Purpose To explore the role of histone H2B monoubiquitination in primary colonic carcinoma and clinicopathological pa-rameters of colonic carcinoma. Methods To detecte the expression of histone H2B monoubiquitination in 116 cases of primary colonic carcinoma and 15 cases of normal colonic mucosal tissue by avidin-biotin-peroxidase complex ( ABC)-immunohistochemistry. Results The level of histone H2B monoubiquitination was significantly reduced in poorly differentiated colonic carcinoma 19. 4% (6/31) compared with that of well-differentiated colonic carcinoma 49. 4%(42/85), moderately differentiated colonic carcinoma 49. 4% (42/85) and normal colonic mucosal tissue 86. 7% (13/15) (P<0. 05). The expression of histone H2B monoubiquitination was closely correlated with tumor differentiation, Dukes stage, TNM stage and lymph node metastasis (P<0. 05), but not depended on sex or age (P>0. 05). Conclusion Histone H2B monoubiquitination is obviously associated with the progression of primary colonic carcinoma. Although its specific mechanism still remains unclear, histone H2B monoubiquitination could be a novel potential molecular marker for early diagnosis, clinic treatment and prognosis evaluation.

Objective To explore the distribution of water with high level arsenic and prevalence of arsenism along Huai'he River and the surrounding area of Hong'ze lake in Huai'an of Jiangsu. Methods Wate rsamples were collected and tested in 2008 from 18 villages of 6 towns according to history data in 3 counties like Xuyi,Jinhu and Hongze. Samples having arsenic level higher than 0.05 mg/L were investigated by epidemiological method and the patients were diagnosed by Standard of Diagnosis for Endemic Arsenism. Results All 5199 water samples were determined,and 260 water samples were exceeding the national drinking water quality level (0.05 mg/L) in 3 counties,the rates of exceeding diagnosis were 5.6%(247/4454),0.7%(4/597),6.0%(9/148) respectively. Total detected rate of endemic arsenic disease was 5.94%(128/2155). The detected rates of age group of 0 ～ ,20 ～,30 ～ ,40 ～ ,50 ～ ,60 ～ ,70 ～ ,80 ～ were 2.86%(1/35),2.11%(2/95),1.26%(3/239),3.10%(16/516),5.53% (32/579),10.07%(41/407),11.84%(27/228),10.71%(6/56) respectively. The detected rate of male (9.10%,78/857) was higher than that of female(3.85%,50/1298,χ~2 = 25.46,P < 0.01). Conclusions Huai'he River and the surrounding areas of Hong'ze lake like Xuyi,Jinhu and Hongze are identified existing endemic arsenic disease area. The prevention of arsenism should be strengthened in these areas.

Objective To analyze the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the spinal cord and clinical characteristics in patients with autoimmune glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) astrocytopathy.Methods A total of 1 040 samples of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and sera collected in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University from March 2013 to June 2018 were tested with tissue-and cell-based assays,and 42 patients were found positive for GFAP-IgG.The clinical data and MRI characteristics of the spinal cord of 19 patients who were positive for GFAP-IgG in CSF with autoimmune GFAP astrocytopathy and lesions in the spinal cord were retrospectively reviewed.Results There were 12 females and seven males among the 19 patients,with onset age of (44±17) years.The main manifestations of these patients included limb weakness (14/19),abnormal vision (5/19),headache (4/19),seizure (4/19),dementia (3/19),etc.On MRI of the spinal cord,five patients showed involvement in the cervical cord alone,eight showed involvement in the thoracic cord alone and six had both cervical and thoracic segment involvement.Fifteen patients had longitudinally extensive myelitic abnormalities (≥3 vertebral segments long).Seven enhancement patterns were encountered.Lesions were displayed in the spinal cord and brain in eight patients.Central gray matter involvement in the spinal cord was found in all the 19 patients.Conclusions Autoimmune GFAP astrocytopathy more frequently presents in females than in males.MRI of the spinal cord has complex presentations and longitudinally extensive myelitic abnormalities usually.Patients often show central gray matter involvement in the spinal cord.Myelitic abnormalities present more often in thoracic segment than in cervical segment.Abnormalities in lumbar segment are less encountered.

The purposes of this study were to investigate the effect of emodin on expression of BKCa channel β1 subunit in basilar artery smooth muscle cells (BASMCs) and electrophysiological characteristics of vascular smooth muscle cells in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Tail artery pressure measurement instrument was used to measure the change of SHR systolic blood pressure before and after emodin intervention. Single vascular smooth muscle cell was electrically recorded by whole-cell patch-clamp technique. Immunohistochemistry and Western blotting were used to study the distribution and expression of the BKCa channel β1 subunit. The results showed that emodin decreased blood pressure of SHR from (223 ± 16) mmHg to (127 ± 12) mmHg (P < 0.01). There was no difference of blood pressure between emodin-treated SHR and Wistar rats. Emodin significantly increased outward currents of smooth muscle cells in SHR (P < 0.05), and this effect could be reversed by specific inhibitor of BKCa channel, IbTX. Emodin also up-regulated BKCa channel β1 subunit expression in BASMCs. These results suggest that emodin relaxes cerebral basilar artery by enhancing BKCa current via increasing β1 subunit expression in BASMCs.
Animals ; Basilar Artery ; cytology ; Blood Pressure ; Emodin ; pharmacology ; Large-Conductance Calcium-Activated Potassium Channel alpha Subunits ; metabolism ; Myocytes, Smooth Muscle ; metabolism ; Patch-Clamp Techniques ; Rats ; Rats, Inbred SHR ; Rats, Wistar ; Vasodilation ; Vasodilator Agents ; pharmacology

Adult ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Parotid Neoplasms ; diagnosis ; pathology ; surgery ; Retrospective Studies

ABSTRACT:OBJECTIVE To investigate the potential mechanism of aristolochic acid Ⅰ(AAⅠ)on aristolochic acid nephrop-athy and the effect of AAⅠ on PI3K/Akt/NF-κB signaling pathway in rats.METHODS 27 male SD rats were randomly di-vided into three groups:control group,AAⅠ low-dose group(2.25 mg/kg) and AAⅠ high-dose group (9.0 mg/kg).Rats were intraperitoneally injected with AAⅠ once daily for 14 d.Then the serum were taken to determine the content of Cr,BUN and AKP in rats;renal pathological changes were examined by HE staining;the expression levels of PI3K,Akt,NF-κB were analyzed by Western blot;the expression changes of IL-6 and TNF-αwere detected by immunohistochemical assay.RESULTS Compared with control group,the levels of Cr,BUN and AKP in AAⅠ groups were increased significantly(P <0.05);kidney pathological examination revealed the improvement of kidney disease and inflammation;the expressions of IL-6 and TNF-αwere increased significantly(P <0.01);the expression of PI3K,Akt and NF-κB were up-regulated.CONCLUSION AAⅠ can induce the kidney injury and inflammation and activate the PI3K/Akt/NF-κB signaling pathway,thus worsen patho-logical changes of kidney tissue.

ObjectiveThis study proposes a novel single-cell protein localization method based on a class perception graph convolutional network (CP-GCN) to overcome several critical challenges in protein microscopic image analysis, including the scarcity of cell-level annotations, inadequate feature extraction, and the difficulty in achieving precise protein localization within individual cells. The methodology involves multiple innovative components designed to enhance both feature extraction and localization accuracy. MethodsFirst, a class perception module (CPM) is developed to effectively capture and distinguish semantic features across different subcellular categories, enabling more discriminative feature representation. Building upon this, the CP-GCN network is designed to explore global features of subcellular proteins in multicellular environments. This network incorporates a category feature-aware module to extract protein semantic features aligned with label dimensions and establishes a subcellular relationship mining module to model correlations between different subcellular structures. By doing so, it generates co-occurrence embedding features that encode spatial and contextual relationships among subcellular locations, thereby improving feature representation. To further refine localization, a multi-scale feature analysis approach is employed using the K-means clustering algorithm, which classifies multi-scale features within each subcellular category and generates multi-cell class activation maps (CAMs). These CAMs highlight discriminative regions associated with specific subcellular locations, facilitating more accurate protein localization. Additionally, a pseudo-label generation strategy is introduced to address the lack of annotated single-cell data. This strategy segments multicellular images into single-cell images and assigns reliable pseudo-labels based on the CAM-predicted regions, ensuring high-quality training data for single-cell analysis. Under a transfer learning framework, the model is trained to achieve precise single-cell-level protein localization, leveraging both the extracted features and pseudo-labels for robust performance. ResultsExperimental validation on multiple single-cell test datasets demonstrates that the proposed method significantly outperforms existing approaches in terms of robustness and localization accuracy. Specifically, on the Kaggle 2021 dataset, the method achieves superior mean average precision (mAP) metrics across 18 subcellular categories, highlighting its effectiveness in diverse protein localization tasks. Visualization of the generated CAM results further confirms the model’s capability to accurately localize subcellular proteins within individual cells, even in complex multicellular environments. ConclusionThe integration of the CP-GCN network with a pseudo-labeling strategy enables the proposed method to effectively capture heterogeneous cellular features in protein images and achieve precise single-cell protein localization. This advancement not only addresses key limitations in current protein image analysis but also provides a scalable and accurate solution for subcellular protein studies, with potential applications in biomedical research and diagnostic imaging. The success of this method underscores the importance of combining advanced deep learning architectures with innovative training strategies to overcome data scarcity and improve localization performance in biological image analysis. Future work could explore the extension of this framework to other types of microscopic imaging and its application in large-scale protein interaction studies.

The prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii infection in birds has epidemiological significance because birds are indeed considered as a good indicator of environmental contamination by T. gondii oocysts. In this study, the prevalence of T. gondii in 313 house sparrows in Lanzhou, northwestern China was assayed by the modified agglutination test (MAT). Antibodies to T. gondii were positive in 39 (12.46%) of 313 samples (MAT titer > or = 1:5). Tissues of heart, brain, and lung from the 39 seropositive house sparrows were tested for T. gondii DNA, 11 of which were found to be positive for the T. gondii B1 gene by PCR amplification. These positive DNA samples were typed at 9 genetic markers, including 8 nuclear loci, i.e., SAG1, 5'- and 3'-SAG2, alternative SAG2, SAG3, GRA6, L358, PK1, c22-8 and an apicoplast locus Apico. Of them, 4 isolates were genotyped with complete data for all loci, and 2 genotypes (Type II variants; ToxoDB #3 and a new genotype) were identified. These results showed that there is a potential risk for human infection with T. gondii in this region. To our knowledge, this is the first report of T. gondii seroprevalence in house sparrows in China.
Animals ; Bird Diseases/epidemiology/*parasitology ; China/epidemiology ; Genotype ; Seroepidemiologic Studies ; *Sparrows ; Toxoplasma/*genetics/isolation & purification ; Toxoplasmosis, Animal/epidemiology/*parasitology

Objective Our study aimed to delineate the clinical and radiological features of patients with anti-myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody (MOG-Ab)positive neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD). Methods Fifty-seven patients with NMOSD and 29 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) were collected. Data on clinical and radiological features of MOG-Ab positive patients with were analyzed retrospectively. Results MOG-Abs were present in 9/57 (15.8%) NMOSD patients and 2/29 (6.9%) MS patients. Both MOG and aquaporin-4 (AQP4) antibodies were positive in one case of NMOSD. There was no significant difference between the two groups (P＞0.05). There were more females than males having MOG-Ab positive NMOSD (females: males=7:1) and the average onset age was 41.4 ± 11.5 years. There was no significant difference in gender and age between MOG-Ab negative and AQP4-Ab positive groups(P＞0.05). The durations of disease were significantly shorter in either MOG-Ab positive NMOSD patients or MOG-Ab negative NMOSD patients than in AQP4-Ab positive group (P<0.05). Recurrence was the main disease pattern of all three groups and the frequency of recurrence was not significant different among three groups (P＞0.05). The incidence of optic neuritis was 62.5% in NMOSD patients with MOG-Ab positive and 43.5% in AQP4-Ab positive NMOSD patients (P＞0.05). There was no significant difference in the morphology and location of brain lesions among the three groups (P＞0.05). MOG-Ab positive NMOSD patients had long segment spinal cord lesions. The median length of the spinal cord lesions in the MOG-Ab positive group was similar to the other two groups (P＞0.05). Conclusions MOG-Ab positive NMOSD patients have higher proportion of females with shorter recurrence course, more likely complicated with optic neuritis. And the radiological features of brain and spinal cord were not specific to patients with AQP4-Ab positive.

OBJECTIVETo investigate the mechanism underlying myofibroblast differentiation induced by transforming growth factor (TGF) beta1 in obliterative bronchiolitis following lung transplantation.

METHODSHeterotopic tracheal transplantation was performed in Smad3 wild-type and knock-out mice to simulate the lung transplantation in human. Murine tracheal fibroblasts cultivated in primary culture were used for in vitro study. Immunohistochemistry, immunocytochemistry, Western Blotting, RT-PCR and DNA electrophoresis mobility gel shift assay were conducted to detect the expression of alpha-smooth muscle actin (alphaSMA), the marker of fibroblast-myofibroblast differentiation, and the activation of Smad3, p38 and ERK1/2.

RESULTSIn affected airways of experimental obliterative bronchiolitis, abundant expression of alphaSMA were found. In vitro study for tracheal fibroblasts, the activation of Smad3 by TGF-beta1 presents as three major forms, phosphorylation, nuclear translocation and DNA binding. In Smad3 wild-type fibroblasts, TGF-beta1 induces the increase of the myofibroblasts transformation, characterized by the elevation of alphaSMA, both at transcription and protein level. While in Smad3 knock-out fibroblasts, the transformation of myofibroblasts induced by TGF-beta1 is significantly decreased (t = 2.080, P = 0.027; t = 1.982, P = 0.032), but not completely abolished. Further study in Smad3-deficient fibroblasts demonstrates that p38 and ERK1/2 could be activated by TGF-beta1 and result in fibroblast differentiation.

CONCLUSIONSTGF-beta1 could promote the transformation of fibroblasts into myofibroblasts in Smad3 dependent and independent signal pathways, especially the Smad3 dependent path, and result in the development of obliterative bronchiolitis.

Actins ; genetics ; metabolism ; Animals ; Blotting, Western ; Bronchiolitis Obliterans ; genetics ; pathology ; surgery ; Cell Differentiation ; drug effects ; Cells, Cultured ; Disease Models, Animal ; Fibroblasts ; cytology ; drug effects ; metabolism ; Humans ; Immunohistochemistry ; Mice ; Mice, Inbred BALB C ; Mice, Knockout ; Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase 1 ; metabolism ; Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase 3 ; metabolism ; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Smad3 Protein ; genetics ; metabolism ; Trachea ; cytology ; transplantation ; Transforming Growth Factor beta1 ; pharmacology ; p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases ; metabolism