1.Identification and expression analysis of the YABBY gene family in strawberry.
Tingting YU ; Shurong SHEN ; Yiling XU ; Xinyu WANG ; Yao YU ; Bojun MA ; Xifeng CHEN
Chinese Journal of Biotechnology 2024;40(1):104-121
YABBY proteins are important transcription factors that regulate morphogenesis and organ development in plants. In order to study the YABBY of strawberry, bioinformatic technique were used to identify the YABBY gene families in Fragaria vesca (diploid) and Fragaria×ananassa (octoploid), and then analyze the sequence characters, phylogeny and collinearity of the family members. The RNA-seq data and the quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) technique were used to assay the expression patterns of the family members. A green fluorescent protein (GFP) was fused with FvYABBYs and transiently expressed in tobacco leaf cells for the subcellular localization. As the results, six FvYABBY genes and 26 FxaYABBY genes were identified from F. vesca and F.×ananassa, respectively. The FvYABBY genes were grouped into five clades, and five family members were orthologous with AtYABBY genes of Arabidopsis. In F. vesca, all of the FvYABBYs were basically not expressed not expressed in root and receptacle, while FvYABBY1, FvYABBY2, FvYABBY5 and FvYABBY6 were highly expressed in leaf, shoot, flower and achene. In F.×ananassa, FxaYABBY1, FxaYABBY2, FxaYABBY5 and FxaYABBY6 were expressed in achene, and all FxaYABBY were poorly or not expressed in receptacle. Additionally, under the abiotic stresses of low temperature, high salt and drought, the expression of FvYABBY1, FvYABBY3, FvYABBY4 and FvYABBY6 were down-regulated, FvYABBY5 was up-regulated, and FvYABBY2 was up-regulated and then down-regulated. In tobacco leaf cells, the subcellular localization of FvYABBY proteins were in the nucleus. These results provides a foundation for the functional researches of YABBY gene in strawberry.
Fragaria/genetics*
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Arabidopsis
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Biological Assay
;
Cold Temperature
;
Computational Biology
2.Advances in machine learning for predicting protein functions.
Yanfei CHI ; Chun LI ; Xudong FENG
Chinese Journal of Biotechnology 2023;39(6):2141-2157
Proteins play a variety of functional roles in cellular activities and are indispensable for life. Understanding the functions of proteins is crucial in many fields such as medicine and drug development. In addition, the application of enzymes in green synthesis has been of great interest, but the high cost of obtaining specific functional enzymes as well as the variety of enzyme types and functions hamper their application. At present, the specific functions of proteins are mainly determined through tedious and time-consuming experimental characterization. With the rapid development of bioinformatics and sequencing technologies, the number of protein sequences that have been sequenced is much larger than those can be annotated, thus developing efficient methods for predicting protein functions becomes crucial. With the rapid development of computer technology, data-driven machine learning methods have become a promising solution to these challenges. This review provides an overview of protein function and its annotation methods as well as the development history and operation process of machine learning. In combination with the application of machine learning in the field of enzyme function prediction, we present an outlook on the future direction of efficient artificial intelligence-assisted protein function research.
Artificial Intelligence
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Machine Learning
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Proteins/genetics*
;
Computational Biology/methods*
;
Drug Development
3.Significance of high expression of C5orf46 in gastric cancer and potential intervention of tarditional Chinese medicine based on bioinformatics, molecular docking, and cell experiments.
Ying-Jia ZHOU ; Jia-Ming LIU ; Bin LIU ; Zi-Xia WANG ; Xin-Yu FAN ; Pei-Zhen HUANG ; Yu-Xin HUANG ; Jing-Ning SUN ; Qi-Qi CHEN ; Hong-Mei SHEN
China Journal of Chinese Materia Medica 2023;48(9):2368-2378
This study aims to investigate the expression, prognosis, and clinical significance of C5orf46 in gastric cancer and to study the interaction between the active components of C5orf46 and tarditional Chinese medicine. The ggplot2 package was utilized for differential expression analysis of C5orf46 in gastric cancer tissues and normal tissues. The survival package was used for survival analysis, univariate regression analysis, and multivariate regression analysis. Nomogram analysis was used to assess the connection between C5orf46 expression in gastric cancer and overall survival. The abundance of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes was calculated by GSVA package. Coremine database, Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform(TCMSP) database, and PubChem database were used to search the potential components corresponding to C5orf46 gene and tarditional Chinese medicine. Molecular docking was performed to explore the binding affinity of potential components to C5orf46. Cell experiments were performed to explore the expression of C5orf46 gene in cells of the blank group, model group, and drug administration groups. As compared with normal tissues, C5orf46 expression was higher in gastric cancer tissues, which had more significant predictive effects in the early stages(T2, N0, and M0). The more advanced the tumor node metastasis(TNM) stage, the higher the C5orf46 expression and the lower the probability of survival of patients with gastric cancer. The expression of C5orf46 positively correlated with the helper T cells1 in gastric cancer and the macrophage infiltration level in gastric cancer, and negatively correlated with B cells, central memory T cells, helper T cells 17, and follicular helper T cells. Seven potential components of C5orf46 were obtained, and three active components were obtained after the screening, which matched five tarditional Chinese medicines, namely, Sojae Semen Nigrum, Jujubae Fructus, Trichosanthis Fructus, Silybi Fructus, and Bambusae Concretio Silicea. Molecular docking revealed that sialic acid and adeno-sine monophosphate(AMP) had a good binding ability to C5orf46. The results of real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction(RT-qPCR) and Western blot showed that, as compared with the model group, the mRNA and protein expression levels of C5orf46 were significantly lower in the drug administration groups. The lowest expression level was found at the concentration of 40 μmol·L~(-1). The results of this study provide ideas for the clinical development of traditional Chinese medicine compounds for the treatment of gastric cancer as well as other cancers.
Humans
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Stomach Neoplasms/metabolism*
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Medicine, Chinese Traditional
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Molecular Docking Simulation
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Prognosis
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Computational Biology
4.Cloning and expression analysis of U6 promoters in Panax quinquefolius.
Jing-Xian CHEN ; Chao LU ; Guo-Xia WANG ; Chun-Ge LI ; Yu-Hua LI ; Fang-Yi SU ; Chen-Ying WANG ; Yao-Guang ZHANG
China Journal of Chinese Materia Medica 2023;48(11):2931-2939
The U6 promoter is an important element driving sgRNA transcription in the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Seven PqU6 promo-ter sequences were cloned from the gDNA of Panax quinquefolium, and the transcriptional activation ability of the seven promoters was studied. In this study, seven PqU6 promoter sequences with a length of about 1 300 bp were cloned from the adventitious roots of P. quinquefolium cultivated for 5 weeks. Bioinformatics tools were used to analyze the sequence characteristics of PqU6 promoters, and the fusion expression vectors of GUS gene driven by PqU6-P were constructed. Tobacco leaves were transformed by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated method for activity detection. The seven PqU6 promoters were truncated from the 5'-end to reach 283, 287, 279, 289, 295, 289, and 283 bp, respectively. The vectors for detection of promoter activity were constructed with GUS as a reported gene and used to transform P. quinquefolium callus and tobacco leaves. The results showed that seven PqU6 promoter sequences(PqU6-1P to PqU6-7P) were cloned from the gDNA of P. quinquefolium, with the length ranged from 1 246 bp to 1 308 bp. Sequence comparison results showed that the seven PqU6 promoter sequences and the AtU6-P promoter all had USE and TATA boxes, which are essential elements affecting the transcriptional activity of the U6 promoter. The results of GUS staining and enzyme activity test showed that all the seven PqU6 promoters had transcriptional activity. The PqU6-7P with a length of 1 269 bp had the highest transcriptional activity, 1.31 times that of the positive control P-35S. When the seven PqU6 promoters were truncated from the 5'-end(PqU6-1PA to PqU6-7PA), their transcriptional activities were different in tobacco leaves and P. quinquefolium callus. The transcriptional activity of PqU6-7PA promoter(283 bp) was 1.59 times that of AtU6-P promoter(292 bp) when the recipient material was P. quinquefolium callus. The findings provide more ideal endogenous U6 promoters for CRISPR/Cas9 technology in ginseng and other medicinal plants.
Panax/genetics*
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Promoter Regions, Genetic
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Agrobacterium tumefaciens/genetics*
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Computational Biology
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Cloning, Molecular
5.MinerVa: A high performance bioinformatic algorithm for the detection of minimal residual disease in solid tumors.
Piao YANG ; Yaxi ZHANG ; Liang XIA ; Jiandong MEI ; Rui FAN ; Yu HUANG ; Lunxu LIU ; Weizhi CHEN
Journal of Biomedical Engineering 2023;40(2):313-319
How to improve the performance of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) signal acquisition and the accuracy to authenticate ultra low-frequency mutation are major challenges of minimal residual disease (MRD) detection in solid tumors. In this study, we developed a new MRD bioinformatics algorithm, namely multi-variant joint confidence analysis (MinerVa), and tested this algorithm both in contrived ctDNA standards and plasma DNA samples of patients with early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Our results showed that the specificity of multi-variant tracking of MinerVa algorithm ranged from 99.62% to 99.70%, and when tracking 30 variants, variant signals could be detected as low as 6.3 × 10 -5 variant abundance. Furthermore, in a cohort of 27 NSCLC patients, the specificity of ctDNA-MRD for recurrence monitoring was 100%, and the sensitivity was 78.6%. These findings indicate that the MinerVa algorithm can efficiently capture ctDNA signals in blood samples and exhibit high accuracy in MRD detection.
Humans
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Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung/genetics*
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Lung Neoplasms/genetics*
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Neoplasm, Residual/pathology*
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Biomarkers, Tumor/genetics*
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Computational Biology
6.Identification of core pathogenic genes and pathways in elderly osteoporosis based on bioinformatics analysis.
Chao WANG ; Xu JIANG ; Quan LI ; Yan Zhuo ZHANG ; Jian Feng TAO ; Cheng Ai WU
Chinese Journal of Preventive Medicine 2023;57(7):1040-1046
Objective: Using bioinformatics methods to analyze the core pathogenic genes and related pathways in elderly osteoporosis. Methods: From November 2020 and August 2021, eight elderly osteoporosis patients who received treatment and five healthy participants who underwent physical examinations in Beijing Jishuitan Hospital were selected as subjects. The expression level of RNA in the peripheral blood of eight elderly osteoporosis patients and five healthy participants was collected for high-throughput transcriptome sequencing and analysis. The gene ontology (GO) analysis Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis was performed for the differentially expressed genes (DEGs). The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed using the STRING website and Cytoscape software, and the most significant modules and hub genes were screened out. Results: Among the eight elderly osteoporosis patients, there were seven females and one male, with an average age of 72.4 years (SD=4.2). Among the five healthy participants, there were four females and one male, with an average age of 68.2 years (SD=5.7). A total of 1 635 DEGs (847 up-regulated and 788 down-regulated) were identified. GO analysis revealed that the molecular functions of DEGs were mainly enriched in structural constituents of the ribosome, protein dimerization activity, and cellular components were mainly enriched in the nucleosome, DNA packaging complex, cytosolic part, protein-DNA complex and the cytosolic ribosome. KEGG pathway analysis showed that DEGs were mainly enriched in systemic lupus erythematosus and ribosome. Gene UBA52, UBB, RPS27A, RPS15, RPS12, RPL13A, RPL23A, RPL10A, RPS25 and RPS6 were selected and seven of them could encode ribosome proteins. Conclusion: The pathogenesis of elderly osteoporosis may be associated with ribosome-related genes and pathways.
Female
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Humans
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Male
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Aged
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Gene Expression Profiling/methods*
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Transcriptome
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Protein Interaction Maps/genetics*
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Computational Biology/methods*
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Osteoporosis/genetics*
8.circ_0092315 Promotes Proliferation and Invasion of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma Cells via Regulating microRNA-1256/High Mobility Group A2 axis.
Shu-Hong KE ; Cai-Xia KONG ; Yao XU ; Cong PENG
Acta Academiae Medicinae Sinicae 2023;45(1):16-21
Objective To investigate the role and mechanism of circ_0092315 in the proliferation and invasion of papillary thyroid carcinoma cells. Methods The expression of circ_0092315 in papillary thyroid carcinoma cells was examined by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR.The proliferation and invasion of TPC-1 cells was assessed by CCK-8 and Transwell assays.The protein level of high mobility group A2 (HMGA2) was determined by Western blotting.The regulatory relationship of circ_0092315,microRNA-1256 (miR-1256),and HMGA2 was explored by bioinformatics tools,dual-luciferase reporter assay,real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR,and Western blotting. ++++Results circ_0092315 was overexpressed in papillary thyroid carcinoma cells (all P<0.001).circ_0092315 promoted the proliferation and invasion of TPC-1 cells (all P<0.001).The transfection of si-circ_0092315 up-regulated the expression of miR-1256 (P<0.001),and miR-1256 inhibitor up-regulated the protein level of HMGA2 (P<0.001). ++++Conclusion circ_0092315 is overexpressed in TPC-1 cells and it promotes the proliferation and invasion of TPC-1 cells by regulating the miR-1256/HMGA2 axis.
Humans
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Thyroid Cancer, Papillary/genetics*
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Computational Biology
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Thyroid Neoplasms/genetics*
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Cell Proliferation
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MicroRNAs/genetics*
9.Preliminary Results of Single-cell Transcriptome Sequencing in Renal Arterial Lesions of Takayasu Arteritis.
Qing GAO ; Zhi-Yuan WU ; Hai-Yang LI ; Yong-Jun LI
Acta Academiae Medicinae Sinicae 2023;45(1):80-87
Objective To explore the preliminary application of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) in the renal arterial lesions in Takayasu arteritis (TA) patients. Methods This study included 2 TA patients with renal artery stenosis treated by bypass surgery in the Department of Vascular Surgery,Beijing Hospital.The obtained 2 renal artery samples were digested with two different protocols (GEXSCOPE kit and self-made digestion liquid) before scRNA-seq and bioinformatics analysis. Results A total of 2920 cells were obtained for further analysis.After unbiased cluster analysis,2 endothelial cell subsets,2 smooth muscle cell subsets,1 fibroblast subset,2 mononuclear macrophage subsets,1 T cell subset,and 1 undefined cell subset were identified.Among them,the two subsets of smooth muscle cells were contractile and secretory,respectively.The results of scRNA-seq indicated that enzymatic hydrolysis with GEXSCOPE kit produced a large number of endothelial cells (57.46%) and a small number of immune cells (13.21%).However,immune cells (34.64%) were dominant in the cells obtained by enzymatic hydrolysis with self-made digestive liquid. Conclusion scRNA-seq can be employed to explore the cellular heterogeneity of diseased vessels in TA patients.Different enzymatic digestion protocols may impact the proportion of different cells.
Humans
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Takayasu Arteritis
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Endothelial Cells
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Transcriptome
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Computational Biology
;
Fibroblasts
10.Bioinformatics analysis and validation of key genes in transformation of idiopathic membranous nephropathy to end-stage renal disease and traditional Chinese medicines for prevention and treatment.
Meng JIA ; Shi-Sheng HAN ; Yi-Ming MAO ; Yi WANG
China Journal of Chinese Materia Medica 2023;48(3):797-810
This study used bioinformatics analysis to screen out key genes involved in the transformation of idiopathic membranous nephropathy to end-stage renal disease and to predict targeted Chinese herbs and medicines and active ingredients with preventive and curative effects. The GSE108113 microarray of idiopathic membranous nephropathy and GSE37171 microarray of were downloaded from the comprehensive gene expression database, and 8 homozygous differentially expressed genes for the transformation of idiopathic membranous nephropathy into end-stage renal disease of were screened out by R software. GraphPad Prism was used to verify the expression of homozygous differentially expressed genes in GSE115857 microarray of idiopathic membranous nephropathy and GSE66494 microarray of chronic kidney disease, and 7 key genes(FOS, OGT, CLK1, TIA1, TTC14, CHORDC1, and ANKRD36B) were finally obtained. The Gene Ontology(GO) analysis was performed. There were 209 functions of encoded proteins, mainly involved in regulation of RNA splicing, cytoplasmic stress granule, poly(A) binding, etc. Thirteen traditional Chinese medicines with the effect of preventing the transformation of idiopathic membranous nephropathy to end-stage renal disease were screened out from Coremine Medical database, including Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma, Lycopi Herba, and Gardeniae Fructus, which were included in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia(2020 edition). The active ingredient quercetin mined from Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform(TCMSP) had ability to dock with the key gene FOS-encoded protein molecule, which provided targets and research ideas for the development of new traditional Chinese medicines.
Humans
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Medicine, Chinese Traditional
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Glomerulonephritis, Membranous
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Kidney Failure, Chronic
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Renal Insufficiency, Chronic
;
Computational Biology

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