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BackgroundAphasia is one of the most common complications of stroke. Mirror therapy (MT) is promising rehabilitation measure for the treatment of post-stroke aphasia. Although some studies suggested that MT is effective and safe for aphasia, the effects and safety remain uncertain due to lacking strong evidence, such as the relevant systematic review and meta- analysis.MethodsThis study will search PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Medline, China Knowledge Network (CNKI), WANFANG, China Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), from inception to 1th May 2023 to identify any eligible study. No language or date of publication shall be limited. We will only include randomised controlled trials of MT in the Treatment of poststroke aphasia. Two investigators will work separately on the study selection, data extraction, and study quality assessment. The western aphasia battery (WAB) and aphasia quotient (AQ) will be included as the main outcomes. Boston diagnostic aphasia examination method (BDAE), Chinese standard aphasia examination (CRRCAE) will be included as the secondary outcomes. The statistical analysis will be conducted by RevMan V.5.4 software. The risk of bias of included studies will be assessed by the Cochrane 'Risk of bias' tool. The quality of proof of the results will be evaluated by using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation guidelines.ResultsThe finding will be presented in a journal or related conferences.ConclusionThis study will provide a basis for whether mirror therapy (MT) is effective and safe in the treatment of post-stroke aphasia.Trial registrationSystematic review registration INPLASY registration number: INPLASY 202340054.

Proteogenomics methods have identified many non-annotated protein-coding genes in the human genome. Many of the newly discovered protein-coding genes encode peptides and small proteins, referred to collectively as microproteins. Microproteins are produced through ribosome translation of small open reading frames (smORFs). The discovery of many smORFs reveals a blind spot in traditional gene-finding algorithms for these genes. Biological studies have found roles for microproteins in cell biology and physiology, and the potential that there exists additional bioactive microproteins drives the interest in detection and discovery of these molecules. A key step in any proteogenomics workflow is the assembly of RNA-Seq data into likely mRNA transcripts that are then used to create a searchable protein database. Here we demonstrate that specific features of the assembled transcriptome impact microprotein detection by shotgun proteomics. By tailoring transcript assembly for downstream mass spectrometry searching, we show that we can detect more than double the number of high-quality microprotein candidates and introduce a novel open-source mRNA assembler for proteogenomics (MAPS) that incorporates all of these features. By integrating our specialized assembler, MAPS, and a popular generalized assembler into our proteogenomics pipeline, we detect 45 novel human microproteins from a high quality proteogenomics dataset of a human cell line. We then characterize the features of the novel microproteins, identifying two classes of microproteins. Our work highlights the importance of specialized transcriptome assembly upstream of proteomics validation when searching for short and potentially rare and poorly conserved proteins.

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a significant human pathogen capable of causing foodborne gastroenteritis associated with the consumption of contaminated raw or undercooked seafood. Quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) is a useful tool for studying gene expression in V. parahaemolyticus to characterize its virulence factors and understand the effect of environmental conditions on its pathogenicity. However, there is not a stable gene in V. parahaemolyticus that has been identified for use as a reference gene for qRT-PCR. This study evaluated the stability of 6 reference genes (16S rRNA, recA, rpoS, pvsA, pvuA, and gapdh) in 5 V. parahaemolyticus strains (O3:K6-clinical strain-tdh+, ATCC33846-tdh+, ATCC33847-tdh+, ATCC17802-trh+, and F13-environmental strain-tdh+) cultured at 4 different temperatures (15, 25, 37 and 42°C). Stability values were calculated using GeNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper, and Delta CT algorithms. The results indicated that recA was the most stably expressed gene in the V. parahaemolyticus strains cultured at different temperatures. This study examined multiple V. parahaemolyticus strains and growth temperatures, hence the finding provided stronger evidence that recA can be used as a reference gene for gene expression studies in V. parahaemolyticus.