AIM: To find new gene function associate with active lupus nephritis (LN) through study on the difference in gene expression of peripheral blood mononuclear cells between LN patients and healthy controls by gene chip. METHODS: The CSC-GE-80 chip containing 8 000 spots of cDNAs were used to investigate the difference of the expression. Both the total RNA from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of active LN patients and healthy donors were reversely transcribed to cDNA with the incorporation of fluorescent( cy3 and cy5) labeled dCTP to prepare the hybridization probes. After hybridization, the gene chip was scanned for the fluorescent intensity. The differentially expressed genes were screened. We repeated that in three groups of LN patients and healthy controls, respectively, and only the genes that have differential expression in all three chips were considered associated with LN. RESULTS: 75 genes were identified to be differently expressed in all three groups of LN patients as compared with healthy controls, including 42 up-regulated genes and 33 down-regulated ones. CONCLUSION: The present study represents a global view of gene expression of LN and provides important clues for further study of LN related genes. And it also suggests defensin ? 1, S100A8, S100A9 may be involved in the pathogenesis of LN.

Objective: To study the clinicopathological features of breast invasive micropapillary carcinoma and its treatment and prognosis. Methods: Clinical data, radiological examination, histopathology, immunohistochemistry, therapeutic regimen and follow-up results of 16 cases of invasive micropapillary carcinoma of the breast were collected. The clinicopathological features, immunophenotype, imaging findings, treatment and prognosis were retrospectively analyzed. Results: All the 16 cases were female, with mean age of 56.3 years (40 to 89 years) . Of the 16 patients, 4 cases were pure invasive micropapillary carcinoma, and 12 cases were mixed invasive micropapillary carcinoma. Among the 12 cases of mixed invasive micropapillary carcinoma, 1 case was mixed with invasive ductal carcinoma, mucinous carcinoma and invasive micropapillary carcinoma, and the remaining 11 cases were all non-specific invasive ductal carcinoma with invasive micropapillary carcinoma. Out of the 16 cases, 13 (81.25%) were invasive micropapillary carcinoma with axillary lymph node metastasis, axillary lymph node metastasis which was more than 4 had 7 cases (43.75%) , clinical stage Ⅲ had 8 cases (50%) . According to the pathological results, 16 cases were treated with individualized comprehensive treatment. Of the 16 patients, 14 were followed up and 2 were lost. Conclusion Breast infiltrating micropapillary carcinoma is a rare type of breast cancer, with high rate of axillary lymph nodes metastasis, aggressive lymphatic invasiveness, high malignancy degree and poor prognosis.

The clinicopathological features of 5 cases of micropapillary pattern of pure mucinous carcinoma (MPPPMC) of the breast were analyzed retrospectively. In this group, 5 cases of MPPPMC were all premenopausal women, whose age ranged from 37 to 48 years old. 3 cases had axillary lymph node metastasis, 3 cases had modified radical mastectomy, 1 case had breast conserving and sentinel lymph node biopsy, 1 case had breast conserving and axillary lymph node dissection, 1 case had oral endocrine drug and radiotherapy, 4 cases had oral endocrine drug and chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and 2 cases had oral targeted drug herceptin treatment. MPPPMC pattern is a kind of special type of pure mucinous carcinoma and invasive micropapillary carcinoma. The age of onset of this type is younger than that of mucinous carcinoma, and the prognosis of this type is worse than mucinous carcinoma. Whether it is an independent subtype of breast invasive micropapillary carcinoma or mucinous carcinoma has not reached consensus.

Cystic hypersecretory carcinoma of the breast is very rare, and has a special histological morphology and immunophenotype. It was understood that it cannot be misdiagnosed as invasive carcinoma of the breast or other benign lesions. This paper reports a case of this tumor treated in our hospital on Apr. 2, 2011. The clinical data, ultrasonic manifestations, histomorphology and immunophenotype were analyzed retrospectively. This study aims to investigate the clinicopathological, immunohistochemistry, diagnosis and prognosis of cystic hypersecretory carcinoma of the breast, so as to improve clinicians’further understanding of it.

Proteus mirabilis lipase (PML) features tolerance to organic solvents and great potential for biodiesel synthesis. However, the thermal stability of the enzyme needs to be improved before it can be used industrially. Various computational design strategies are emerging methods for the modification of enzyme thermal stability. In this paper, the complementary algorithm-based ABACUS, PROSS, and FoldX were employed for positive selection of PML mutations, and their pairwise intersections were further subjected to negative selection by PSSM and G_REMLIN to narrow the mutation library. Thereby, 18 potential single-point mutants were screened out. According to experimental verification, 7 mutants had melting temperature (T_m) improved, and the ΔT_m of K208G and G206D was the highest, which was 3.75 ℃ and 3.21 ℃, respectively. Five mutants with activity higher than the wild type (WT) were selected for combination by greedy accumulation. Finally, the T_m of the five-point combination mutant M10 increased by 10.63 ℃, and the relative activity was 140% that of the WT. K208G and G206D exhibited certain epistasis during the combination, which made a major contribution to the improvement of the thermal stability of M10. Molecular dynamics simulation indicated that new forces were generated at and around the mutation sites, and the rearrangement of forces near G206D/K208G might stabilize the Ca²⁺ binding site which played a key role in the stabilization of PML. This study provides an efficient and user-friendly computational design scheme for the thermal stability modification of natural enzymes and lays a foundation for the modification of PML and the expansion of its industrial applications.
Enzyme Stability ; Lipase/chemistry* ; Molecular Dynamics Simulation ; Proteus mirabilis/metabolism* ; Solvents/chemistry*