Objective To detect the expression of β-catenin in the tissues of primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL), and to discuss its function in PCNSL.Methods The paraffin embedded tissues from 10 patients diagnosed as PCNSL from October 2010 to April 2012 were collected as the experimental group.The paraffin embedded tissues from 10 patients with lymphadenitis were collected as the control group.Quantitative real-time PCR and immunohistochemical method were used to detect the expression of β-catenin in these tissues, and the relationships between β-catenin and clinical data were analyzed.Results Immunohistochemistry results showed that β-catenin protein was localized in the cytoplasm and (or) nucleus.Among 10 PCNSL patients, β-catenin protein was positive in 4 patients, while it was no positive in all of 10 lymphadenitis patients, with the significant differences between both groups (P ＜ 0.05).The β-catenin gene relative expression level was 4.70±0.57 and 1.00±0.27 in the experimental group and the control group, respectively.β-catenin expression was no correlation to age, PS score, cerebrospinal fluid protein level and serum lactate dehydrogenase level of patients with PCNSL.Conclusions Whether in mRNA level or in protein level, β-catenin expression is always high in PCNSL tissues, and its protein is expressed in the cytoplasm, however, this phenomenon was not observed in the tissue of lymphadenitis.

Objective:To investigate the change and clinical significance of serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP) level in patients with acute spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage(AICH).Methods:81 patients with AICH admitted to the Neurosurgery Department of Tianjin Third Central Hospital from January 2019 to October 2020 were retrospectively analyzed. 81 patients with non cerebral hemorrhage who came from the health examination center or complained of dizziness and had no hepatobiliary and skeletal diseases were selected as the control group. The clinical data of all the patients were recorded, including gender, age, Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score, hemorrhage location, liver function indexes, the history of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, smoking, drinking, and so on. The differences in clinical data between the two groups were compared. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the correlation between liver function indexes and GCS score. The independent risk factors for AICH were screened by binary logistic regression, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the value of serum ALP in predicting intracerebral hemorrhage.Results:Serum ALP level in AICH group was significantly higher than that in the control group [85.0(70.0, 103.0) U/L vs 65.0(54.5, 71.5)U/L, Z=6.740, P<0.001]. Pearson correlation analysis showed that serum ALP had a negative correlation with GCS score ( r=0.255, P=0.022). Binary logistic regression analysis showed that hypertension ( OR=20.440, 95% CI 8.572-48.737) and ALP ( OR=1.077, 95% CI 1.049-1.105) were risk factors for intracerebral hemorrhage. Serum ALP level was an independent risk factor ( OR=1.069, 95% CI 1.038-1.101) for AICH after adjusting for confounding variables including age, AST, history of hypertension. ROC curve showed that the area under the curve (AUC) of serum ALP in predicting intracerebral hemorrhage was 0.807 (95% CI 0.740-0.873, P<0.001), with sensitivity of 67.9% and specificity of 81.5%. Conclusions:Serum ALP level may be related to the occurrence and severity of AICH. Therefore, serum ALP level can be used as a reference index to evaluate the occurrence, severity of patients with AICH.

The number of available protein sequences in public databases is increasing exponentially. However, a sig-nificant percentage of these sequences lack functional annotation, which is essential for the understanding of how bio-logical systems operate. Here, we propose a novel method, Quantitative Annotation of Unknown STructure (QAUST), to infer protein functions, specifically Gene Ontology (GO) terms and Enzyme Commission (EC) numbers. QAUST uses three sources of information: structure information encoded by global and local structure similarity search, biological network information inferred by protein–protein interaction data, and sequence information extracted from functionally discriminative sequence motifs. These three pieces of information are combined by consensus averaging to make the final prediction. Our approach has been tested on 500 protein targets from the Critical Assessment of Functional Annotation (CAFA) benchmark set. The results show that our method provides accurate functional annotation and outperforms other prediction methods based on sequence similarity search or threading. We further demonstrate that a previously unknown function of human tripartite motif-containing 22 (TRIM22) protein predicted by QAUST can be experimentally validated.

Objective:To screen the pivotal genes involved in the occurrence and development of HBV-associated HCC. Additionally, perform validation and biological function analysis to evaluate changes in the expression of pivotal genes and their prognostic value in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.Methods:The GSE121248 gene expression profile data of HBV-HCC patients were searched and downloaded from the GEO database. The R language was used to compare the differences in gene expression between hepatocellular carcinoma and paracancerous tissues. KEGG and GO function enrichment analyses were performed on the differential genes. PPI plots and pivotal gene screening were carried out through online tools like STRING and Cytoscape software. 369 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma and 160 healthy controls in TCGA and GTEx were used as validation cohorts to verify the expression levels of the pivotal genes. A Kaplan-Meier plot was drawn to evaluate the prognostic value of the pivotal gene.Results:A total of 120 differentially expressed genes were screened, of which 89 were up-regulated and 31 were down-regulated. Differential genes were mainly enriched in the metabolic pathways related to retinol metabolism, cytochrome P450 metabolism, and the p53 signaling pathway. The top 10 differential genes were selected as pivotal genes by the Cytoscape plug-in cytoHubba. There were significant differences in the expression levels of four types of CCNB1, CDK1, RRM2, and TOP2A genes in the validation cohort. All four types of genes were up-regulated. Survival analysis showed that patients with elevated expression levels of four genes had a poorer prognosis, with statistical differences in results.Conclusion:Four types of genes, CCNB1, CDK1, RRM2, and TOP2A, have high expression levels in patients with HBV-HCC and are correlated to shorter survival times, making them a potential target for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.