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The Cancer/Testis Antigen (CTA) genes comprise a group of genes whose expression under physiological conditions is restricted to the testis but is activated in many human cancers. Depending on the particular expression pattern, the CTA genes are speculated to play a role in spermatogenesis, but evidence is limited thus far. Here, we reported patients with a hemizygous nonsense mutation in cancer-testis antigen 55 (CT55) suffering from male infertility with extreme disruption in sperm production, morphology, and locomotion. Specifically, the insufficiency of sperm individualization, excessive residue of unnecessary cytoplasm, and defects in acrosome development were evident in the spermatozoa of the patients. Furthermore, mouse models with depletion of Ct55 showed accelerated infertility with age, mimicking the defects in sperm individualization, unnecessary cytoplasm removal, and meanwhile exhibiting the disrupted cumulus-oocyte complex penetration. Mechanistically, our functional experiments uncovered CT55 as a new autophagic manipulator to regulate spermatogenesis via selectively interacting with LAMP2 and GABARAP (which are key regulators in the autophagy process) and further fine-tuning their expression. Therefore, our findings revealed CT55 as a novel CTA gene involved in spermatogenesis due to its unprecedented autophagy activity.

Background Folate is considered to be related to lipid metabolism. With the increasing numbers of folic acid fortification nations, the associations of dietary folate and serum folate with lipid profiles deserve more attention and are worth further study. Methods US adults aged ≥ 20 years from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were evaluated. Participants taking folic acid supplements were excluded. The multivariate linear regression model and smooth curve fitting were applied to assess the associations. The segmented regression model was employed to examine the threshold effect of nonlinear relationships. Results Our cross-sectional study included 3706 participants in total. There was a negative relationship between serum folate (log transformed) and triglycerides (β = –0.223, 95% CI: –0.337, –0.110) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) (β = –0.152, 95% CI: –0.296, –0.007) and a positive relationship between serum folate (log transformed) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (β = 0.090, 95% CI: 0.033,0.146). There was a negative association between dietary folate (log transformed) and total cholesterol (TC) (β = –0.299, 95% CI: –0.465, –0.134) and LDL-C (β = –0.266, 95% CI: –0.409, –0.123). A nonlinear relationship was found between dietary folate (log transformed) and HDL-C. Threshold effect analysis showed that the inflection point was 377.57 ug. Within the inflection point, the β-coefficient of HDL-C was 0.105 (95% CI: 0.018, 0.192); beyond the inflection point, there was no relationship (β = –0.067, 95% CI: –0.162, 0.028). Conclusions Optimal dietary folate and high serum folate were associated with favorable lipid profiles. Dietary folate, in the recommended 300–400 ug/d, had a beneficial effect on improving lipid profiles.

Future artificial intelligence circuits will require expandable electronic synapses with extremely high bit density and computing speed. In this regard, the nanostructure of two-dimensional materials achieves the goal and provides device scalability in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. In this work, we report the nonvolatile bipolar resistive switching characteristics of Ni–Al layer double hydroxide (LDH)-adsorbed thiadiazole memristors. The Ni–Al LDH-adsorbed thiadiazole memristors implement a progressive reduction process and can be used to simulate the “learning” and “forgetting” functions of biological synapses. At the same positive and negative voltage pulse width, multiple resistance stages can be observed for continuous pulse number. In addition, the application of pulse train operation scheme is an effective method to control the simulated synaptic devices during the reset process, which helps understand the nature of the evolution of conductive nanofilaments.

Soft magnetic composites (SMCs) have rapidly become the hot spots of research, because of competitive magnetic saturation and high electrical resistivity. Although the magnetic properties have been continuously improved, the nonmagnetic separation and high demagnetization in structure result in low permeability. In this study, Fe–Si–Al SMCs with various particle orientations are designed and prepared under magnetic field. The effects of structures with various orientations on hysteresis loops, effective permeability, magnetic loss and electrical resistance are studied. The results show that the electrical and magnetic properties are totally determined by particle orientation. Especially, compared with non-oriented samples, the permeability of fully oriented samples with particles perpendicular to the normal axis has been greatly improved. This work is of great significance for the research and application of SMCs.

The deciduous Chinese tupelo (Nyssa sinensis Oliv.) is a popular ornamental tree for the spectacular autumn leaf color. Here, using single-molecule sequencing and chromosome conformation capture data, we report a high-quality, chromosome-level genome assembly of N. sinensis. PacBio long reads were de novo assembled into 647 polished contigs with a total length of 1,001.42 megabases (Mb) and an N50 size of 3.62 Mb, which is in line with genome sizes estimated using flow cytometry and the k-mer analysis. These contigs were further clustered and ordered into 22 pseudo-chromosomes based on Hi-C data, matching the chromosome counts in Nyssa obtained from previous cytological studies. In addition, a total of 664.91 Mb of repetitive elements were identified and a total of 37,884 protein-coding genes were predicted in the genome of N. sinensis. All data were deposited in publicly available repositories, and should be a valuable resource for genomics, evolution, and conservation biology., Measurement(s)whole genome sequencing assay • transcription profiling assay • sequence_assembly • sequence annotationTechnology Type(s)DNA sequencing • RNA sequencing assay • genome assembly • bioinformatics analysisSample Characteristic - OrganismNyssa sinensisSample Characteristic - Environmentterrestrial biome Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: 10.6084/m9.figshare.10069796

Nyssa yunnanensis is a critically endangered species endemic to China. Here, we assembled and characterized the plastome of N. yunnanensis using Illumina paired-end data. The assembled plastome is 156,544 base pairs (bp) in length, containing a large single-copy (LSC) region of 86,056 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 18,262 bp, and two inverted repeat (IR) regions of 26,113 bp. The plastome possesses total 125 genes, including 81 protein-coding genes, eight rRNA genes, and 36 tRNA genes. In addition, the overall GC-content of the whole plastome is 37.9%, while the corresponding values of the LSC, SSC, and IR regions are 36.0, 32.2, and 43.0%, respectively. Furthermore, phylogenetic analyses show that N. yunnanensis is closely related to the species of Camptotheca acuminata.

Mesoporous gas-sensitive nanomaterials have attracted the attention of more and more researchers because of their excellent stability and selectivity. Herein, pure and cerium-doped indium oxide 3D nanosphere (26–19 nm in diameter) arrays were synthesized via nanocasting using mesoporous silica as hard templates. The content of the Ce dopant ions has been found critical to control the structure, optical properties, and gas-sensing activities of the materials. The Ce-doped indium oxide shows significantly improved gas-sensing properties as compared to undoped indium oxide. And the sensor fabricated from the 3 mol% Ce-doped In2O3 with mesoporous nanospheres exhibited excellent sensing properties to ethanol at the optimum temperature of 330 °C. The significantly improved sensing performances may be ascribed to the mesostructured morphology and the doping of Ce ion. Optimizing the performance of mesoporous gas-sensing materials through various channels still requires our continuous efforts.

In this paper, nickel oxides (NiO) and iron (Fe)-doped NiO nanowires (NWs) with the various doping content (from 1 to 9 at%) were synthesized by using SBA-15 templates with the nanocasting method. All samples were synthesized in the same conditions and exhibited the same mesoporous-structures, uniform diameter, and defects. Mesoporous-structures with high surface area created more active sites for the adsorption of oxygen on the surface of all samples, resulting in the smaller surface resistance in air. The impurity energy levels from the donor Fe-doping provided electrons to neutralize the holes of p-type Fe-doped NiO NWs, which greatly enhanced the total resistance. The comparative gas-sensing study between NiO NWs and Fe-doped NiO NWs indicated that the high-valence donor Fe-doping obviously improved the ethanol sensitivity and selectivity for Fe-doped NiO NWs. And Ni0.94Fe0.06O1.03 NWs sensor presented the highest sensitivity of 14.30 toward ethanol gas at 320 °C for the high-valence metal-doping.