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The years-long high-precision photometric data observed by Kepler satellite combining with huge amount of spectra observed by LAMOST provide a great opportunity to study the relations between surface rotation and lithium abundance of li-rich giants. In this study, we cross match the Kepler data with li-rich giants catalog from LAMOST, and obtain 619 common sources. Then we measure 36 rotation periods from the full set of 295 li-rich giants with good data quality which consists of two sub-samples. The rotation periods of 14 stars was extracted from 205 stars with evolutionary stages determined using asteroseismology, including 11 core helium-burning stars (HeBs), 2 red giant branch stars (RGBs), and 1 unclassified star. All the super lithium-rich giant stars ( A ( Li ) > 3.3 dex ) are HeBs in our sample. The remaining 90 giants do not have evolutionary stages confirmed, and in this sub-sample, 22 giants have their rotation period measured. The rotation detection rate of the former sub-sample is 6.8%, which is significantly higher than the detection rate of a large giant sample in previous studies (2.08%). With the surface rotation period measured, we confirm the relation between stellar rotation and lithium enrichment of giants. Meanwhile, we find that the less Li-enriched stars have a relatively dispersed distribution of rotation periods, and the giants with a high Li enrichment is concentrated on the rapidly rotating area, which is consistent with earlier studies. The present work also shows a jump at A ( Li ) ≈ 3.3 dex in the relation between rotation period and Li abundance that coincidently is the boundary between Li-rich giants and super Li-rich giants which may indicate the different mechanisms. The rotation periods of super Li-rich giants become shorter as the lithium enrichment increases. This correlation provides an evidence for the rotational induced extra-mixing mechanism responsible for Li enrichment of giants.

Carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars are considered to be related to the first generation of stars, and responsible for the chemical evolution of the early Galaxy. More than half of them are in binaries, and could be explained by the binary evolution, but the formation channel of them is still not fully understood. Among the hundreds of CEMP stars, there are nine CEMP RR Lyrae stars identified, and at least seven of which are very likely not binaries. The usual binary star evolution channel is difficult to produce such a single star, particularly that of carbon enrichment. One way in which such a single star might be produced is the merger of a helium white dwarf with a Hertzsprung gap (HG) star. We use a stellar evolution program to calculate the models of the merger remnants, and find that the models can reproduce the observed distribution of these CEMP single RR Lyrae stars in terms of surface temperature, gravity, and carbon abundance. Hence, it is extremely possible that the helium white dwarf and HG star merger model is one of the formation channels of the metal-poor carbon-rich RR Lyrae stars.

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the high incidence tumors and is ranked second in cancer-related mortality. Even though great progress has been made, there are no effective therapeutic strategies for late stage and metastatic CRC patients. Acidity is one characteristic of the tumor microenvironment. However, how cancer cells respond to this acidic environment surrounding them remains largely unknown, especially in colorectal cancer. Methods: Proton sensor receptor expression was analyzed in GEO and TCGA datasets. The expression of GPR4 in CRC specimens was confirmed by western blotting and immunohistochemistry (IHC). The role of GPR4 in CRC progression was analyzed both in vitro and in vivo. Pharmacological intervention, immunofluorescence and gene set enrichment analyses were performed to reveal the underlying molecular mechanisms of GPR4. Findings: We found that GPR4 was upregulated in CRC samples. In addition, its high expression correlated with late stage tumors and poor overall survival in patients. Furthermore, loss-of-function assays proved that GPR4 promoted CRC carcinogenesis and metastatic ability. Mechanistically, GPR4 was activated by extracellular protons in the tumor microenvironment and enhanced RhoA activation and F-actin rearrangement, leading to LATS activity inhibition, YAP1 nuclear translocation and oncogene transcription. Conclusions: The expression of GPR4 is upregulated in colorectal cancer and is associated with shorter overall survival time in CRCpatients. These findings reveal the novel roles of GPR4 in CRC progression and suggest GPR4 might be a new therapeutic target for CRC treatment. Funding Statement: This work was supported by the grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81702300 & No.81873555). Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: Study protocol that strictly in line with International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Patients that had received no anti-tumor therapy and signed written informed consent were enrolled in this study.

Parkinson's disease (PD), the second most prevalent age-related neurodegenerative disease, occurs as a result of the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. Long non-coding RNA-p21 (lnc-p21) has been demonstrated to be upregulated in PD. However, its role in PD is unknown. Here, the results showed that lnc-p21 was highly expressed in human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells treated with MPP+. Knockdown of lnc-p21 attenuated the cytotoxicity and cell apoptosis induced by MPP+ as shown by enhanced cell viability, decreased LDH release and cell apoptosis rate, accompanying with reduction of caspase-3 activity and Bax expression, and enhancement of Bcl-2 expression. Furthermore, knockdown of lnc-p21 mitigated MPP+-induced oxidative stress and neuroinflammation, as evidenced by the decrease in ROS generation, increase in SOD activity and decline in TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 levels. Conversely, overexpression of lnc-p21 resulted in the opposite effect. miR-625 was identified as a target of lnc-p21. lnc-p21 overturned the inhibitory effect of miR-625 on MPP+-induced neuronal injury in SH-SY5Y cells. Additionally, lnc-p21 positively regulated TRPM2 expression by targeting miR-625, and knockdown of TRPM2 inhibited MPP+-induced neuronal injury. Overall, our study identified a new lnc-p21-miR-625-TRPM2 regulatory network that lnc-p21 regulated MPP + -induced neuronal injury by sponging miR-625 and upregulating TRPM2 in SH-SY5Y cells, which provide a better understanding for the pathogenesis of PD.

Sichuan pickle is a natural combination of probiotics and dietary fibers, in which a strain Lactiplantibacillus plantarum QS7T was found to be capable of efficiently metabolizing inulin. However, the underlying molecular mechanism of inulin consumption by the strain QS7T is unclear. Therefore, this study firstly investigated the metabolic characteristics of inulin in the strain QS7T, and the results showed it could grow very well on the medium containing inulin as a carbon source (maximum OD600 nm, 1.891 ± 0.028) and degrade both short-chain oligofructose and long-chain fructan components through thin layer chromatography analysis. Genomic sequencing and analysis revealed a high percentage of functional genes associated with carbohydrate transport and metabolism, particularly glycoside hydrolase (GH) genes responsible for hydrolysing carbohydrates, within the genome of the strain QS7T. Furthermore, comparative transcriptomic analysis of L. plantarum QS7T in response to inulin or glucose indicated that functional genes associated with inulin consumption including several genes encoding PTS sugar transporters and two predicted GH32 family genes encoding beta-fructofuranosidase and beta-fructosidase were significantly up-regulated by inulin compared to the gene expression on glucose. In conclusion, we obtained a mechanistic understanding of interplay between probiotic L. plantarum QS7T derived from Sichuan pickle and natural dietary fiber, inulin; totally two operons including a sacPTS1 operon responsible for metabolizing short-chain oligofructose primarily in the cytoplasm and a fos operon responsible for extracellularly degrading all moderate and long-chain fructan components linked to inulin consumption by L. plantarum QS7T.

Previous preclinical evidence has suggested that the elevation of epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) derived from the cytochrome P450 (CYP) epoxygenases-dependent metabolism of arachidonic acid has important anti-inflammatory effects. However, the levels of EETs and their synthetic and metabolic enzymes in human ulcerative colitis has not been evaluated.To evaluate EETs and the expression of relevant CYP isoforms and the metabolizing enzyme, soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH), tissue biopsies were collected from 16 pairs of ulcerative colitis patients' tissues and matched with adjacent non-inflamed tissues. EETs were extracted from tissue homogenates and analyzed by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry.The concentration of EETs was higher in ulcerative colitis tissues compared with matched adjacent non-inflamed tissues (1.91 ± 0.98 ng/mg vs. 0.96 ± 0.77 ng/mg, mean ± SD, P 0.01). As shown by immunohistochemistry, sEH was present in the cytoplasm and intestinal mucosa and showed a decline in ulcerative colitis tissues compared with matched adjacent non-inflamed tissues. Western blot analyses showed reduced sEH expression in ulcerative colitis tissues compared with matched adjacent non-inflamed tissues, whereas CYP2J2 increased in ulcerative colitis tissues (P 0.05). However, there was no statistically significant difference observed in CYP2C8 and CYP2C9 protein expression between them (P 0.05).Our data suggest that the increase in EET levels may be part of a protective mechanism in ulcerative colitis. Furthermore, the concentration of EETs could be a key factor for drug therapy for ulcerative colitis.

Odontogenic ameloblast-associated protein (ODAM), an acidic matricellular protein, has been implicated in several epithelial neoplasms. However, its biological functions and molecular mechanisms in cancer progression, particular colorectal carcinoma (CRC), remain unknown. Here we demonstrated that ODAM was significantly down-regulated in CRC tissues compared with their normal counterparts. Then, we established that ODAM expression level was closely correlated with CRC development and patient prognosis. The abnormal expression of ODAM dramatically affected CRC cell growth in vitro and in vivo. We further revealed that the inhibitory effects of ODAM on CRC cell growth were associated with PTEN elevation and PI3K/AKT signaling inactivation. Furthermore, we determined that silencing of PTEN expression yielded recovery of AKT activity in ODAM-expressing CRC cells. Our study suggests matricellular protein ODAM may serve as a novel prognostic marker and act as a CRC growth suppressor.

Rab3D belongs to Rab protein family. Previous reports showed that the expression of Rab3D was dysregulated in various types of cancer. Rab3D belongsRab3D belongs. However, little is known about the role of Rab3D in carcinogenesis and progression of colorectal cancer (CRC). Here, we first evaluated the expression of Rab3D in 32 fresh CRC and matched normal tissues and found Rab3D was dramatically increased in CRC tissues compared to normal tissues (p

The variation of solar p-mode oscillation frequency with the solar magnetic activity is called the frequency shift, which is considered to be caused by a perturbation in a thin layer near the solar surface. A method for predicting the frequency shift by the magnetic activity index and the solar model had been developed previously. In this method, the frequency shift depends on the intensity of magnetic activity and the position of the perturbing source. The intensity of magnetic activity is considered to be proportional to the magnetic activity index. And the position of the perturbing source was assumed to be fixed previously. This paper has studied the variation of the position of perturbing source. By using the observed p-mode oscillation frequency and Ca II index of the Sun, it is found that the position of perturbing source may be varied with the solar magnetic activity. In the solar maximum year, the position of perturbing source is deeper, but it is shallower in the solar minimum year.

Epithelial cell transforming sequence 2 (ECT2) is a well-studied guanine nucleotide exchange factor for the Rho family GTPase, which has been demonstrated as an oncogene in many types of human cancers. However, little is known about the prognostic value of ECT2 in colorectal cancer (CRC). In current study, we investigated the expression pattern and underlying clinical significance of ECT2 in CRC. ECT2 expression was detected in 345 CRC specimens by immunohistochemistry, and its correlation with clinicopathologic parameters and prognosis of CRC patients were analyzed. Data from Oncomine database and real-time PCR demonstrated that ECT2 expression was elevated in CRC compared with normal tissues. Among the clinical parameters analyzed, high expression level of ECT2 significantly associated with tumor size (P=0.020), serum CEA levels (P = 0.000) and TNM stage (P=0.027). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that patients with high ECT2 expression had a remarkably shorter overall survival. Cox regression analysis revealed that ECT2 expression level was a significant and independent prognostic factor for overall survival rate of CRC patients. These data suggested that ECT2 is an unfavorable biomarker of prognosis in CRC and that ECT2 may be a potential therapeutic candidate for CRC treatment.

The Stripe82 has been repeatedly observed by SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) from 1998 to 2004, so as to provide us with opportunities to investigate the light variations of related objects. In this work, 29 broad-line LINERs (low-ionization nuclear emission line regions) in the Stripe82 are selected from the catalog LMCC (Light-Motion Curve Catalogue) to study their light variations. By comparing with the photometric measurements of the normal galaxies in LMCC, four candidates which possibly have light variations are picked up. Finally, after further verifications, it is found that there are two LINERs (SDSS J004828.80-001241.5 and SDSS J030203.53+005159.5) exhibiting relatively obvious light variations.

The terahertz (THz) and mid-infrared (MIR) spectra of benzene-1,2-diol in the solid state have been modeled by density functional theory (DFT). Calculations of the vibrational spectra based on the optimized geometries provided a good fit to the observed spectra, and a more reasonable spectral reproduction has been achieved than those in previous work. For THz spectrum, the simulation based on the varied unit cell dimension has clearly shown that THz spectral reproduction is affected by the temperature change of unit cell. For MIR spectrum, band assignments are reported in terms of potential-energy distribution (PED), which differ to those previously reported for benzene-1,2-diol in some respects.

This paper reports a corpus-based lexical study of the most frequently used medical academic vocabulary in medical research articles (RAs). A Medical Academic Word List (MAWL), a word list of the most frequently used medical academic words in medical RAs, was compiled from a corpus containing 1 093 011 running words of medical RAs from online resources. The established MAWL contains 623 word families, which accounts for 12.24% of the tokens in the medical RAs under study. The high word frequency and the wide text coverage of medical academic vocabulary throughout medical RAs confirm that medical academic vocabulary plays an important role in medical RAs. The MAWL established in this study may serve as a guide for instructors in curriculum preparation, especially in designing course-books of medical academic vocabulary, and for medical English learners in setting their vocabulary learning goals of reasonable size during a particular phase of English language learning.