced cell death of hepatocellular carcinoma cells primarily through mitochondrial apoptosis and mitophagy pathways. Therefore, PGD can be used as an apoptosis and autophagy agonist in the research and development of antitumor agents.
Humans ; Mitophagy ; Carcinoma, Hepatocellular/pathology* ; Liver Neoplasms/pathology* ; Cell Line ; Autophagy ; Apoptosis ; Membrane Proteins ; Proto-Oncogene Proteins/genetics* ; Tumor Suppressor Proteins/pharmacology*