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TBX5 is a vital transcription factor involved in cardiac development in a dosage-dependent manner. But little is known about the potential association of TBX5 3' untranslated region (UTR) variations with congenital cardiac malformations. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between TBX5 3'UTR variants and risk for congenital heart disease (CHD) susceptibility in two Han Chinese populations, and to reveal its molecular mechanism. The relationship between TBX5 3'UTR variants and CHD susceptibility was examined in 1 177 CHD patients and 990 healthy controls in two independent case-control studies. Variant rs6489956 C>T was found to be associated with increased CHD susceptibility in both cohorts. The combined CHD risk for the CT and TT genotype carriers was 1.83 times higher than that of CC genotype, while the risk for CT or TT genotype was 1.94 times and 2.31 times higher than that of CC carriers, respectively. Quantitative real-time PCR and western blot analysis showed that T allele carriers exhibited reduced TBX5 mRNA and protein levels in CHDs tissues. Compared with C allele, T allele showed increased binding affinity to miR-9 and miR-30a in both luciferase assays and surface plasmon resonance analysis. Functional analysis confirmed that miR-9 and miR-30a downregulated TBX5 expression at the transcriptional and translational levels, respectively. The assays in zebrafish model were in support of the interaction of miR-9/30a and TBX5 3'UTR (C and T allele). We concluded that TBX5 3'UTR variant rs6489956 increased susceptibility of CHD in the Han Chinese population because it changes the binding affinity of two target miRNAs that specifically mediate TBX5 expression., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Congenital heart defects (CHDs) are one of the most common human birth defects worldwide. TBX20 is a crucial transcription factor for the development of embryonic cardiovascular system. Previous studies have demonstrated that mutations in the TBX20 coding region contribute to familial and sporadic CHD occurrence. However, it remains largely unknown whether variants in the TBX20 regulatory region are also related to CHDs. In this study, we sequenced the 2 kb region upstream of the TBX20 transcription start site in 228 CHD patients and 292 controls in a Han Chinese population. Among the 8 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified, six SNPs are in strong linkage disequilibrium and the minor alleles are associated with lower CHD risk (for rs10235849 chosen as tag SNP, p = 0.0069, OR (95% CI) = 0.68 (0.51-0.90)). Functional analysis showed that the minor alleles have lower transcriptional activity than major alleles in both human heart tissues and three cell lines. The electrophoretic mobility shift assay suggested that TBX20 minor alleles may exhibit higher binding affinity with certain transcription repressors. Our results indicate that a moderately lower TBX20 activity potentially reduces CHD risk in the Han Chinese population, providing new insight in the study of CHD etiology.

We construct the 1D ℤ3 parafermionic model based on the solution of Yang-Baxter equation and express the model by three types of fermions. It is shown that the ℤ3 parafermionic chain possesses both triple degenerate ground states and non-trivial topological winding number. Hence, the ℤ3 parafermionic model is a direct generalization of 1D ℤ2 Kitaev model. Both the ℤ2 and ℤ3 model can be obtained from Yang-Baxter equation. On the other hand, to show the algebra of parafermionic tripling intuitively, we define a new 3-body Hamiltonian H123 based on Yang-Baxter equation. Different from the Majorana doubling, the H123 holds triple degeneracy at each of energy levels. The triple degeneracy is protected by two symmetry operators of the system, ω-parity P [formula in text] and emergent parafermionic operator Γ, which are the generalizations of parity PM and emergent Majorana operator in Lee-Wilczek model, respectively. Both the ℤ3 parafermionic model and H123 can be viewed as SU(3) models in color space. In comparison with the Majorana models for SU(2), it turns out that the SU(3) models are truly the generalization of Majorana models resultant from Yang-Baxter equation.

A new realization of doubling degeneracy based on emergent Majorana operator Γ presented by Lee-Wilczek has been made. The Hamiltonian can be obtained through the new type of solution of Yang-Baxter equation, i.e. -matrix. For 2-body interaction, R(θ) gives the "superconducting" chain that is the same as 1D Kitaev chain model. The 3-body Hamiltonian commuting with Γ is derived by 3-body R₁₂₃-matrix, we thus show that the essence of the doubling degeneracy is due to [R(θ), Γ=0]. We also show that the extended Γ'-operator is an invariant of braid group BN for odd N. Moreover, with the extended Γ'-operator, we construct the high dimensional matrix representation of solution to Yang-Baxter equation and find its application in constructing 2N-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state for odd N.