DNA microarray has become an essential medical genetic diagnostic tool for its high-throughput, miniaturization and automation. The design and selection of oligonucleotide probes are critical for preparing gene chips with high quality. Several sets of probe design software have been developed and are available to perform this work now. Every set of the software aims to different target sequences and shows different advantages and limitations. In this article, the research and development of these sets of software are reviewed in line with three main criteria, including specificity, sensitivity and melting temperature (Tm). In addition, based on the experimental results from literatures, these sets of software are classified according to their applications. This review will be helpful for users to choose an appropriate probe-design software. It will also reduce the costs of microarrays, improve the application efficiency of microarrays, and promote both the research and development (R&D) and commercialization of high-performance probe design software.
Base Sequence ; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis ; Oligonucleotide Probes ; Sensitivity and Specificity ; Software ; Software Design

Purpose: To realize the detection of T-wave end with an efficient and accurate method. Methods: R-wave was lo-cated using wavelet transforming, and then the T-wave detection interval was identified accttrately by avoiding the influence of heart rate and P-wave. In addition, T-wave peaks were determined referring to the modulus maxima in the interval. Based on these, the T-wave end was located with a simple and practical geometrical method, which was applied for the evaluation of QT database. Results: The positioning capability of the above-mentioned method reached to (-0.35225±18.5869) ms which was comparable or even better than those manual annotations from QT database by cardiologists. Conclusions: The experimental results showed that our algorithm for T-wave end detection is robust to noise, baseline drift and waveform morphological varia-tions, and easy to calculate and to realize.

Objective To study the clinical effect of enalapril maleate and folic acid tablets in the treatment of H type hypertension, and to observe the blood homocysteine(Hcy), to provide the basis for clinical diagnosis and treatment.Methods 126 patients with H type hypertension were selected.They were divided into study group and control group according to the random number table method,63 cases in each group.The control group was given enalapril maleate, the study group was given enalapril maleate and folic acid tablets.The clinical efficacy of the two groups was compared.The systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and Hcy level before and after treatment in two groups were observed.Results The total effective rate of the study group was 90.5%(57/63),which of the control group was 74.6%(47/63),the difference was statistically significant(x2=15.371,P<0.05).There was no significant difference in systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure before treatment between the two groups(P>0.05).The systolic pressure after treatment of the two groups were (129.3±5.7)mmHg and (137.9±4.9)mmHg, the diastolic blood pressure were (81.5±3.6)mmHg and (89.6±5.1)mmHg, the differences were statistically significant compared with before treatment(t=8.969,7.851,7.343,6.987,all P<0.05),the difference between the two groups was statistically significant(P<0.05).There was no significant difference in Hcy before treatment between the two groups(P>0.05), after treatment Hcy levels of the two groups were (8.93±0.63)μmol/L and (15.35±0.57)μmol/L respectively, the differences were statistically significant compared with before treatment(t=8.097,8.031,all P<0.05),the difference between the two groups was statistically significant(t=7.573,P<0.05).Conclusion Enalapril maleate and folic acid tablets in the treatment of H type hypertension has good clinical effect, can significantly lower blood pressure, improve Hcy level.

Objective:To investigate the monitoring value of echocardiography for atrial septostomy during the treatment of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation(ECMO).Methods:Sixteen patients underwent atrial septostomy during the treatment of ECMO in Wuhan Asia Heart Hospital from Jan.2017 to Dec.2019 were included. The diameter of the ostomy, the direction of interatrial shunt, the tricuspid regurgitation degree and the pulmonary artery pressure were measured by echocardiography daily after atrial septostomy.Results:There were no significant differences in the diameter of the ostomy in 16 patients(the range of coefficient of variation 0.86%-4.77%). The direction of interatrial shunt changed gradually from right - left atrial shunt to left - right atrial shunt. Pulmonary arterial pressure decreased gradually(the range of coefficient of variation 14.70%-32.13%) as estimated by tricuspid regurgitation pressure gradient.Conclusions:Atrial septostomy is an effective measure to relieve right heart pressure and improve right heart function in patients with ECMO. The echocardiography can be helpful for the monitoring of atrial septostomy.

Objective To investigate the relationship between RKIP expression and the efficiency of radiotherapy in NPC patients and evaluate the possibility of using RKIP as a predictor of radiosensitivity.Methods A total of 180 patients with NPC in Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center without evidence of distant metastasis at initial diagnosis were enrolled in this study,who had received intensity-modulated radiotherapy alone.Patients were classified into 2 groups according to criteria below:patients with biopsy proven recurrent diseases occurring at nasopharynx and/or neck within 5 years after radiotherapy were classified as the radioresistant group.The pathological type at relapse was the same as the previous one before treatment.Patients with a minimum follow-up of 5 years after radiotherapy without evidence of recurrence at the original site of the tumor were classified as the radiosensitive group.Patients in the 2 groups were matched according to the factors related with radiosensitivity.RKIP was examined by immunohistochemical staining before radiotherapy.The relationship between RKIP expression and the effect of radiotherapy were analyzed.Results The positive rate of the RKIP expression in the radiosensitive group versus the radioresistant group was 80.0％ versus 26.7％.The positive rate (x2 =12.498,P ＜0.01) and the intensity of the RKIP expression (x2 =51.429,P ＜ 0.01) were significantly different between 2 groups with a negative correlation with radio-resistance to NPC (r =-0.344,-0.535,respectively,P ＜ 0.01).Based on the RKIP expression,the radiosensitivity,specificity,accuracy,positive predictive value,negative predictive value,false positive and false negative were predicted as follows:80.0％,73.3％,77.2％,75.0％,78.6％,26.7％,and 20.0％,respectively.Conclusions RKIP protein shows negative correlation with radioresistance to NPC and could serve as a biomarker in preliminarily screening the intrinsic radiosensitivity of NPC.

Objective To understand the status quo of dyslipidemia among urban and rural residents in Ganzhou City.Methods The multistage stratified cluster random sampling method was adopted to select the urban and rural residents aged more than 35 years old as the respondents,among them 4 829 respondents had the intact data,the investigation items included age,sex,height,body mass,waist circumference(WC),FBG,Scr,blood pressure,TC,TG,HDL and LDL.The body mass index was calculated.Results The prevalence rates of hypercholesterolemia,high TG and low HDL among the urban and rural residents in Ganzhou City were 8.76 ％,16.38％ and 24.04％ respectively.Compared with the persons of normal blood lipid,FBG,Ser,WC and BMI in the persons of high blood lipid were much higher (P＜0.05).Conclsion The blood lipid abnormality in the urban and rural residents in Ganzhou City is dominated by low HDL and high TG.

Objective To discuss the diagnostic value of HIT-antibodies in suspected HIT patients with heart diseases.Methods A single center study.We collected 242 blood samples of suspected HIT patients whose platelet count decreased after heparin application during July 1 st ,2012 to June 30th ,2016 in Wuhan Asia Heart Hospital and detected the concentration of HIT antibodies , meanwhile the 4T′s score were calculated.Among the study objects , there are 206 patients received cardiac surgery , 28 received cardiac interventional therapy and 8 received drug therapy.And we divided them into HIT group (44, median age 57.5, 23 females ) and non-HIT group ( 198, median age 63.5, 87 females ) according to clinical diagnosis.Quantitative data was analyzed by independent t-test or Mann-Whitney U test.Qualitative data was analyzed by Fisher′s exact test.We drew ROC curve according to the statistical analysis to determine the optimal threshold value of antibodies in diagnosis of HIT andsensitivity , specificity, negative likelihood ratio, positive likelihood ratio of the HIT antibody detection .Therefore, we can assess the value of HIT antibody detection in HIT clinical diagnosis and treatment .Moreover, we used the optimal threshold value of antibodies to testify the suspected HIT patients .Results The HIT antibody concentration of HIT group (44) and non-HIT group ( 198 ) are 3.2 ( 95% CI:1.8 -5.5 ) U/ml and 0.4 ( 95% CI:0.3 -0.4 ) U/ml, respectively.The concentration of HIT group is much higher than the non-HIT group(P<0.000).When the cut-off value of HIT-Ab is set at 0.9 U/ml, sensitivity and specificity are 93.2%and 91.9%, respectively. And negative likelihood ratio and positive likelihood ratio are 0.07 and 11.53, respectively.When the cut-off value of HIT-Ab is set at 0.6 U/ml, sensitivity and specificity are 100.0%and 73.7%.HIT-Ab and 4T′s score of ROC-AUC are 0.971 and 0.745, respectively.The diagnosis value of HIT-Ab in HIT is significantly higher than the 4T′s score ( P<0.000).Conclusions HIT antibody detection is a simple and effective auxiliary diagnostic method in HIT exclusion .And HIT antibody detection is more optimal than the 4T′s score in HIT diagnosis and treatment .

Objective:To investigate the effect of decreasing DKC1 gene expression on radiosensitivity of HeLa cells.Methods:A cell model with low expression of DKC1 gene was established by shRNA technology with lentivirus as vector, and the interference efficiency was verified by RT-PCR and Western blot assay. Cells were divided into two groups of interference (Lv-shDKC1) and its negative control. Telomerase activity was detected by TRAP-ELISA, and telomere length was measured by Real-time PCR. Cell survival was obtained through clone formation assay and fitted by multi-target single-hit model, and radiobiological parameters ( D0, Dq, N, SF2) and radiosensitization ratio (SER) were calculated. Results:After DKC1 interfering, the expression levels of mRNA and protein of DKC1 in HeLa cells were significantly decreased by (71.330±4.112)% ( t=25.53, P<0.05) and (35.520±3.804)% ( t=4.833, P<0.05), respectively. Compared with the blank control group and negative control group, the telomerase activity of Lv-shDKC1 group decreased significantly from 0.900±0.044 and 0.897±0.031 to 0.713±0.021 ( F=31.44, P<0.05), the relative telomere length was significantly decreased from 4.233±0.306 and 4.633±0.379 to 2.667±0.404 ( F=39.15, P<0.05). The telomerase activity and relative telomere length of blank control group and Lv-shDKC1 negative control group had no significant difference( P>0.05). SF2 in the interference group (0.571±0.006) was significantly lower than that of the blank control group (0.861±0.009) and the Lv-shDKC1 negative control group (0.807±0.002) ( F=1812, P<0.05), and the radiosensitization ratio (SER) of shDKC1 interference was 1.508. Conclusions:Downregulation of DKC1 in human cervical cancer HeLa cells enhances the radiosensitivity through inhibiting the activity of telomerase and shortening the length of telomere. DKC1 gene may become a new target of radiosensitization.

In this research, we compared the visual neuron responses for LGN, A18 and PMLS of old and young cats with extracellular single-neuron recording techniques. We used firing rate vector to characterize information, and response irregularity of cells to evaluate the degeneration of visual characters. Response irregularity is characterized by means of the two coefficients of variation of firing rate vectors: Cv and Cv2. We found that there was no significant change of the response irregularity in LGN areas during the aging process from young to old cats. But in the other two areas, neurons of old cats exhibited significantly larger response irregularity than those of young cats. The result indicated that the information processing function of advanced visual cortex was impaired by aging. This result also provids a reference for the research of the other neuronal system changes during aging process.
Action Potentials ; physiology ; Aging ; physiology ; Animals ; Cats ; Neural Conduction ; Neurons ; physiology ; Visual Cortex ; physiology